I wouldn’t feel too bad about them having to spend money on things like servers or hiring staff for reporting and support tickets. Blizzard has been making truces with the community recently with the goal of making as many people happy for as cheaply as possible, which is completely understandable and honorable.
I am on red alert however. At the end of the day they are charging $180/year for a 15 year old game here, so we should expect a well-staffed team rather than Blizzard relying on fully automated systems which reduce human cost such as right-click reporting, loot trading, and auto-banning.
WoW Classic will bring many players with it and those players will help to inflate the retail sub numbers. I doubt Blizzard will ever release their numbers side by side… only as a measurement of total subs. Either way, the new subscriptions brought by all the new WoW Classic players should warrant a properly staffed team for the project.
I am also wondering if Classic will require that you purchase the most recent expansion or if you’ll just need an active subscription?
Williams is correct in the sense that if you bought BFA regardless if you currently play or don’t you will be able to log on to your BFA account so long as thats the one you add game time too for Classic.
However if you haven’t purchased the most recent expansion, BFA, you can create a new account and sub for 15/$ and get access to Classic and Retail servers up to the last expansions content. In this case, Legion 1-110.
If blizz is noticing retail is losing fan appeal I think it’s smart to start slowly bringing on old expansion only servers.
Classic
BC
Etc… obviously slowly and dedicated servers for those expansions only that way you can play the newest expansion but if you don’t find it to liking you can revert back to classic… or if for some reason you liked cataclysm that expansion
well…the sub doesnt just include classic, on retail base wow up to legion is a part of it, while bfa is locked behide 50$ wall, its similar to guild wars 2 only difference is that instead of paying extra money for previous expacs, its included in sub. so since classic is only 1 8th of everything included, i think its a good deal. you can play retail and classic with only the sub, and you can choose to play bfa or not.
Honestly I think we should have an initial cost for classic as well. It would reduce the tourist wave which and, like you said, they could use that money towards not always making the cheapest choice when it comes to classic.
Right now they’re clearly concerned with spending as few resources as possible, but that might still change if the game turns out to be very successful.
I take issue with the people who say things like “You’re not paying $15/month for classic, you’re getting it free with bfa”. If I go to a restaurant that offers a free steak with purchase of a $15 salad, but won’t sell me a steak a la carte, I’m paying $15 for steak.
I honestly don’t think it’s likely that there will be much overlap between retail and classic players, except for a flood of tourists at launch, and the inevitable slight bump in subs two weeks after every retail “content” drop when everyone has completed all the new “content”.
I don’t mind paying $15/month for a 15 year old game. A flat box cost would be an open invitation to add microtransactions (since they already have your money). I mind that the fact that it’s bundled “free with a retail subscription” is bandied about as an excuse for why we aren’t getting customer service.
Simply put, I’m satisfied with labouring for 1-1.5 hours in order to fund an entire month’s worth of Classic. However, I cannot even conceive of investing a penny within Retail.