So you’re saying Classic WoW as a whole is going to lose 85% of its playerbase in the first month? And Blizzard is pretending otherwise because they want to keep the interest of stockholders and investors?
You’re hilarious. I hope you’re trolling.
6 Likes
doesn’t matter still can’t read that font
I would say 85% is high, 50% is more likely by the 6 month mark.
Exactly. Some people are delusional though, and want to dump on Classic’s name just because they can.
Im curious as to where this 75 percent of players that quit classic will be going. They are quitting classic and just going back to their normal lives, quitting for other games? What is the reason they will be quitting?
this will happen. long ques.
2 Likes
Here is a solution to avoid layering and no queues. Not a really good one though.
Blizzard will allow phase 1 to take 6 months+ so many people would leave until the servers are stable then introduce phase 2 with no layering
1 Like
You’re assuming it’s an all or nothing proposition with Layering. It isn’t, as Blizzard has indicated with “We could allow more, but we won’t” stance.
They can “lower the boom” on the overpopulated realm over a period of weeks.
I’d guess the goal is no layering on most realms by the end of the third week. At that point the “mega-servers” will start seeing their login queues get longer and longer as the concurrent population limit is lowered(and fewer layers are created to host said population). They’ll simultaneously allow free realm transfers to a lower population realm.
You’ll probably see “layer population caps” vary between 2.2K and 3.5K-ish at a guess depending on how recently they’ve “collapsed a layer” on that realm. Where a 2.2K population layer means another one is about to “pop” and a 3.5K(-ish) layer would indicate they just “popped” one.
Between continuing attrition as some player (“the tourists”) simply quit, and others transfer off, they’ll continue to lower the bar on the allowed maximum population on the server. Basically they’ll be “tuning” for a specific queue size/length on those “mega-servers” and depending on things look population wise, they’ll either expand or shrink the targeted queue size.
I’d basically guess that sometime around the end of week two to see queues to begin to grow in earnest on a lot of realms as they try to get populations to shift to other realms so they can turn layering off and get phase 2 underway. As I’m not expecting Phase 2 until November at the earliest, that would give them two months to depopulate the over populated realms.
You won’t see it jump from no queue to a 10K queue, it would more likely to be no queue to a 500 person queue when they start, moving to a 1,000 person if not enough have left by the end of that week. The second week would potentially see up to 2K person queue by the end of the second week. With it possibly moving into the 3K range by the end of the third week if people aren’t leaving for other realms quickly enough for Blizzard.
The only realms that would be likely to see a 10K queue once they’re ready to phase out layering are the ones that are (somehow) pushing 10K queues with layering enabled prior to their phase out of layering starting.
Nah the numbers will drop off. A lot of retail folk will go back once they truly realise they can not move transmogs and mounts and whatever. Classic is not a game for a lot of people on retail but they will make accounts to at least troll if nothing else our community. But once Blizz releases literally anything new for them to do on retail, they will be gone. This is no shade on anyone please understand. It is just that these are 2 different games built for different gamers. Not better or worse, just different. And people will go to what game they like more. But the numbers will certainly drop on both games at one point. Retail at start of classic and classic when new stuff is released on retail.
As for hardware, it is much better then it used to be and can handle many ore people then it used to in the past. Does that mean there will be no wait lines? HA!!! But you got no-one to blame but yourself for choosing a full server. Having said that , it’s not like you don’t have enough time to roll on a low pop. Crying at the wait lines while refusing to go to lower pop servers that are available is … lets not go harsh here, silly to say the least.
1 Like
70% of players quit before reaching level 10 as per Michael Morhaime, then President and CEO of Blizzard Entertainment at the close of Wrath of the Lich King. It was a very large part of their justification for the leveling revamp that happened with the Cataclysm.
As the level 1 through 10 content in Wrath is the level 1 through 10 content in Classic, it is reasonable to expect that 70% quit rate is likely to be matched or even exceeded by the players who are new to Classic. Wrath was 10 years ago after all.
What isn’t so clear cut is how the returning players will respond to that, and if the 70% quit rate would likewise be valid for them.
As to where they’d go after quitting classic? If they quit at level 10, they probably didn’t spend very long in the game in general, and they’d probably just go back to whatever it is they normally do.
1 Like
I like the idea I proposed elsewhere, that if the players on certain realms are particularly insistent on remaining on grossly overpopulated realms, they simply leave those realms on Phase 1, and let everyone else move into Phase 2.
1 Like
Many Alliance!.. Left side, even side! Now, handle it!
2 Likes
They’re interested in a high population, not on being stuck in Phase 1 content. That’s a pretty silly suggestion.
Why punish people because they don’t mind playing on realms with queues?
1 Like
Predicting at least 50% die-off in concurrent players by the end of the first month. 85% in the realm of the possible depending on if they actually make people wait more than a month for phase 2.
Queues. First of all, the chances of a 15 year old game that has been available for free through pservers being able to reverse a decade long decline in MMOs and surpass retail is very unlikley. The main 3 pservers have less than 200k active players, retail has 2-4 million.
But I’ll play out your fantasy. Layering is gone by phase 2, that is happening even if servers are still peaking at 20k. The immediate result would be 17k players in queue. Blizzard would just open new servers and offer transfers off of the full servers to these new servers. It really is that easy.
The “Average player” should take about 3 months to hit level 60.
Unless they no life it, or min/max their way to 60. Which probably won’t be the “average player” but a substantial number of people all the same.
Dire Maul and the PvP honor system went live about the same time the “average player” was hitting level 60. At least for North America. Patch 1.3(Dire Maul and the World Dragons) released on March 5th, compared to a November 23rd release. That’s over a three month spread. I think a November release for Phase 2 to go with an August 27th release is reasonable. I also think that’ll probably be about right for Classic’s “Average Player.”
The power gamers will simply have to rage for most of September and all of October.
But nobody really knows. Your guess is as good as Blizzard’s guess is as good as mine.
But I seriously doubt it will be 95%. I’d be willing to bet a lot on that. This game is just too good and too well-designed and too addictive. There was a very good reason that it was so successful back then, and most of the “improvements” have made the game worse, not better.
I think that for 6-12 hours on Aug 26th in the U.S. and 27th in EU, classic will have a higher number of concurrent players than retail.
One thing to remember: even if there were absolutely no drop in the number of active players, we would still expect to see a large drop in the number of players logging in at the same time over the course of weeks.
Think about it: a ton of people are planning to take time off the first week, even no-lifing for a while. They certainly aren’t going to do that every week though. Life can’t be put off forever.
Eventually, they’re going to go from (for example) ten hours per day to eight, six, five and four… Until a couple months down the road, they’re playing for perhaps 10-20 hours a week.
And when you go from playing say 60 hours per week to 10-20 across the player base, you get an effective 66% to 80% drop even if the player base remains the exact same.
1 Like
Idk if this blue post will help
1 Like