If I was a betting person, I’d imagine that Wrath Classic will bring more players back / have more people switch from retail than Classic or TBC. It’s when subs were peaking, many people started in Wrath etc.
I recall playing alts being reasonable, and the raids / PvP were all really fun at the time - so it makes me wonder how that will impact 10.0.
Obviously, people will check out the new expansion but I could see more people staying subbed for Wrath vs Retail.
Curious what kind of design path Blizz will take with 10.0, given they will have some serious “competition” with themselves with having both Wrath and 10.0 out around the same time (based on previous release cycles).
Don’t think it’s going to affect retail at all. People who play retail are people who enjoy the direction, people who enjoy classic are people living in nostalgia and desire social immersion before systems were put in place a big dent into that aspect of the game. Classic is also hyped up because it launches around stale periods and some people are desperate to associate themselves with their favorite title in some shape or form because anything else doesn’t exist to them lol.
Whatever design path they decide to consider on, they need to do something innovative and not a repeat of history as the company is receiving a lot of criticism and losing it’s #1 spot (while subjective) and a stream of employees leaving in a flock… it should give them a wake up call that they need to take action.
WOTLK features little more than gold dailies, very easy dungeons, wintergrasp/PVP, and is raid heavy in terms of progression. I’d guess that once the nostalgia wears off, WOTLK won’t be anywhere near as popular as you suggest.
There will be a population boost initially, but not a lot of reason to believe it’ll last.
WOTLK is the perfect expansion because it has the balance of classic and new things. For example: Looking for dungeon, but I believe it is inside battlegroups, and you get to know the people you are grouping with, and it is important because of the badges. It has that big World PvP zone, Wintergrasp - which is server specific and awesome so it keeps the server community alive and important. It also has a lot of good weekly raids and nice pvp balance, and ret paladins, peoples favorite class, is finally monstrously good, and alliance get an awesome pvp trinket which balances out faction pop
Wrath was my favorite, by far, but I have zero interest in replaying it. I have zero interest in anything classic, and I’m sure there’s tons of players who feel the same way.
People here will do anything except admit that the classic version of the game is good. Like they are trying to prove that Brack was right when he said “No. You don’t want tha- to do- that either. You think you do, but you don’t.” Classic absolutely is and will continue to pull in players and money separately from retail. A lot of classic players don’t touch retail because they don’t like what it’s become. It’s okay. It’s not a contest.
WotLK is the one, single thing for which I would give Classic another shot. LK and DK lore is almost my favorite fantasy lore EVER, and I missed WotLK when it was current. So I might actually give Classic another try if WotLK Classic becomes a thing.
But… I won’t stop playing retail for it. I like retail too much to drop it in order to play an old game that I missed when it first came around.
I mean that’s subjective, I don’t think anyone denies TBC and WOLTK were great expansions. They are my favorite expansions and I thoroughly enjoyed them but the problem is I played them when they were relevant and when they were at a different era of the internet so the experience was much different vs now.
People getting world first kills on launch day? Full fledged guides of complete min/max and meta picks based on previous patch notes, you’re literally playing a replay. There’s no competitive edge to a game that has tons of information on it. Now if you’re new or just simply wanted to re-live that experience after a decade to see how your experience will shape out, nobody is stopping you. But someone who’s experienced it, I have no business wanting to replay it. I may not be 100% content with retail but it hasn’t got me to quit like it did in MoP or WoD because it’s not as bad but again, that’s subjective.
I’d say the game is worse than MoP/WoD in my personal opinion. For me those two expansion were my all time favorite because of how great PvP was. So yeah I get the perspectives. I’m talking about the forum goers whose mission it is to bash classic any way they can because it dares to exist or have people like it over the current game. Kinda like the extreme Asmongold haters who don’t realize they are the person his persona is designed to make fun of. People get way too worked up over such small things.
Wrath classic had better force retail to up its game. It’s the peak of pre cata wow and unlike vanilla and tbc I can see myself totally preferring it if retail doesn’t step up. LFD is there yet with minimal other changes you know I’m down.
I suspect the same thing will happen as with Classic and TBC. A bulk of the retail players will give it a go, but will find it isn’t for them and will go back to retail within a couple of weeks.
I look forward to playing it though. I started playing during Cata, so I’ve been enjoying the difficulty of both classic and TBC.
I’ll play it some, but I think that since we got to relive classic, and this time MANY players got to farm Naxx, it’s going to be fairly lame in PvE for most of it.
The dungeons are a joke.
Naxx isn’t new for most of the players anymore, it’ll be this weird raid tier where you are just re-playing what we did in classic except somehow much easier.
Trial of the Crusader is a terrible 5 boss raid tier all on its own.