From what I gathered in the last few days, it seems like the Classic hype is stronger than ever. I've seen streamers who were absolutely adamant that Classic was just a Nostalgia thing and would not work in the long run, make a 180 degree turn, admitting they were wrong.
While others avid WoW players who recently quit BFA, like Sodapoppin and Asmongold were absolutely excited about Classic.
I also had a look at WoW official forums and people are raving about Beta, even the retail fanboys seems more open on giving Classic a fair go, whilst just few months ago there was a good amount of vitriol all over the forums against Classic and its fans. I can feel a strong positive vibe.
I am pretty confident Classic would be a success, there isn't a Social MMORPG around these days, and there are many people who crave the return of more relaxed days when you'd level at your own pace. I am also sure many kids will love this 'new thing' where getting stuff actually means something and feels like an achievement, something they probably never experienced in their young online gaming career.
Personally I can't wait for World PvP......Stranglethorn, I am coming!!!!!
It'll be going strong for the first few weeks. Honeymoon as they call it. It's interesting to see how it'll fare in its second or third month. I expect some 50k or thereabouts. Which is fantastic, but...it's WoW we're talking about, it should be much more.
We'll see who is right about this honeymoon bullshit, but I know people who have been playing on alt servers for years and who were waiting for this for ages. Stop making assumptions, stick to facts... and maybe try the thing yourself ?
Where do you think I pulled those 50k from? Honestly, I don't expect it to hold over 100k for any extended period of time.
Both being actually quite low for WoW.
There preparing for over 1 million (multiple servers ) at Classic launch , the sustainable players should be over 500k the first year ..
That would be interesting to see, i can tell you from a personal experience on pvt server. One server opened fresh and within that first 24 hours they said over 10k people had signed in at one point. The server was packed, people everywhere questing talking about how great it was being back in vanilla. i thought wow thats amazing, so many people want vanilla wow. within a week there were level 60s camping low zone areas. within a month most of the population was gone. people hit 60 and got bored.
Video games are not the only industry where people want what they used to have before someone "improved" on it. Classic Coke, for example.
Take vinyl albums, for example:
"Vinyl album sales continue to be a bright spot among an otherwise bleak album sales picture. 16.8 million vinyl albums were sold in 2018, according to Nielsen Music (up 14.6 percent) — marking the 13th consecutive year of growth for the format. 16.8 million is also a new yearly high for vinyl album sales since Nielsen Music began tracking sales in 1991."
A medium long-thought dead by pop culture has been growing consistently over the past decade, defying the industry trends.
Classic items, many times, have an original authenticity or purity of purpose that newer items don't. A 1964 Ford Mustang can't serve as your personal navigator via a touchscreen, but many would rather have one of those than a brand new Mustang, because of the very pure and well-executed design goal: American muscle.
Not saying your point isn't valid but regarding vinyl albums (being a collector myself) the reason mostly is the vastly better quality not nostalgia. When it comes to audio - digital isn't superior.
Same thing applies to video, that's how we keep getting better quality digital versions releases with every generation (HD, FHD, UHD, and so on).
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
So many of the beta players started wow in cat or later they seem to be loving the classic
Makes sense really, many beta players are current WOW subscribers, which in order to enjoy WOW in it's current incarnation its likely you are a newer player who is unaware of how the game used to be.
WOW may have 2-4M subscribers today, which means they have 96M former subscribers from days gone by.
While there is certainly some players who have enjoyed WOW since 2004 until present, my guess is it is a much, much smaller subset of the total.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
People are actually liking everything - obviously not all people but *some* people.
The real question is - how long will it last?
Every other classic server for other games is only popular for a short time and then the population absolutely plummets.
I dont see any reason why WoW wont follow the same pattern.
No way of overcoming "been there done that feeling" - that is inevitable. Only variable is how quickly this happens for different players.
If you add up all the people who played vanilla WoW compared to those other games even if WoW retains the same % of the "people who stay" it will probably still be more than all of those other games combined. WoW was the cause of failed marriages, job loss etc on a scale never seen before. There were hardcore EQ players sure but nothing on the "i'm gonna completely throw away my life just to play WoW" level.
Add the number of vanilla players with the new players that will try it and stick with it cause they like it better than BFA and player numbers may not drop below 250k which is what SWG had b4 WoW came out in 2004. I'm hoping they can retain 1mil so other developers take notice and relaunch older MMO's like SWG to try and get a piece of WoW's pie again.
From what I gathered in the last few days, it seems like the Classic hype is stronger than ever. I've seen streamers who were absolutely adamant that Classic was just a Nostalgia thing and would not work in the long run, make a 180 degree turn, admitting they were wrong.
While others avid WoW players who recently quit BFA, like Sodapoppin and Asmongold were absolutely excited about Classic.
I also had a look at WoW official forums and people are raving about Beta, even the retail fanboys seems more open on giving Classic a fair go, whilst just few months ago there was a good amount of vitriol all over the forums against Classic and its fans. I can feel a strong positive vibe.
I am pretty confident Classic would be a success, there isn't a Social MMORPG around these days, and there are many people who crave the return of more relaxed days when you'd level at your own pace. I am also sure many kids will love this 'new thing' where getting stuff actually means something and feels like an achievement, something they probably never experienced in their young online gaming career.
Personally I can't wait for World PvP......Stranglethorn, I am coming!!!!!
you honestly gonna base your opinion on streamers / youtubers capitalizing on the hype train for subs?
That's just it, its not really like Vanilla WoW. Graphically it looks like Vanilla but that's where it ends. Mobs are not as hard as they used to be, I see zero players having to rest like you used to have to, players pulling multiple mobs solo when if you got an add back in the day you were basically dead, stat scaling for classes is different resulting in much higher dmg from players, I see very little to no CC being used, exp rates are not the same, I mean the list goes on and on and on. They basically made everything much quicker than it used to be....
Sorry but this isn't Vanilla WoW. Might look like it but it definitely is not.
What? Literally everything is identical to vanilla. They are recreating bugs that were in vanilla so that it's a 1:1 mirror. I don't know what you watched.
I disgaree 100%. It's not even close to being identical.
Like I said in my original post, it's not even close. Really the only thing that is identical are the graphics. Everything else not so much.
you know they literally have a classic 1.12 server blade running to compare their version against the original classic.
it's literally a 1:1 and here is where the problem lies, players have their "memories" or experiences on "private servers" of what classic should be when in fact it's pretty much exactly what they are putting out in beta.
This is why these servers are never maintainable long term.. peoples memories never match up with the actual game and they don't get that new mmo in a fresh genre feeling.
Video games are not the only industry where people want what they used to have before someone "improved" on it. Classic Coke, for example.
Take vinyl albums, for example:
"Vinyl album sales continue to be a bright spot among an otherwise bleak album sales picture. 16.8 million vinyl albums were sold in 2018, according to Nielsen Music (up 14.6 percent) — marking the 13th consecutive year of growth for the format. 16.8 million is also a new yearly high for vinyl album sales since Nielsen Music began tracking sales in 1991."
A medium long-thought dead by pop culture has been growing consistently over the past decade, defying the industry trends.
Classic items, many times, have an original authenticity or purity of purpose that newer items don't. A 1964 Ford Mustang can't serve as your personal navigator via a touchscreen, but many would rather have one of those than a brand new Mustang, because of the very pure and well-executed design goal: American muscle.
Not saying your point isn't valid but regarding vinyl albums (being a collector myself) the reason mostly is the vastly better quality not nostalgia. When it comes to audio - digital isn't superior.
Same thing applies to video, that's how we keep getting better quality digital versions releases with every generation (HD, FHD, UHD, and so on).
Right: purity of purpose. You accept the trouble of maintaining a record player and a library of albums because it achieves its primary purpose better than the more convenient offerings.
I don't understand the fad in this whole "lets go classic" for ancient MMOs ...
Like ... if the current state of the game is trash, guess what, in couple of months it will reach trash levels again. It's not like Blizzard are going to branch off expansions and have 2 WoWs. Eventually WoW classic will reach WotLK and everyone will start moaning again.
I experienced it first hand in L2 classic. They are adding the wretched elemental system. Fuck 'em. Same with Blizzard.
Also whoever released the rumor that vinyl is better than hi-def digital audio is a fucking madman. A rich madman at that. It's completely false, but they are reaping profits on dead technology.
It's like saying floppy disks store information better than SD cards because they are magnetic, omega fucking lul.
Can't wait until tape cassettes are back with the marketing. They sure are back in the cloud server space , but not so much so in consumer electronics.
To put it mildly though, with digital you can store sounds that are incomprehensible to the human hearing on both sides of the spectrum and everything in between at a "resolution" that a vinyl can only dream for. There are no playback fragments, distortions, interference or anything of the sort as long as the output system supports it.
The only problem is the actual output system, whether or not it can play the recorded sounds. Also bytes are not affected by age (depending on storage technology)
With digital it hardly matters what cable are you using before the output system, because with digital you can insulate cable "noise" and re-stream lost packets.
Honestly, I don't know why people keep repeating this shit. Are you justifying your spending habits?
Yup, I can't wait to get in and play a spirit priest again. This game is going to save me a lot of money because all I am going to need for my PC upgrade now is an overclocked Ryzen 3 quad core and 8gb of ram, and the lowest end Navi GPU.
Hell I might not even need to upgrade. My old P II 1100T, and 7850 played classic WoW just fine.
I wonder just how long this 8 year old system will hold together?
People are liking to look at streams of classic? Ok.
I think a more important issue was brought up in someone's video (I think madseason or something like that) talking about this streamer 'following.' Pretty much, if the streamer ends up quitting, the following leaves as well and given that classic is supposed to be a very 'server dependent' game, that'll result in a lot of dead servers. That isn't really a problem for a br/etc like when Ninja quit Apex, since that's just a matchmaking game, but hey, wonderful time to be alive though.....All I hope for is that there's a Cata server one day (YEAH I SAID IT!).
I see Blizzard as being at a crossroads, BfA isn't a popular expac and numbers have probably never been this low, the game is obviously still profitable but without major changes, which i am fairly sure that Blizzard are not blind to, the writing is very much 'on the wall'. Will WoW Classic change Blizzards fortunes? well that remains to be seen, but there is a very good chance imo that it could give Blizzard the breathing space they need to 'fix' things, this isn't so much about WoW although it is perhaps symptomatic, but instead the direction in which Activision/Blizzard are heading, the mobile market is a gamble where Acti/Blizz can lose much and gain little, and perhaps that is a lesson they need to learn.
Not saying your point isn't valid but regarding vinyl albums (being a collector myself) the reason mostly is the vastly better quality not nostalgia. When it comes to audio - digital isn't superior.
Digital audio as streamed over Internet or even CD quality isn't superior... until a certain point when your vinyl will be so used it sounds like crap.
But lossless high sample rate (192 or more) and 24 bit audio is definitely superior - not only in quality, but also in the fact that it's inalterable by time.
The good old days of cleaning dust from the needle
Can we all agree that the current Blizz is not the same as older Blizz?
I'm hoping Classic is successful, but I'm not sure if current Blizz deserves it.
I hope they pay attention to what's going to happen and learn from it in some way, and take that education and use it to course correct for BFA+.
I've said something similar before on here I believe, too much verbal diarrhea on too many forums to remember.
As of right now we know where Classic could end, and it's not pretty to a lot of people!
Gut Out!
The issue with most of today's MMORPGs is that they long ago started eliminating things in the name of convenience, and when you do that, you start fostering a playerbase that assumes those conveniences are absolutely necessary.
Blizzard has commented before that they lament how WoW sacrificed community for some of these things. But it's too late to go back now, because the player base now feels entitled to those things as loyal customers, and things like flying mounts and LFG type stuff are much more obvious to players than the effects of a vibrant cooperative community.
I'm hoping Classic will show them that they're horrible at assuming things (most of us know this already) and the 94% of their old population didn't go anywhere, but are still around waiting for something more fun to play.
But maybe I'm just as bad at assumptions as Blizz is!
It's like they made WoW into a non-mobile mobile game that almost plays itself and players only need to use 1-thumb, and Blizz is afraid to take the game back to 2-thumb game play! ha
Not saying your point isn't valid but regarding vinyl albums (being a collector myself) the reason mostly is the vastly better quality not nostalgia. When it comes to audio - digital isn't superior.
Digital audio as streamed over Internet or even CD quality isn't superior... until a certain point when your vinyl will be so used it sounds like crap.
But lossless high sample rate (192 or more) and 24 bit audio is definitely superior - not only in quality, but also in the fact that it's inalterable by time.
Depends on where does that 192/24 come from. Right now there isn't a viable source and what's out there is basically conversions from vinyl to lossless. Although many of the audiophiles use pretty neat high tech and expensive equipment to do the conversion but there's still the problem of electricity which adds a lot of noise to the mix. I don't think there ever will be a giant source of lossless files converted in perfect conditions because it is too much of a hassle and there is no want in the market. Many of the producers nowadays do their QC on CD and that's that because that's the peak quality of the 99.99% of the market would ever listen to.
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
We'll see who is right about this honeymoon bullshit, but I know people who have been playing on alt servers for years and who were waiting for this for ages. Stop making assumptions, stick to facts... and maybe try the thing yourself ?
Or people that flat out quit after Cataclysm nuked their characters with that new stupid childish dumbed down system in use today. Personally I can't wait to get back to classic and make it popular enough that Blizz branches it off as a main MMO.
People are liking to look at streams of classic? Ok.
I think a more important issue was brought up in someone's video (I think madseason or something like that) talking about this streamer 'following.' Pretty much, if the streamer ends up quitting, the following leaves as well and given that classic is supposed to be a very 'server dependent' game, that'll result in a lot of dead servers..
Sodapoppin and Asmongold are hardcore WoW fans, that's all they basically play. But they finally got sick with BFA and retail in general.
Their love with Classic is genuine, I don't think they'll quit any time soon.
I'm hoping Classic will show them that they're horrible at assuming things (most of us know this already) and the 94% of their old population didn't go anywhere, but are still around waiting for something more fun to play.
But maybe I'm just as bad at assumptions as Blizz is!
It's like they made WoW into a non-mobile mobile game that almost plays itself and players only need to use 1-thumb, and Blizz is afraid to take the game back to 2-thumb game play! ha
Gut Out!
you know WoW didn't hit monster numbers until Wrath.. so even your 94% of the population is relatively small...
Edit - it really is an impressive game when you think about it though... to have around 5 million players by the end of Classic and to keep growing going into TBC and Wrath like it did is a huge accomplishment...
especially when you consider at the time that MMO gaming was still pretty niche, WoW really opened it up to mainstream gamers, i guess that was the beauty of it, the accessibility.
I'm hoping Classic will show them that they're horrible at assuming things (most of us know this already) and the 94% of their old population didn't go anywhere, but are still around waiting for something more fun to play.
But maybe I'm just as bad at assumptions as Blizz is!
It's like they made WoW into a non-mobile mobile game that almost plays itself and players only need to use 1-thumb, and Blizz is afraid to take the game back to 2-thumb game play! ha
Gut Out!
you know WoW didn't hit monster numbers until Wrath.. so even your 94% of the population is relatively small...
Edit - it really is an impressive game when you think about it though... to have around 5 million players by the end of Classic and to keep growing going into TBC and Wrath like it did is a huge accomplishment...
especially when you consider at the time that MMO gaming was still pretty niche, WoW really opened it up to mainstream gamers, i guess that was the beauty of it, the accessibility.
By the end of vanilla WoW had around 8 million players. 94% of 8 million is about 7.5 million. Not even relatively small if you ask me.
I'm hoping Classic will show them that they're horrible at assuming things (most of us know this already) and the 94% of their old population didn't go anywhere, but are still around waiting for something more fun to play.
But maybe I'm just as bad at assumptions as Blizz is!
It's like they made WoW into a non-mobile mobile game that almost plays itself and players only need to use 1-thumb, and Blizz is afraid to take the game back to 2-thumb game play! ha
Gut Out!
you know WoW didn't hit monster numbers until Wrath.. so even your 94% of the population is relatively small...
Edit - it really is an impressive game when you think about it though... to have around 5 million players by the end of Classic and to keep growing going into TBC and Wrath like it did is a huge accomplishment...
especially when you consider at the time that MMO gaming was still pretty niche, WoW really opened it up to mainstream gamers, i guess that was the beauty of it, the accessibility.
By the end of vanilla WoW had around 8 million players. 94% of 8 million is about 7.5 million. Not even relatively small if you ask me.
no by the end of vanilla it was like 5.8 with an increase of sales that was coming in due to TBC getting launched at TBCs launch they had around 7m
and they still sustain around those numbers now at certain parts of expansion packs, so by no means is that groundbreaking.
that being said in wrath they hit monster numbers which they have never reproduced
Edit - if you're going off that graph that was released, it was actually proven to be slightly wrong.. and Classic ended around 5.8 million, there is sources online to confirm.
Comments
Same thing applies to video, that's how we keep getting better quality digital versions releases with every generation (HD, FHD, UHD, and so on).
WOW may have 2-4M subscribers today, which means they have 96M former subscribers from days gone by.
While there is certainly some players who have enjoyed WOW since 2004 until present, my guess is it is a much, much smaller subset of the total.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
it's literally a 1:1 and here is where the problem lies, players have their "memories" or experiences on "private servers" of what classic should be when in fact it's pretty much exactly what they are putting out in beta.
This is why these servers are never maintainable long term.. peoples memories never match up with the actual game and they don't get that new mmo in a fresh genre feeling.
See you all in Classic!
You stay sassy!
That said, I don't think it's a long-term thing for the majority of players.
However, there will always be dedicated old-schoolers - and probably more for WoW Classic than most other "dead" games.
I have no way of predicting the future - but I'd be surprised if more than a few hundred thousand people played this regularly after the first year.
Certainly, if they reach 1M regular players after the first year - I will have to say I was wrong about its longevity.
But I have no idea why anyone would WANT the game to fail - or would want people to not play it.
The more people in the world who're happy and enjoying themselves - the better the world will be for everyone in it.
That... Sounds familiar here.
Like ... if the current state of the game is trash, guess what, in couple of months it will reach trash levels again. It's not like Blizzard are going to branch off expansions and have 2 WoWs. Eventually WoW classic will reach WotLK and everyone will start moaning again.
I experienced it first hand in L2 classic. They are adding the wretched elemental system. Fuck 'em. Same with Blizzard.
Also whoever released the rumor that vinyl is better than hi-def digital audio is a fucking madman. A rich madman at that. It's completely false, but they are reaping profits on dead technology.
It's like saying floppy disks store information better than SD cards because they are magnetic, omega fucking lul.
Can't wait until tape cassettes are back with the marketing. They sure are back in the cloud server space , but not so much so in consumer electronics.
To put it mildly though, with digital you can store sounds that are incomprehensible to the human hearing on both sides of the spectrum and everything in between at a "resolution" that a vinyl can only dream for. There are no playback fragments, distortions, interference or anything of the sort as long as the output system supports it.
The only problem is the actual output system, whether or not it can play the recorded sounds. Also bytes are not affected by age (depending on storage technology)
With digital it hardly matters what cable are you using before the output system, because with digital you can insulate cable "noise" and re-stream lost packets.
Honestly, I don't know why people keep repeating this shit. Are you justifying your spending habits?
Hell I might not even need to upgrade. My old P II 1100T, and 7850 played classic WoW just fine.
I wonder just how long this 8 year old system will hold together?
Will WoW Classic change Blizzards fortunes? well that remains to be seen, but there is a very good chance imo that it could give Blizzard the breathing space they need to 'fix' things, this isn't so much about WoW although it is perhaps symptomatic, but instead the direction in which Activision/Blizzard are heading, the mobile market is a gamble where Acti/Blizz can lose much and gain little, and perhaps that is a lesson they need to learn.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
I'm hoping Classic is successful, but I'm not sure if current Blizz deserves it.
I hope they pay attention to what's going to happen and learn from it in some way, and take that education and use it to course correct for BFA+.
I've said something similar before on here I believe, too much verbal diarrhea on too many forums to remember.
As of right now we know where Classic could end, and it's not pretty to a lot of people!
Gut Out!
What, me worry?
Blizzard has commented before that they lament how WoW sacrificed community for some of these things. But it's too late to go back now, because the player base now feels entitled to those things as loyal customers, and things like flying mounts and LFG type stuff are much more obvious to players than the effects of a vibrant cooperative community.
But maybe I'm just as bad at assumptions as Blizz is!
It's like they made WoW into a non-mobile mobile game that almost plays itself and players only need to use 1-thumb, and Blizz is afraid to take the game back to 2-thumb game play! ha
Gut Out!
What, me worry?
But they finally got sick with BFA and retail in general.
Their love with Classic is genuine, I don't think they'll quit any time soon.
especially when you consider at the time that MMO gaming was still pretty niche, WoW really opened it up to mainstream gamers, i guess that was the beauty of it, the accessibility.
and they still sustain around those numbers now at certain parts of expansion packs, so by no means is that groundbreaking.
that being said in wrath they hit monster numbers which they have never reproduced