I’m worried that classic with eat into server population that people will quit in droves to play classic. Do you think people will still play retail?
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Some like me will play Vanilla. Some will play retail. Some will do both. Until Vanilla is out for over a year, we won’t know how impactful it is. BFA just isn’t doing it for me.
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It won’t really affect player numbers. The people who don’t like the game currently and moan incessantly about how classic is going to kill retail, aren’t currently playing.
You’ll have tourist numbers at the start, then the dedicated people will be left playing it.
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Most people will try classic for a month or two, if that, then realize all the QoL changes that are in retail (or just get bored with the tedious grindy hell that was vanilla) and will return to retail.
There’s no reason at all to be concerned that classic will tank live, only the most stubbornly dedicated will keep playing it.
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Do you have any research to back this up? Because currently the hype for classic completely outweighs any that’s left for BFA.
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There is massive historical evidence that “hype” is a terrible predictor of anything. You don’t need any new research to prove that you should not believe “hype”.
So the amount of “hype” is not research, is not evidence, is nothing.
Besides, there are several million players. Have you seen “hype” from several million people? No. You have seen it from 10 to 30 people.
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You really should not point out the other posters’ numbers when you can provide no reliable source for your own.
TL:DR Links please
Flips hair and begins doing the dishes and prepping the kitchen for tonight’s parties!
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why does it matter? Play the game in any version.
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Obvious and repetitive bait.
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There will be a temporary drop at release week, but as time goes on people will start coming back and within a month we will be close to current population again. Most of the people who will be permanently transitioning to Classic have in all likelihood already quit playing retail.
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Short term - slightly
Medium and Long term - won’t be noticable
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Honestly, it depends on how many people wanting to play exclusively Classic are currently playing Retail.
From what I’ve heard in the forums (take that with a grain of salt), Classic is drawing mostly from former WoW players, not current ones.
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You mean Classic. Vanilla came out in 2004.
They’re called by different names to differentiate the two and avoid confusion.
OT, i’ll probably play Classic casually while still playing BfA as i’m sure most will as per rose tinted glasses if they’d played Vanilla way back when as i had.
Of course, Classic being played with addons unlike Vanilla & everyone being better players now will make a huge difference vs the 2004 experience. Also, we have Wowhead nowadays which is exponentially better than Thottbot- it’s just better for finding info on how to do quests!
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You dont understand bro.
The QOL improvments turn wow into a game where the world is irrelevent. And the gear you get is inconsequential, which make the very very minor grind for the item annoying as is.
In classic yes you may grind for hours on end for the crafting mats. But when you craft that arcanite reaper you have THE WEAPON. You are done… whereas retail… your not done… you need to craft it again… and again, and hope for a titan forge… you gotta run the dungeon for the armor piece over… and over again. Even if you get it… keeeeeep grinding the same dungeon…
Tldr: The grind is longer in classic yes… but in retail the grind never ends. And there are going to be many, many people that haVe no ideah how mich more FUN classic is. And once they sample it, they will never go back…
Atleast until retail becomes more like classic
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But I don’t want retail to have pitiful and embarrassingly bad spec balance, jokingly trivial dungeons and raids.
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Depends… I think that retail has an advantage that Classic will lack. The wow token, which will inevitable force some people to make gold in retail to buy the token so they don’t have to pay for game time in classic.
But that’s just a thought… no one knows how the future will go.
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They will for the first few weeks and then will quit when people can’t show up for a 40 man raid or commit and it falls apart. They will then go to retail and solo clear BWL and feel better and realize what an asinine thing they are doing.
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I think that retail is already dying.
I know this forum doesn’t typically admit to faults that the current game has, but it is. I’m on a relatively popular server and logged on during prime time to find a guild to see if I could get myself into WoW again. Tradechat is dead and the server forum is dead. And I know people here don’t pay too much attention to streamers/youtubers, but it honestly looks like classic will be wildly successful unless there are drastic changes made to the game philosophy in retail.
Saying that will likely get me flamed on general discussion, but honestly the loud minority on this forum do not speak for a majority of the player base.
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Yes.
Classic only takes a couple of months to get to 60, then they find out how little there is to do.
If they can’t be in a guild that can’t field 40 people, and raid well, the game is over.
Very few people will be able to stick it out, on the horrible raiding schedule they’d have to endure to ever get anything. Very few of those people who WOULD, will be able to be in a raiding guild to do it. Very few raiding guilds will exist, per server, which can do it.
So it will actually replicate the experience I had in Vanilla quite well; People will level up, seeing the promise of what happens when they hit max level. Then that promise won’t deliver.
Have you played the beta phase where everyone is 60, then tries to somehow be in a guild that can field 40 people for raiding, then they somehow have success at raiding and get at least the Molten Core gear set? No, of course not. You won’t EVER see “that beta phase.”
This is because they did the same thing to us in the betas for Vanilla, I think I got a character to level 40 in beta phase 3? Or maybe it was the open beta where I did that. They didn’t let you see it “all” on purpose.
Playing vanilla was the “research to back this up.” They are making the same thing, again. Remember that Vanilla was the perfect time to experience Vanilla, with a huge population. This will be worse.
BFA, even when I’m bored, is way better than Vanilla was. I don’t need a global village, as well as a schedule worse than many people’s jobs, in order to get anywhere. I can at least do some stuff; The stuff isn’t as great as in Legion, but it least I can do some stuff and progress.
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No, I think you don’t get it. Vanilla was not as good as people want to believe, and the lack of content will leave people with a content drought that will have no end, unless they do a BC server. Then the same problem will require a WotLK server and so on.
A dedicated few will play classic, the rest will quit shortly after 60 to go back to retail, or just quit the game in general.
Anyone who thinks that a 15 or so year old version of WoW will kill the most recent version of the game are just being silly.
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