The given numbers are just an example, but that is actually what was happening during the Vanilla to Lich King era of the game.
They were losing TONS of people every quarter. It just didn’t look like it back then because they were getting even bigger amounts of new players every quarter (it was a net gain).
After a brief honeymoon period, Classic is pretty likely to lose people far faster than it gains them (times and gaming options were different then). So expecting the results of Vanilla for Classic is probably not realistic.
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cool, seems we have become nemesis based on preconceived notions
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That’s why they have content phases.
There’s going to be “new” content to look forward to for most of Classic’s lifespan. If they’re expecting a massive surge of players for Phase 1, why would they not expect a growing number of players for the later Phases, as well?
Any concern about net population decline should be for after Phase 6, not before Phase 2 is even out.
Phases will help but probably only to a similar degree that you see now in Retail. Basically, each new phase will bring some people back that left… until they get as far as they want and leave again.
Phases are not likely to cause any actual population growth (with the possible exception of the Naxx patch, since many never saw it, it might be a bigger draw).
One thing that will be a wild card is the timing with retail patches. People who play both are likely to migrate based on whichever one has the newest content… so that could cause some unusual flux.
Classic/vanilla doesn’t really work like that, though. A player who hasn’t been playing from the start and progressing through all the raids isn’t going to return, do some world quests or dungeons and then go straight into Naxx.
The Phase most likely to draw the player base will be Phases 2 and 3 for the PvP ranking system and BGs respectively, because neither require you to have been all that active in the content prior to their release. Add onto that, in Phase 3, we’re getting BWL, which will bring back Phase 1 and 2 raiders who quit for the new content.
That’s assuming people even end up quitting in the phases as you expect. With how much slower gearing is, it’s going to be much longer before a player “finishes” each raid tier. I suspect even many dedicated raiders won’t be finished with their Phase 1 and 2 gearing before Phase 3 even comes out.
Suffice it to say, no one really knows for certain what will happen. I personally have a really high opinion of Classic and can’t imagine its population declining overall. Obviously the number of concurrent players will be highest at launch, but overall active users will probably go up over time, not down, as the game adds more content.
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Yes. Once upon a time, this toon used a free transfer to move from Illidan to Haomarush. Hao was listed as a “low” pop server at the time, but since several “full” servers with large queues were offered the free transfers, and all of them required Hao as the destination, it resulted in a nice population bump that made it a suitably-populated server.
You are right about Classic not “working like that” of course, but I suspect that a lot of people don’t realize (or remember) it, so I would expect to see a surge when the “end game” for Classic appears.
It would not even surprise me if a good number of people don’t even bother to join Classic until then. It’s not going to end well for most of them but I expect it will happen anyway.
I have no doubt that Classic will take a huge dive in numbers fairly quickly (probably by the second quarter). But Blizzard seems to be ready for this by over-stacking realm populations… so that when it happens, the realms should (in theory) have proper population numbers.
How can you people not realize that there is no “end” to Classic/Vanilla except for the 1% that just want to consume content and move on? Vanilla was a WORLD YOU LIVE IN - not a consumable item. You have consumable items IN the world you live in. You log in to the world to see friends and go about your daily business - just like leaving your house in rl and going to work/school/the track/a restaurant/the gym/your gf house/the bank/Walmart/hiking. Our “World” was changed to the vending machine in some corner of Gnomer where you drop in $15 and receive goods like some Orwellian nightmare.
I don’t think most people are looking for a world to live in… mainly because we already have one of those.
That is not to say that games like WoW are not about escapism (leaving the real world behind) but most people seem to enjoy real life enough not to seek a replacement world to live in.
Some people will be thrilled to stay in Classic forever, and more power to them if that is what they want (it’s good to get what you want)… but most people want more.
Nobody said anything about not enjoying real life and trust me, bfa is not “more”. Why do you think people coming back to Classic talk about returning “Home”? Yes, they are looking for the world and the people in it. Classic is a game in real life just as checkers… or bfa is. We all want different things in our entertainment. Some of us want fun time with our friends and a hobby where we build toons and their lives. Some of us want to bang our heads against walls or study others’ epeens. It’s all good.
BFA might not be more but Retail, as a whole, is more (by default) because there is simply more there to do. It might just be stuff that you don’t want to do. No biggie… different strokes.
I’m not sure about that “returning home” thing though. It’s a tired phrase but it’s basically true that “you can never go home again”. Times and places are very hard to recapture. You might be setting yourself up for a bad time (good luck to you though… I hope you find it).
All that said, I think Classic will be great for the game. It will finally provide a solid alternative to Retail… and it will help keep Retail on the same course, rather than reverting to a classic design. As long as Classic exists, fans of both versions of the game have somewhere to be… its win/win.
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In Classic there might be less to do but it all means something. I played one stress test and had more fun in game in those few hours than I have in 10 years. There is some fun stuff to do in retail like Plants vs Zombies but the soul of the game is gone. I do not mythic raid and maybe if that was my thing I might feel different. Still, you are right there are 2 games with people for each. My feeling is tho that Classic will be such a success that they will try to redo much of bfa. The games are so different from each other this might backfire.
If Classic is a success, they stand to make a lot more money if they keep Classic and Retail as very different games, because that way they can make money off of both types of players.
If they were to try to make Retail more like Classic, it would go over about as well trying to make Classic more like Retail. Keep them apart and you can make money from either kind of player.
That’s not to say that they will NEVER change up a Retail thing or two to be more like Classic (some class design things are a good bet) but Retail isn’t likely to see a major design shift, no matter how popular Classic ends up being.
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There’s really no need for this thread, as Blizz already answered this in a reddit AMA that was stickied above.
They still hope to remove layering by the time phase 2 begins, and stated they are ready and willing to open additional servers, offer free transfers, and if necessary even implement the vanilla-era paid character transfer (with its vanilla restrictions apparently) in order to maintain appropriate server populations.
Free transfers to low pop realms in a single realm world are for suckers.