I think a big factor in the predictions has little to do with it being classic wow. Unlike gamers from 2004-2005, today’s gamers lack long term attention for games in general. Many last 30 to 60 days before they are off looking for what they think will be the next best thing.
I really don’t think its a classic thing or even a wow thing. A lot of its the mindset of gamers today.
That doesn’t make their predictions true by any means. When you look at WoW’s longetivy overall, the demand for classic that resulted in classic, the popularity of private servers and other factors, I think the predictions are going to miss their mark.
i actually may fall off before it starts. I think blizzard is making a huge mistake on the number of servers they have available and its going to do nothing but cause people to quit over the long wait times that will ensue. Plus they have zero marketing campaign for this release so huge populations of the original community will know nothing about wow classic to know to come back. Relying on streamers, who many of us dont watch, to inform us of classic isnt going to help us know to come back.
2004 all over again bros will recruit bros from word of mouth. Thats how I got into the game. Hell I did not even like the kid who told me about wow. I got wow shortly after than I gave my free pass to my bro and then he started +2 in days.
Todays WoW classic release and the original 2004 release arent comparable.
In 2004 Blizzard was a new comer to mmos. They had a decent size fan base from the diablo, warcraft and starcraft games, but nothing like they have today.
Sony released EQ2 at the same time and the subs were really close for the first couple months. WoW eventually won out because it was the better game.
Now, most gamers have heard of or played WoW. There’s a much bigger fan base as well. Instead of a steady increase in popularity the original had, most people interested will play it from launch. There wont be the many new comers all throughout og classic and BC to offset the losses of people quitting like there was during the old release.
The original only had a few hundred thousand subs on release and had plenty of room to grow. Todays WoW classic will probably have millions of subs from the start and not much room to grow.
Even if WoW classic is a massive success, it will still see a large drop off as time goes by.
Yea, this post is about shortly after release, such as Phase 2, because there are so few servers and a lot of people seem to think that within the first month the numbers will drop by 80% and stay down.
Maybe not 80% but there will be a drop off of tourists. I think the pop will still be strong, just for those like myself who just want to play classic. That will not be everyone though, some will just be there to see what it’s like and then will probably leave.
You could go to the original Everquest TLP server forums and read every single one of the posts here on them… word for word.
Hundreds thought the servers would fail… hundreds thought that the kids now days would not play because it was so tedious… hundreds thought that no one would play because of all of the bots and mage armies…
Every single post here is exactly the same as there… and those servers flourished and they made more and more and more of them over the past 10 years…
I think one thing that has been overlooked here, I see a lot of posts about, you can’t go back home! People will become bored! Its not new, its old!
Well for a large amount of players, Wow classic is new. Anyone who joined in the last 8 years never knew the old game. Even those who joined in TBC don’t know Vanilla, they rushed through 0-60 to get to 70 and never really enjoyed the immersion that comes with going from 0-60 as an end game.
Who has the crystal ball? I know I don’t, who is to say a good percentage of those who come to visit don’t stay or leave. You do not have a lock on the future if you do, give me some stock tips please.
I’m a Vanilla player started in mid 2005. I will be playing this as my main game. I’ll check out expansions since its free and see if they start going back to a play-style i like, but I’ll reside in Classic, then to TBC if/when that launches in 3 or 4 years, like a large portion of the older player base.
I personally see after a month losing 50% or more of the player base visitors, then a trickle more down to 40% or so. I think Classic will if it ever splits off from retail be self sustaining and would bring a significant number of retail subs down on the retail side.
To me the game has just become a joke of what it once was that I can barely stand it, most of the time i’m just farming old content now and I’m thinking i’m not in the minority who feels this way. But again I don’t have a real magic crystal ball and I’m pretty sure no one else on here does.
Classic is not just competing with BFA or up coming versions of retail. It’s competing with every kind of video game that’s available. There are so many modern games that simply outshine classic wow. Classic wow is for a niche audience. It’s not going to hold peoples interest for long after the hype dies down and upgrades come at you once a month if at all.
I think it’s a fair assumption that many will drop off early on. The real question is how precipitous the population falloff will be. I hope Blizzard isn’t assuming the percentage they experience on release of each expac. I think Classic will have more staying power than that. We shall see.
Why do you think retail players will be so many that it will be noticed when they quit? Also, why do you think retail players can’t change their minds?
I think you’re a little naive if you think that the population of players who enjoy and stick with retail are the kind who would enjoy the classic experience. We could be wrong on that front, but Classic and Retail cater to two entirely different audiences.
As for why “retail players will be so many that it will be noticed when they quit”, it’s because there’s no cost for a Retail player to try Classic out. I’m sure there will be plenty of tourists.
There IS going to be a drop off, just because that’s how any MMO launch works.
I don’t think I am naive. Just because the current retail playerbase hasn’t tried classic doesn’t mean they won’t like it. There have been several players come over from retail talking about how they were wrong and classic is so much better. I think its gonna surprise a lot of people how much they actually like having a community and gear that is static. Making friends on your server and needing them to do quests. I don’t think every single retail player will stick around. For some reason people always take it to an extreme and think I mean there will be no quitters. I just don’t think the drop off is gonna be as big as people think. In vanilla we literally said if you played to level 10 you were hooked. We called it world of warcrack. I think those tourists are gonna check it out and be surprised when they find themselves at 60. I don’t think this drop off is going to be MASSIVE like everyone seems to suggest. I can’t find one single post of someone saying they plan to quit classic at some point.
I think Retail players just haven’t been given an appropriate challenge. I think WoW Classic will have quite an effect on a lot of them and they will stay. I agree that there are a bunch of paint lickers on retail, but it’s our job as vanilla players to foster and challenge them.
If Vanilla wow succeeds we may very well see a revitalization of actually CHALLENGING RPG games.
This exactly. I think they haven’t had an opportunity to play a game like classic. I think people are just assuming retail players wont like it for some reason… I have no idea where they get their info from.
I agree. There are also the retail players who grew up hearing our stories about classic. At the very least most of them will try it and will realize we weren’t just making it up. They will then develop their own stories, and tell their friends, those friends will join and make their own stories, and tell their friends. The cycle continues.
I think there will be a first “initial” wave of drop off, very small, and then it will snowball and increase from there.
People who gave it a try in the first week but didn’t want to deal with the queues or fighting for quests might give it a second chance after their friends come back with their war stories. Not to mention Blizzards media presence has been non existent on this game (mainly because they don’t want it to out shine their new product, that would look very bad for marketing) - A lot of old players still have no idea that vanilla is even coming out.
I have friends who haven’t played video games for YEARS who want to come back, I also have friends who have only known retail and like it, they tried classic and they’re already hooked.