I could find no quotes supporting the notion that takes the notion of functionally the exact same game with just two different server options-- but then running farther with it as you do, going on about “what’s good for one is good for the other” etc. Just this:
Ysithiens stated straight up that they’ll be watching logins into Classic, which means of course they’ll be looking doing the same for regular WoW and analyzing the various metrics for each. The two are so different, and will be attracting different audiences, it makes little sense to try to say that they’d be thinking of it all as the same game:
Now this is aside from the fact that they swear that Classic’s popularity isn’t an issue:
But he says nothing about modern WoW’s popularity. We all know that this has to be something that they certainly worry about, maybe not in relation to Classic. But in general.