Retail has definitely shrunken in size since expansion launch, but I would hardly call it “dead”. There’s still plenty of groups for basically every part of endgame content regularly rolling, even factoring out the carry sellers.
Having not played WoW since 2009 I certainly can’t form a valid opinion about retail, positive or negative. To be fair though, retail will continue to be more profitable regardless of population because cash shop.
I would 100% put Legion above any other expansion.
The long class storylines and mage tower alone were great.
No, it will probably come back. I Won’t play retail and haven’t for years but i can see people going back just for the reason of if you have a life out side of games you can’t succeed in vanilla, it’s dominated by 40+ hours a week players or you suck. The toxic, e peen macho virgins are attracted to classic and normal people hate those fckrs.
I think the main problem, aside from LFR/LFG and other features introduced along the way was gating the grinds. At least back in vanilla I could do all-nighters and grind my eyelids off and get things done but ever since dailies were introduced in TBC, I felt this “time gating” feeling creeping into the game, growing like a tumor.
I know Blizzard tried it’s hardest to extend played metrics, but telling people when you can do stuff and when you can’t in an MMO feels wrong. What amazes is their stubbornness because not only they ignored the pleas of players of old to ease up on the time gating, they doubled down by gating every single aspect of the game behind a schedule.
And now most players (from what I’ve seen) are excited about Vulpera being added as a playable race… if this was attempted 14 years ago it would have 100% been an April fools days joke by blizzard… now the playerbase is excited about it… absolutely pathetic.
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who is y’all
My retail guild on Sargeras died when classic came out, since the new patch 8.3 was announced none of them returned. We had been raiding since Cata. BFA dug it’s grave with its time gated, cash shop mount-centric nonsense and Classic closed the coffin
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I’ve been reading the to and froing discussion here, and there doesn’t seem to be any reference to players like myself that just quit WoW completely when it became too easy (after WotLK imo), and returned for the time tested skill based MMO playing experience, and 2ish months into it i’m thoroughly enjoying it, it’s not just about nostalgia for me but it’s actually a challenge! not just hit 2 buttons while you’re making a coffee, add this to the migrating players and I reckon the Classic servers will be much more crowded than the retail, if retail manages to hang on at all with the die hard retail buffs out there, certainly it will lose alot of the players who have any real skill, if that’s even a thing now.
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One reason so many people have quit retail is that they’ve already tried to turn it into a mindless grindfest to emulate the classic experience. Lots of people quit over level scaling and increased health to mobs during leveling that drastically slowed down leveling while removing all feel of progression. Allied races: grind away! You want flight? You shouldn’t, because it’s bad for your soul, but if you grind away and wait away we’ll let you have it even though you don’t deserve it.
What, you like gold? Here, have a depressed economy. Now grind away!
Many have rejected these changes and quit over them. They had to roll some of them back, or at least make additions that allowed them to pretend that they didn’t make some big mistakes.
Devs think that people feel more rewarded by surviving massive grinds than by getting actual rewards for their efforts.
Wow didn’t get easy. You got good.
Most retail players have already left Classic. Some never intended to stay. Some intended to stay but realized that it didn’t interest them anymore. Or that you can never go back.
A character of mine just left the guild he joined on day 1. Dead as a doornail.
I was already in a great guild in WotLK, they over simplified the game and made it so any idiot could play it, I enjoyed the obvious gaps in skill that existed, without them there was no way to measure improvement etc, everyone was on par bad or not, the only way you could tell is if someone kept walking into fire etc. You shouldn’t be able to begin playing a game and be right at the top of the DPS meter on your first day. As for the guild emptying, they most likely just found other guilds as the server I am on is growing and growing, and there are numerous 600+ member guilds that already exist, on top of that mine is the 5th least populated server and we are already fighting over mobs.
Vanilla - sub growth.
BC (beginning of retails roots) - sub growth.
WotLK (most overrated expansion in MMO history and introduced the beginning of needing to be strong enough to fight ((possibly)) titans and/or their enemies and everything wrong with modern WoW) - sub peak.
Cata (players asked for HD zone revamp, Acti-Blizz says f*** all that noise we’re burning this b*tch to the ground, Blizz also listens to players moaning about leveling so only 5 measly levels this time) - sub loss.
MoP (some randos wanted pandas - first race that’s considered neutral ((for the first 10~ levels)) - actually a decent story and expansion) - sub stagnation.
WoD (Acti-Blizz is scared, WoD is developed for the fans instead of by the team, pathfinder is implemented to appease both sides, ((flyers vs no flyers)) everyone loses - sub loss.
Legion (second most overrated expansion in WoW, and my 2nd to least played expansion, also leading back to WotLK - players had to be strong enough to defeat Sargeras, something many players throughout the years claimed would/should be impossible ((he cleaves worlds in half))) - sub stagnation(?).
BfA (the end of WoW for many, and a catastrophic failure, but with it bringing new light to possibly the end of this horrid path WoW has gone) - extreme sub loss, around 100 players left per realm.
Classic (a great new/old starting point, but I won’t BS myself and say it’ll be as popular as it is for years to come. A great time in WoW history - absolutely, the best time ((imho)), but even the hardcore Classic fans might move onto new games in development that are trying to take the old school approach) - extreme sub growth, too soon to tell and actually impossible to tell since Wrath, so all of this is BS, anyway.
WoW, as the ultimate MMO king, is dead. Other MMO’s have finally taken people away from it and now it’s just another MMO on the scene. If all Acti-Blizz has is more WoW Expansions, then I assume WoW will just bleed and bleed as more innovative IP’s come out drawing more and more players away as the expansions get less and less $$ put into them as subs drop and drop.
WoW is for the birds.
I’m not saying anything about Modern being dead, but that particularly doesn’t make any sense. “If one of their games was unpopular, they wouldn’t have put funds into another game, particularly the one that was by far the most popular of their products the first time!” What?
??
Not exactly. All PC MMOs are in decline, and going the way of model trains, eventually. WoW is undeniably top of the food chain. Even if you count console FF and ESO as MMOs: WoW buries them.
Just google MMO subscriptions. Been the same overall story since 2004.
Bump keep up the discussion guys
Nazjatar was pretty busy today.
Love the Warcraft universe. Played since vanilla. Retail has evolved as a result of the short comings of vanilla such as lfg and travel time etc etc. community including myself largely wanted the changes we have now. Blizzard has done the best it could in most cases to keep the game current and relevant. I guess threads like this are good for discussion purposes but… . So much of what is present in this particular thread is conjecture. Its assumptions based on feelings. There really are no good numbers anywhere. Opnions come from what we interpret not from much fact. The thread is so full of bias in one direction or another its intensely nausea inducing to read. Why do players, all quite literally playing the same game just different versions of it feel so compelled to hammer the “opposing” side? Its all the same universe. Regardless, both iterations are dependant on each other as you wouldnt have what you have now if Classic had been a failure. Ironically you wouldnt have Classic “official” if there wasnt a big enough push from the community. I understand quite well what the pros and cons are for both. Seriously though can we not just enjoy the pros for each and hope that from Shadowlands on the best of both can come together and make the best WoW experience for all of us? How many of you are here, in the Warcraft universe because you just want good pvp or pve? Do some of you literally only care about the mechanics of a game and not the lore? Dont care to be immersed? I guess it just seems like nothing is really getting done in any of these threads really except trashing one side or the other when both have something to offer. A lot of ppl are just so closed off to one way ornthe other of experienceing the warcraft universe and its astounding.
Seriously…cant we all stop picking apart either version of the game and get along for a change? Or at least have some more productive conversations about it? “People are going to quit classic in a month because its just nostalgia” How can anyone know that specifically for sure? “Retail is crap and Classic is going to kill retail” These statements are what is so irritating and the mentality behind it is the biggest problem in this thread and others like it. I can understand the motivation behind both statements but the statements themselves are useless. Why does anyone on one side or the other feel so compelled to say stuff like this? All it seems to do is help divide everyone.
Sigh…hopefully someone reading this gets what Im poorly trying to communicate.
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Uhhh 3 months later. Still bigger. And growing actually
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Have fun with your dailies