Looking back at this post now. I think Classic WoW on its own saw 8 million players and currently. It is close.
TBC and WotLK will have Classic WoW combined at 12 million across EU and the US. Not even including the Asian servers and our Oceanic friends.
People concerned with Classic Vanilla WoW dying, the Fresh meme will keep Classic alive assuming Blizzard creates Fresh Classic servers.
Create SEPERATE servers for TBC and WotTLK. Do not progress Faerlina to The Burning Crusade. Create new servers for copy to TBC and WotLK. 1 Character soulbound only items. No gold.
Estimates have been done that I think are fairly accurate, that at the time of Classic launch WoW had as few as 3 million subscribers, potentially even less. Blizzard indicated their subs doubled at Classic launch, so that would give a total of, perhaps, 6 million. A lot of those would have gradually dropped off over time, but I agree the numbers would bloom again if TBC went live.
We Oceanic friends are included in the US sub total as we are part of the US region account, and so is a fairly decent part of Asia. Itâs only China and I think S Korea that are separate. So places like Singapore play on the US region.
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World Wide the sub number must be huge. Its great that Classic WoW has been as successful as it has been. Because now it has opened the door for TBC and WotLK.
There are fans of MoP and Cataclysm. If there is enough interest for those servers, Blizzard can create a couple of servers for players of that expansion.
Vanilla, TBC, and WotLK are Top 3 for me. I would hate it if Blizzard forces TBC onto the Vanilla servers. Because it will be exactly what they did all those years ago. They were meant to be Vanilla so it should stay Vanilla. It shouldnât become TBC.
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I donât know if the estimates for subscriptions take into account EU, China and Sth Korea. It would be difficult for us to get estimates of that as we cannot generally see what their activity levels are like. I know WoW used to be huge in China but how it is now I have no idea.
Most players would, I think, be satisfied to see Classic (Vanilla), TBC and WotLK provided as playable options. Beyond that the interest would be very small, and probably not large enough to warrant the work required.
I agree about the servers. I think Classic Vanilla and Classic TBC should be provided as a separate log in option as Classic is now. I believe they should be kept as entirely separate entities and if a Transfer option is provided for characters to TBC, they should turn up with 0g, their mounts and any other bound items, and no materials. The no gold thing might seem harsh, but I could see people with large quantities of gold creating toons, spreading their gold out, transferring the toons over, then deleting them. Start fresh if you want to transfer is my preference because anything else would impact on the gameâs economy, and any new players starting would be at a severe disadvantage.
I also want the option to create a level 58 character. People who didnât play Classic but have been hoping for TBC would be able to start playing TBC on more or less the same spot as everyone else. If it is considered as, in effect, a separate game, and not a carry over from Classic, then itâs a good choice and would tempt more people into playing it.
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I canât see them offering transfers to BC servers, the name debacle becomes insane.
I foresee a day when Iâm offered a choice Expand to TBC or stay in Vanilla forever. There will then be Fairbanks TBC and Fairbanks Vanilla or all of one will graduate to UnGoro or something.
Obviously this will immediately transfer the known economy to the new TBC server leaving the existing economy intact. Minus obviously the players and whatever they brought to the party.
You would get your choice on every toon but only in the upgrade window. After the window you just make fresh characters on TBC servers. Obviously you could only transfer to like minded servers ever. Even if they copy every server theyâll have less than retail. And even if half the populations of every server are halved after the transfer the servers will still have better numbers economically than now.
My 2 copper.