Given the history of Activision, I’m surprised they held onto the boost for Classic for as long as they did.
the down hill spiral that led retail to what it is today has begun, and the ones that cant see that wont realize until its too late
I dont see where you see that downhill spiral, retail is going just fine.
I just counted retail english high/full servers and there is about 40 of them, while Classic has 5 high/full ones.
German retail high/full has over 20 servers and Classic has 2.
Judging by that, there are a lot more players who still play retail comparing to Classic.
I’d say no to all, except character customization (retail barbershop).
TBC - 11.0 million
wrath -12.0 million
cata - 10.2 million
MOP - 7.7 million
WOD - 5.5 million
legion - 5.4 million
BFA - 1.7 million
if thats not enough theres 100s of youtube videos explaining in depth of how the game has gone down hill, not just the numbers but the reasons
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Im not sure where did you get numbers for wod, legion and bfa since that data werent published since wod. Anyway, that data dont include wow token gametime.
But true, less players these days than wotlk times.
On the other hand, retail is much more profitable these days, as it breaks all records in sales and revenue rise.
Im more concerned about Classic, since it lost a lot of players in short time, especially pvp servers. Looks like Classic dont have so many faithful players as some thought.
True!!
of course retail brings more profit in, look at all the paid services it has
people play the next thing, when classic was released nooooo one played retail,
then shadowlands came out so everyone went back
same thing will happen when tbc comes out
Flavor of the month classes are well know and people are already leveling their go to classes for TBC. And although in favor of the boost, I would prefer if it is either limited to one or max limited to 1 every 6 months.
Appart from that I am not against any service or vanity transactions, I don’t plan on using most them but I am not bothered by other people using that if it makes them happy. I wouldn’t even mind introduction of token if that would reduce bots, but I doubt that. I wouldn’t want them to sell gear or items that give an advantage at max level (for raiding or pvp) other than that i’m not fussed
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@Fiftycali: Opinions vary. As far as I was able to determine, Classic in EU did not exceed retail’s figures even at launch.
And while there is no public data available for the last several expansions, that 1,7 million value for BfA really should die in a fire as my best estimate at the time of the WeakAura “leak” put US + EU by themselves at significantly over 2 million, meaning that Russia, Korea, Taiwan and China would have contributed about MINUS 300 000+ to the total, which is mathematically impossible, when talking about total numbers of active accounts. Granted, just my opinion, but I did not agree with 1,7 million world wide at the time and I still stand by my view from that time for that time.
@Marquiza: I hate to dampen your enthusiasm somewhat, but due to the connected realms programs, you can not run a straight comparison like that. As an example, there are technically only 3 English RP realms left and of them, only Argent Dawn and the massive 7-way count as “High”, while the 3-way has an overall status of “Low”.
I loved how a dev revealed in BFA that basically 70% of WoW subs are from China.
Also WoW would be back then (in 2019) around number 1-3 in Steam charts.
Not a good look.
sorry but i really dont care about the exact numbers and im sure your numbers are good, but i was using it as a reference to explain that the game went into a down hill spiral, whether i was off by 20 million or 2 million it doesnt matter, the fact is it went down
Most of the reasons that a expansion goes down hill can be summed up to:
Bad design choices - See BFA pruning of class abilities as example.
Content drought - Happens at end of every expansion.
Bad tuning - Maybe not as big of a problem in PVE but in PVP a lot of pvpers tend to quit when the tuning is all over the place.
Tbh i have never heard a retail player quit due to ingame store. Most don’t care about it or even use it.
Yet the like/dislike ratio on the videos of the store mounts and transmog sets are extremely one sided towards the dislike end.
That’s because those that didn’t like that stuff aren’t playing and quit a long time ago 
I admit, good point
Indeed.
You also have the case of retail players selling Token (for game time) in retail against Classic gold. Technically not even against ToS i think? And untrackable?
Microtransactions should have never been a thing, outside of perhaps server transfer.
That’s where the line should have been drawn, but alas, people are too conditioned to getting rewards right now even if they have to pay real life money, which hurts the overall health of the game as they gain benefits or added value without playing the game (cosmetics or not). But they either don’t care or can’t think.
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the line has been crossed years ago imo
you can buy mounts, pets and transmog from the shop.
you can buy gold with tokens and buy pretty much anything in the game you want, yes, blizzard encourages sellruns / arena boost / anything through trade chat (we recently managed to get it out of the LFG tool, huge win 
)
you can change your name, change the server, fraction, race , appearance from the shop
you pay a monthly subscription and new game cost every year
honestly, not sure how much more you can monetize, i guess they could directly sell stuff from the game for gold
Except skill 
One day I’ll stop being bad!
They are doing this for the MUNNY! This is not classic anymore. So many changes…
And they’re easing it in on the players. Small changes here, small changes there. Just like f’ing retail. I see so many people defend this boost bs, like, why are you defending a multi billion corp? I don’t get it.
So please, don’t fool yourself… They are not doing the boost service to be nice to new players. Or to allow people to play with their friends “faster”. Or for whatever stupid reason some people seem to defend it for. If they really cared about that, they would have provided this service for FREE. You hear me? For god damn free! They only care about money. As if mister Kotick doesn’t get enough this year in bonuses while the hard working devs are getting exploited.
How can they be so morally retarded in a global pandemic situation where people have LESS money to spend overall? Well, they don’t care… And if you think it is ethical justified in anyway, you’re just naïve and need to grow up.
I was looking forward to play Classic TBC again, but with all the changes, and now a new mount … Only time will tell if this mount will be monetized, either through an in-game shop or through a “special edition” of TBC Classic. Ohh boy…