[makosdv]

A vocal minority of the community was pushing for vanilla. There was a somewhat popular (supposedly 150k active players) vanilla server setup by some people in the community (Nostalrius) that was shut down by Blizzard for copyright infringement. It's hard to say what Blizzard will do after they roll out the vanilla servers. They may create TBC, WotLK, etc. servers, or it may be a dud that they just shut down... I'm sure it will depend on how successful they are and how much effort is required to maintain the servers.

[falcolas]

There's also a vocal minority who are mad they're starting with 1.12; it has too many balancing changes for their taste.

And another minority who wants the equivalent of EQ's progression servers - they don't want to be stuck at 1.12, they want all the same content releases again.

And another minority who wants TBC. Another WotLK.

Blizzard is going to be disappointing someone with every choice when it comes to classic. And a lot more people are going to be disappointed when they actually go and play that game.

TBF, you couldn't pay me enough to go back and play a warlock with all the prep required to raid Molten Core (and all the "limited debuff slots" BS). That's a lie of course, I'd happily even mule a Paladin for your guild if you wish to pay me $300k+ a year.

[maccard]

I wonder how many of those 150k will convert to paying players.

[nikanj]

The cost of running WoW servers per player must have plummeted in 15 years, thanks to both better devops and better hardware. They might be ok with a freemium model.

[falcolas]

If they haven't moved WoW proper to a freemium model, I highly doubt they'll do it for Classic.

Look at EQ. The base game is freemium, but if you want to play on the latest progression servers, you need to pay their subscription price.