I’ve seen a lot of folks talking about how they expect numbers to drop off drastically after4-6 months or so. Frankly, I don’t believe this will be the case.
There will certainly be a lot of ‘new’ player frustration that will drive people away, folks who don’t want to gear/grind etc. etc. but as more and more individuals devoted to Classic start gearing up and stockpiling supplies it will become much easier for players to kickstart in to the ‘endgame’ world.
Guilds and friends will have materials and gear and crafting recipes to help their friends and associates level/gear/run content. After 4-6 months I expect to see a more steady and gradually increasing playerbase.
I’m only preferring the older versions of WoW because they didn’t gut class spells so much. I really enjoyed MoP and would have continued if they kept classes the same.
The main drop-off people talk about is going to happen before the 5-6 month mark.
and it’s mostly people who aren’t devoted to classes and wont make it anywhere near endgame. It’s people who will check it out to see what the fuss is about, and go back to BfA because of all the inconvenience.
Aside from people that aren’t devoted to the classes and quit before endgame, it’ll coincide more with Phase releases. I expect that drop-off to happen before 5 months.
I don’t expect the population to keep increasing after six months.
Classic is not the new hot thing that Vanilla was when it was out. There are a lot of people who are geared up for this…but one need only check the General Forum for BfA to see that there are plenty of Vanilla players who want no part of this.
I think it will be a lot sooner then that… people are going to come to see it but it won’t be a game that a lot of the current wow players will be interested in.
Worse everyone knows how powerful warriors are without understanding how brutal they are to level and gear.
There will be a good chunk who has romanticized the memories in their minds, who once they try to “go back home” will realize it wasn’t as good as what they had in their minds. THink Classic NES, those things sold out in minutes and there was a waiting list to buy them, but once people bought them and played them, I’m betting most people stopped playing them within a month or so. But there will still be some people playing them, Hard to say the percentage but I suppose time will tell.
I wouldn’t say so much the inconvience as just the quality of the game. Vanilla was not that good. It was a game created by a completely non-cohesive team. Classes were designed one way, but built another way, and then conflicted by the team designing the dungeons and raids. Everything that made Warcraft what it was just barely made it into the story.
This doesn’t mean that a lot of us don’t want to play it anyway. But we gotta stop this obsession with BfA players can’t handle inconvenience, or they want everything wrong for the game. While we had fun back then, and might have fun this time around, it really wasn’t that great of a game.
I keep seeing this argument but all I know is that private servers like nost kept growing and growing for several years until Blizzard had to finally shut them down because they got too popular.
The demand is there, people want to play classic wow… for more then 6 months obviously.
I do expect to see a drop-off around a 5-6 month mark, once the initial frenzy is done, and the work begun. But I also foresee a drop-off at the 24-28 month mark, if Blizzard doesn’t introduce TBC or Classic+. Stagnation is slow death.
I fully expect the classic population to be a fraction of it’s launch by the six month mark. I’d estimate that it will dwindle down to a core of around 200-400k players, where it will remain for the rest of it’s life. Probably closer to 200k… (Numbers are for US servers)
The game was also free. It can be started and stopped at any point. Knowing you have to restart and pay to sacrifice the time becomes a detriment for many.
Also. Many players won’t be used to not having catchup mechanics in a game. Although players seem to hate that, starting from scratch can become daunting if they don’t like their class and feel “stuck”.
I believe it comes up because Blizzard expects a huge drop-off, and they’ve been fairly open about that. I think people are really interested to see how Blizzard’s projection will be accurate.
I am a semi-retired 55 year old ex-lawyer who has been playing since mid-way through Vanilla, as a filthy casual. I got one server first in MOP and that’s about the only high value thing I ever did except constantly play for a decade and a half. In my opinion, based on having played Vanilla, having read a lot of these forum posts, and participating in two stress tests, I believe that there will be a Renaissance, based on community, that will keep a large player base playing in Classic. Younger players who have never experienced close Wow relationships might just respond positively, and stick around. Or it might end up being the older crew like me and my peers. But in a discussion about viability, I believe that as long as Blizzard doesn’t gut the need and the opportunity to build actual relationships with other players, I will play this game until the end of time.
Their getting “too popular” has nothing to do with it. Their existence is enough to warrant a shut-down. Blizzard’s name is plastered all over them, and the help button links to Blizzard websites. This is not a good thing.
The demand may be there, but it’s far less than some people feel. And people who play on private servers want to play classic WoW for free.
I predict we’ll see eight total WoW Classic realms on launch. After a few months, most of them will be dead.
I love classic WoW, but it’s not going to be as popular as people think it’s going to be.