When WoW launched in November of 2004 we had a total of…
43 PVP servers and 41 PVE server and 5 RP servers.
Blizzard expected 500,000 people to be “successful” (this info has been echoed by Kevin Jordan and Mark Kern and others in various videos). But those 89 servers were not enough, since WoW kept growing!
2005 launched…
33 servers of various server types. In 2005 in November my actual home server launched!
And then Blizzard continued to add more servers in 2006!
Vanilla WoW had around 174~ US servers. The worldwide subscriber count at 2007, just at the end of Vanilla was over 7,000,000. If we assume 2,500,000 of those accounts are US accounts. We had around 14,000 players per server.
I know people are worried about what kind of server breakup to expect. If we will have RP servers. So just looking back at how they handled it in the past, I’m expecting a good amount of servers that will host a wide array of players.
Sources: Wowwiki (for the realm creation timeline), MMOChamp screenshot of WoW subscribers.
I’m expecting the servers to be almost dead by the time AQ patch comes out. Nobody really wants to go through that kind of a mess, and to those that do are the very few selected people that can stay and play for a long time
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Hopefully it reaches a nice core group by the time aq is a thing, tourist drop off will be real but so will be new people joining.
I’ll be happy to just play.
Classic will not launch with near as many servers as OG vanilla did.
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MMOs seem to be in decline. I’ve heard BFA is around 2mil. FF14, GW2, and ESO combined are around that much. I am sure the first month there will be a lot of players, all new MMOs pull in tons of players and quickly drop off after the first month. The fact that Classic is being treated as additional content for BFA instead of a standalone game will make it even worse for Classic. If it is released during a BFA content drought I imagine a large percentage of current retail players will at least make a character to mess around.
I think it is possible that Classic will launch with over 4 million, but I would be surprised if it is over 1 million after the first month. To make things even worse, I see about half of the Classic population being retail players that only play when they are done with BFA for the day.
There will be a lot more that completely dump BFA when classic comes out.
The entire 1-59 twink community is probably going to all but vanish from BFA/Retail.
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This is true, no reasons for twink community stay on retail now.
I expect the BIG starting numbers.
- 75% will abandon in a week realizing that they are level 35 and not 60 running BWL as they expected
- 15% after hurting MC 40 men raid requirement
- 5% will remain playing from time to time, running some 5 men donjons, working on D2 set (when released)
- 4% will be having fun playing AH
- 1% or less raiders
I think the forum will be full of whines (Why do I need to retrain my one hand sword skill all up from 1 to 300?)
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It will be much before that. Most people are gonna quit at level 43.
I doubt WoW Classic will be “dead” by AQ but I also doubt it’ll be as hugely successful as other people are saying. As someone earlier in the thread pointed out, MMOs are on a decline.
I expect a similar result for Classic and retail to happen the same way (but much greater player count), Runescape ended up. They have RS3 and OSRS. both still running to this day with a fairly strong number of players considering to what its competitors have to offer now a days.
I feel a similar thing will happen with WoW. An early spike of curiosity and then a slight decline to a steady amount of diehard players. My guess would be a player base of 1-2 million for Classic and Retail combined in about 2-3 years.
WoW will survive for a long time.
Underestimating the amount of servers needed is WAYYY better than overestimating…
The worst player experience possible is being on a dead server. Vanilla wow is a social game… and if you are on a dead server it makes like half the content unavailable to you.
They need a thorough plan to merge servers as populations settle.
Modern MMOs may be on a decline, but they are no longer really “MMOs”. Modern WoW is a push button for content loot piñata that struggles to keep players busy/entertained.
Players know that if they are behind, just wait for the next patch and they can just beat the new loot piñata and carry on. Player power increases dramatically each major patch, and even new players realize this after experiencing it once or twice.
It says a lot when you can pay (directly or indirectly) to skip most of the games leveling process…
The Classic reboot is going back to a time where the game was an actual MMORPG.
On the MMO side players learn that the right way to deal with a lot of things is to form or join a group. Every starting zone has some area that is intentionally very very hard to do solo and made easy by just inviting a couple people.
On the RPG side, there is so much difference in talent choices and equipped gear. Speaking as someone who intends to play a Warrior tank, I will at several points have to pick between two really great but exclusive quest rewards that are TPS or Survival oriented and there is no clear answer which is “best”. Super nerd spreadsheets will be created telling me what the optimal gear is for every boss fight in the game.
Some people are going to fall in love with that type of game and stick around for as long as they can play.
How many is a good question, but I think it will be quite successful while not overtaking “retail” WoW. I have doubts that the type of player who would thoroughly enjoy an older MMORPG game outnumber those who do not.
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I would say Launch 5 RP 5 RP-pvp, and 25 normal and 25 PVP. I doubt they’re going to launch with as many servers, they also seem to be doing no advertisement, and this whole remaster is very underplayed or even talked about by those who don’t know about wow ETC Only people who know about Most of wow. I.E Retail players who don’t like Classic in theory, and the old school fans who are eager on the fence ETC.
I’d hope they launch with less then they needed add more as they did need, and those newer servers would follow a content plan, and not just open up with what’s open on the other servers. that would get those Memer’s to help populate the servers, and those who want community to stay where they are.
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