World Of Warcraft Classic: 5 Reasons It Might Fail (And Why It Won't)

How many players need to be playing a year down the line, for the World of Warcraft Classic project to be a success?

Some may consider Classic a failure if it doesn't have have as many, or more players than the modern version of WoW. Some may think that a healthy, stable player base - even if it's in the tens of thousands - wouldn't be a success.

How It'll Pan Out:

What we can do, is guess at a few likely scenarios, which if and when they occur, might give us an idea on how Blizzard themselves views the success of the project.

1. Burning Crusade & Beyond

If Blizzard wants to expand their "Classic Lineup" further, we can assume they believe that the legacy servers were a success.

2. Blizzcon

How extensive is the Classic coverage going to be? Are they going to cover the game with one or two quick panels, or treat it the same way as their most popular games, such as modern WoW, Hearthstone and Overwatch?

3. Media & Community estimates

Ever since Blizzard stopped announcing the subscriber count for World of Warcraft, various fan sites have been trying to estimate the current numbers using various census data. While it is just an estimate, it does hold some value in determining the popularity of the game.

If the estimates for WoW Classic are in the high hundreds of thousands, or even millions, can anyone truly argue it was a failure?