Why do classic players say, “retail failed.”

Retail literally lost over half it’s active subs from mid-Cata to present. So bad was it, that Blizzard walked back on their “we won’t be doing legacy servers”, which have been asked for since at least WoD.

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Million of people showed their dislike for Retail by not playing it. That’s the main reason Retail failed. People don’t want to play it. There are better games and things to do.

It’s odd that people get annoyed by the facts. It really shouldn’t bother you that Retail failed and you can’t handle when people point that out. Maybe just hope some day the game can be salvaged instead of getting mad about it.

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I’m…not sure you quoted the right person? Retail sucks, I agree, but instead of letting it live rent free in my head and having to complain about it at every opportunity, I just…don’t play it

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Again, muh feelings is not a disproof to what i said. I used raid logs a form of numerical data as an estimate for population. And you 2 as a retort are using “muh feelings” as evidence to disagree.

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I was responding to you.

That’s where we agree.

It’s not living rent free in anyone’s head. This is something “You” are projecting for some reason and why I quoted you. This thread is a discussion about why Retail failed. Nothing more, nothing less. The OP doesn’t understand (they asked a question) so now they have gotten educated on the facts. It has nothing to do with, complaining.

Again neither do I.

Because its the only way they feel they can validate their decisions in life.

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Rent free…

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Source please lol

Especially since they share the same exact sub. :clown_face::clown_face::clown_face:

This is so doubt X

Did…did you expect them to never lose players lol.

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From my experience a lot of classic players are bitter that the game passed them by and its easier to pretend retail has no redeeming features then to admit they are simply terrible players. It’s mostly the most vocal of the classic andys, like the people who claimed MC was too hard for retail players for example.

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Define failed, it hasn’t failed completely in the sense that it’s still here. But it certainly has failed to retain anywhere close to the popularity it enjoyed at its peak.

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You realize “retail subs”. Are not all on retail right? Seeing how you need a retail sub to play either of the classics.

And when it comes down to an active community. Retail failed miserably.

There hasn’t been a sense of community on wow since the open of AQ.

That was the last real community effort that wow ever had.

It involved everyone.

In that sense. Retail failed.

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Losing ~6.5 million players (~45%) in the span of 5 years (2010 to 2015) is not expected.

Losing ~ 4.5 million players (~55%) in the span of 1 year (2014 to 2015) is nearly unheard of.

…2015 was when they stopped reporting subs.

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What’s funny about that is that Brack’s ‘you think you do, but you don’t’ was Blizzcon 2013 I believe. They were so full of themselves at that point, and had such a crash and burn with WoD.

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Logic-based estimates are not feelings. Wrath has raiding and pretty much nothing else. Its PvP is on life support. Maybe you could say that it has levelers, but that is also pretty dead.

In retail, raiding isn’t even close to the most popular end-game activity anymore; M+ is by a huge margin. Even given that, Wrath raiding is only more active by like 20-30% going by the comparison earlier in the thread. Retail arena is probably 5-8x as active based on available ladder numbers, and retail arena is dwarfed by its casual BGs. Then you add in the hypercasual collection playerbase, which Wrath barely has due to no transmog, no legacy scaling, and only having three expansions worth of things to even seek out.

There is a ~0% chance that it’s even close, and an actually 0% chance that Classic is bigger. We don’t need the literal numbers to know this with sufficient certainty to assume it is true until proven otherwise. You acting like we do is like saying I can’t say a mountain in the distance is taller than the house across the street because I haven’t gone and physically measured the mountain.

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Yep.

Way I see it both games have had bad times. Both offer entertainment in some way though even in rough times.

Wrath of late got cool points for JJ and RDF now comes.

Retail tries things too. if not for the JJ and I am really trying to grind a s. priest up to see when it gets really good, I’d be there to make an eredar skinned space goat a few hours here and there.

Way I see it both games have the same issue.

They blow off feedback till the mid or the end. Classic took this long to work out LFG only…had issues. Retail likes grinds and systems. that slowly fade as time goes on. or holds off on other goodies.

One day both game version devs ideally work this out…day 1 of an expac lol. That would be real nice.

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If there’s one thing Classic players love more than being as toxic as they can be, it’s inhaling fatal amounts of copium.

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I also love living strictly in the past. Does it hurt? Being so inherently stupid, I mean.

I wouldn’t call retail a “failure” per se. It’s just something that doesn’t appeal to me in the least. I haven’t played since mid Legion, and I will end the Classic experiment at the end of MoP or possibly WoD at the latest.

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This always gets me lol. You can force them to admit that no game is going to grow infinitely, and you can get them to acknowledge that WoW’s peak was positively absurd, but they will never concede that the overwhelmingly likely explanation for its stagnation and downturn is that it was just the time for it after over half a decade of unprecedented growth. They will never concede that the game simply outgrew them as it evolved alongside broader trends while their own tastes stagnated.

Which isn’t to say its evolution was perfect, or that no individual aspect of it suffered for its overall design direction. But as you say, they speak of the game like jilted lovers and without an ounce of objectivity. I had no idea such people even existed until Classic. Every time I returned to retail myself over the years it was always an overwhelmingly positive experience. It never once felt like the game had become anything fundamentally different; it was just what I’d expect from the game given that it had been iterated on for another 2-3 years.

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