Classic WoW - To Folks Predicting a Playerbased Drop in 5-6 Months

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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I don’t think anyone knows how much people will enjoy Classic.

Some say it’ll be too inconvenient for those used to retail,
Some say people will be glad to have a purpose ingame.

The only real thing to base an opinion off right now, are content schedules. Retail content will reduce Classic players for at least awhile, and Classic content will bring people back for…at least awhile.

I’m betting/hoping (not predicting) that people will enjoy Classic more than they thought they would.

Ultimately, I don’t care if the playerbase drops…so long as there’s enough people to play the game.

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There will 100% be a big drop after the first month or two the only question is how much. Some people think as high as 80% while others are hoping for only 50%.

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I think it’s more that the pseudo turn based design of old school MMO’s just hasn’t aged well at all. It was a necessary design 15-25 years ago because of computing and network power issues that just isn’t a problem anymore.

And people are wondering why it still exists, particularly newer players.

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Yea but every new gamer isn’t going to be all into Fortnite or those types of games. Yes it’s super popular but there are younger gamers that do want to play MMO’s. Maybe it’s because their parents played them and they fell in love. Maybe it’s because they love an adventure. Regardless the market is always growing because there are more gamers. That is the point I am making.

In 2019 millions of new gamers will be born, you saying none of them will play or want to play an MMO? Just because they are young it doesn’t exist? That just isn’t what is happening. There will be some young gamers in Classic, New Gamers as well.

I think the biggest issue with the MMO industry is providing a great MMO to play. There hasn’t been one in many years. The market is out there just need the game to play.

If there was an amazing MMORPG released in today’s time it could easily get 20-30 million subs and dominate the market. Not saying that is Classic but the draw to classic getting 10 million subs, will hopefully get companies to make a great MMORPG again.

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i agree with that. Bfa still has a lot of dated mechanics that were necessary in 2004, while other games have taken better advantage of modern tech

stuff like auto attack, melee attack range not matching the animation, lee way and the over all lack of skill shots make wow feel pretty dated in 2019

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Nah, this is trying to rewrite history. It was a great of a game as its remembered. It came into a somewhat mature genre and dominated because of how well it was done. Trying to take that away from it is just nonsense. I played MMO’s since the genre made its roots from bbs games to open worlds, and Vanilla WoW earned its throne. Absolutely in every way.

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Indeed, what you used to get for putting up with those kind of mechanics was a persistent character and being able to play with huge numbers of people. That’s simply no longer the case anymore.

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All this “retail player tourists”.

Noone talks about how bad bfa was received and how much of those “huge retail player numbers” coming to classic are.

What does the “masterpiece” called bfa still have when it comes to subs? 1-2 million tops.

Classic is fishing out of a vanilla pool of 8 million players, a bc pool of 11 million and wrath pool with its close to 13 million active players.

On top of all that you have people who never tried it or player later expansions + a few retail tourists.

Suggesting anything but multiple millions of players in the first month is unrealistic, giving all the numbers.

Go ahead and compare wow classic with wow bfa in google trends. Bfa is way way way down there in the nothing since release.

What happens next is, if the game is good enough, to make the players stay subbed.

People here say it wont do that, that classic, as some posters here said, aint a good enough game.

And then you look up OG WoW and see that its up there in the list of the best games of all time.

So good that people were willing to go to shady unofficial sites, download gigabytes of data from whothehellknows to play on a bugged version of their favorite game where all the time investement can be for nothing in a matter of days/months. Where there is most likely corruption and other things increasingly disturbing the gameflow.

But still hundrets of thousand people went through that, and thats not because its free, its because its the superior game… even in an unofficial and devistated state.

If it where for money, why arent other privates of cata+ any successful? Cause theyre bad from the get go. Even when without bugs.

I wouldnt be suprised if classic becomes and stays more successfull by subnumbers than bfa with word of mouth advertisment alone.

Actually I would bet on that.
I bet on the better game, and anyone with any sense at all should do the same.

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This is accurate.

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150

You’re forgetting that 90% of human beings are morons.

I’ll be very pleasantly surprised if Classic has more then 150k at launch. But a million? Hell no. That’s asking for the Moon.

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Many of whom are the same people and who no longer have the free time to actively play like they did 10-15 years ago. Classic is going to get a fraction of the people for a fraction of their free time that they used to have. Many people already did everything available back then and won’t come back because there’s very little point in doing it again, many people have moved on to new games, and many new players are going to get very discouraged by the lack of modern conveniences in Classic.

Sure, there will be a surge of players joining Classic at launch but I doubt it will be more than a few million decently-active players. And of those there will be a good number who will only stick around a few months.

It’ll be interesting to see how many initial players it gets and how quickly it falls off, whether the half-life is on the order of a couple of months or a half dozen months. That’ll make the difference between it having enough players to stay vital for only a year or a for a couple of years.

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It will drop off for the fact that people will no think it’s worth $15 a month. Some people who played vanilla will comeback, but a 30+ year old isn’t gonna wanna pay $15 a month for a game they play 5 hours a week.

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153

Depends on the 30+ year old.

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Eh, I was in my 30’s when I started playing. Of course, I played for a lot more than 5 hours a week. It was fun back then and I’m sure it will be fun again, however I’d really prefer if they just made a modern version of wow that is fun to play.

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And 30+ year olds now have spouses, kids and jobs to compete with their time.

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Not all of them.

Some of them may or may not have actively decided against it because they view married life as too restricting. Maybe some of them don’t want to have to explain to their future kids why visiting their grandfather is a bad idea.

Maybe you need to stop assuming that things are normal in this world at this point in time, cos they certainly aren’t.

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Polls show that the mojaroty of players will be in the 25 - 35 bracket of age. Followed by the 35+ and teenagers to early 20s.

People tend to say that nobody has time anymore to play the game for extensive periods of time, and people, by majority, didnt have that time all those years in the past.

And thats fine. Most people wont see much of the endgame and thats just how the game works. Its that sense of something greater beeing out there, the feeling of always having something signifcant to do when you log in.

Not a daily or weekly chest. Not some super repetetiv stuff for the same small reward that will give something months down the road.

This will apply to r14 grinders, sure. This also applies to top edge raiders, sure.

But the majority? The majority will take around 3-6 months to even reach 60. And the leveling is fun, especially when playing with rested xp, as most casuals will.

This game offers so much for all players. Theres always important content to do that involves playing with others in a social game.

Each dungeon run isnt a 4 random people appear out of nowhere, one interface button press, 10 minute rush, teleporting into and out of an unimportant dungeon you only enter for some key or exp.

No.

Each dungeons makes you communicate and travel, most of the times you will get into fights (if you dont play on a pve server) and you will make rivals and friends in the process.

Each “repetitive” action you do, on low or max lvl, inherits the strong possibility of a new exciting story to experience and sometimes even to share.

Looks like people have forgotten all the documentaries about wow. All the drama of addiction and people destroying their life over this game.

Do you think peope would do that for a bad game? Certainly not. And thats why you dont hear about that anymore, cause “no one” would do that for the mess the modern iteration of wow is.

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How much time people have isn’t going to affect Classic’s #s that much. Vanilla was successful because it was a ground breaking MMO that respected your time and let you level at your own pace.

Most people never raided in the first place, and I doubt that will change much.

What will impact Classic’s #s more than anything is competition. This isn’t Classic vs Retail. This is Classic vs Retail AND numerous other gaming options that did not exist 15 years ago.

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To build on this, I know of plenty of young gamers (17-21ish) who are excited about Classic WoW, particularly the challenges and how long it takes to achieve something.

Not all young/current gamers are Fortnighters. I’m 29 and I’m certainly not.

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And the fights don’t take 30 minutes between 2 classes that don’t even have healing spells…oh yea and resilience splitting the game in half and ruining the entire game.