Classic should have been a separate subscription but they said they didnt want to manage two wholly separate MMOs. I can understand that from their point of view but it would have done alot for players.
And many will come for the war within⌠Anything new brings a spike in players. But look at the retention of classic all the way up to wrath⌠It is a downward trend.
Retention is the main stat here. Not the spikes.
I mean, ditto SoD and retail? Thatâs how it goes. People see shiny new thing and want to play it, but not everybody sticks around.
Iâd go so far as to say that every single one of us who posts on these forums (with more than two posts, anyway) is an exception to that 
If this were true they would not have my subscription right now.
No Vanilla = no Subscription; and I do not do MTX so there is that too.
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This is true for me as well. Iâm actually not sure how Psychachi figures Era isnât generating subs specifically on its own. I certainly tried to play both Classic and retail for a while there. It was challenging and I couldnât keep it up but I have no doubt others do. However, certainly not the majority, nowhere near.
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Youâre arguing in circles here. Nobody is telling you that the majority of players donât want Vanilla. We (because itâs not just me anymore) are telling you that the people who said they wanted Vanilla actually wanted Vanilla. They got it, and a lot of them are still playing it.
Itâs that simple.
Did you not point out fairly early on that the request that got shot down for JAB was for other previous expansions, not just Vanilla?
Iâm having trouble keeping track of where you land on this since you seem to jump around a bit. Itâs perfectly reasonable for people to want TBC, especially after Vanilla had run its course. Long-term Vanilla isnât for everybody. Truth be told, I didnât think it would be for me, yet here I am.
At the end of the day, the only people who JAB was right about with that statement would be people who advocated for Vanilla and who then played it in 2019 and found it was not what they wanted. Those folks certainly exist but I think itâs a lot smaller a pool than youâre prepared to consider.
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OP says game is dead.
Someone remarks that people were once offended by Bracks remarks but it looks like he was right.
Someone responds by saying Bracks remarks never resonated with them.
I respond to that and say in hindsight, in spite of any exceptions or ill feelings, he looks like a prophet today and why.
Poster responds and says anyone they find arrogant will never receive any due credit from them. Poster asks a follow up question and so do some others.
I attempt a one size fits all answer and provide a long post with a mountain of empirical evidence as to why Brack is, in fact, correct - if we take his answer in context and apply it to today - because the time was needed to get to Wrath to cover something JAB specifically predicted 11 years in advance and to gather up all the rest of the data related to his take on the Classic base. I make it clear that Im only interested in the validity of Brackâs assertions.
Someone responds to it and says Bracks comments are unjustified - null and void - because Classic wasnât for the masses even though the company puts it on the same exact subscription with the masses and mass market advertises vanillas return (lol). Poster claims its centered around thousands who were specifically asking for vanilla but doesnât explain why or how - but isnt it great pirate server players got official servers now?
I explain Brack doesnât require anyoneâs permission to be justified, thatâs what we have the facts for. Poster doubles down and said even though Brackâs right, he can also be wrong, depending on your personal perspective - ex. If you think Era existing right now is proof of him being wrong even though its not, then Brack is wrong - even though you said he was right just before that. Somehow, thats not contradictory at all.
From there they tried to beg out of the discussion they started but since Im stupid and donât let them off the hook Im forced to endure more non sequitor fluff like, âthe guy who asked at Blizzcon got what he wantedâ and thats what makes the remarks unjustified. How? Why? Donât know, wasnât explained. Im guessing its so we donât look at the things that actually justify them.
Brack is talking to the entire WoW community at an event designed to talk to the entire WoW community and frames his answer taking the entire WoW community into account yet the fact he is talking to the entire community is my assumption. Why is this fact my assumption? Because only one representative of the community asked the question and the applause was weak - that means the answer wasnât meant for everyone even though its a public Q&A with devs on a stage in front a crowd made up of community members. How? Why? I donât know, no logic presented - it wasnât explained. Even though Brack is addressing the entire community, not everyone in the entire community cares about vanilla so it fell on a lot of deaf ears which is something Brack canât control but is somehow accountable for anyway.
Hope that gets you up to speed.
How? Why? Its not enough to say it man, you gotta prove it. These are your theories, burden of proof is on you. You just say stuff without explaining how it refutes anything. Youâve typed a lot of words but havent said a single thing. People who advocated vanilla are still part of the entire WoW community. Bracks response was to the overall WoW community - he told the overall WoW community that the overall WoW community wasnât interested in vanilla and so neither were they at the time. It didnt matter if you really wanted it really badly - most people rather click a button to get groups and thatâs the game they rather work on.
What about somebody who advocated for Vanilla, made crazy gold selling mage boosts and sold it for real money to third party websites so they could sell back to gold buyers? Its somewhat of an aside but Im just wondering if all vanilla advocates are created equal in your eyes or do they refute Brack too?
Well yeah, 2019 is a pretty convenient year to freeze in time to talk about how few people left on account of thinking they did but didnât. It also means you think there are 3 million vanilla advocates out there but whatevs. On a personal note Ive shared before, I came to Classic with nearly 30 guildmates from vanilla and TBC, more than half from vanilla and I was the last man standing 90 days after launch, so thats like 28 people right there in 2019 that I know about. Im sure the pool was smaller in 2019 but by P6 more than a million people were already gone so maybe some people needed a little more time to figure it out, I dunno.
How about that Era population 48 hours after TBC launched? Where were all the vanilla advocates then?
Unfortunately for you, we kind of needed to get where we are now to get a full and accurate picture of the landscape. Classic has been out going on 5 years, player behaviors, trends and population #s can and have been observed, weâre 3 expansions removed from Era and while we have the best Era population weâve had since pre TBC launch, thatâs a more recent phenomenon and still a tiny minority.
Brack predicted RDF would be a desired commodity even among so called classic players - literally called them out on it and got it 100% right even though he never thought the day would come. Brack reasoned that way more players are drawn to RDF than opposed to it. You think you want to play without it but most of you donât. Forget retail, in the Classic space Era canât even remotely compete with Cataclysm of all things. Thats as you think you do but you dont as it gets.
Its really nice to have Era and with enough of a community to get a nice experience out of it - that doesnât make Brack any less correct as of today.
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They thought they wanted TBC, Wrath and cata, but there are tons who wish they never left.
I played TBC and started over fresh on Era, no regrets; I love it here.
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Sorry - I already tried this, but reading through 119 pots most of then hairsplitting between you and Tubbly ⌠sigh
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Is truth is between the hairs?
Sorry, what do you mean?
Iâm just making a joke
But yes I also quickly skim or skip over these long detailed paragraphs about personal intents and such
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Sorry, Iâm not a native speaker, and this joke eluded me
I do th very same, and I hope Corpseknife will cite himself, instead of forcing me to find his âtruth between the hairsâ 
Just saw this.
yikes
Yeah it sucks. If Era had managed to hang onto more players or had been more active with people going back and forth between the two we might have had a real chance at TBC Era servers which probably would have led to Wrath servers which I wouldnt have played on but some definitely would.
Well, canât say I really blame you. Probably would have been easier for them to say they prefer their personal beliefs and discount everything else as nonsense.
⌠and now you understand me, could you please re-post that link?
ht tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHDFgZAuJHU
ht tps://ironforge.pro/population/era/
Not doing anyoneâs homework for them after this so dont ask.
Hey me too. Almost exactly the same experience. But at least for me, absolutely zero of those people (myself included) were advocating for Vanilla servers prior to their announcement.
This is where your mistake lies. Youâre seeing a lot of Vanilla tourists leave the game and feeling like JABâs comment was prophetic, when that is not at all appropriate. Those werenât the people asking for Vanilla and those werenât the folks JAB was responding to.
I want to be clear as well here. Iâm not saying âVanilla touristâ like itâs a bad thing. Of course people wanted to try the shiny ânewâ thing from Blizzard and of course they found it wasnât to their liking. You can look at every single game launch for the past decade (even longer) and see that same old familiar curve. Itâs nothing new, but Clasisc 2019 did retain a lot of players while it ran its course and it continues to retain more players than I think anybody expected.
As others have pointed out, this conversation has gone on too long. You want to believe JABâs remarks are prophetic, thatâs your perogative. I think youâre very much mistaken but hey, this isnât the first time you and I have gotten into it and this is a familiar outcome.
You are right about one thingâŚ
This is the main topic of the thread. It sounds like maybe you agree based on the position youâre arguing with respect to YTYDBYD but either way, the game is not dead, itâs alive and kicking and there are some really great communities out there to be had.
Iâm loving Era and if it wasnât here, I 100% would not be playing WoW.
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Thanks.
Links are easier to use if you use preformatted text - the </> - like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHDFgZAuJHU
https://ironforge.pro/population/era/
Except they will credit this sub to WoW sub numbers. They could care less if you just sub ONLY for classic. The sub still shows you subbed to retail first.