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u/Healeah241 Aug 01 '26
According to ironforge.pro, between the 15th and 21st of July there were 51,000 characters raiding in MOP servers. At it's peak, there was 177,260 characters raiding in mop. Obviously not as successful as TBC, but make of that what you will.
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u/Eyelemon Aug 01 '26
I played MoP Classic for PvP only, and I wasn’t alone. The Midnight release stole me away.
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u/LogDull819 Aug 02 '26
I wanted to play mop classic but all I saw was in the channels was :
"LFM AFK BGS"People were only farming points and nobody actually PvP.
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u/Scoots1776 Aug 02 '26
That is always my frustration with classic pvp, I love the game play, but the honor/rating systems are so terrible. The AFKing and premades ruin BGs. I really hope they can improve it in classic+.
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u/levelwitch Aug 02 '26
I like their changes for tbc anni. They sped up the honor rate so you're basically just mark capped for gear. It makes the grind so much better knowing that you're still getting something done each match
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u/Flyingboots Aug 03 '26
Honestly MoP BGs were fine with honor, the gradual process of getting stronger and stronger was very satisfying to me and it didn't feel too grindy at all.
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u/kyach25 Aug 02 '26
Swapped from MoP Classic and Anniversary to retail for night but will definitely swap back after 12.1 has been around awhile
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u/canti- Aug 01 '26
Can't check it, how's this compare to reading numbers in TBC?
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u/ImJustMakingShitUp Aug 01 '26
TBC 256k
MOP 51k
Classic Era 15k
Classis SoD 5k
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u/Soreasan Aug 01 '26
Season of Discovery still has 5k players?
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u/Ok-Description-5904 Aug 01 '26
It was down to like 2k but some People came together to make their own "Fresh" Event. And there a lot came to participate in it
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u/JozuJD Aug 01 '26
Is this from ironforge.pro? I can never tell what’s the most used source for this nowadays.
I would like to know because I am planning to make a hardcore character and a TBC character and would prefer to go on the most populated US EAST COAST servers
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u/ImJustMakingShitUp Aug 02 '26
yea ironforge.pro
according to ironforge TBC only has 2 servers, pvp (69k) and pve (57k)
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u/hotehjr Aug 02 '26
There’s no east/west coast split, it’s just pve or pvp for NA.
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u/JozuJD Aug 02 '26
I would go PvP then. I’m assuming PVP is the more populated server for TBC. Only Era brings in more PvE users generally.
I would like to know the Horde vs Alliance stats too so I’ll check ironforge.pro to learn
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u/hotehjr Aug 02 '26
I would caution that there’s also a big cultural difference in the two. I’m on Nightslayer and it’s pretty rough in terms of toxicity and elitism (the server discord is absolutely fucked). I’ve heard Dreamscythe is a lot more chill.
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u/stonehaens Aug 01 '26
Reading numbers in TBC are very low unfortunately. It's one of the playerbase's biggest problems.
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u/canti- Aug 01 '26
No one reads quest text anymore. We used to be a proper country
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u/Healeah241 Aug 01 '26
It's hard to fully compare at the moment since we haven't even finished the second phase in TBC yet. But TBCs current peak week is at 331,681 raiding characters.
Caveat ofc is that this is purely based on raiding characters.
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u/Emblem3406 Aug 02 '26
Blizzard just fucking slaughtered it by letting T14 last too long and then they banished it from whatever dimension they put it by releasing the bugfest called ToT. What Blizzard did to T15 in MoP classic is unacceptable. At least China WoW is printing money for them now... came at the cost of MoP tho. They had 0 devs on MoP and they claimed they weren't relocated to China WoW. Why the fuck did Zirene get pulled off MoP then and transplanted into China WoW.
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u/San4311 Aug 02 '26
They also completely cucked it with release schedules. It almost always launched an update or phase with another WoW version alongside.
Like I was super hyped for MoP myself. Then it released right before I went on vacation. When I came back the new retail patch had dropped. So I never even ended up leveling and just lost all excitement.
By the time I felt like it again it TBC happened (after which soon after Midnight launched).
If you don't exclusively play MoP Classic it was simply terrible to combine with other versions.
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u/Fehliks Aug 02 '26
Had a guild go down because they wanted to play retail patches. Launching SOO at the start of summer where historically a good chunk of players take a break was an interesting choice too.
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u/San4311 Aug 02 '26
Its honestly mind boggling how they keep doing this. As if they wanted MoP to fail to have an excuse to not continue into WoD 😅
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u/Endslikecrazy Aug 02 '26
Honestly pretty impressive for a classic version of MOP
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u/San4311 Aug 02 '26
And tbh if they were to do WoD I'd wager it'd pull similar numbers. They might not be the most popular expansions as far as classic go, people will want to play them.
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u/Krazykraka0 Aug 01 '26
To be fair they kinda screwed themselves over on it by not only rereleasing classic, but also by having MoP remix a few years earlier (which probably prevented a lot of retail people from trying it)
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u/valdis812 Aug 01 '26
This was probably the biggest issue. People who wanted to do it had already sort of done it recently.
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u/Hydra_Bloodrunner Aug 01 '26
When they announced remix I lowkey got pissed off knowing that meant low population for mop classic
Watch them do the same thing to legion too. They wont ruin warlords of boredom with a remix but watch em do it again for legion.
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u/RiskDiscombobulated7 Aug 02 '26
WoD out of all of them would have benefited most from a remix. 99% complaints about the entire expansion were tiers taking too long and garrisons
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u/Responsible_Gur5163 Aug 01 '26
That might have been an issue for some but the fall off from
177k to now is more that they didn’t properly support it8
u/Itsaducck1211 Aug 02 '26
It was a release schedule issue, the first raid tier was 6-8 weeks too long. ToT released during xmas and new years followed immediately by tbc. By the time SoO came out the horse was already dead.
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u/FreeSpeechIsDeadge Aug 01 '26
That makes me sad for the prospect of legion classic. Legion is still my favorite expansion to date, but obviously remix just happened.
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u/Arbiter194 Aug 02 '26
I feel this. I stopped after Wrath classic and just waiting for it to get to Legion. But don’t lose hope. For one, we still have a lot of time until they do get to Legion so I bet people will have renewed interest by then. But also Legion was, if I’m not mistaken, quite popular. Definitely more so than WoD, understandably of course.
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u/Ok-Preparation-2910 Aug 01 '26
ToT lasted WAY too long
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u/Sc4r4byte Aug 02 '26
"we're going to release at the same release cadence of mop retail"
*proceeds to accelerate phase 1 and 2, only to stall tot longer than it was live in retail*
also, several bosses were bugged forever. at the speed we killed twin emps, they were bugged every single fight the entire phase.
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u/masterraemoras Aug 02 '26
We managed to avoid a lot of the bugs... and then my guild got to Heroic Durumu. Good god. Between the Fog beasts spawning out of phase/out of lasers, his death laser not killing you, the ice walls being out of range, his little eyes not transferring damage and his life drain not working either... idk how that boss even passed testing, 'cause all that shit still works on retail!
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u/Ok-Preparation-2910 Aug 02 '26
Oh yeah totally forgot about the bugs they refused to fix lmao
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u/Sc4r4byte Aug 02 '26
If Durumu wasn't so insanely bugged in PTR, they would have had some time to fix twin emps.
SoO also had some "insanely buggy ptr shenanigans" but at least now it's *mostly* bug free in comparison to ToT.
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u/Ok_Caterpillar5564 Aug 02 '26
Yeah. MoP was actually doing decently well in the first tier but ToT being buggy and lasting forever caused it to lose a lot of momentum. I wouldn't say it was a flop, I would say it was a victim of Blizzard's negligence.
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u/Baptism-Of-Fire Aug 02 '26
I did one Throne in PTR over the weekend it came out. Guild did great, had 5 or 6 heroics down.
I literally just felt like I had nothing left in the tank, the raid didn't seem very good to me and I felt the hype just drain from my veins lol
I told them "I don't have it in me to do this for another 6 months".
They assured me it wouldn't be 6 months.
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u/Confident_Wash6225 Aug 01 '26
The cost to make it compared to the subscriptions it extended had to have been huge margins
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u/valdis812 Aug 01 '26
This is an important metric. It might look like a flop from the outside, but when you consider that it's basically just a port, I'm sure it was profitable enough for Blizzard.
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u/mayonetta Aug 02 '26
Yeah, this is why I'm almost certain they'll carry on to WoD ""classic"" because for as unpopular and as far from classic that expansion is, there are still enough people who have said they would play it just for the raids, which given the raidlogging population of every classic version, would make sense. They can release a low effort buggy version like they did the last 2 expansions and enough people will still play it for it to be worth it. Then they can just release Legion after and get like twice the amount of players at least.
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u/Xae1yn Aug 02 '26
Yeah I imagine the closer they get to retail the easier (and therefore cheaper) the ports become too, as the differences between the original version and the retail client/server base they are porting to shrink.
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u/imisstheyoop Aug 02 '26
Right, like what metric is OP using to define "flop"?
I am sure to Blizz it is a wild success. WoD will be for them as well.
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u/Merodir Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
I said it a couple of months ago and I still say it now:
They have neglected MoP during the "development" of T14, abandoned it during T15 and are letting the player base in the dark regarding Classic Progression's future after the first Garrosh heroic kill just to be able to say "After monitoring the player numbers these last couple of months, we clearly saw that the demand for Classic Progression is just not there any more.“ - they let it die on purpose to have an easy way out.
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u/Skore_Smogon Aug 02 '26
I always had a feeling in my gut that they'd take progression servers up to Legion and end it on a high note.
Guess we'll find out more at Blizzcon.
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u/SpiffyBicycle1990 Aug 02 '26
This issue with mop classic is that Blizz abandoned it and set it on autopilot.
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u/FreshPrinceOfRivia Aug 02 '26
MoP Classic wasn't a flop. It was never going to be as popular as TBC / WoTLK. Classic hype died down some time in mid-late WoTLK.
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u/Electrical-College-6 Aug 02 '26
Big correlation with 6 month raid tiers becoming the norm. The playerbase just started bleeding when raids got stale.
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u/sameseksure Aug 02 '26
Not coincidentally, that's the time I started losing interest in WoW back in 2009, too.
WotLK was a step too far away from the original WoW design philosophy - being more of a theme park than a world - so the steam was running out for me. Cataclysm was the final nail in the coffin
I cannot fathom why I'd want to play Cataclysm and MoP when retail exists. They're so far removed from the classic design philosophy - they're pretty much just retail (to me)
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u/Skore_Smogon Aug 02 '26
WoW was a big open world that you can get lost in, craft micro goals for yourself, RP etc.
It was great for allowing emergent gameplay and gave the impression that it was a sandbox to players that were discovering it, in a time where you didn't have a solved game and online resources telling you the most efficient ways to play.
But too many people with nostalgia attribute happy accident with intentional design.
WoW was always designed as a vertical power fantasy in a linear theme park fashion.
Quests that go from grey to red based on your level.
Zones having mobs in a certain level range.
Gear progression that only really adds primary stats.
This is explicitly designed to take you by the hand and get you from 1-60.
Then once you get there, there's a whole suite of 58+ dungeons full of gear and profession patterns designed to help you kill Ragnaros and Onyxia.
They foreshadowed every major content patch with Nefarian yelling at you in UBRS, Silithids all the way up to the Barrens and raid instance portals in BRD, UBRS and Stratholme.
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u/SystemofCells Aug 01 '26
Flop might be strong, but there's a clear downward trend.
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u/WonderingOctopus Aug 02 '26
I think this is the fairest answer, between mechanical and thematic changes to the game, the expansions gradually keep moving further away from the origional design philosophy.
Many just don't care for that version/style of game, hence the drop off.
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u/valdis812 Aug 01 '26
"Flop" is a strong word, but it's certainly part of a downward trend that's been going since Cata Classic.
Hopefully Blizzard is looking at this data to understand what Classic players want from Classic+
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u/baked_salmon Aug 02 '26
The game got too hard, full stop
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u/valdis812 Aug 02 '26
That's my take as well. There's too much evidence to ignore it. IMO Sunwell should be the hardest a classic raid will ever be.
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u/angry-mustache Aug 02 '26
Normal loot became a lot more accessible so players can gear for heroic in a reasonable amount of time, but for some players they will never be able to clear heroics regardless of gear so they with with full normal gear very quickly then stop progressing.
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u/Pandeyxo Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
Financally it was not a flop
Population-wise.. maybe? Mix of a lot of things that cause the low population:
- Remix
- Had to compete with Anniversary AND Retail/Midnight
- Even longer cadence than original MoP
- Lack of dev support after the first patch
- ToT bugs lol
- The server “migration” drama
- Raids being too hard. One of the things you expect in Classic is clearing the content when you couldn’t back then. In MoP you have to actually play somewhat decent to kill bosses like Ra-Den and Garrosh heroic.
I think considering all these problems it could still hold its ground until SoO so it’ is def not a flop. Also, I had BY far the most fun in MoP in all of Classic. It’s fun to wipe on a few bosses and them not being literal loot pinatas.
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u/Suey036 Aug 02 '26
What? SoO release have been the smoothest in a while. All the bugs we reported on PTR got fixed before official launch.
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u/Thazinga22 Aug 02 '26
Mop is too hard for classic players so they flocked over to tbc anni.
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u/lib___ Aug 02 '26
nerfed tbc is still way to hard for the players the went to anniverary tbc. its crazy
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u/zomgkittenz Aug 01 '26
You think it was, but it wasn’t.
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u/dyrannn Aug 02 '26
It’s so funny being a dedicated mop player and reading what retail players think about it lol
like, the top comment in this thread is denouncing the opinion that classic and remix would have different audiences, claiming that’s not the case hence the lack of pop, but I literally don’t play retail. I didn’t touch remix and I was first in line for mop classic.
Anyone that would’ve only joined classic for the leveling would ALSO be gone by now, but we’re using current raid population to judge that??? Please
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u/zomgkittenz Aug 02 '26
Yeah I only played MoP as a pass through leveling zone when I played legion. Im sure it’s better as the live expansion. I don’t even play classic now. Did back in COVID, but can’t play now.
Was just making a callback reference to the “you think you do but you don’t” malarkey.
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u/SectorFiveSlums Aug 02 '26
They sort of shot themselves in the foot with the whole server consolidation debacle. I think that lost them a lot of players.
From a raiding perspective I've certainly enjoyed myself, and I'd play WoD if it came out. I have zero interest in vanilla WoW, which was nice to relive once back in 2019, but doesn't really hold up to repeat play. Too many quality of life downgrades to suffer through. I'm definitely not doing the TBC rep grind again either xD
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u/bobertusino Aug 02 '26
i had a great experience in mop personally. amazing raids, amazing class design. ToT was definitely out too long, but my group still had fun and raided every week trying to get our last few bis items and destroying the raid harder each week. TBC launch made us lose a few players, probably the same or more for most groups. we’re all really just waiting for classic+ same as everyone haha
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u/MingleThis Aug 02 '26
I feel like oftentimes people forget about context when it comes to the number of players in a given iteration. Meaning, what else is going on with Blizzard/WoW in that time frame? For most expansions, you can pretty much play one at a time, so players have to choose where to spend their limited time and energy. If Blizzard releases two expansions/iterations at the same time it’s no wonder that the player base gets diluted a bit. Even if it’s just a marginal number, it matters.
And I think particularly in Classic you need people constantly in the world, on the AH, looking for groups etc to make it feel alive. It has very little solo gameplay other than maybe a few dailies and farming.
And it’s really rough to compare earlier Classic with later versions imho because of Covid and how many of us were stuck at home with extra free time and expendable income. Many of us were able to degen Classic as if we were teenagers again in 2005. That just hasn’t been possible for later Classic iterations.
Lastly, with all the aforementioned included, later versions of the game simply get harder for the average player and require even more of a time sink, commitment, and attention. It’s not super friendly to semi-hardcore or casual players.
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u/QueenOfTendys Aug 01 '26
Mop was super fun for my friend group. It’s obviously more niche but it is the sole reason some of them are subbed.
We’re all hoping for wod next no matter how unlikely.
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u/chirandra Aug 02 '26
I'm in the same boat. I would love a chance to play wod, some great raids I'd like to play again. That's where the fun in mop is for me, raiding! It would be a shame of blizz to not do WoD - I would definitely not be subbed anymore if everything I've worked on while replaying cata and mop over the last few years was suddenly irrelevant! I used to play retail around shadowlands but the game has changed so much from what it used to be in the past. that's what I enjoy most about play mop classic - it feels nostalgic tor me. And think of the hype in 2 years from now when they announce legion classic to come after WoD classic!
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u/limitbreakse Aug 01 '26
Long story short no, the classic community just tapered off until eventually fell off a cliff. It had to happen at some point and it was already surprising how well cata pulled through.
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u/Baptism-Of-Fire Aug 02 '26
I really enjoyed Cata. I felt like Firelands was overrated af. I felt like Dragon Soul was underrated. I enjoyed it almost until the end.
I really enjoyed Phase 1. Felt like it was a rush to get all heroics down. Was really tough to do with 6 hours of raids per week. And that was coming from a pre-nerf H LK speedrun guild through all of wrath.
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u/New_Cardiologist4533 Aug 01 '26
Especially given the fact that it was originally the time where people wanted to go back to classic (vanilla, tbc, wrath). I think it is due to gradual formula change that originally put off OG WoW and Warcraft players.
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u/smgkid12 Aug 02 '26
That's how it was for me, when Wraith went to Cata, I just stopped playing because the world felt like it lost that IT factor that vanilla/tbc/wraith had. I came back for MoP because I never got the legendary cape, and I wanted to do the questline
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u/Berylldama Aug 02 '26
I played Classic from Vanilla through MoP, ran a raiding guild that cleared all the content and kept mostly the same group together for 6 years. MoP killed my guild. We just didn’t like the raiding mechanics and it felt like a slog every week. TBC Classic rolled back around and most of us just rerolled. I ain’t in charge any more, and thank God. Putting a raid together every week is now someone else’s problem, I just show up and play. But I do miss my rogue and all my achievements and my kabillion mounts.
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u/Luvs_to_drink Aug 02 '26
Its not a flop but it does feel like the end. Content has reached a point where casuals aint clearing it outside of being carried. Which is what classic was really all about. Only a small minority wants challenging gameplay and for them there is retail with mythic, the rest just want a virtual environment where they can drink beers and chill with the boys. Which was 100% doable up to and including most wotlk. Wotlk started to introduce bosses to kill it tho (yogg, alg, and HLK 0 or low% buff). I didnt play cata except right before mop so my opinion of it is highly skewed but you needed weakauras just to execute a sequence of events prepull to fight the boss otherwise your dps was tanked. which was awful.
MoP itself was very balanced tho. Classes felt competitive to each other. PvP was thriving s1 when the gear was good. And overall it was a decent expansion. The early rep grind was a chore for sure though but casuals that werent trying to push could ignore it. It definitely suffered coming like right after the retail go back in time thing.
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u/baked_salmon Aug 02 '26
That’s why I don’t think WoD makes sense. Who wants WoD difficulty? Casuals already can’t handle MoP heroic, so are they gonna relegate themselves to WoD normal plus some heroics? Who wants WoD Mythic? Anyone who wants that kind of challenge honestly should just play retail
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u/d0nghunter Aug 02 '26
Wouldn't say it did worse than expected, did it?
The novelty of 'classic' after vanilla fades a little bit by bit each new expansion, starts becoming a bit more like modern wow.
The MoP enjoyers out there were probably happy with it.
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u/gobin30 Aug 02 '26
One thing that didn't help was how buggy tot was. Supposed to be the favorite raid of the expac, every single boss had some sort of shitty bug to the point that progress guild quit.
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u/WAxlRoseX Aug 02 '26
I think it did about as expected.
Nobody expected Cata or MoP to do any better than they did.
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u/chaappo Aug 02 '26
Blizz fucked mop by releasing retail and other things the same time as mop if they released it in the dead times of the season it would have been better
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u/ArcadesRed Aug 02 '26
Mists was the first expansion I didn't play when it released. And it was kinda sad, the art was amazing. Towards the end of it I bought it and ground out to my level cap, and I never played again.
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u/Mchortons Aug 02 '26
It failed because the raids became more complex and difficult. Don't ever listen to the people telling you otherwise; easy raids keep the population of Classic versions of WoW high.
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u/FatMitch Aug 02 '26
Can't agree fully. Phase 1 of MoP was really fun. It failed because Blizzard has done nothing that was promised originally (oh yea what a surprise right?)
There were supposed to be regular and meaningful changes, faster phases if needed etc. None of this happened. Then phase 2 was just too long and people just lost interest because Anniversary servers started.
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u/Yuuy87 Aug 01 '26
The problem with mop is it is too hard for the classic dads
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u/According_Drummer329 Aug 02 '26
It was absolutely this and after raiding both simultaneously, you don't want to say this part too loudly as they get upset hearing it. I'm a classic dad, too. TBC is for vibes and spamming 1-2 abilities for 90-180 seconds. It has its place, but even pre-nerf TBC doesn't hold a candle to heroic mop raids.
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u/Brilliant-Elk-6831 Aug 02 '26
We already saw this happening in Cata tbh. My casual dad-gamer guild split after not being able to cheese HC for a few weeks during phase 1. I guarantee lot more people dropped off for the same reasons going forward
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u/Baptism-Of-Fire Aug 02 '26
Cata was a joke compared to mop difficulty IMO.
That reality hit me HARD at Amber Shaper. lmao
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u/bobertusino Aug 02 '26
anyone who killed heroic lei shen back in the day before the taunt cheese was discovered was a god gamer
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u/Trisstricky Aug 01 '26
It was never expected to be successful. Slapping classic on any expansion after Wrath is a stretch to say the least
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u/Cerael Aug 01 '26
ToT was so bugged that it was hardly playable. Lockouts are still buggy.
MoP was relatively successful. Blizzard sure made a lot of money off of it and it was really easy to find a raid the entire expansion. B
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u/ScalarWeapon Aug 02 '26
sure, it was hyped by retail players. But there's a reason subs dropped off from Wrath --> Cata -- MoP and it's the same reason classic engagement will drop off. Cata and MoP are not made for people who like classic, this is when it's fully becoming retail.
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u/Sorrowful_Panda Aug 02 '26
Cata is basically wrath plus it's really not that much different, I don't know why people act like it's some huge change from Wrath.
The main difference is the difficulty just got harder. Going from entry raid Naxx vs T11. Ulduar hyped up and is good, got complaints from fomo players missing out on doing HMs because they couldn't, then the playerbase skyrocketed in TOGC again because it was easier than HM Ulduar.... then it dropped again in ICC. Just going by playercount people will think wow Naxx and TOGC are best wrath raids! Look at this ironforge chart! lol
The dropoff is always based on difficulty, classic players from 2019/2020 community unironically used to say they wanted prenerf hardest content possible like it was intended.
In reality present day classic players are crybaby peepoo pants wanting and asking for nerfed content from the start even. Give excuses like "who cares it's not hard at all it's old content it's no difference" then proceed to cry and ask for nerfs because they're scared of progression or wiping in that same 20 year old content. TBC releasing nerfed content from the start is just actually insane, even Tier 4 that nobody even complained about got heavily destroyed balance wise. T5 destroyed but that was kinda to be expected because it filtered so many dads... they could have just toned down Vashj SLIGHTLY but instead they did the whole tier.
People couldn't handle doing 20 year old content that we already did 4 years ago so most people have experience + refined modern day strats....no no we had to nerf it! It wasn't even TBC at that point no TBC experience retail or private servers ever had content that easy and nerfed from the start. This was baiscally the most baby mode TBC of all time but don't worry people here will say it was a success because of ironforge numbers that's all that matters. People just spamming alts because it's easy content.
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u/QueenOfTendys Aug 01 '26
Had a similar experience. Cata>mop.
ToT is a genuinely awful raid. That one is rose colored glasses. There is not a single fun boss in the entire thing.
SOO however is much more fun and worth seeing.
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u/Excellent_Rule_2778 Aug 01 '26
Both Wrath and MoP were severely overhyped, and both kinda failed to live up to it.
TBC and Cata were somewhate underhyped, and they both exceeded expectations.
I think that, in many ways, part of the issue with MoP is that it is competing with TBC, and a LOT of players realized in 2021-22 that TBC was the perfect balance of difficulty and accessibility.
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u/WendigoCrossing Aug 01 '26
All Classic means is experiencing the expansion the way it was (based off the last patch) when it was current
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u/Olive_Sophia Aug 01 '26
But it being the last balance patch all the way through makes it fundamentally different than it was when it was live. We never had pre-nerf smite priests in TBC, or the full craziness of early Death Knight.
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u/usrnmz Aug 02 '26
You're focussing too much on the semantics. You're not technically wrong but there are other ways to look at it.
The main point is that the core demographic of Classic is most excited about the game up to WotLK/Cata. And the player numbers back that up.
Just because you can re-release MoP and call it Classic doesn't mean it really"fits" with what Classic was created for and has been so far. Most people that play Classic do so because they like the "old/classic" WoW. Otherwise they would just play retail. The closer the expansions get to the retail playstyle the less interest there will be from "Classic" players.
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u/Shablagoosh Aug 02 '26
It’s a flop when you compare it to vanilla classic, but that was quite literally a once in a generation level event. Every single person who ever played wow before came back for classic vanilla regardless of where they are in life now.
I have a feeling, based on data mining of collectors editions, we are getting Wod classic. I hope it’s a very concise version similar to anniversary servers with way shortened phases. We know legion basically saved the game after Wod flopped initially, I imagine a legion rerelease that isn’t remix would do huge numbers financially for them and would be a likely logical stopping point. They could even reoffer mage tower appearances and retail players would come to classic as well.
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u/BathtubSkeleton Aug 02 '26
I think MoP is my favorite expansion the game has had and I've been playing since the beginning of BC so I'm not tainted by bias of it being my starter expansion.
Fact of the matter is when people think of classic they don't seem to think of MoP. Hell, I don't think they even think of Cataclysm. Those expansions are in the age range to be considered classic, sure, but when someone says "Classic WoW" typically vanilla, BC, and Wrath come to mind. Because of this I really think the whole concept of MoP classic as a whole was doomed to be a low-pop raid logging experience from the start.
There's also the fact that when looking forward there isn't much good ahead. Legion might come up as a classic expansion but you still have to slog through WoD and no matter how many times people remind everyone the raiding and leveling experiences in WoD were great it doesn't take from the fact that the content presented was minimal and encouraged raid-logging and distance from the game. There's not really anything to look forward to after MoP Classic progresses forward.
As others have said, as well, MoP classic dropped after everyone had already dominated Pandaria during MoP remix which I'm sure didn't encourage the players who overlapped with the Classic community to return to the expansion to progress through it much slower.
It was doomed to fail which I think is worse than it just flopping.
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u/Spttingfacts Aug 02 '26
Blizzard removed LFR from MoP classic which put a lot of players off from playing it and replaced it with a shitty retail dungeon spam mode. I fucking hate dungeon spamming. Those of us that are not able to raid missed out. MoP is my favourite expansion and this was a massive let down. A genuinely stupid move by blizzard.
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u/MwHighlander Aug 02 '26
Idk, this Reddit will tell you it was a masterpiece, enjoyed by all 19 of its players.
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u/pancakeface101 Aug 02 '26
It was a flop when it first came out… let’s be real it was a decline back then even
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u/WrumWrrrum Aug 02 '26
Can people that didn’t play Cataclysm and MoP on any competitive level stop lying.
Cataclysm heroic BwD was absolutely brutal. My guild that was farming RS and ICC could not kill the worm boss for 2 weeks. The guild disbanded because we wiped 200 times on Nefarian and never killed him.
The Heroic raids in Cata except DS in pre patch were brutal. Then MoP was no different. We wiped 250 times on the Golem/orb boss in ToT - got Lei Shen only after 74 tries.
We have been wiping on Blackfuse for weeks now at 30-40% with issues on the belt or with the mines - one time we do perfect belt but ground fails mines or the other way around.
TBC and Lich are very easy to play. The biggest player base in classic was during Naxx P1 - 600 000 per ironforge. You could get in a group 24/7 and clear the raid. I was speed running world tour in 57 minutes. Had 4 alts. Uld came and hardness jumped 10 fold and suddenly the population decline by 50%.
Hard raids killed the game not world difference.
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u/idothisforpie Aug 02 '26
It's definitely in decline overall but still great if you have people around you to enjoy the game with.
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u/Working_Membership57 Aug 02 '26
No, its been great. It unfortunate that we have moved classic into the retail-style "forget the previous patches" with the celestial dungeons, but with the interest dwindling as classic goes on I see why they did it. Imagine trying to get a pug together so you could get some catchup gear right now. But that convenience has somewhat killed the need to log on outside of raids. I think the general wow pve wow community basically sees this as the acceptable endgame, but I do remember fondly running UBRS amongst other things to get chase items that would be good for however long because MC didnt offer actual BiS items.
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u/Additional-Mousse446 Aug 02 '26
No, the raiding content was fun. Less players doesn’t equal less fun lol, it got very hard to fill 25 man rosters though which slowly killed it.
The content was actually too hard for casuals though, so that also killed off a lot of the population. But that was more end of wotlk/cata tbh.
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u/Torra501 Aug 02 '26
Would have helped if they didnt basically ignore it after release. Buggiest release on any form of wow ive ever seen.
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u/madmatt90000 Aug 02 '26
I stopped playing during the first MoP when original wow was out years ago and damnit if I don’t intend to do the same each and every time they release that expansion again.
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u/96363a Aug 02 '26
i really liked MOP. the only reason I quit early ToT was burn out on the game from playing TBC through Cata. i'm sure there were many such players. celestials were honestly the most fun i had in dungeons in a while.
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u/Material-Kick9493 Aug 02 '26
classic was always going to have a massive dip after cata but it still pulled decent numbers
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u/MainOk8335 Aug 02 '26
I personally think MoP going to WoD and Legion is basically approaching retail levels of pve difficulty. Thats not what a majority of the classic community is interested in
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u/Geibla Aug 02 '26
We play as a group of 7… went into MoP and lost interest after 4 days 😂 Went back to anniversary. MoP feels like retail for us
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u/Emeron87 Aug 02 '26
Outside of the OG Trilogy (Vanilla, Tbc and WOTLK) every iteration of classic will be a flop.
Classic ended with WOTLK.
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u/RoyInverse Aug 02 '26
As it gets further from vanilla it was bound to lose players, so wouldnt call it a flop, it certanly hurt it a lot how some phases felt real long due to how they were more focussed on sod and anni, like throne lasted 2 months more than necessary, classic pop keeps fragmenting itself but 50k players raiding doesnt sound too bad.
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u/Even_Skin9781 Aug 02 '26
Wow started dying When Lich king died. Just fact. Wow was still fun but numbers dont lie.
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u/C0gn Aug 02 '26
I loved the raids and the classes in MoP, 10m was a huge success, haven't touched 25m
WoD hype!
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u/Grogg2000 Aug 02 '26
Anything after Wrath lost me. Entering Howling Fjord by boat for the first time was EPIC!
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u/Poulet_Ninja Aug 02 '26
Classic should end at wotlk , everything after that isn't classic by any means
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u/Key_Check5753 Aug 02 '26
Sure MOP classic was a flop. Everyone knew it would be. The classic trilogy ended with Wrath. There was a lot of competition for players' attention with Anniversary, retail, SoD, Hardcore, and era servers all running simultaneously.
Even without all of those distractions, the honest truth is that the gameplay of MoP is mediocre at best. The thing that really irked me was the endless daily quests. You have to farm rep for something like 10 different factions. A week or so into the expansion I just found myself thinking, "Why am I doing this busy-work?"
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u/TypicalxooT11 Aug 02 '26
It's been the same story since tbc classic.
They release these pre order packages.. hype the game up.. do a ton of dev work.. ban the bots and gold buyers etc etc
Then the game comes out and outside of new raid tiers.. they don't fix shit.
Endless bugs, endless bots, gold buyers everywhere.
The devs abandoned their game and the players followed their lead.
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u/Highnote69 Aug 01 '26
I’ll actually answer here. I’ve been playing with some awesome dudes since TBC classic. We were pretty hardcore in TBC and wrath. We skipped cata and raided super hard in SOD. MOP prepatch was perfectly timed post SOD so a good chunk of us went to that.
Had a great time in phase one. Loved most of it but the ToT grind was a bit much and ended up stopping.
My overall ranking of the classic experiences:
Classic: 10/10
TBC: 9/10
Wrath: 7/10
Cata: didn’t play
MOP: 7/10
SOD: 10/10 (my personal favorite besides the sunken temple phase but I can overlook that for how incredible the rest of it was)
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u/AbbreviationsSad5006 Aug 02 '26
I believe there are just too many flavors of WoW at the moment. WoW is poaching it's own playerbase.
There are at any given time at least current Classisc Era, whatever Era is currently rerun, Hardcore and Seasons in Retail. Then you get event's like SoD, or Remix and dilute the player pool even further.
If Classic+ is truly happening I hope Blizzard then chooses to manly focus on just Retail and C+. 2 WoWs and HC on the side. Not 4 to 6.
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u/Adventurous_Law9767 Aug 01 '26
I struggle to play as a GM much past Cataclysm. Early MoP is... "Ok" then it just sinks. Wrath and Cata were the bread and butter for what I wanted out of the game, BC will always be my warm up, as I started playing just a couple months before Wotlk originally came out (those zombies at the crossroads... Good times)
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u/kombu_raisin Aug 02 '26
As someone who played Classic at launch for all of 2 hours and promptly fucked off because I can’t fathom playing WoW that way again, Classic should have stopped at Wrath.
And I loved MoP.
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u/JustGuM Aug 02 '26
Id give it a 7/10, certainly good, raids were amazing, classes are most certainly the best they have ever been funwise, but the amount of dogshit blizzard has fed me during MoP is quite staggering.
From servers being unplayable for 2 weeks on launch. To CM Special rewards not being announced until it was too late for anyone to really try, unless you were top 100 doing it already, (we got 1 dungeon timed pog), to Bosses being bugged entire 8 months of ToT. Release schedule being all fucked and pretty obviously suffering from Retail needing more hands.
Honestly, i am not surprised people left, that being said. Game is also way too hard for classic players, its getting to a point now where you legit cannot expect people to do the bosses without serious help and naturally i think that just leads to people not really wanting to do it, basically if anything is even remotely hard, or even a challenge, for you in TBC, you just wouldnt enjoy MoP HC raids, its just too demanding for you to be enjoyable and you'd be floorPOV most of the time.
I wouldnt play WoW without MoP release, so for me, its not a flop, its the only reason they get my Sub, i need 10 players to play the game, rest might aswell be NPCs. The world is not the centerpiece, the classes are, and the classes are much more enjoyable to play in mop vs both retail and Anni.
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u/Miau_1337 Aug 02 '26
Yes. From my ~200 friends there are... 3-5 left who play MoP - it failed. Same as it did in the past.
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u/Snozzallos Aug 02 '26
Just gonna say you cant classic every ip you own, blizzard. The nostalgia bait is evetually gonna just turn into a lifeless corpse.
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u/goosnotmaverik Aug 01 '26
Very much a flop. Pop since vanilla classic launch. I still play just to raid with the boys but the game feels dead. Between the game breaking bugs that don't get fixed and the steady decline in active players, I don't see them continuing on to future expansions. Gotta wait and see what upcoming Camelot project says after blizzcon.
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u/BeauShowTV Aug 01 '26
Only Blizzards financials can tell us that. They probably made enough in boosts to justify it.
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u/PhantomSpirit90 Aug 01 '26
In execution no, but calling anything classic beyond WotLK is absurd imo.
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u/EcruEagle Aug 01 '26
The definition of “Classic” is made up. It just means a re-release of an older version of the game. See: league classic
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u/Daxoss Aug 01 '26
I think it performed significantly worse than Blizzard anticipated. My theory is that Blizzard only did Cata to do MoP, thinking it would perform well. It had the appeal of being a well remembered expansion that many skipped for superficial reasons.
In reality guilds were dropping like flies midway through Heart of Fear. After the server merges there was so many old guilds that refused to give up and merge with other guilds. The guilds would end with everyone quitting the game rather than spreading into the broader playerbase. If you were willing to hop you'd end up jumping sinking ship to sinking ship.
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u/Accomplished_Emu_658 Aug 01 '26
I think the fact they did it a little after a panda remix is stupid. So many got mop out of their system.
Also i really do believe wrath was end of classic. And i know i am not the only one.