My Life As A Gamer: Classic Crushes Expectations

From the "Eating ALL the crow" department comes today's Bellular Gaming video.

Yeah, we do want it Brack. Enjoy that crow.

It's been over a week since Classic released. The poopsocking hardcore cohort are hitting 60 now, so we're going to see how soon Molten Core gets cleared and put on farm shortly. I'm thinking by the end of the month, and I'll make it brief as to why: every single part of the game is ridiculously well-documented, so nothing is a mystery. All of the top-tier character builds, gear lists, boss guides, etc. are already out there. It's a solved problem; apply the solution and get on with it already.

Which means that I also expect that once Molten Core is on farm, some Classic players will go away until the next phase of release or they'll downshift their playtime to just raid-logging and maybe related stuff like rep-grinding. Others will switch to an alt and get them up to speed. Blizzard wants those returning players to shift over to the live game, so the news of Classic players getting Battle For Azeroth for free as soon as they get their first character to Level 60 (complete with a free character boost) came with an "But of course." reaction from most of us.

I am not surprised at all by any of this. We told them this would hit like the fist of an angry god, and it has. We expected that they'd use this as a retention scheme, and they have. We knew they'd try to get returning old-school players to try the new stuff, and they are. We know now that much of the game's commercial success comes from microtransactions and not just subscription fees; you'd think they'd cut the players a break and reduce the fees or go wholly Free To Play, but no. And those old-timers, who have long joked that only WOW can kill WOW, they're proven right.

If only Blizzard's counterparts in related media would get the hint and bring back proper support for the editions that made their game. Looking at you, WOTC.