I don’t spend time hanging around private server communities, no. I’ve spoken to private server players before though, but I don’t find that to be representative of the whole of private server players.
Less vague comments and better metrics with regards to “Most of them…” statements would be appreciated. Relying on hearsay from private server communities, and buzz around what Blizzard is doing right now, are not reliable means of measuring and predicting what’s going to happen over the next few months.
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Reddit census for instance. That’s a better predictor.
I am going to let you in on a secret, the only thing permanent in WoW is your mounts, transmog collection, and achievements, you could delete any or all of your characters tonight, then remake them, and by the time the next tier of content is done, you will have everything back, if not better.
You can say you put tons of time and effort into your characters, but in reality because the content resets with every patch, you put basically nothing into your characters.
Contrast that with getting full Naxx gear, that is something, because that actually takes significant time and effort to achieve over the course of multiple patches.
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I don’t think it will be massive, but it’s fair to expect some drop off of players. It won’t be for everyone. But, I think most people who are going to be playing are those who played before, and know exactly what they’re in for.
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That’s what really sucks about retail. The constant never ending gear treadmill and moving of the goal posts on every expansion/major patch. This is further compounded by the inevitable stat squish that happens every 3rd expansion or so when the power creep and item level becomes too high. Nothing we do in the game really matters anymore because all our gear and time spent participating in current content will be rendered useless/obsolete as soon as the next patch is released and the item/character level cap is increased again 
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Retail players don’t understand the lack of QoL in Classic is what will make it good. And that’s fine. They can stick to their action game, as it does have its moments. But all those QoL improvements over time in BfA are what have made the game worse.
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classic content is finite. When you’ll do everything - there will be no new content to wait.
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That’s the gamble, isn’t it? Blizz seems to think that the tourists are going to vastly outnumber the long-term players.
No one really knows how it will turn out until about 6 months from now.
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In a year when naxx is out and is cleared and a lot of people have all the gear they want, sure. But until then, nope. Imagine thinking “I cleared MC once, Ill just wait until BWL and clear than once, then I will wait for AQ40 and clear that once, then I will jump right into Naxx and clear that once.”
The fact is that gearing up in classic is part of the experience, getting your entire raid ready for the next tier, then power clearing previous tiers to gear up your members that are still behind or looking for that specific piece is going to keep people engaged for quite a while.
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I’ll let you in on a secret. Some of us are attached to our characters, and don’t give a damn about Naxx gear. It’s the journey, the experiences, the time spent on a server and the fun in gaming. 15 years invested is a long time.
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No but everyone is having a blast in trying to speculate, so here we are lol.
I honestly think that because so many players have quit playing retail due to all of the idiotic changes Ion and his team have wrought essentially ruining the game we all fell in love with so many years ago, (myself included btw) that the number of players who will resub for Classic alone will be astronomically high. This includes the entire private server community who claimed they would play on Blizzard legacy servers if they were to ever exist, and the mass exodus of players who rage quit during WoD when they announced their intent to remove flying from the game. Unfortunately I have absolutely no idea just how many people that would be, but I’d venture to guess that we are talking about a ballpark figure of between 3 and 4 million. That’s a conservative figure given the amount of subs that were lost during WoD and onward.
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People play the same golf courses for 30 years with no problem.
I watch repeats of 1965 Star Treks.
New doesn’t mean good
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If your character mattered, blizzard wouldnt encourage your to make alts constantly and allow your achievements, mounts, gear, transmog, ECT to be shared across your account. The moment that happened, your individual character became “your account” and your argument went out the window. Sorry, but that is the sad reality.
Characters mattered far more more 2004-2010, than they do now.
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Unrelated, but my favorite economist/philosopher is from Glasgow 
I’m considering moving there next year.
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People expect the dual sub means some retail only players will play to say 10-20 just to see what classic is like but ultimately just stick with retail. These tourist will inflate launch numbers and very quickly dwindle.
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…and?
My individual characters may not matter to BlizzardActivisionWhatever, but they matter to me. I don’t play for Blizz, I play for my own enjoyment.
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Well, because the history you’re referring to is an apple while the Blizzard account-based play is an orange.
In the world of private server play, people actively sought out those places specifically to play Vanilla WoW. The community stayed vibrant and populated because people went there with one goal: to play Vanilla WoW.
In the world of Blizzard server play, there will be many people who never saw or played Vanilla who will go in and make a character to check out the “new thing” being offered on their account. They didn’t come to Blizzard seeking out Vanilla, so a lot of those people will go into a Classic game, figure out they don’t like it, and stop playing.
Many who played Vanilla thoroughly in the past will go in for nostalgia and click around a bit. They may even stay a week and go visit all the old zones they miss. Then, they’ll go back to retail because that’s where their guild is and where their current character progression demands their time.
So it’s a different thing altogether.
That’s why we predict a dropoff. There will be a surge at the start and it will taper off over a month or two…leaving us with a stable, more long-term population.
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Because this is a niche?
Because there’s dozens of players posting about things they consider great or different in Vanilla, that weren’t anything like what they think?
Classic WoW was the most casual mmo when it came out- but it is also considerably hardcore and casual unfriendly compared to most mmos today, including retail WoW.
That means it appeals to the majority of players, those that have limited time to play, those that want quick gratification.
The people that are seeking a massive grind, that want to spend an hour or longer every raid day just on buffing, that don’t mind spending half an hour on flight paths in a two hour play period, that don’t mind spending literal weeks /played on rep grinds- these are not the norm, these are niche players.
Once everyone else realizes what classic wow is, they’ll stop playing. The situation is extremely different from when it came out.
It’ll appeal to those with nostalgia that actually remember what the game was like- so a small group. It’s not going to appeal to even all the players back then who either have considerably less time than they used to, or that wanted Vanilla to become more casual.
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Denial is the first stage of grief. It is OK, we will be here for you on classic servers, a warm embrace awaits you.
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