The business sense is really simple - Blizzard is spending a little to make Classic, so the expectations are actually very low.
The current retail system is already in place, and has all of the security and bugfixes in place, so configuring that system to run Classic data won’t require a massive investment in new resources - most of the work is already done - it just needs to be worked onto what is already there.
There is no scenario in which Blizzard is investing a huge amount of money on Classic. They hired a few people to wrap Vanilla onto the modern retail engine and architecture.
Any players that return solely for Classic is a bonus. They can claim them as additional MAUs, etc.
The meeting where Blizzard reports on their financials are public information. We know that Blizzard hasn’t reported on active WoW accounts for a long time now.
Instead they use Monthly Active Users and Daily Active Users which is a single stat that includes players of ALL Blizzard games: Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, and Overwatch.
That’s why I said it makes no sense: You’re trying to claim they’re going to use Classic WoW to prop up numbers they don’t even report to the shareholders anymore.
I don’t think $15 with the sub is a relatively bad deal, I just feel like there’s nothing wrong with offering the option to buy just classic if you want to, it’s a game using old code, assets, ideas/other things so it doesn’t need to cost as much as it did in 2004, for those who play retail anyways it’s not a bad deal but for those who love classic and detest retail it feels like they’re paying for it for no reason
for example Warcraft 3: reforged, if it game bundled with the orginal Warcraft 3, I don’t think there’s a need for them to take WC3 off the blizz classic store, it’s a good deal but there’s nothing wrong with offering that option
Actually, this could make it interesting. When they give Blizzard MAU numbers, they only give a sum-total of all games. If I play both WOW and HotS, I figure I count as 2 MAU. What about if I paid for and played on all three WOW accounts I have on this Blizzard account? Would that be 3 MAU for WOW or 1 MAU? I assume 3.
So, given that, if someone plays Retail and Classic, will they be counted as 1 MAU or 2 MAU? My suspicion, given the way logging into the demo would log someone out of Retail, and vice versa, is that it will count as one WOW account.
All that to come to the question: how will people interpret things if MAU goes from (example only) 37 million to 40 million in the quarter in which WOW: Classic is released? What if they deliberately include a BfA patch in the same quarter? Will their single paragraph in the financial report try to credit the BfA patch or acknowledge the higher popularity of WOW: Classic than anticipated? Or, yes, what if it doesn’t change, or drops?
My guess is that it’s per Battle net account. I could play WoW, Overwatch, Diablo, and Starcraft all in one day and it probably only counts as 1 MAU/DAU unless I’m using different accounts.
People will always try to interpret one thing or another from Blizzard’s shareholder meetings, though since we are talking about the entire catalog of Blizzard’s games there are a number of reasons the MAUs would shift so it’ll just be a lot of speculation.
Though if the number of Classic players is impressive enough, there’s a chance they’ll just say something about it specifically to make themselves look good. Kind of like how they said BfA sold 3.4 million copies on day 1 and it was the “fastest selling WoW expansion to date”.
you can already do that I’ve been to Disneyworld before, if you just want to go to animal kingdom for example you can just buy a ticket for just one park, of if you want to go to Epcot you just buy just for that park, there’s also an option to go to all of them if you want to also
then there’s the question if, analogous to wow, Classic + retail are 2 separate theme parks, or if it’s akin to classic being a ride/section of a particular park with retail being the whole park (which you can’t just buy directly to the ride itself), I think they should be considered as 2 separate parks from each other since they’ll have 2 different development teams (that may lead the game into a different direction with TBC), 2 different design philosophies, 2 divisive communities, and most people don’t have time to play 2 mmo’s at once, they’re practically 2 separate games, besides this a lot of people’s yearning for classic came from a strong detest towards modern wow, so making them pay for it will only upset them
again overall I don’t think it’s a bad deal but I don’t see what’s wrong with offering the option for those who only want classic, it may not be that big a deal for standard retail players but for those who were planning to dive into just classic and play it as much as possible until the end of their lives, an unnecessary part of the sub will wear down after a while
The absolute most logical way to look at it.
It’s a video game sub. They have been around for a couple decades now.
Enough with the movie, restaurant, carnival, amusement park, and did i really just read a disney analogy? Really?
Video game Sub. Personal choice. If you value it. Pay it. If you don’t value it. Don’t pay it.
Very simple.
To be fair there are a dozen real world examples that support either side. Netflix doesn’t let me subscribe to just things labelled as sci-fi, for example. I have to subscribe to all of Netflix, or none of it.
Real world examples aren’t a great argument for anything here.
Though while I don’t see Blizzard actually doing it, I’m not against having a Classic only subscription. If they offered it, I would likely use it.
Don’t forget that sub games are far cheaper than those so called free games…those things can cost you a fortune…at least with a sub you know what you are paying.
Most of those free games have everything you need to be competitive in the least behind a pay wall. So no you can not play them for free unless you want to suck.
This just makes me think of The Old Republic. When they went Free to Play, I returned to my account from the free trial to see what was up. Leveling got MASSIVELY slowed down (unless you paid to increase experience gain!) and it cost like $1.99 to unlock the privilege of hiding your ugly helmet.
Yeah, I’d rather have a mandatory subscription than a game that sucks until you spend “optional” money on it.
No, most of those free games allow you to pay obscene amounts of money to get where you would have gotten to with hard work and dedication. And if you want to throw money at them, that’s your choice. But it’s still a choice.
i don’t feel that having no classic only option is that unreasonable, but i also feel like they chose to make it like that because they knew they’d make more money that way
Neverwinter runes I believe it was at level 8 had like 0.01% chance to combine and if it failed you lost one… or you could pay $10 for a 100% chance…Like I am going to farm up 10000 of those things vs farming 3 and paying $10 Thats not even a choice. The choice was pay the money or don’t play.
I’ve never said Classic should be free. My position always has been that there should be an option to sub to classic and only classic. Let people have the option to sub to both if they so chose. More options is always better for the consumer.