Holy chit brahs, vanilla wow servers officially announced

[LFAesthetics]

nah nah m8, death n taxes ftw. Kel'Thuzad despawned on death n taxes at 1% m8 then Nihilum took the kill, dont u remember m8?



There's so many big decisions they have to make. It makes logistical sense to roll out Vanilla and recurring Vanilla servers at 1.12 since that's the final build, but that's a massive detraction from the "authentic...classic experience" that Brack was talking about. Then it's just a private server with better support and tuning. Besides, 2 straight years of the same exact build is unprecedented, I bet people would start screaming for class balancing and changes halfway through vanilla (not sure if that's what you were talking about). I would be down for higher tuning for raids (mostly health/damage) if average guilds start stomping them.

Since these kinds of changes can have massive effects on the experience, I think they simply have to make it verbatim, except for bugs - can't see Blizz purposely building bugs into a game for the sake of hotfixing them later.

But who knows? The decision alone to release Vanilla brough back memories of the old, bolder Blizzard. So for all we know, people will be stuck in kneel after looting and Paladins will be solo'ing Kazzak before they hotfix Reckoning Bomb. On one side that seems like petty novelty and cheap nostalgia, on the other side it gives a sense that Blizzard genuinely cares about making their fans happy.

the one thing that people on the WoW forums seem to ignore in that same interview with brack however is "polished blizzard experience" I don't see them releasing broken classes like 1.1 intent on fixing them in a patch 3 months down the line.

i also don't think theyll release a 1.12 patch where mc is cleared in the first week because the raid can DPS through mechanics. They'd adjust the tuning to account for the increased DPS some classes had after they were fixed, or when the debuff slots went to 16. but those small changes adjust the meta of the game, now shadow priests and extra warlocks aren't that bad to have etc.

[CaliSuperSport]

the one thing that people on the WoW forums seem to ignore in that same interview with brack however is "polished blizzard experience" I don't see them releasing broken classes like 1.1 intent on fixing them in a patch 3 months down the line.

i also don't think theyll release a 1.12 patch where mc is cleared in the first week because the raid can DPS through mechanics. They'd adjust the tuning to account for the increased DPS some classes had after they were fixed, or when the debuff slots went to 16. but those small changes adjust the meta of the game, now shadow priests and extra warlocks aren't that bad to have etc.

I just wonder how that will be received because it still falls into the category of change. I'm also curious how much input they'll take from the community. Hopefully it will be less toxic now that we're past the ridiculous QoL debate. I can't find the quote of Brack saying "polished" but he was probably referencing to the server meltdowns at launch, when they blew past their sub expectations within weeks. His quote from the announcement stage was "we want to reproduce the game experience that we all enjoyed....not the actual launch experience."

For a vast majority of people 1.12 is Vanilla because that's the only patch private servers have ever used.

I think this is debatable. Vanilla's population still outweighs the private server pop, and from private servers, how many are really that adamant on using 1.12 only? I played on private servers and I would prefer 1.1 start.

[Millington]

content patching is different than time gating raids. some people think the servers will go through a literal patching where the skills change etc. I think blizzard will just release the mechanics and skills etc at a certain patch point, most likely in a similar fashion to Nostalrius. you could really argue that 1.1 was broken in a lot of ways and some classes were utterly useless. I wouldn't want to play 1.1 and roll a warlock for example.

But if you held a gun to my head, I would say that I believe all the content will be released at once, simply because its not new - there is no reason to hold people back unnaturally; they've already been there done this, so it's like why even bother gating it, they only gate the content now to draw out the expansion. there is nothing to come after naxx except years of the same.

And if the dungeons are tuned properly, people will need to farm T2 to get T3 anyways.

that said, gating the content might make sense to make the game feel alive, otherwise its would feel like playing last years CoD, nobody would really care about the content.

but doing the AQ gate openeing and all the prestory raid stuff is fun.

Yeah, that's a difficult question about skills/talents. My guess is a 1.12 skills with 16 debuff slots, though there are foreseeable issues. I really don't know what to think about that.

It's always been my assumption they would stagger raid releases. Having them all at once would remove content (e.g. AQ gong, Naxx zombie invasion) and it would totally make a mockery of Vanilla's story line. I think this would pretty dramatically effect the gear pacing and Vanilla's relatively superior sense of gear permanence. The people racing through the content are going to accumulate an unbelievable gear advantage even by Vanilla standards (and this could be felt to some degree among player subsets occurring between mong and professional gamer).

More importantly, releasing content gradually allows them to stretch out the hype ($$$) and create a bunch of little progression races overtime. It would need to be perhaps accelerated, the danger being that people race through each content patch's raids, grow bored and drop out (a la Elysium).

[NillaWafer]

I think this is debatable. Vanilla's population still outweighs the private server pop, and from private servers, how many are really that adamant on using 1.12 only? I played on private servers and I would prefer 1.1 start.

It's possible, but you've gotta remember that it's pretty much the private server community that drove Blizz to go back to classic. I really doubt we'd be where we are if it wasn't for the success of nost, kronos, gummy, and all the other private servers. There might have been a bigger pop during retail vanilla, but 1.12 from private servers is fresh, on everyone's mind, and the only thing that people have played since the end of vanilla, some ten years ago.

Now, the starting point is basically the entire debate at this point. What itemization should blizz use? What talents? What content? What raids should be open? What Battleground? It's all a huge topic of discussion.

I don't really know where I stand at this point. As I said earlier, I'm pretty torn. I wouldn't mind Blizz making changes, yet at the same time, I wouldn't mind them keeping it the same. Tbh now that I think about it, I don't think it's really about the state of the game so much as what is actually happening. The old community is getting back together to play some vanilla fuking wow. That's all I really care about. And I think that we wouldn't be having these discussions if people didn't love the game so much.

[FIREnICE]

It's possible, but you've gotta remember that it's pretty much the private server community that drove Blizz to go back to classic. I really doubt we'd be where we are if it wasn't for the success of nost, kronos, gummy, and all the other private servers. There might have been a bigger pop during retail vanilla, but 1.12 from private servers is fresh, on everyone's mind, and the only thing that people have played since the end of vanilla, some ten years ago.

Now, the starting point is basically the entire debate at this point. What itemization should blizz use? What talents? What content? What raids should be open? What Battleground? It's all a huge topic of discussion.

I don't really know where I stand at this point. As I said earlier, I'm pretty torn. I wouldn't mind Blizz making changes, yet at the same time, I wouldn't mind them keeping it the same. Tbh now that I think about it, I don't think it's really about the state of the game so much as what is actually happening. The old community is getting back together to play some vanilla fuking wow. That's all I really care about. And I think that we wouldn't be having these discussions if people didn't love the game so much.

they should essentially keep it the same but change the classes that lagged in vanilla to somehow compete.

[Feyras]

My $.02

I think they should launch the game as it was launched on initial release, minus the known bugs, and then roll out the patches at X rate depending on activity/community response.

It makes the game as true to the original as possible, while kind of making the game progress via patches instead of launching and remaining the same the whole time.

I personally don't care what they do as long as they leave out the QoL stuff most people agree suck (cross-realm, lfd, etc) and give me the original BG system

[CaliSuperSport]

It's possible, but you've gotta remember that it's pretty much the private server community that drove Blizz to go back to classic. I really doubt we'd be where we are if it wasn't for the success of nost, kronos, gummy, and all the other private servers. There might have been a bigger pop during retail vanilla, but 1.12 from private servers is fresh, on everyone's mind, and the only thing that people have played since the end of vanilla, some ten years ago.

Now, the starting point is basically the entire debate at this point. What itemization should blizz use? What talents? What content? What raids should be open? What Battleground? It's all a huge topic of discussion.

I don't really know where I stand at this point. As I said earlier, I'm pretty torn. I wouldn't mind Blizz making changes, yet at the same time, I wouldn't mind them keeping it the same. Tbh now that I think about it, I don't think it's really about the state of the game so much as what is actually happening. The old community is getting back together to play some vanilla fuking wow. That's all I really care about. And I think that we wouldn't be having these discussions if people didn't love the game so much.

You're right about the private server community driving this. They got Mark Kern to directly acknowledge Morhaime and Vanilla servers.

IMO, when in doubt; just stick to Vanilla. Like I've mentioned ITT, butterfly effect is real and small changes can have a big impact. But now we're talking about big changes that will undoubtedly alter the vanilla experience. Besides as fun as private servers were, we should remember that they are NOT exactly the same as Vanilla for many reasons.

People are throwing in suggestions because this is our chance to enhance the game, but really they should just stick to the game, at least for 1 go around. I'm assuming the servers will be recurring for the lifetime of WoW, so they can make alterations later if the opinion is overwhelming.

My $.02

I think they should launch the game as it was launched on initial release, minus the known bugs, and then roll out the patches at X rate depending on activity/community response.

It makes the game as true to the original as possible, while kind of making the game progress via patches instead of launching and remaining the same the whole time.

I personally don't care what they do as long as they leave out the QoL stuff most people agree suck (cross-realm, lfd, etc) and give me the original BG system

This is my opinion as well. Blizzard's capacity for content release is far greater than 13 years ago, I can't imagine it's that's difficult to do progression.

[yokeybear]

You're right about the private server community driving this. They got Mark Kern to directly acknowledge Morhaime and Vanilla servers.

IMO, when in doubt; just stick to Vanilla. Like I've mentioned ITT, butterfly effect is real and small changes can have a big impact. But now we're talking about big changes that will undoubtedly alter the vanilla experience. Besides as fun as private servers were, we should remember that they are NOT exactly the same as Vanilla for many reasons.

People are throwing in suggestions because this is our chance to enhance the game, but really they should just stick to the game, at least for 1 go around. I'm assuming the servers will be recurring for the lifetime of WoW, so they can make alterations later if the opinion is overwhelming.



This is my opinion as well. Blizzard's capacity for content release is far greater than 13 years ago, I can't imagine it's that's difficult to do progression.

i can agree on these opinions

[NillaWafer]

My $.02

I think they should launch the game as it was launched on initial release, minus the known bugs, and then roll out the patches at X rate depending on activity/community response.

It makes the game as true to the original as possible, while kind of making the game progress via patches instead of launching and remaining the same the whole time.

I personally don't care what they do as long as they leave out the QoL stuff most people agree suck (cross-realm, lfd, etc) and give me the original BG system

Like day 1 release day back in 2004?! That's a bold move. A real bold move.

I'm all about it. I just don't see Blizz releasing that lmao.

[Enemy11]

i just hope they end up releasing tbc afterwards

brb karazhan
brb black temple
brb the sunwell
brb tbc arenas

brb zul'aman bear runs that actually took some skill and coordination to get


brb guilds wiping half a year on this boss and disbanding

[Zerafian]

i just hope they end up releasing tbc afterwards

brb karazhan
brb black temple
brb the sunwell
brb tbc arenas

Im way more interested in a BC server too. I started playing in late vanilla, about a month before BC release. All my memories are in BC for sure. Though, thats probably 3-4 years away, at least.

[stasmtl]

i wish i kept old screenshots from back in the day, feels

[CaliSuperSport]

i just hope they end up releasing tbc afterwards

brb karazhan
brb black temple
brb the sunwell
brb tbc arenas

brb zul'aman bear runs that actually took some skill and coordination to get
[img]http://www.vismaior.org/images/news_pics/bearcavalry.jpg[/ig]

brb guilds wiping half a year on this boss and disbanding
[img]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4LM8Tyu9aNw/maxresdefault.jpg[/ig]

Never really got to play TBC. Idk how I walked passed these boxes at Wal-Mart so many times without buying it...



I would be so stoked to play. Also Wrath too.

i wish i kept old screenshots from back in the day, feels

Same. I was too young to consider that hard drives fail. I lost all my WoW, CS: Source, and UT2004 screens & replays. Fukin sucks

[NillaWafer]

I'd rather play wraith than tbc just because I only played a little bit of wraith. I played a lot of tbc, and that lvl 70 grind is honestly soulcrushing, moreso than the vanilla grind imo (with the exception of r14 because fuk that chit). My guild just started ulduar when I quit wow for good, never got to see my boy Arthas

[turboface]

I'd rather play wraith than tbc just because I only played a little bit of wraith. I played a lot of tbc, and that lvl 70 grind is honestly soulcrushing, moreso than the vanilla grind imo (with the exception of r14 because fuk that chit). My guild just started ulduar when I quit wow for good, never got to see my boy Arthas

I quit after Ulduar ... my guild went on to be really successful (Intent). Ulduar was a ton of fun but honestly I had the most fun during WOTLK launch and leveling to 80; I played an Ele sham too so knocking people off their mounts / off cliffs / etc was hilarious. I remember leveling and seeing Kaywarrior from Exodus on KT running around (GM of the top guild on the server). No sharding, no LFR, no escape if someone was fisting your bum. Ah good times.

Best thing I managed to do was get "The Immortal" achieve / title from Naxx 25 (completing the whole thing w/ no deaths).

OH and getting the TLPD (Time Lost Proto Drake) like 11 years ago or whenever the zone opened.

Also getting my first 310% speed mount back when your mount speed was dependent on the mount itself & only a few mounts were 310% (everything else was 280%).

[meenman83]

We got people gladiator in TBC for $400 paypal when 2s got Glad, chit honestly took 4 hours or 30 matches was even quicker if the toons where geared, made an easy 10k the first 3 seasons.

[xfusion]

oh man don't even get me started on vanilla pvp videos.

World of Roguecraft is the GOAT for me, but some others I liked:





I wonder if these two will return. I follow Grim on social media and he was on vanilla servers. I also follow the guy from World of Rogeucraft, Mute

Where's Grim on social media??

[NillaWafer]

I quit after Ulduar ... my guild went on to be really successful (Intent). Ulduar was a ton of fun but honestly I had the most fun during WOTLK launch and leveling to 80; I played an Ele sham too so knocking people off their mounts / off cliffs / etc was hilarious. I remember leveling and seeing Kaywarrior from Exodus on KT running around (GM of the top guild on the server). No sharding, no LFR, no escape if someone was fisting your bum. Ah good times.

Best thing I managed to do was get "The Immortal" achieve / title from Naxx 25 (completing the whole thing w/ no deaths).

OH and getting the TLPD (Time Lost Proto Drake) like 11 years ago or whenever the zone opened.

Also getting my first 310% speed mount back when your mount speed was dependent on the mount itself & only a few mounts were 310% (everything else was 280%).

I've always played priest so MC'ing people off cliffs and off the boat was a joy of mine. Might have to do that a few times in classic .

But I'm jelly man, I feel like I never really experienced wraith outside of leveling through the zones. And that expansion held my interest the most because I love the Arthas story line

[Lollaff]

I don't think cross realm BGs are necessarily a bad thing, as long as it's limited to BGs only. I played for a while on Elysium (now Lightbringer) and queues were horrible for horde. That server had about a 55/45 ratio of horde to alliance, and horde had queues of about an hour for pre-made groups.

And if Blizz decide to change the system so that premades play other premades, that would be nice. I played both pug and for a while with a premade who were pushing R14s, and it is aids. We usually would win ABs 2000/0 with people just afking in spawn, and the same happened against us when I was pugging. It's just not fun at all. The steamrolling usually happens in premade vs premade aswell, it's usually just that whoever loses the initial battle for blacksmith just concedes, but that's how the game is for people pushing high ranks anyway.

[Purfected]

i just hope they end up releasing tbc afterwards

brb karazhan
brb black temple
brb the sunwell
brb tbc arenas

brb zul'aman bear runs that actually took some skill and coordination to get


brb guilds wiping half a year on this boss and disbanding

Arena's are one of the dumbest introductions in to WoW. although fun and interesting at the very beginning it quickly went downhill because it's impossible to balance and only certain comps are played.

TBC without arenas would have seen such awesome world PvP.

in hindsight, they should have revamped the vanilla honor system to somehow reward the more skilled players. I don't know how they would do that but yeah.

but you are correct about everything else about TBC, TBC was the best expansion, I just think it would have been better if arena was not introduced, as well as no flying mounts.

[CaliSuperSport]

I quit after Ulduar ... my guild went on to be really successful (Intent). Ulduar was a ton of fun but honestly I had the most fun during WOTLK launch and leveling to 80; I played an Ele sham too so knocking people off their mounts / off cliffs / etc was hilarious. I remember leveling and seeing Kaywarrior from Exodus on KT running around (GM of the top guild on the server). No sharding, no LFR, no escape if someone was fisting your bum. Ah good times.

Best thing I managed to do was get "The Immortal" achieve / title from Naxx 25 (completing the whole thing w/ no deaths).

I love hearing about old raiding stories, even though I barely raided myself.

Do you guys follow Preach Gaming? He talks alot about his quest for world first during old raids including some boss mechanics (don't think he ever got world 1st) but he also got #1 worldwide in DPS on a Cata raid I believe. His guild played on Sylvanas with Method and narrowly missed out on world first Anub'arak. He eventually joined Method.

If you just wanna kill some time and reminisce on the good old days

Vanilla Raiding: 55:10
TBC: 1:01:00
Wrath: 1:20:10

Where's Grim on social media??

Twitter: https://twitter.com/grimtherogue?lang=en

Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/user/GrimAlAkir

His reaction to Classic servers:

[Feyras]

Like day 1 release day back in 2004?! That's a bold move. A real bold move.

I'm all about it. I just don't see Blizz releasing that lmao.

Yes sir. People want the true Vanilla experience, that's what they should get. Like I said, they should fix the obvious bugs, but there needs to be some sort of progression or the servers will die out.

Based off of what's been said in this thread, people are roflstomping Vanilla content on private servers. If they release from the launch of the game, it allows people to "feel" like they're apart of the birth of what is considered one of the greatest MMOs of all time.

Arena's are one of the dumbest introductions in to WoW. although fun and interesting at the very beginning it quickly went downhill because it's impossible to balance and only certain comps are played.

TBC without arenas would have seen such awesome world PvP.

in hindsight, they should have revamped the vanilla honor system to somehow reward the more skilled players. I don't know how they would do that but yeah.

but you are correct about everything else about TBC, TBC was the best expansion, I just think it would have been better if arena was not introduced, as well as no flying mounts.

Respectfully disagree. I loved arenas from TBC-Cata. I quit doing them after Cata because I barely play the game anymore.

The great thing about MMOs, is you don't have to play all aspects. If you don't like Arenas...you don't play them. For some of us, that was our way of doing "endgame" content. Maybe we didn't always have the time to log on and raid for hours, but could get another buddy or 2 and run Arenas in the time we did have.

[CaliSuperSport]

Yes sir. People want the true Vanilla experience, that's what they should get. Like I said, they should fix the obvious bugs, but there needs to be some sort of progression or the servers will die out.

Based off of what's been said in this thread, people are roflstomping Vanilla content on private servers. If they release from the launch of the game, it allows people to "feel" like they're apart of the birth of what is considered one of the greatest MMOs of all time.

I'd say it's more like elite players with hours of free time who have played vanilla for 5+ years are roflstomping. My first Wailing Caverns run on private servers took probably 2 hours and not because it's a maze, we were wiping on the bosses. Don't even get me started on Shadowfang Keep.

Just thinking about BRD gives me chills.

[Enemy11]

I'd say it's more like elite players with hours of free time who have played vanilla for 5+ years are roflstomping. My first Wailing Caverns run on private servers took probably 2 hours and not because it's a maze, we were wiping on the bosses. Don't even get me started on Shadowfang Keep.

Just thinking about BRD gives me chills.

this, you gotta remember the people who rush to 60 are a minority. most people just wanna relive vanilla without trying to make it a fulltime job. i'd give it at least 8-12 months before a big part of the player base clears everything as long as they release the raids gradually

[Feyras]

I'd say it's more like elite players with hours of free time who have played vanilla for 5+ years are roflstomping. My first Wailing Caverns run on private servers took probably 2 hours and not because it's a maze, we were wiping on the bosses. Don't even get me started on Shadowfang Keep.

Just thinking about BRD gives me chills.

My honest opinion is that a high percentage of players will quit pretty quickly. Now, in my opinion's math I'm removing those that played the game back in vanilla because they want to do it more for the nostalgia of it, and because they liked the games as the remember it back then.

However, anyone that is late WOLK and newer will probably quit relatively quickly (within 6 months) because they're so used to being able to roll through leveling and handed gear.

I hope I'm wrong because I'd love to see classic servers prosper with a variety of players (time wise) but I just think people that are newer to WoW won't like the grinding that it takes to get to cap and good gear.

[Millington]

My honest opinion is that a high percentage of players will quit pretty quickly. Now, in my opinion's math I'm removing those that played the game back in vanilla because they want to do it more for the nostalgia of it, and because they liked the games as the remember it back then.

However, anyone that is late WOLK and newer will probably quit relatively quickly (within 6 months) because they're so used to being able to roll through leveling and handed gear.

I hope I'm wrong because I'd love to see classic servers prosper with a variety of players (time wise) but I just think people that are newer to WoW won't like the grinding that it takes to get to cap and good gear.

There's enough abiding interest for private servers to exist, it stands to reason an official server would appeal to even more. I don't think it's going to rebound to 12 million players, but there are enough people interested to maintain multiple high pop servers which is really all that matters to me.

[Feyras]

There's enough abiding interest for private servers to exist, it stands to reason an official server would appeal to even more. I don't think it's going to rebound to 12 million players, but there are enough people interested to maintain multiple high pop servers which is really all that matters to me.

If you had to guess, what would you guess the population off all the "best" private server are? I think someone somewhere in this thread said Nolstarius (spelling?) had like 100k total accounts. I don't think Blizzard releases active wow numbers like they did when they were towering over the MMO world, but I think saying 2-4m is fair considering some people pay with in-game gold.

Even if 1m comes back for classic, I still think that if 50% stayed after 1 year they could call it a success. All this is assuming that they don't do a TBC/WOTLK version after a year or so.

I'm looking forward to classic, but I just don't think people who haven't played it will enjoy it because of how easy it is now to get gear/level.

[Briisk]

If you guys got old screenshots in BGs, post them. I want to see if I see my name top of the list gnomesayin

[NillaWafer]

If you had to guess, what would you guess the population off all the "best" private server are? I think someone somewhere in this thread said Nolstarius (spelling?) had like 100k total accounts. I don't think Blizzard releases active wow numbers like they did when they were towering over the MMO world, but I think saying 2-4m is fair considering some people pay with in-game gold.

Even if 1m comes back for classic, I still think that if 50% stayed after 1 year they could call it a success. All this is assuming that they don't do a TBC/WOTLK version after a year or so.

I'm looking forward to classic, but I just don't think people who haven't played it will enjoy it because of how easy it is now to get gear/level.

For the best servers at peak times: Nost had 15k+ players (I've read above 20k some days). Elysium anywhere between 10k-15k (before the split between Light's hope and elysium, idk what it is now). Kronos about 7k. Warmane aka chitmane faked their pop, but it was estimated around 5k-8k, higher when their wraith server was popular.

The middle tier servers like Ares, Tauri, Elysium's pve and 2nd server will get a few thousand at peak. And there's a ton of lower tier servers that will get a few hundred.

It's pretty well known that blizz's servers during vanilla held around 2.5 - 3k at peak before a queue started. With just the private server community alone, there's enough people for blizz to give us at least 15-20 vanilla-like servers. But that was with their old tech and not counting everyone in retail who wants to try. Imo, 7-8k at peak is the perfect pop for vanilla. 10k+ starts to become an overcrowded chitshow.

If they are really expecting 1 million people to play classic, they are going to need a fuk ton of classic servers.

We'll definitely see a drop off in playerbase, but I fully expect the early months to be at max capacity for a good chunk of the day. There's just too much hype around it.

edit: I'll add too that the pop is a majority EU players because that's where almost every private server is located. NA and Oceanic, while still active, don't account for nearly as much of the pserver pop because the ping is a minimum of 100, and in most cases, pushing 200. I guarantee NA players are drooling just thinking about about 20-50 ping. I know I am.

[Feyras]

For the best servers at peak times: Nost had 15k+ players (I've read above 20k some days). Elysium anywhere between 10k-15k (before the split between Light's hope and elysium, idk what it is now). Kronos about 7k. Warmane aka chitmane faked their pop, but it was estimated around 5k-8k, higher when their wraith server was popular.

The middle tier servers like Ares, Tauri, Elysium's pve and 2nd server will get a few thousand at peak. And there's a ton of lower tier servers that will get a few hundred.

It's pretty well known that blizz's servers during vanilla held around 2.5 - 3k at peak before a queue started. With just the private server community alone, there's enough people for blizz to give us at least 15-20 vanilla-like servers. But that was with their old tech and not counting everyone in retail who wants to try. Imo, 7-8k at peak is the perfect pop for vanilla. 10k+ starts to become an overcrowded chitshow.

If they are really expecting 1 million people to play classic, they are going to need a fuk ton of classic servers.

We'll definitely see a drop off in playerbase, but I fully expect the early months to be at max capacity for a good chunk of the day. There's just too much hype around it.

edit: I'll add too that the pop is a majority EU players because that's where almost every private server is located. NA and Oceanic, while still active, don't account for nearly as much of the pserver pop because the ping is a minimum of 100, and in most cases, pushing 200. I guarantee NA players are drooling just thinking about about 20-50 ping. I know I am.

I remember there being long ques (Aerie Peak-US on my Vanilla toon) but I don't remember what the numbers were for each servers activity.

When I said 1m I meant total coming back to play the game. I think that probably 60% THAT COME BACK will quit within a year even after trying BFA.

My main point is most people will come back to try it for the first time or for nostalgia purposes. However, if they haven't been playing WoW they won't remain playing because of outside reasons (life, etc).

This is only my opinion based off of how I play WoW. Off and on each expansion hoping it brings back good times in the game, but I wind up being disappointed. Plus, I just don't have the time that I did in Vanilla-WOTLK due to being older and not in the Navy anymore. I will play classic, but then remember I hate leveling, and what made the game great for me was not knowing how to play and being in a helpful guild. I've become more of an elitist since then having been Gladiator multiple times, and been top 10 server progressions on the PVE side.

I hope I'm wrong and I play Classic and love it and stick with it for awhile, but all things come to an end.