Most players creating accounts and starting in Classic will probably be tourists from Retail.
Many Retail players are curious about what WoW was like during Vanilla so will sign up for Classic to dip their feet in the waters. Since they’re already paying for Retail, it is effectively free for them.
Most will likely do little more than dabble in Classic, while their mains remain in Retail. Most of their gametime will be in Retail, and when they get bored of leveling in Classic they will probably stop playing Classic and go back to only playing Retail.
The private servers you mentioned catered to players who were only interested in playing Vanilla.
The “Retail tourist factor” was not present so those examples are inapplicable to Classic.
It happened literally every single content patch that has been released through the entire life of WoW, and also during the launch of every single expansion.
My recollection from Vanilla was that you were on a small server with no cross-server gameplay.
There was a very limited array of raid groups capable of progressing intermediate and high content.
If you wanted to raid, first you had to find a raid group with a compatible raid schedule. Once you did that you applied and then went through a trial period where you had to perform.
Assuming you made it through the trial period, you were then awarded a raid slot. You defended your raid slot with your life, because if you lost it it might not be possible to find another.
Also, unlike Retail, there were no viable “catch-up” mechanics in Vanilla.
If you missed a tier, your only option was to apply for a slot with a really low-end guild and hope you got in. Or maybe apply for a non-raiding slot in an alt-raid with an established raiding guild.
If your guild needed replacements, the only place to get them was to poach them from less progressed guilds on the totem pole. This created a ripple effect as then those less progressed guilds had to do the same to the guilds below them and so on.
Edge cases do not really support your conclusion, the numbers bear out population growth throughout 2004-2011, There were no major dips in population until then. The data is on my side, you can google it yourself.
FFS are you trying to troll or honestly not getting what I’m saying.
I’m not talking about long-term growth in the game. I’m talking about the short-term trend of population spikes on the release of content patch and expansions.
Yea, I like his posts, but he didnt factor in new players, people really think the majority of players are going to be “retail tourists” that quit soon after launch and no one else is going to replace them and have the numbers continue to go up?
This seems like faulty logic to me.
I am talking about the overall population and you are talking about some people that will quit and will be non-factors in the overall numbers. Then acting like they matter for some reason. No one is disputing the fact that some people will quit. My point was in the OP and has been consistent throughout the comments is that, they will not matter in the end, the population will continue to grow. So there will be no population drop off. At least until late in its life cycle, probably AQ or Naxx time frame once people are “done” for real with the content.
There was an infographic showing nost had 730k accounts created but only 130k active accounts over a year. This is people that jumped through hoops to play on a free server.
Blizzard will also have actual Vanilla data laying around. Subscriptions rose, but that was because new players came in faster than players left. We don’t actually have any idea how well Vanilla retained players, but Blizzard does.
It is nothing like an expansion release, what put that in your head? It is more akin to a release of a new game, there is no economy, everyone starts at level 1 with no money and no gear, there is nothing you can do in the game to prepare yourself for the new content to get an edge other than practice a leveling route.
It is a full relaunch of a game. The “FRESH” server meme is real.
There will undoubtedly be a significant number of BFA players who will not be able to understand the Classic appeal. They won’t like the slower pace. They won’t understand having to earn what you get. They won’t understand having to socialize to accomplish things. They just want to mash some buttons and have everything handed to them, or they would rather collect pets and mounts and play dress up.
But there are some great unknowns. How many people will come back and resub in two weeks just for Classic? How many of those will invest fully and stay for 2-3 years? How many of them will soak up a month or two of nostalgia then quit? How many BFA players will get stricken by Classic and realize that it’s much better than BFA and stay?
These are questions that will only be answered in time.
I’m going to give you my honest opinion about this.
Current WoW players are bored and feel disenfranchised with modern WoW… for the most part, they are unhappy but don’t know why. (Kinda like so many are in real life)
When they see/think of WoW Classic… they get the “neat” factor… the nostalgia aspect… but if it is slower than modern WoW to get to endgame, and you can’t get lots of epics every day… certainly people will stop playing after the initial “excitement” dies down.
What they fail to realize is… is the reason why modern WoW leaves them unsatisfied. It gives everything away. No one can obtain something that is hard to get
WoW Classic provides a more perfect ratio of effort vs. reward. And rewards mostly by the amount of time you invest. Anyone who invests 100 hours in the game can achieve a lot of rewarding things… but… some people can invest 100 hour in a couple weeks… others in 6 months. And the people who want to gain the same amount of progress as those that play a lot more are why the game has gotten so terribly unsatisfying.
My hope for them is that they try Classic… and I suspect a lot more of them will than admit. And then they will FEEL what progression is like. They’ll get drawn in by that feeling. And stay.
Yes, however this is a very poor comparison as OSRS is still regularly updated to this very day, while the pitchforks were brought out when the “NO CHANGES” rants became popular when classic was released. The game will have a dip in players just like every other game. People will play and get bored, then they will leave. People will love the game and play until Blizzard figures out what they will do next with classic. People won’t play at all. Why does it matter as long as you enjoy the game and you have fun? Classic is a blast. I’ll play it until I get bored, then do something else. If I don’t get bored and have a great time, I’ll keep playing.
You also can’t compare the growing subscriber numbers from Vanilla WoW all the way through Wrath to just a standard classic WoW release in 2019, that makes no sense whatsoever.