Ninja release?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Most of you are probably familiar with Apex Legends. It’s a fairly popular f2p shooter that released earlier this year. There was no marketing for it, no release date announced either. There were some rumors of a new game coming from Respawn/EA, and then all of a sudden, it was out. It did very well in its first few months (in the top 10 most profitable PC games last quarter, according to SuperData). The release strategy seems to have worked.

I’m wondering if this same sort of release strategy will be used for Classic WoW? Like Apex Legends, Classic has no box to preorder and probably won’t be getting any mainstream advertising. Apex is free and only requires a digital download; Classic will only require a small fee and a digital download. Both qualify as “games as a service,” even though they have different monetization systems. The two games look very different on the surface, but they actually have some commonalities.

So, my question is, could Classic just suddenly get ninja released in the same manner that Apex Legends was released? That sort of release strategy may help to alleviate some of the launch day concerns people have for Classic. For example:

:black_small_square: It prevents a situation where everyone is ready to go and smashing the play button the second the servers go live.

:black_small_square: Fewer people crowding into the starting zones means there will be a reduced need for sharding.

:black_small_square: Many of the fanboys who want to constantly follow their favorite streamer around will end up being way behind them in the leveling process. By the time most of them have figured out Classic is live, the streamers will be well past the starting zones. The “typical” gamer (not playing all day) won’t catch up to them. If you are leveling quickly and happen to be in the same zone that some popular streamer is in, you will probably appreciate the fact that there aren’t 100 idiots following them around.

:black_small_square: People won’t have time to figure out where all the cool kids are going to be. If everyone knows the release date and the rumor mill starts churning regarding who is playing on what server, a lot of people are going to plan to roll on the server with player/ guild x. Depending on just how popular player/ guild x is, that server may need to be locked almost immediately after it opens. If we don’t know the release date or the server names ahead of time, sycophants and haters can’t preplan to roll on that server.

If the game just suddenly launched at like 3 am on a weekday, or some other seemingly random and highly inconvenient time, I think a number of the potential launch day issues discussed here become non-issues, or they are at least reduced in severity. I’m not necessarily espousing this sort of strategy, but do you think it could go down like this?

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Blizzard is going to release Classic with out warning
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Yeah… no. There would be overwhelming backlash if Blizzard did this. The reason Apex was “ninja released” is because at that moment in time, anything EA touched was getting sh!t on regardless of what it was.

Also, Blizzard has like a 30 year track record that they’ve shown an established process they go through prior to almost all of their releases.

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I doubt it. Blizzard knows that the backlash would be horrendous. They want to make money, not tick off a large portion of their target market…

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Its to late for that. That would work if ppl didnt know classic was becoming a thing.

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I’m not sure how likely it is, but I think it is definitely possible. Blizzard has been pretty clear they view Classic to be a sub-server to WoW, and not a standalone game. IE, they expect it to be something people log into during content lulls in Modern WoW. So in that regard, I could see Blizzard treating it as basically a patch or content update, as far as marketing and the like goes.

There will be a release date given, but a marketing blitz seems unlikely.

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Actually… I am not so sure there would be as much backlash as everyone thinks… People would be in too much of a scramble to actually get on and play it…

Sure there would be a few cross words like “that was pretty sneaky/sh!tty etc…”
But people would quickly get over it as they get into the game and play - plus they are already going to be saying cross words like “finally, only took them 15 years… plus forever to actually get it out…”

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This is hands down the worst post on the classic forum.

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no they would let you know ahead of time so you can download classic before launch day just like with patches.

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i think it would be funny. people would lose their stuff if they got home from work or school and found out it had been released at 10am with no warning.

heehhee. i wanna see the world burn.

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I am am kinda hoping they will do this.

I doubt they will but it would be extremely funny.

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There is a large percentage of players looking to speed run Classic. There is 100% no way Blizzard would ever do this.

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A ninja release would make launch numbers smaller. Anything to ease launch and reduce sharding needed is a good idea. It would make people mad, but who cares. They should have put a box price for 10 bucks on it to keep Tourists out of the way, at least for 6 months or so.

A major problem is people from BFA swinging in, taking up a toon name, realizing that they can’t face pull 10 mobs and jump in circles and hit level 10 in 25 minutes, and they leave with the toon name still locked down.

They won’t Ninja the launch though. I’m expecting a 1 month notice.

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This would pizz me off to no end. I want to make sure I am off work and be there when gates open to get my names. I want to be sure my friends are Cheeto and Pepsi stocked, guild planned out, toons also mapped and we dive in together. Honestly, the idea above of a small fee at launch might not be a bad idea, though won’t happen. BFA folks taking up a name for 5 minutes, clogging starting zones then never coming back is a real issue. They will cry about not being able to loot the thingies then leave. Here’s a thought… ask some people to group up so everyone gets credit! Asking people to group up is so foreign nowdays the idea will not even occur to them.

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you mean the BFA folks who are the only ones actually paying Blizzard to fund our hobby? This self entitlement is exactly why I hope they do ninja release. You are exactly the person I want to see annoyed.

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I’d be one happy neckbeard.

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So many people would be pissed off, they wanna take time off work for this to relive it.,

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roughly how much is large?

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The main problem with the idea of them ninja releasing it, is they already gave us a timeframe for when it’s going to be released. So to just suddenly release it with no warning would annoy quite the number of people.

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Zero chance. People are going to be scheduling their lives around this game. Guilds, communities, and events are planning around it. This isn’t just another game to many people.

If the game is still set for summer 2019, it wont be too much longer until we hear about a release date. People need to know when to take off work, etc. Blizzard knows this.

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Apex is a run and game - you can play for 15 minutes, or 4 hours and it doesn’t really matter.

While WoW, especially vanilla/classic can’t really be enjoyed unless you commit hours at a time. A “quick” session of Vanilla while levelling, is still an 1+ hours of commitment.

Blizzard know this, and so much more than you and I hadn’t even considered or thought of.

People need to commit and they must have a release date so people are able to… well… commit.

As in, take time off work/send children in for adoption/divorce/etc…

Release date, 98.3% sure.

While I also thought it would be really cool for a ninja release, that moment is long gone. Like, 6 months past kind of thing.

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