Open their eyes to what, you may ask, and that is the fact that the game has spiraled into a mess of convenience and hand holding. I have 5 reasons why I personally could see an exodus from retail to classic when it drops.
Classic doesn’t hold your hand. Classic as you all may remember was very challenging at times. Setting up 40 man raids was a chore, yet there was something magical about having an actual raid charge the instance portal instead of 10 people. It also wasn’t simplified into the ground, every talent you chose had meant something and the customization was pretty awesome to see.
Convenience wasn’t a thing. There was no flying, and you had to trek to where ever you wanted to go, whether it be on foot or mount. You couldn’t just get on a flying mount or que for a dungeon. You actually had to venture outside the capital cities.
Reputation. Your identity was everything, whether it had been your guild identity, your identity or your server identity. We weren’t just numbers, and many people including myself loved seeing rival guilds or players and dominating them. It brought excitement and faction pride to the game especially on pvp servers where you only could make horde or alliance and not both.
My personal favorite… world pvp. With no flying mounts and actually having to go to the instance to run the dungeon or raid, there was so much world pvp compared to now and you were forced to battle. You couldn’t just fly away or turn warmode off.
There was no sharding. Sharding is literally the worst thing blizzard has ever done to the game.
I hope blizzard realizes this when hordes of people leave retail for classic. Retail is alright but in its current state has many flaws and classic was such a pure version of an MMORPG that everyone fell in love with. I personally can’t wait to dive back in and fall in love with the game again.
Without actually reading your post and just answering the question posed in the title.
Unlikely. Classic will have to be massively, massively successful over more than 6 months for Blizzard to even consider taking a few baby steps back towards being Classic.
I wouldn’t expect more than a few hundred thousand dedicated, long-term Classic players in total. Way more than most MMOs ever see, but only a fraction of WoW’s former crowd.
It’s really hard to say, right? I was never hardcore in Classic, don’t plan to be now. But I’ll be subbed slowly casual-ing it up as long as it’s live. I only made 52 before BC launch, so I have lots to experience, especially other classes.
In fact, I think Hardcore play will be limited, as it always has been in WoW. But with well over 100 million individual WoW accounts created over the years, you might be surprised how many come back for some good semi-hardcore casual play.
Retail is a lobby craft/loot box non rpg now, and a lot were turned off when true progression was lost.
Just thought of this. Blizzard secretly wants Classic to both fail and succeed.
Fail, for obvious reason.
Succeed (the thing I just thought of): Bobby Kottick’s internal monologue: “You mean we can make a version of WoW that we never have to update or spend any money on once it’s done beyond a minor addition to our weekly server maintenance costs, and people will pay for it? Why the hell do I need to pay an expensive development team for the main WoW game then?”
Edit: Basically, if Classic is successful, it’s pretty much just going to print money for Blizzard so long as they leave it alone.
I’m convinced Activision dragged them into doing this. I have no evidence whatsoever for the hunch, but it makes a certain degree of sense, when you consider the motives of the parties involved.
Mate, do you know how much of the games original code has been completely changed at this point? People aren’t saying they’re different games metaphorically, they could literally be completely different warcraft themed MMORPG’s. Modern WoW is effectively WoW 2. The changes they’ve made are too extensive for them to just go back on…and that was years ago. So no, their formula for the modern game isn’t gonna change. If you’ve noticed the game took yet another turn during WoD and they’re going in that general direction, they have consistently for Legion and BFA. If you don’t like modern, then there’s no reason to be involved, play legacy, let those who enjoy modern enjoy it.
Now, that aside though, if they really wanted to change their minds about their formula it is doable, but to do so they’d have to build from the ground up using Classic as a base. Even if they made this completely independent of Classic, it’s clearly not what they want. We’d sooner see a new MMO before anything. We’d probably see additional legacy options for BC and Wrath before that even.
i am aware how coding works, I’m not saying they go back and change everything they have done, but if they notice that classic gets a huge popularity that hopefully they can set a course back to their roots instead of continuing to make things so simple it hurts. Like I don’t think bfa should have flying, but a lot of people disagree with me and are excited for it to be released because and I quote “it makes life easier” which has what the game has come down to. How can we make it easy so that we can get the most subscribers possible. Which I understand is how they get money but sometimes to much is a bad thing.
Like I said I’m not saying trash it all and go back but Atleast set a course towards what people want instead of what is easy for the average casual.
Talents had less actual choice in vanilla than they do now…
World pvp is more common now than it was in vanilla.
Wow always held your hand… it was always the casual convient mmo.
You dont just sit in the capital city in retail any more than you did in vanilla.
Reputation is just as important now as it was in vanilla, cause reputation was not that important unless you wanted to do hard content in which case you had to prove yourself to your guild just like you do in retail.
Sharding is not that bad and saying it is the worst thing in wow is MASSIVELY hyperbolic and incorrect.
But sure keep your nostalgia glasses on and not look at things objectively. Have fun in classic when all these illusions get shattered.