Better to have to impose login queues in phase two and offer free migrations to underpopulated realms in the second phase than to contend with nobody playing the game in phase 2 because everybody quit during phase 1 because the sever population collapsed on their first realm, then the second one they rolled on, and then the third one they went to wasn’t interested in them because they were too far behind.
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Watching the developers have a collective aneurysm whenever classic was brought up in the past, their complete lack of interest, and their general attitude of disdain towards vanilla leads me to believe that yes, the current developers do resent the former success of classic.
Not being able to play with friends because they’re stuck in a 3+ hour long queue when you’ve already invested 15+ hours into your toon is not fun either.
Sure they might be able to reroll on a server without queues, assuming there is one, but that also means throwing away 15+ hours of work as well. On a toon parked on a server which will possibly be under populated in 2 weeks. And just so you could re-roll on a second server(with your friend at least) which ALSO will be under-populated in 2 weeks.
Great plan!
and it sounded just as dumb as the first time you said it.
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That’s another good way to handle it, and a very “Vanilla” solution.
It’s probably true that most people will quit but layering is causing side effects that shouldn’t be allowed like people getting arena grand master within an hour by switching layers…
It indeed is, by phase 2 we should have a much better idea of what the actual population will look like.
One thing to remember is that none of the current retail development team worked on vanilla, I sure some of the programmers, artists and stuff did. But the people who designed the game to work the way it did? not one.
Personally I always thought they kept swapping in new class designers after about cata, mainly because each expansion seemed to be trying to tear down everything about the way you played previously and reinvent itself. This type of thing screams new management to anyone who has ever worked in any company that was bought out.
As for Ian, he got to where he is through math. Not feelings, not insight into player psyche, math.
This doesn’t make him a bad developer, I mean making terrible design decisions does, but not his inherent love of math. It is however a very different style from vanilla, much more cerebral and less empathetic. The current focus on arbitrary numbers is something only someone else who also loves math could possibly love.
They should just put a time limit on how often you can hop layers from grouping.
(delayed)My guess is because they’re using classic to test their ‘‘new’’ system. i have theories, blizzcon will give more insight
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Well, that’s only 70%, but that’s also “70% of new players quit before level 10” and expecting attrition to immediately drop to 0 from there to max level is a bit of a stretch, IMO.
That is also data from 9 years ago.
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From Wrath of the Lich Kind era, which would have been the Vanilla leveling content that people were qutting in.
Blizzard’s historical record showed that 70% of players quit by level 10. They have no reason to expect the quit rate is going to be lower on the same exact content 10 years later. If anything, they have reason to expect it to be higher.
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meeeeeehhh I think your stretching, but there will be fall off, ill give ya that.
But you cant rely on data that is 9 years old in today’s gaming market.
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No, it has nothing to do with a failure outcome. It has everything to do with sever merges and the gameplay environment such merges are going to create for those “connected realms.” It is a road you do not want to go down if it is possible to avoid.
“Prevailing knowledge” and understanding of the modern gaming market says that the present day gaming market isn’t going to be receptive to Classic WoW. So based on that, Classic WoW is expected to shed new players at a rate that’s worse than what it did at its peak during Wrath.
How the hell are people trying to argue with actual statistics?
Do you morons live in some bizarre world where empirical date is irrelevant?
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Where the flying monkeys did you read that? O.o
you’re never going to convince them classic wont have 10-15 million players, steadily.
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I’m trying to decide if there is a point in discussing this further with you. You’re disputing hard data directly relevant to the topic at hand and trying to ignore it.
You’re also ignoring the matter that Classic WoW plays very differently than anything that is currently “in vogue” for game designers these days. In industry terms it is a “throwback” and nostalgia piece that is likely to only prove to be a niche market. Because it goes against the prevailing theory of game design.
We know the currently prevailing theory of game design is trash, and their expectations are probably exceedingly low. However, it also is valid that I expect that game is going to spike, and then it’s drop like a rock, but there is going to be that “core fanbase” which creates the social foundation which likely leads to sustained (by slow/steady) growth of the game from that point on.
But Classic has to make it through that initial crash in the player population first. Layering maximizes the chances of that happening.
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