Yup, it is in excess of 3 million more subs from WoW classic.
Link from Blizzard or it didn't happen.
3 million is probably a very conservative estimate, its likely we will never see any real figures put out by Activision because ironically Classic WoW is a competitor for Retail WoW, which might sound crazy but consider this, why would Classic WoW players buy the next Retail WoW expansion? So while Activision is no doubt hoping that the resurgence of Classic will filter players into Retail, the reverse is probably true, Classic is taking the bulk of what remained of Retail, and there were not that many retail players left. This is the likely scenario, Activision will continue to patch Retail WoW, but they will hold off of putting out another expansion until/unless sufficient players are playing Retail to risk it as putting out an expac and it having sales in the 100's or worse in the tens of thousands rather than numbering in the millions would be devastating.
You say this based on faith, not fact.
My friends wife plays BFA and loves it. She's in an active guild that lost only a few members, and it remains to be seen what the retention rate will be in the coming months for Classic.
Those who live under the bridge know gamers are a fickle bunch, always chasing rainbows....
Agreed. Classic will fade to a more normalized level in a couple of months. Retail WOW is still humming along. Players are invested. Plus think about the new players who try Classic then load up retail WOW for the first time and see all those QoL changes and say
"Hey this is better for my time spent. I'll play this version instead."
I think some fans of Classic will try and throw Retail under the under performing bus but the reality is retail is making Blizzard far more money and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Blizz is working on their new expansion for retail right now. WOW is looked at as a single money making IP not two separate entities like some would like to believe.
Retail is fine.
Yup, it is in excess of 3 million more subs from WoW classic.
Link from Blizzard or it didn't happen.
3 million is probably a very conservative estimate, its likely we will never see any real figures put out by Activision because ironically Classic WoW is a competitor for Retail WoW, which might sound crazy but consider this, why would Classic WoW players buy the next Retail WoW expansion? So while Activision is no doubt hoping that the resurgence of Classic will filter players into Retail, the reverse is probably true, Classic is taking the bulk of what remained of Retail, and there were not that many retail players left. This is the likely scenario, Activision will continue to patch Retail WoW, but they will hold off of putting out another expansion until/unless sufficient players are playing Retail to risk it as putting out an expac and it having sales in the 100's or worse in the tens of thousands rather than numbering in the millions would be devastating.
You say this based on faith, not fact.
My friends wife plays BFA and loves it. She's in an active guild that lost only a few members, and it remains to be seen what the retention rate will be in the coming months for Classic.
Those who live under the bridge know gamers are a fickle bunch, always chasing rainbows....
Well its funny you should say that because my Uncles second cousins best friends sister used to play BfA too and all her friends now play Classic
Exactly my point, all evidence anyone can point to including SuperData is anecdotal.
For what its worth most of the people I know including my son and his friends who used to play WOW back in the day are not playing Classic, or BFA either.
Likely will have to wait until the next financial report to discern any real numbers on the success of Classic, and even then it will be an extrapolation unless Blizzard chooses to publish detailed breakdowns.
Those living under the bridge trust only hard facts, never faith.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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I am one of those that subbed for classic only. I am loving it. I hope they do a Classic+ in the future instead of TBC ect... but I doubt they will. My guess would be that there are about a million players which is way more than I thought there would be. It seems like it is still growing but only a month old so we will see what happens in a couple of months
Yup, it is in excess of 3 million more subs from WoW classic.
Link from Blizzard or it didn't happen.
3 million is probably a very conservative estimate, its likely we will never see any real figures put out by Activision because ironically Classic WoW is a competitor for Retail WoW, which might sound crazy but consider this, why would Classic WoW players buy the next Retail WoW expansion? So while Activision is no doubt hoping that the resurgence of Classic will filter players into Retail, the reverse is probably true, Classic is taking the bulk of what remained of Retail, and there were not that many retail players left. This is the likely scenario, Activision will continue to patch Retail WoW, but they will hold off of putting out another expansion until/unless sufficient players are playing Retail to risk it as putting out an expac and it having sales in the 100's or worse in the tens of thousands rather than numbering in the millions would be devastating.
You say this based on faith, not fact.
My friends wife plays BFA and loves it. She's in an active guild that lost only a few members, and it remains to be seen what the retention rate will be in the coming months for Classic.
Those who live under the bridge know gamers are a fickle bunch, always chasing rainbows....
Agreed. Classic will fade to a more normalized level in a couple of months. Retail WOW is still humming along. Players are invested. Plus think about the new players who try Classic then load up retail WOW for the first time and see all those QoL changes and say
"Hey this is better for my time spent. I'll play this version instead."
I think some fans of Classic will try and throw Retail under the under performing bus but the reality is retail is making Blizzard far more money and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Blizz is working on their new expansion for retail right now. WOW is looked at as a single money making IP not two separate entities like some would like to believe.
Retail is fine.
More fine than you think it is for a 15 year old game The amount of money they make on retail is much higher than many uniformed people think. You will see at launch of their next expansion pack the types of numbers they can still move for retail. You don't have to like it but facts are facts.
They've had, at worse, over a million or two million subs even at their worse. NO ONE ever thought they made little money on retail mate.
I wish we could get some official Blizzard numbers but I saw people saying 3 to 4 million subbed for classic.
3-4 million would have a LOT more classic servers.
Probably somewhere between 1 and 1.5mil . Will be a lot more interesting to see the numbers 3 months post launch
There were queues in the tens of thousands at first, so this initial number could work. They scrambled to create more servers, even with the amount they have now there was a queue in the hundreds daily on the majority of them for the first couple of weeks or so. Even now there are still several servers at FULL with queues daily. The initial push for subs was with name reservation, so those subs already either renewed for another month or canceled.
There is no doubt the initial surge in subs is likely real, but of course that will dwindle over time, as you have insistently pointed out. My response to this is no duh, of course it will. Even the most successful expansions have a huge surge then fall off a few months after. This is not rocket science. The bottom-line point here is WoW Classic has been a huge success when many said "you think you want it, but you don't."
People thought this would fail miserably out the gate and it hasn't. Those of us enjoying it knew better.
As great as this news is unfortunately i don't think Blizzard has the talent or the creative vision to build upon it. Classic will run its course, they might release BC and then its all down hill after that. Hate to be a negative cunt but i don't have alot of faith for any original interesting and fun content from the current team.
I will caveot this post that I have played nothing but vanilla/tbc servers for the past decade so I obviously have a bias, but just want to point out, due to the sub fee being the only source of revenue for classic and retail also having the expansion, paid services, mounts, lvl boosts and other cash shop items, it will take a much larger player base for classic to compete bottom line with retail. That being said, I would not be surprised to see paid name/guild/server x-fers come to classic to help boost its revenue stream. I'm not for this but if its necessary for the continued support of classic and potentially TBC+, I would support it as long as it ends there, no mounts, no lvl boosts, no cash shop.
As far as speculating #of either new subs for classic or subs that have converted their use from retail over to classic, I would say 3-4M is quite reasonable based on the current 73 classic servers and the speculated 50k player cap per server before reaching full queue status. During peak times I see the vast majority of servers either High or full which would equate to about 3M players online at that moment and surely there are likely an equal number of subscribers not on at that moment.
I would suspect just the initial extra subs classic brought have already paid for the work put into it and then some. Those who stick around and newcomers are just profit, minus server costs and dev team salary. I dont play, nor will I, its just not a game I enjoy, either version. But watching from a bystander perspective I have a hunch this went over really well and make blizzard plenty of money already.
Yup, it is in excess of 3 million more subs from WoW classic.
Link from Blizzard or it didn't happen.
3 million is probably a very conservative estimate, its likely we will never see any real figures put out by Activision because ironically Classic WoW is a competitor for Retail WoW, which might sound crazy but consider this, why would Classic WoW players buy the next Retail WoW expansion? So while Activision is no doubt hoping that the resurgence of Classic will filter players into Retail, the reverse is probably true, Classic is taking the bulk of what remained of Retail, and there were not that many retail players left. This is the likely scenario, Activision will continue to patch Retail WoW, but they will hold off of putting out another expansion until/unless sufficient players are playing Retail to risk it as putting out an expac and it having sales in the 100's or worse in the tens of thousands rather than numbering in the millions would be devastating.
You say this based on faith, not fact.
My friends wife plays BFA and loves it. She's in an active guild that lost only a few members, and it remains to be seen what the retention rate will be in the coming months for Classic.
Those who live under the bridge know gamers are a fickle bunch, always chasing rainbows....
Agreed. Classic will fade to a more normalized level in a couple of months. Retail WOW is still humming along. Players are invested. Plus think about the new players who try Classic then load up retail WOW for the first time and see all those QoL changes and say
"Hey this is better for my time spent. I'll play this version instead."
I think some fans of Classic will try and throw Retail under the under performing bus but the reality is retail is making Blizzard far more money and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Blizz is working on their new expansion for retail right now. WOW is looked at as a single money making IP not two separate entities like some would like to believe.
Retail is fine.
This actually happened with my guild, a few of us who didnt care for classic jumped back over to retail and while in discord we were doing our Mythic+ runs and Arenas and just joking around and laughing and having fun, our classic friends who were just bitching about raptor heart drops decided to take a break from banging their head against it, and give BFA a go, these are people who quit back in Cata and never came back. While I think they are still leveling in classic, I get pinged to play one of my alts in Retail with them alot now, and they are excited for level sync.
I wish we could get some official Blizzard numbers but I saw people saying 3 to 4 million subbed for classic.
3-4 million would have a LOT more classic servers.
Probably somewhere between 1 and 1.5mil . Will be a lot more interesting to see the numbers 3 months post launch
You said "honeymoon phase" first now you moved to 3 months, after 3 months I bet you will say give it a year. Personally I'm having a ball almost Hunter 60 planning on leveling a Warrior tank and a Priest healer next.
A thing worth noting is that classic at the moment isn't in it's full potential... Once BWL releases a lot more people will get interested and as for proper PvP in BGs... that's when the game will start to shine and that's when I expect a massive influx of players. Classic PvP is just too fun, no matter what class/spec you play. It's not balanced in any way, but it's still a ton of fun.
As for AQ and Nax, especially Nax... I expect double the current numbers when it gets released.
MC might be the most iconic raid, but honestly literally any other raid in classic is more fun even Zul'Gurub.
The only sad thing was that since there were a lot of private server players, they managed to kinda ruin a lot of the expectations people had for MC which in turn probably made a lot of people give up on classic not realizing that MC is pretty much trash compared to the rest of the raids and PvP.
Personally for me just the leveling alone was more fun than anything BfA have to offer. I could literally play 16 hours just leveling and not even notice I've played that much when in BfA I notice literally every minute I'm online(haven't been for quite a few months now tho).
Personally I really hope the classic servers continue to thrive and I would love if they release TBC and WotLK down the road. I'll definitely play them.
That said while BfA was a total bust I do expect the next expanstion to actually be good, because since it's very release BfA has been hinting that the horde and the alliance might stop existing as factions and new factions with mixed(horde/alliance) races might pop up. That will be interesting and if they remove the grind, but instead introduce something that feels fun doing it and not a chore it just might turn out to be a great expansion.
Still there are so many things that need fixing in retail that even if they do this it might still be a complete failure.. I mean PvP is boring. Removing challange modes and replacing it with mythic + was a horrible decision in my opinion. Any type of pointless grind needs to be removed.. Honestly if they took ideas from shitty games and make it that you get sick transmog from the grinds instead of AP(which shouldn't be in the game) it will be better. The grind that is forced on you really ruins the mood to play the game for a lot of people.
Maybe hire a team to rest raids instead of players and make it actually interesting for people when a new raid drops. Instead of already knowing everything about the boss and having addons that literally tells you what to do it will be a lot more interesting to see people actually try and figure what to do.
One thing that classic have that would be nice for retail is to make older zones relevant. Obviously I don't mean all old zones(from all expansions), but at least from previous expansion. That way the game will feel more populated. In classic you can find useful stuff from literally any mob at any level. It's not ony level 59-60 that give you stuff you need/you find useful at max level.
From any source other than Superdata this could mean something.
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Bottom line is naysayers were saying nay nay nay before classic was even announced, said it more once it was announced, and they are still saying it a month into release. Nay away, a shit-ton of people are enjoying the game. Sorry this is like sand in the ol' underwear waistband for some of you. No, not sorry. Nay away!
Bottom line is naysayers were saying nay nay nay before classic was even announced, said it more once it was announced, and they are still saying it a month into release. Nay away, a shit-ton of people are enjoying the game. Sorry this is like sand in the ol' underwear waistband for some of you. No, not sorry. Nay away!
I think the vast majority thought it would be initially successful based on the resurgence of classic servers in general like Runescape, Lineage II and Rift and pirate servers like WOW and EQ have had (have). I think the question has always been how long will an unchanging server's popularity last. Because if classic WOW would have stayed in the state the current classic is in it would not have lasted 15 years. Change is inevitable. Is this a fad or a trend? Or is it just WOW being WOW with no relevance on the genre as a whole because it is it's own thing? Time will tell.
I've read they are going to release BC at some point though.
How come blizzard got the best cinematic but their mmorpg game graphics suck?
It's not the graphics it's how style is cartoonish which is fine by me cause wow has something no other mmorpg has: responsiveness you hit a skill or ability and happens instantly no server lag or any kind of delay. So yeah style might not be for everyone some like realistic style but works great and to me at least controlling my character feels super smooth and natural.
Yup, it is in excess of 3 million more subs from WoW classic.
Link from Blizzard or it didn't happen.
3 million is probably a very conservative estimate, its likely we will never see any real figures put out by Activision because ironically Classic WoW is a competitor for Retail WoW, which might sound crazy but consider this, why would Classic WoW players buy the next Retail WoW expansion? So while Activision is no doubt hoping that the resurgence of Classic will filter players into Retail, the reverse is probably true, Classic is taking the bulk of what remained of Retail, and there were not that many retail players left. This is the likely scenario, Activision will continue to patch Retail WoW, but they will hold off of putting out another expansion until/unless sufficient players are playing Retail to risk it as putting out an expac and it having sales in the 100's or worse in the tens of thousands rather than numbering in the millions would be devastating.
You say this based on faith, not fact.
My friends wife plays BFA and loves it. She's in an active guild that lost only a few members, and it remains to be seen what the retention rate will be in the coming months for Classic.
Those who live under the bridge know gamers are a fickle bunch, always chasing rainbows....
Agreed. Classic will fade to a more normalized level in a couple of months. Retail WOW is still humming along. Players are invested. Plus think about the new players who try Classic then load up retail WOW for the first time and see all those QoL changes and say
"Hey this is better for my time spent. I'll play this version instead."
I think some fans of Classic will try and throw Retail under the under performing bus but the reality is retail is making Blizzard far more money and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Blizz is working on their new expansion for retail right now. WOW is looked at as a single money making IP not two separate entities like some would like to believe.
Retail is fine.
More fine than you think it is for a 15 year old game The amount of money they make on retail is much higher than many uniformed people think. You will see at launch of their next expansion pack the types of numbers they can still move for retail. You don't have to like it but facts are facts.
Except Retail does not have the numbers, when in 1 month alone the rise in subscriptions amounted to the same kind of amount made from the sales of BfA in its entirety, then yes, things are not fine with Retail WoW and they probably haven't been for quite a while. Superdata's 'guesstimate' of 3 million is likely very conservative, and i doubt we will see any official figures any time soon, or ever, but by the same token there are also 'guesstimates' that put Retails sub numbers before Classic as being sub 1 million and is in all probability a huge part of the reason why Classic is even a thing. If all was really 'fine' with Retail then you can be very sure that Activision would not have relented on the Classic WoW issue, particularly as doing so has made the CEO look foolish.
Blueturtle13, I have to disagree about retail Wow. The only people still playing retail are the hardcore raiders and even they are starting to find other games to play. This last expansion was a real dud and the prior one not much better.
I would be willing to bet the retail Wow population is well under 500k.
Without classic saving their butt, there would have been definite layoffs in the Wow staff.
Yup, it is in excess of 3 million more subs from WoW classic.
Link from Blizzard or it didn't happen.
3 million is probably a very conservative estimate, its likely we will never see any real figures put out by Activision because ironically Classic WoW is a competitor for Retail WoW, which might sound crazy but consider this, why would Classic WoW players buy the next Retail WoW expansion? So while Activision is no doubt hoping that the resurgence of Classic will filter players into Retail, the reverse is probably true, Classic is taking the bulk of what remained of Retail, and there were not that many retail players left. This is the likely scenario, Activision will continue to patch Retail WoW, but they will hold off of putting out another expansion until/unless sufficient players are playing Retail to risk it as putting out an expac and it having sales in the 100's or worse in the tens of thousands rather than numbering in the millions would be devastating.
You say this based on faith, not fact.
My friends wife plays BFA and loves it. She's in an active guild that lost only a few members, and it remains to be seen what the retention rate will be in the coming months for Classic.
Those who live under the bridge know gamers are a fickle bunch, always chasing rainbows....
Agreed. Classic will fade to a more normalized level in a couple of months. Retail WOW is still humming along. Players are invested. Plus think about the new players who try Classic then load up retail WOW for the first time and see all those QoL changes and say
"Hey this is better for my time spent. I'll play this version instead."
I think some fans of Classic will try and throw Retail under the under performing bus but the reality is retail is making Blizzard far more money and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Blizz is working on their new expansion for retail right now. WOW is looked at as a single money making IP not two separate entities like some would like to believe.
Retail is fine.
More fine than you think it is for a 15 year old game The amount of money they make on retail is much higher than many uniformed people think. You will see at launch of their next expansion pack the types of numbers they can still move for retail. You don't have to like it but facts are facts.
Except Retail does not have the numbers, when in 1 month alone the rise in subscriptions amounted to the same kind of amount made from the sales of BfA in its entirety, then yes, things are not fine with Retail WoW and they probably haven't been for quite a while. Superdata's 'guesstimate' of 3 million is likely very conservative, and i doubt we will see any official figures any time soon, or ever, but by the same token there are also 'guesstimates' that put Retails sub numbers before Classic as being sub 1 million and is in all probability a huge part of the reason why Classic is even a thing. If all was really 'fine' with Retail then you can be very sure that Activision would not have relented on the Classic WoW issue, particularly as doing so has made the CEO look foolish.
I am wondering if they may end up doing a variation on wow classic instead of going to TBC.
If they update some systems, put in new content such as Ashzara, fill out Hyjal, etc, then they could charge a box release fee. Which I would pay as I would prefer filling out the old world and refining some talents/classes instead of going to TBC.
Tldr, blizzard could make more money with a spinoff/refinement/content addition to classic instead of TBC.
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For what its worth most of the people I know including my son and his friends who used to play WOW back in the day are not playing Classic, or BFA either.
Likely will have to wait until the next financial report to discern any real numbers on the success of Classic, and even then it will be an extrapolation unless Blizzard chooses to publish detailed breakdowns.
Those living under the bridge trust only hard facts, never faith.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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There were queues in the tens of thousands at first, so this initial number could work. They scrambled to create more servers, even with the amount they have now there was a queue in the hundreds daily on the majority of them for the first couple of weeks or so. Even now there are still several servers at FULL with queues daily. The initial push for subs was with name reservation, so those subs already either renewed for another month or canceled.
There is no doubt the initial surge in subs is likely real, but of course that will dwindle over time, as you have insistently pointed out. My response to this is no duh, of course it will. Even the most successful expansions have a huge surge then fall off a few months after. This is not rocket science. The bottom-line point here is WoW Classic has been a huge success when many said "you think you want it, but you don't."
People thought this would fail miserably out the gate and it hasn't. Those of us enjoying it knew better.
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An accountant's perspective...
I will caveot this post that I have played nothing but vanilla/tbc servers for the past decade so I obviously have a bias, but just want to point out, due to the sub fee being the only source of revenue for classic and retail also having the expansion, paid services, mounts, lvl boosts and other cash shop items, it will take a much larger player base for classic to compete bottom line with retail. That being said, I would not be surprised to see paid name/guild/server x-fers come to classic to help boost its revenue stream. I'm not for this but if its necessary for the continued support of classic and potentially TBC+, I would support it as long as it ends there, no mounts, no lvl boosts, no cash shop.
As far as speculating #of either new subs for classic or subs that have converted their use from retail over to classic, I would say 3-4M is quite reasonable based on the current 73 classic servers and the speculated 50k player cap per server before reaching full queue status. During peak times I see the vast majority of servers either High or full which would equate to about 3M players online at that moment and surely there are likely an equal number of subscribers not on at that moment.
This actually happened with my guild, a few of us who didnt care for classic jumped back over to retail and while in discord we were doing our Mythic+ runs and Arenas and just joking around and laughing and having fun, our classic friends who were just bitching about raptor heart drops decided to take a break from banging their head against it, and give BFA a go, these are people who quit back in Cata and never came back. While I think they are still leveling in classic, I get pinged to play one of my alts in Retail with them alot now, and they are excited for level sync.
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Personally I'm having a ball almost Hunter 60 planning on leveling a Warrior tank and a Priest healer next.
Something like, people hate our present game so much that now a huge percentage of our subscribers are paying to play an older version of it instead.
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As for AQ and Nax, especially Nax... I expect double the current numbers when it gets released.
MC might be the most iconic raid, but honestly literally any other raid in classic is more fun even Zul'Gurub.
The only sad thing was that since there were a lot of private server players, they managed to kinda ruin a lot of the expectations people had for MC which in turn probably made a lot of people give up on classic not realizing that MC is pretty much trash compared to the rest of the raids and PvP.
Personally for me just the leveling alone was more fun than anything BfA have to offer. I could literally play 16 hours just leveling and not even notice I've played that much when in BfA I notice literally every minute I'm online(haven't been for quite a few months now tho).
Personally I really hope the classic servers continue to thrive and I would love if they release TBC and WotLK down the road. I'll definitely play them.
That said while BfA was a total bust I do expect the next expanstion to actually be good, because since it's very release BfA has been hinting that the horde and the alliance might stop existing as factions and new factions with mixed(horde/alliance) races might pop up. That will be interesting and if they remove the grind, but instead introduce something that feels fun doing it and not a chore it just might turn out to be a great expansion.
Still there are so many things that need fixing in retail that even if they do this it might still be a complete failure.. I mean PvP is boring. Removing challange modes and replacing it with mythic + was a horrible decision in my opinion. Any type of pointless grind needs to be removed.. Honestly if they took ideas from shitty games and make it that you get sick transmog from the grinds instead of AP(which shouldn't be in the game) it will be better. The grind that is forced on you really ruins the mood to play the game for a lot of people.
Maybe hire a team to rest raids instead of players and make it actually interesting for people when a new raid drops. Instead of already knowing everything about the boss and having addons that literally tells you what to do it will be a lot more interesting to see people actually try and figure what to do.
One thing that classic have that would be nice for retail is to make older zones relevant. Obviously I don't mean all old zones(from all expansions), but at least from previous expansion. That way the game will feel more populated. In classic you can find useful stuff from literally any mob at any level. It's not ony level 59-60 that give you stuff you need/you find useful at max level.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
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If all was really 'fine' with Retail then you can be very sure that Activision would not have relented on the Classic WoW issue, particularly as doing so has made the CEO look foolish.
I would be willing to bet the retail Wow population is well under 500k.
Without classic saving their butt, there would have been definite layoffs in the Wow staff.
I am wondering if they may end up doing a variation on wow classic instead of going to TBC.
If they update some systems, put in new content such as Ashzara, fill out Hyjal, etc, then they could charge a box release fee. Which I would pay as I would prefer filling out the old world and refining some talents/classes instead of going to TBC.
Tldr, blizzard could make more money with a spinoff/refinement/content addition to classic instead of TBC.
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