I’m saying that lousy games flopping doesn’t mean Classic will flop.
Originally, vanilla doubled it’s subscriptions every month for a year. That won’t happen again, sure, but why do you think it will shrink by eighty percent in a mere two weeks? It’s very possible for a game with explosive popularity and quality to maintain numbers for months.
No, I think it will be inflated at launch by 5-6x because of a pre-existing but uninterested Retail subscription base, and a heavy hype train.
I fully expect the 400-500k of Classic players to keep growing, albeit more slowly than 2004.
There aren’t that many people playing BfA. It barely has more than FF14. Them playing is a drop in the bucket. Like I said, you’re just use to games spiking early and dropping off because games typically suck. Once in a while a game is decent enough to hang on for a year or more. Classic has a reasonable chance at that given it’s popularity/quality.
There are that many retail subscriptions.
If we only get 500k players at launch, I will be both disappointed, and happy, because layering won’t kick in, since there’s too few players. Its a system with a built in obsolescence.
Okay, well, Vanilla had 8m+ subscribers before TBC came out. The TBC launch was crazy, but not unplayable. If Classic gets twice as many players as BfA, that’s still not that many compared to the past. Layering wasn’t needed then, it’s not needed now.
And had 4-5 times as many servers as we’ll have. 30-50 is the generous maximum.
Ops post went over your head huh? Reread it, youll get it.
They are just two very different games, made for very different audiences. Classic is about the social aspect, group up, developing friendships, rivalries, communities, working together to meet challenges. Even the professions mattered and fed off each other (you needed things from people with other professions to level your own, etc).
It was about the journey, not (a rush to) the destination.
The modern version is more like a massive solo player game with other people around who don’t really matter (if you don’t want them to). You could play the entire game, from level 1-120 and do all the content including raiding (LFR mode anyway) without ever speaking to another person.
It’s not impossible for someone to like both though.
Well, launches are always super crowded. The good news is, you don’t have to complete the starting area before you can move on. Classic isn’t so linear. Questing isn’t “on rails” like it is in newer xpacs. You can skip those quests and still go pick up other ones, or grind mobs, or get discovery XP… you can do what you want, instead of being forced to do quests in a specific order, for the most part.
So instead of 4-5 layers per server, just have 4-5 times as many servers. In the unlikely event that 80%+ of the population quits, merge the empty ones. Problem solved.
You say “Unlikely”, I say:
Blizzard has never merged servers. They have created Connected Realms. Are you really asking for CRZ already?
Yeah, nah. I’m just going to reiterate this:
What would be interesting is if they do decently with this classic release, and pay attention to what their original player base has been saying for years. Then release tbc, maybe wotk as they played out originally. That seems to be common the point were many lost interest with the game. Each expansion since then Blizz has seemed to stray from the original game into what it is now. Like many I fired up my subscription for this test, I enjoyed it enough that it was totally worth it. Since test ended I have since logged into my retail account a few times and just have no desire to play it, the game as it is now just does not compare to Vanilla/TBC/Wrath.
Maybe an idea for “classic” long term is to stick closer to the model, but then either branch off a new direction in story, or figure out a way to maintain the playstyle, spell/classes, etc of these early expansions and use them in the newer storylines? That will be a monumental undertaking, but I think the core original game model is much more sustainable and rewarding as a player than the current retail game.
I think it is the significant changes to classes over time that has hurt them and lost much of the player base. I know I liked some of the storylines of recent expansions, but do not care for the changes to playstyle, classes, trades, etc. Honestly all the classes seems to have similar mechanics these days and just feel no sense of individuality.
One can dream at least, but I think it would be interesting to see how it played out if they developed classic as a parallel to existing retail, but with the intention of staying faithful to the base design of classes/traits, etc.
These are all good ideas, but this is not relevant to launch, because Launch will not immediately capture the market.
Yeah I got that all written out and realized it strayed onto a tangent but was close to it and no-place else to put it. :-p
You don’t have to do the starting quests.
No one knows … and that’s essentially one of the problems with predicting how many servers to initially create.
“You don’t have to play the game. You can just go mindlessly kill boars for 3 hours instead. That’s a worthy investment of one’s time!”
/s
I’ll give you a hint - if you group up with other players, you can complete quests/kill mobs you can’t by yourself. Or do whatever you want to do - it is your time.
This is probably the dumbest, most short-sighted thing I’ve read today. There are tons of people that love WoW but are going to hang up BfA when Classic comes out.
If you love it so much, why are you quitting?