The sad thing is most classic gamers are just hoping that blizz realizes the same thing and improves retail. Retailers are so incensed that their stupid diablo style first person shooter…possibly…but probably wont…at least in the next expansion since design specs were certainly already underway…so retailers take a breath…go back to having some RPG element/ social elements/ challenge elements added back in that they hyperventilate at every single suggestion.
Retailers bowl with the bumpers up and don’t realize the game is more fun with the bumpers down. Simple. And blizz has to recognize by now that putting the bumpers up and connecting all the pins so every hit is a strike, is just weak gameplay.
The reason is that retail players have been insistent that Classic would never happen and/or never succeed.
The people who brazenly predicted that Classic would not just be successful but would actually surpass the retail playerbase are simply serving a little crow to all of their detractors for the past 2 years.
But yes, of course, real numbers don’t count if we don’t like them. So let’s wait a few more months. Of course.
Retail players responded to the constant spam threads being made by telling people what blizzard had said on the subject. Time for you people to move on but I am guessing you are the type of people who enjoy living in the past so that may be too much to ask.
I stopped at 23. It was just so boring and such a slog. Not even remotely challenging or difficult, just slow and boring. Repeated back tracking, overly rare quest drops, super slow respawn timers on quest mobs and items. No thanks, like a bunch of other people I am now just on WoW when taking time from BL3.
All very valid points. My personal opinion, however, is there was a huge spike. It will taper off. It is just natural course of things. And then those that love it have the game they wanted. Those have fun in retail still have fun in retail. And it is a win win for all.
Is classic for me? Nope. Not on any serious level anyway. I will mess with it here and there. But I was there. I already did it. I personally don’t have any huge interest in going back. Just personal preference.
I hope classic is more successful than anyone could have ever imagined.
I do enjoy living in the past sometimes, especially regarding videogames.
Why? Not nostalgia, but because the industry hadn’t yet tried to monetize everything. It’s like how music started deteriorating in the 90s because of the Loudness War.
Ummm, it’s actually possible to precisely compare concurrent player numbers for the motivated.
But for the unmotivated, simply log onto a “high” retail realm and start doing /who commands to get a feel for the online playerbase. Then log onto any Classic realm and do the same. Keep in mind that who results are limited to 50 players so you will have to do precise searches to get less than 50 players most Classic searches.
I expect that, right now, the concurrent player ratio is in the realm of 10:1.
That said, I do not agree with some or even most of the design decisions in BfA, and I hope the interest in Classic remains strong long enough to prove to modern WoW’s devs that many of the concepts they so readily dumpstered or watered down over the years weren’t actually all that bad.
Do I want modern WoW to die? No. That would be bad for everybody, Classic fans included. Do I want modern WoW to mirror Classic? Nope, as much as I love Classic, it has its share of issues. What I do want is for the devs to set their hubris aside for a moment and transform modern WoW into a “greatest hits” of sorts, pulling the best from past forms of the game to produce the most amazing revision the game has ever seen.
There’s no doubt that Classic is popular… but people are using queue times as a indicator that it’s more popular than retail. However, they fail to take into account the limited number of servers available for Classic which creates artificial scarcity.
If Classic had as many servers as retail then you can gauge which one is more popular by comparing how many full, high, mid, low, etc. servers there are.
It’s essentially like saying Popeye’s chicken sandwich is better than Chik Fil A… maybe, but Popeye’s is hyped up by having low supply which artificially increased demand (I mean seriously… how can you run out? Just put some of your amazing, boneless chicken in between a bun with some pickles).
Classic is a success. Totally exceeded Blizzards expectation.
Is it bigger than retail? No.
Was being bigger than retail the expectation? Obviously not, see the first sentence.
Were the naysayers wrong. Absolutely.
Do classic folks want retail to die. No.
Do classic folks want retail to improve. Yes
Do retailers want retail to improve. Unknown
Right now, in NA, there are more people playing Classic WoW than retail WoW. Does that make it bigger than retail? Some people say yes, others say no we have to wait longer.
Not sure you can prove that, but I don’t care. It’s success level is well past any expectation from conservative to optimistic. My only hope is effect retail game design go forward.
Retailers think they know what they want but they don’t.
Blizzards thought they know what we wanted but they didn’t, but they do now.
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