Could Classic destroy WoW?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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**Let me preface this post by letting you all know I am a life long Warcraft fan and I LOVE vanilla WoW. I am not here to trash Blizz and Warcraft, but rather, to raise a semi-serious concern. **

TLDR: I think Classic is going to split up and destroy a lot of guilds and thereby ruin a lot of players entire WoW experience, causing them to unsub.

I run a large, reasonably successful raiding guild in WoW. I have also led a large guild in vanilla.

For myself, and a number of other people in my guild, the reason we still pay for our subscription and continue playing Warcraft is because of our community.

We continue coming back over and over because our little group of friends and regular raid schedules is what gives this game meaning. Not only do we cherish our time spent in raids, but raid night is also the main reason many of us grind mythic+, farm world quests and ensure that we do our weekly 10 keys. I wouldn’t give two craps about my ilvl if it weren’t for my overarching goal of getting AOTC and then Cutting Edge.

It’s all about progressing together.

If the guild died, I am pretty sure at least half of us would move on to another game. I believe this because I know replacing a guild can be tough. Despite all the people spamming guild recruitment in /1, finding a new guild that you like can be very difficult.

It’s difficult to find a guild that is:
1 - On your server
2 - Fits your time schedule
3 - Needs your class
4 - Likes your IO/logs
5 - And most importantly - has a social culture that you fit in with.

So what does this have to do with Classic?

Well recently, we have been discussing what we are going to do when Classic comes out. Specifically, we have been discussing which of us are fully intent on moving from BFA to Classic as our new “main game”.

Bad news: we are totally split.

It seems half our player base are people who are now like 25-30 and have been playing WoW since they were kids. We all remember the glory days and we are genuinley thrilled to get back into the old school game.

The other half our player base seem to have joined WoW during MOP, WoD, Legion or just now in BFA. Most of these players look at Classic and think it sounds stupid. They see crappier graphics, no mythic plus, no cutting edge, no group finder, imbalanced classes, ridiculously grindy gameplay and just an overall worse game.

After having this discussion a few times, I have come to the conclusion that Classic is probably going to kill the BFA side of my guild when it comes out. I think about half our core are going to swap to Classic, and the other half are going to be left in the dust with no guild.

I think this is probably going to happen all across every single server, and I honestly don’t know if enough people who stay in BFA are going to survive the first month of Classic by finding new BFA guilds. (ESPECIALLY SINCE IT COSTS $25 TO SERVER SWAP. HINT HINT HINT BLIZZ)

But here is the real problem…

One might think that this will be fine because Classic is going to be so successful that all the dying guilds in BFA will be replaced by a bigger player base on Classic. I don’t think it will happen.

Having gone back and played on several of the pirated servers, I know first hand what happens in Classic these days. People get super into it all the way until level 30. Then at level 30, people realize it takes like an entire day of grinding and questing to get to the next level and they stop playing.

The grind is too slow compared to what they are used to in retail wow. Today’s Warcraft community is too accustomed to having their quests, XP and gear spoon fed to them on a silver platter.

This problem gets worse and worse all the way until level 60. By the time you get to level 57, you are going to find that about 4/5 of the people you met in the earlier levels have disappeared because the grind is too much.

I would bet good money that very few people who launch Classic will make it to end game. I am thinking less than 1/4. Perhaps only even 10% of the players will make it to 60.

Then at 60 they will discover there are very few healers, even fewer tanks, no group finders, and the PVP queues take up to 30 minutes to get a good match.

(If you think the current tank shortage is bad, wait until you see how many geared level 60 prot warriors there will be.)

… Some players might think about rerolling to tank or heal, then decide not to because it takes 3 months for anyone with a job or school to hit 60.

So another half of the people who get to level 60 will quit Classic.

Then what? Then they try going back to retail.

But when they return to retail, they will find that their guildies who stayed behind have left to try and find new guilds. For many of those people, the guilds they found sucked, and they have just decided to just stop playing… because half their friends went to Classic.

My conclusion is this: Unless Classic is a slam dunk, over-the-top success, I think it may result in mass guild death, and then a serious decline in subscribers.

If I am right, WoW may actually be dead by Christmas 2019, and it might happen because the game we’ve all been waiting for.

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if people are going to quit retail to play classic all that tells me is that classic is a superior product to retail.
sorry to those who remain behind, but i do not feel bad that people want to play a better game.

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Ya don’t get me wrong. I am going to play Classic. I am just worried about what will happen to my guild when I do.

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Activision already destroyed WoW, the only game I want to play now is Classic WoW.

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As the 10th post on this topic, this week alone, this was very unnecessary.

Why do people feel the need to mock the people who are giving them what they want?
Game projects have been cancelled closer to completion than current Classic is seemingly now.

Retail will live on - it won’t “lose” subscribers, because you still have to be subscribed to play.
Sure, the first few months will be heavily in favour of Classic WoW - then they’ll release a massive expansion with all the new content, using all the new money from all the new subscribers.

And it’ll be back on its feet.
Stop dancing with Joy around the idea of current WoW dying - it is very childish and really speaks volumes about your character.
Some people still love classic, millions continue to play it for many reasons.

Long term:

Classic - 1 or 2 million players
Retail (After next expansion) - 3-5 million.

Classic will depreciate over time - you can’t retain success for so long with stagnation.
Vanilla private servers don’t have the same players they had in 2007. Most Vanilla PS players quit after 2-3 years.

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well considering that retail has all but killed off guilds outside of heroic and mythic raiding oriented guilds, i don’t think classic will do much more damage.
between personal loot, LFR, LFD, communities, cross server everything, guilds don’t bring much benefit anymore.

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If you think I wrote this post to childishly mock Warcraft, you are mistaken.

I put a great deal of time and thought into this post.

It was posted to create discussion in the community. There is also a hint in the post, that I think Blizzard should anticipate this problem by making server transfers free.

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Of course classic will deteriorate retails numbers. Retail is already on a downward spiral and when an alternative is introduced it is a no brainer.

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I’m not referring to you.
Look at the very first replies to your discussion.

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not needed. with the except of mythic raiding for a period of time, literally everything in this game can be done cross realm except trades.
given that all loot no matter what is now personal (GRRRR), what possible reason would they need to worry about what server someone is on?

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what in gods green earth makes you think retail will have 3-5 million people?

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You, Murgsie.

Another apparent grave dancer →

What on gods green earth makes you think Classic will overpower Retail?

Most of the things people list in retail as a “problem” have been there since WotLK

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It isn’t your post - its that you should be aware of the crowd you are drawing in.
These people don’t care about your guild, or your friends.

They’d crush all your social progress for the last 13 years to get Vanilla-like WoW back.
They don’t care about your/my issues

Edit: Look at how your post receives no likes, but the hate comments do.

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i don’t. However retail has been on a downward spiral to begin with, and between US and EU only has 6 Million 120 characters. now considering i have 2 alone, and my friend has 4, and the average 120s per player in my current guild is over 2…

I’d be hard pressed to say retail currently has more then 4 million people as is, with people quitting all the time because BFA is a crap sandwich.

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Citation needed.

You can’t possibly make this assertion.
IN all honesty, Classic WoW will probably make retail better - as i’d assume players will see ‘raw’ features in Classic WoW as superior, and since they’ve grown accustomed to them, it wouldn’t be such a shock to implement them in Retail WoWs’ next expansion.

Classic WoW and Retail WoW are mutually beneficial when it comes to success.
You should be hoping both come out of this well.

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You’re basically trying to use the same nostalgia, rose-colored glasses argument that even J. Allen Brack is infamous for (“you think you do, but you don’t”). I don’t think there is ANYONE who posts on this forum who is unaware of the slower leveling.

That’s a bad bet. I think you’re underestimating the total number of people who will launch WOW Classic. We don’t all play Retail. Some quit WOW years ago, while some quit more recently. Some have played pservers, even made 60 on more than one, while others never did.

While I’m sorry if your Retail guild suffers, the problem isn’t really WOW Classic. If a full half of your guild want to make WOW Classic their main (not just dabble in their spare time, since the sub is shared), then they don’t feel invested in Retail, don’t feel invested in the Guild’s Retail progress.

Eh, if Blizzard decides WOW Classic is causing issues in Retail in terms of Guild membership, that’s something to resolve in Retail - whether by merging more realms so the population available to guild recruitment increases, or eliminating the realm requirements for guilds, or dropping the character service price.

I don’t think, with your particular doom-and-gloom scenario, it would matter whether WOW Classic succeeds beyond our wildest dreams or dribbles down to a couple dozen people on one faction on one realm. Retail WOW will live or die on its own merits (or lack thereof).

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https://realmpop.com/

it’s called an educated guess.

lol this will never happen.
people complained when they tried to make dungeons require cc and coordination in cata.
they complained again about it in bc timewalking.
people complain when leveling takes longer.
people would rather have classes all do roughly equal dps then have classes be unique and diverse.

why? it’s not like anything in classic will get added to retail. the last two times they tried to make retail more like classic the fan base collectively lost their minds.

it will be a cold day in hades before retail resembles anything close to classic.

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Once people start playing classic they realize it isn’t like retail where the only aspect of the game that matters is end game content. In classic it wasn’t like that, due to the amount of time it takes, people realize that leveling is a journey of itself. Each level brings with it possible new gear, new spells or spell levels, and a talent point. You can see your character increase in power each time you level or equip a new piece of gear. In retail its almost the opposite, you feel weaker as you level because of the way scaling works.

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I don’t see how Classic will kill retail when Classic is static, expect for making more legacy servers I expect the money Classic makes to keep retail going.

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A lot of this is likely to be contingent on what the Classic Dev Team decides to do once they’re done with WoW Classic. TBC Classic is going to be much less of a challenge for numerous reasons. They could probably turn that out in a handful of months. Because IIRC, nothing of note has happened to/in Outland since it was released. Ditto for Wrath, the Cataclysm didn’t do much of anything to speak of up there.

There is no real challenge to be had in working on those potential “Classic” projects like was the case in WoW Classic. Because Classic was dealing with thousands of quests being restored(while almost every TBC and later quest remains in the modern client), dozens of zones being drastically changed(The Cataclysm only impacted the Vanilla regions; and Outland is much smaller than the original Azeroth), and then finally implementation of the old game mechanics. With WoW Classic as a baseline, a “TBC Classic” project could likely be turned around in a fraction of the time using a fraction of the resources. The only question with it is a matter of timing.

Now that said, finding a way to use Classic’s information with Retail on the same client? As well as getting the chance to possibly introduce subtle tweaks/changes of their own along the way? (As the Bronze Dragonflight wouldn’t send you to an Alternate Timeline “just because they can.”)

That’s something that’s going to be hard for them to pass up. As some former Blizzard Devs have said, the hardest thing for the Classic Devs has to be working on that project and NOT being able to make changes(“leave their mark on the product”). They have to have a “wish-list” that’s a couple miles long at this point. That it also provides an outlet for the players who want more extensive changes made to Classic’s gameplay is another potential bonus for everyone involved.

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