You made a lot of assumptions here.
You are correct. And we have no reason to believe those founding members are still the largest group of players.
Erm, yea, you do. You can assume and guess all you want but it is literally just that without some actual data to back it up.
This seems to think that classic is only popular with “original” players. Many many threads were created with people talking about being excited to experience it for the first time as they were too young before.
Old rig doesn’t mean its an old player, and an old player doesn’t mean its an old rig. Again, you’re assuming that’s the case.
And it’s all besides the point. When the game gets to a point where these cpu’s can’t handle it, Blizz will say that and stop fixing things like this. And we can go back and forth about whether that’s good or bad all day but it has no effect on the outcome. Old hardware becomes dated and no amount of sentiment will change that. I’m saying this as someone who has played off and on since vanilla. I’m an “original” player, I don’t want to have to upgrade my hardware either but the world doesn’t stop for anyone.