Beta Hype

Just because I'm not playing the beta (and not planning to either) that doesn't mean that I'm not interested in hearing what other people have to say about their experiences with it. So far, reactions seem pretty positive. There are the ones who were super excited about it beforehand and are - unsurprisingly - super excited about it now, such as Nixxiom:



Then there are those who were vaguely optimistic about it beforehand and are now also super excited about it, such as Crendor:



(I also love how his first big beta adventure was to run his level 9 orc hunter halfway across the world just because he could, and because you don't get res sickness under level 10.)

And finally, there are those who figured that Classic probably wasn't going to be for them and were positively surprised, such as Jesse Cox:



I expect that we'll see a fair amount of grass roots hype building for Classic over the next few months. I don't think Blizzivision is going to invest much into marketing it beyond some basics such as social media shout-outs and inviting journalists to give it a try, but I think the success of Nostalrius has shown that there's a part of the Vanilla crowd that's both very loud and very passionate and basically willing to provide a lot of advertising for free.

And there's certainly interest too: Well-known streamer Asmongold hit over 100k live viewers streaming a Deadmines run for example. I expect the grousing of the "you think you do, but you don't" crowd will continue for a while, but I also suspect that a lot of people will still be curious enough to give the game a try at launch just because everyone's talking about it.

It's been about five years since we last had a major Western MMO launch (I'm thinking of ESO and Wildstar in 2014), and in these times of controversy about microtransactions and such, Classic is also going to stand out as launching with a pure subscription package with no add-ons. Could Blizzard be managing to capture the zeitgeist at just the right time a second time? I can't wait to find out.