Blizzard is going to succeed either way. Classic incentivizes players to keep an active subscription now. When there’s content droughts in retail people will play classic and vice versa. Sure, Blizz would like to retain all the new subscriptions but it’s very safe to assume that many more accounts will have longer subscriptions because there is simply more content for a player to do.
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Your average person gets bored after a few MC or BWL clears. It picks back up for AQ40 and most people will never see inside of naxx. Leveling & World PVP for a returning player is usually the most fun aspect.
Often though around the 3-6 month mark a player will be looking to either re-roll or consider playing TBC. Even players who think they don’t like TBC will be tempted telling themselves “if I only had crusader strike,” “If I just had normal gear sets, my spec would be viable,” “PVP is fun but theres no real ranking system”. In time most players will appreciate both games.
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Happens in all games.
Next?
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Lol wut. Most players will be just dinging 60 for the first time on their first character in 3-6 months.
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So you think private servers reflect even in the slightest the upcoming Classic subs? Hahahahaaaaahaaahaaa
Classic is for the WoW players that currently aren’t Subbed waiting for a great version of WoW to play. There are 10+ million of these players out there and that isn’t counting first time new players.
If WoD which was an average expansion had Subs reach 10+ million at launch you are telling me that Classic which is a far superior version of WoW in every way won’t beat WoD?
Classic will easily have several times the amount of Subs of current Retail. It isn’t even a question. Just stop…
It isn’t even that hard in today’s times to get 10 million subs for a hyped up game like Classic.
There are “MILLIONS” of old WoW players returning to play Classic, There are “MILLIONS” that will want to try the game that started it all for the first time.
Simple math is simple.
I think it’s pretty certain that Classic will never get to the heights of WoW in its first run. It will most likely get a lot of people to rejoin and crossover from Retail, some will get bored once they do a few things and then leave. It’s likely that the initial population will be close to the peak population and then it will fall off from there.
How long will it take? Well, I’m guessing that a bunch of people will quit by level 40 and another batch will quit after reaching 60 and doing a few alts. A third wave will stop playing once they run out MC and BWL. After that the diehards will make a run all the way to Naxx, slowly hemorrhaging players.
So how long will it take to die off? Figure the level 40 batch will last a month or so, the level 60 batch will get 3 or 4 months, the early raiders will get a year out of it, and the rest could go another year.
I’m betting we’ll lose 1/2 by about 6 months and it will decay at about that same rate, losing 1/2 every 6 months or so. Maybe even a bit faster than that, halving every 4 or 5 months.
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I don’t think there will be a drop off. When a game gives you incentive, meaningful and social gameplay with an active community, it has endless replayability. It’s the one version of WoW unspoiled by game-ruining features.
So it may seem ironic, but no, you don’t need new content to continue a game like this or maintain its momentum.
Finish every raid and fully geared? Go PVP or aid players in dungeon runs.
Tired of battlegrounds? Put together a raid on Orgimmar.
Tired of the class you main-ed? Roll a new one.
Tired of your faction? Give the other one a go.
Tired of competitive gameplay? Level up professions.
Tired of all of the above? Hang out in a capital city and socialize.
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There are also many casual players back in vanilla whose goal is just hit 60. They don’t play as often, a few hours a week, so level 60 was basically their endgame. If many of those players come back to Classic, I can see many of them dropping off after 2-3 months once they hit 60 again.
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Bingo you get it. There is zero competition in the MMORPG market and Classic will dominate the industry since it offers something no other game can.
Classic is the Future of WoW
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Umm vanilla capped out around 7.5 million before BC. MMOs, as a whole, have been a dying breed for a long time now. Not many people are interested in them anymore. They had their popular phase, and that phase has since passed. They aren’t going to reach their popularity that they once had.
All you have to do is look at the bell curve of wow subs and you’ll see the statistical trend. All games follow one… A game comes out, it ramps up to the peak of the bell curve, in terms of players playing it, then it decays. WoW has just managed to drag that out over 15 years, instead of a single year that most other MMOs manage.
But I’m done arguing with classic optimists. You people are almost as annoying as antivaxers, antiGMO’ers and climate change deniers lol…
That is just not true. There are more people interested in MMO’s now than ever as there are more people on the internet and gaming now than ever. You think every new gamer getting online for the first time instantly wants to play a FPS or MOBA? None of them want to play an RPG or MMO? That is statically impossible and further more illogical.
In 2004 there was 757 million people online 11.7% of the World Population
In June 2019 there was 4.422 Billion people online 57.3% of the Population
You telling me none of them are interested in MMO’s? Stop…The gaming and online industry has been growing rapidly and so is the MMO market. The fact that WoW dropped off in a growing market says something about the direction of the game and how poorly it was developed over time. Getting further and further from a true MMO.
You have no argument, You also shouldn’t be on the Classic forums either if you don’t like Classic enthusiast. That is like going to Church and saying you don’t like talking to religious people.
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I think those that aren’t cut out for Classic will realize it very quickly. Even level 1-10 is harsh when compared to BFA leveling.
Yea but most of the people playing Classic have never played BFA. So it isn’t a good comparison. Classic isn’t for Retail players. It’s for a different market.
there’ll be 2 drastic drops in the population, assuming that the game’s popularity doesn’t explode
the first would be after the tourists leave
the second would be after guilds get bored with naxx and PvP and quit WoW, which will happen gradually, and possibly over a period of 6 or more months
I think there will be lots of casual “tourists” (retail mains) that will float back and forth from each game depending on the current content and interest in retail.
Since classic comes with retail, no one really ever quits.
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If the phases are released in a “patch-like” or spread state to allow for stable releases and steady content consumption then Naxx won’t be out until earliest—late 2020 or more likely mid 2021.
Six months from classic release would be February next year. There will be drops in activity, but those players won’t be quitting, they’ll be going back to retail.
I think the playerbase of people who are willing to play vanilla WoW indefinitely at a hardcore daily play style is far lower than some people claim.
There’s going to be tons of people who try it initially and drop off quickly. There’s going to be tons of people who play it occasionally for old times sake. But people who are going to play it daily for hours for the rest of their lives? Not so many.
What some people don’t like to acknowledge is that vanilla did indeed have people who quit during vanilla.
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Considering how unstable most private server realms are reputed to be it’ll be quite interesting to see how people really react to a stable classic environment on a long term basis.
No MMO can sustain launch populations and while classic is more likely too it’s in the nature of gamers now to just move to the next big thing.
expecting a sub drop within 3 months is reasonable, maybe it will sustain, maybe it won’t.
Wait and see I guess.
And find that the Retail players have left in droves once their population dropped drastically when Classic came out. You’ll have a huge wave of people dropping Retail WoW entirely when they can’t find groups to do stuff. The people who come back in 6 months will return to a game on its last legs.
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