A few months ago I’d have thought it a long shot, but retail WoW has never been less popular and the beta has completely blown up on Twitch which could potentially bring in a lot of new people and not just old vets like us. If Classic can retain even a third of Vanilla’s numbers it’ll still be ahead of BfA.
Classic being an enduring success, even if it doesn’t permanently overtake retail, is probably the best thing that can happen to get this genre moving in a good direction again. It could be the Dark Souls of MMORPGs - a game that shows that old-school mechanics can still be relevant to modern gamers.