I am interested in which one has a higher player count overall right now. Are people toughing it out through BFA for now, or are they enjoying Classic WoW?
Hard to say.
We have no numbers.
Classic players will show up and say they have more because their servers have more activity. But that means very little when sharding isn’t a thing, everyone is shoved into 2 continents instead of 9 or whatever, and there are like 35 servers housing the entire population vs 250 servers on NA Retail (estimates, not gonna go count).
Classic is certainly more popular in the long-term than I thought it would be though. I’m not saying it doesn’t have more, just that we’ll never know and people trying to use anecdotal evidence when things aren’t equivalent shouldn’t be listened to.
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Retail WoW probably has more simply because of how long it’s been going on.
For Classic, you have to have intentionally installed it within the last year or however long it’s been.
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I play on Classic occasionally when I’m bored for a few hours here and there then get bored of it.
I play both. I think that there are probably more people on Retail, but I am generalizing from my friends list. There are 11 people who are playing retail and 5 who are playing classic at the moment. But 16 is not a very large sample size. Plus, my data is flawed because I meet more people on retail.
If you go by warcraftlogs numbers, there are significantly more classic players than retail players. However, warcraftlogs can only track those who upload logs. I’m sure there’s a way to query the API and get an accurate count of characters people have recently logged into, for retail at least
Only Blizzard knows the numbers, but Classic just lost 74k accounts!
If it was close before, that certainly widens the gap a bit.
There isn’t a comparison, classic is like playing chess, BFA is like playing checkers. Everything in classic is hard and rewarding while BFA is just a dumbed down game where everything is easy. Even mythic raiding is probably easy as pie.
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You would get destroyed in a mythic raid if you think playing classic is hard.
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Everything in WoW (both classic and retail) is easy, since it’s just pressing buttons. Just keep pressing them and hopping around until you do it right!
P.S. I do not understand that phrase. Making a pie is not easy, especially if you’re making it from scratch.
P.P.S. The Prophet Skittra, a current boss, is a free mythic kill, if that’s what you’re referencing.
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The only thing “harder” in Classic is leveling and that is only because its slower. Raiding is simple, rotations are easy 3 button rotations hell play a mage and hit 1 button.
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According to the forums, no-one plays retail now, so the forums would say probably around 500k in retail total, whereas the forums say classic is hugely popular, so probably around 5m playing classic.
Again, this is what the forums say.
TL;DR: You’re not going to get anything like an accurate read on this question from either the retail or the classic WoW forums.
Retail by far. Classic is dying…rather quickly.
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Careful, your bias is showing.
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I think Classic had about the same if not more players when it came out. Now I’d say retail is probably pulling ahead with a lot of classic players quitting/taking a break.
I don’t care either way nor does it matter because subscriptions cover both. My realm is alive, and they had to bring back layering because of the sheer number of people wanting to play, so finally I could log on.
I’m just glad Classic exists because retail is FUBAR. There is no saving how abysmal BFA is as long as Ion is leading it.
I don’t like BFA, but I am playing it. I actually haven’t played much of Classic (I am a vanilla vet though). My wife and I only made it to 10 for the first time last night.
So, I don’t really have a bias.
I think Retail overall but Classic sees spurts (when new content comes out) that may put it higher temporarily.
In the end though Classic shows that while retail has gone a little too far in the recent years a lot of changes were good for the game.
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Classic is going strong…atleast the realm I play on.