This game will be massive. They probably don't have enough servers. Sure after a few months there will be some population loss, but this will be very successful. There is a huge fan base centered around this. The players asking for this game really want it and fought hard to get it. Don't believe the BS about the game dying.
Let's be honest though. They will be merging servers or have dead servers in 2 months.
Almost everyone I know who is hyped about classic has never played classic.
Everyone you know is most certainly not the majority of players. I agree, a lot of retail WoW players who never experienced WoW Classic will most likely buckle under the pressure of a non instant gratification game play. A game that actually challenges them before they go raiding. However, this game wasn't brought back for THEM. It's being brought back for the players who DID actually play vanilla WoW. Which are precisely the kind of people who will stick with it a lot longer than a year. Retail WoW is a damn joke.
No.
Don't kid yourself Activision Blizzard are doing this to make money. Period.
They are not "bothered" whether its played by old, players or even new players; just the bottomline.
You are correct. However "New Players" Are already paying and playing BFA. These Old players let their subscription lapse years ago. Myself included I last payed for WoW in August of 2011. They want to recapture those players, because with the lack of any real MMORPGs out they have become an untapped market again.
Aside from the addition of the new PvP server and considering we're still almost a week away from launch. I'll go out on a limb and claim Classic WoW is in no way, shape or form in danger of ghost servers, even 18 to 24 months down the road. If you think about how many veteran players, such as myself who left before Cataclysm launched, a majority of us are returning to play on Classic servers. We are talking millions of players that fit that description.
And something else people have forgotten/or maybe never knew is that original WoW is the game that tore the roof off of the fixed relatively low population numbers that ALL PC games used to have. On the day WoW launched the highest population MMO was SWG at around 250k players and that was considered at the time a success. When WoW broke one million players not only did it cause the NGE but also brought gaming into the mainstream. Love or hate WoW but gaming was no longer taboo because of WoW so it was kind of a phenomenon and really deserves all the credit for what they did.
Errrr - not really. Tricky.
Simple corrections first. EQ1 had had the biggest mmo population prior to WoW. Peak was put at 650k. Doesn't change the fact that WoW was a very big mmo.
"Tore the roof off PC games."
Not really. The Sims was launched years earlier and sold well over 10M copies. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold tens of millions very quickly. Now this one is tricky since it was multi-platform but even today e.g c. 30% of ESO players are on PC. Probably a higher percentage of PC players back then when consoles were pretty new so - over 10M. There were other titles as well.
As far as making gaming "mainstream" - that expands things beyond PC only and brings in mega-tens of million selling titles, some going back to the 80s, such Pokemon, Mario, Sonic etc. Heck even the Wii Play sold 40M+.
What Blizzard did do - very successfully - was to develop and build the brand. And kept selling.
Which is why a few years ago they were able to say that the game had 100M accounts. The implication is that they were "losing" on average 10M subs per year. To lose them though you first have to have them!
The fact that other games are bigger doesn't diminish this huge success.
I agree with your point but Im fairly certain Lineage the Blood Pledge was near or in excess of 2 million subs by the time WoW arrived. Making it the highest population MMORPG at the time.
Let's be honest though. They will be merging servers or have dead servers in 2 months.
Almost everyone I know who is hyped about classic has never played classic.
Everyone you know is most certainly not the majority of players. I agree, a lot of retail WoW players who never experienced WoW Classic will most likely buckle under the pressure of a non instant gratification game play. A game that actually challenges them before they go raiding. However, this game wasn't brought back for THEM. It's being brought back for the players who DID actually play vanilla WoW. Which are precisely the kind of people who will stick with it a lot longer than a year. Retail WoW is a damn joke.
No.
Don't kid yourself Activision Blizzard are doing this to make money. Period.
They are not "bothered" whether its played by old, players or even new players; just the bottomline.
You are correct. However "New Players" Are already paying and playing BFA. These Old players let their subscription lapse years ago. Myself included I last payed for WoW in August of 2011. They want to recapture those players, because with the lack of any real MMORPGs out they have become an untapped market again.
Aside from the addition of the new PvP server and considering we're still almost a week away from launch. I'll go out on a limb and claim Classic WoW is in no way, shape or form in danger of ghost servers, even 18 to 24 months down the road. If you think about how many veteran players, such as myself who left before Cataclysm launched, a majority of us are returning to play on Classic servers. We are talking millions of players that fit that description.
And something else people have forgotten/or maybe never knew is that original WoW is the game that tore the roof off of the fixed relatively low population numbers that ALL PC games used to have. On the day WoW launched the highest population MMO was SWG at around 250k players and that was considered at the time a success. When WoW broke one million players not only did it cause the NGE but also brought gaming into the mainstream. Love or hate WoW but gaming was no longer taboo because of WoW so it was kind of a phenomenon and really deserves all the credit for what they did.
Errrr - not really. Tricky.
Simple corrections first. EQ1 had had the biggest mmo population prior to WoW. Peak was put at 650k. Doesn't change the fact that WoW was a very big mmo.
"Tore the roof off PC games."
Not really. The Sims was launched years earlier and sold well over 10M copies. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold tens of millions very quickly. Now this one is tricky since it was multi-platform but even today e.g c. 30% of ESO players are on PC. Probably a higher percentage of PC players back then when consoles were pretty new so - over 10M. There were other titles as well.
As far as making gaming "mainstream" - that expands things beyond PC only and brings in mega-tens of million selling titles, some going back to the 80s, such Pokemon, Mario, Sonic etc. Heck even the Wii Play sold 40M+.
What Blizzard did do - very successfully - was to develop and build the brand. And kept selling.
Which is why a few years ago they were able to say that the game had 100M accounts. The implication is that they were "losing" on average 10M subs per year. To lose them though you first have to have them!
The fact that other games are bigger doesn't diminish this huge success.
You may be thinking about 650k total all time users including trial accounts. SWG had the highest paid population numbers of all SOE games, it was their flagship game. If EQ had 650k paying players in 2004 then the SOE toilet swirl would not have started after the NGE.
As for your comment about Sonic, Mario they were retro iconic but did not propell gaming out of the unspoken shadow nerd realm like WoW did. WoW Mr T commercials, movie/music stars talking openly on camera about how they played WoW making it "not weird" by society to play "video games" at 35 years of age. WoW being featured in movies like Zombieland. WoW t-shirts worn by college students with pride not fear of being ridiculed and for me the most obvious one was going on dates and being able to talk about my gaming hobby and not have the person get up and walk away cause guess what, they had a friend who played WoW. I've played Nintendo since I was 5 and it wasn't them who broke that barrier it was WoW.
Let's be honest though. They will be merging servers or have dead servers in 2 months.
Almost everyone I know who is hyped about classic has never played classic.
Everyone you know is most certainly not the majority of players. I agree, a lot of retail WoW players who never experienced WoW Classic will most likely buckle under the pressure of a non instant gratification game play. A game that actually challenges them before they go raiding. However, this game wasn't brought back for THEM. It's being brought back for the players who DID actually play vanilla WoW. Which are precisely the kind of people who will stick with it a lot longer than a year. Retail WoW is a damn joke.
No.
Don't kid yourself Activision Blizzard are doing this to make money. Period.
They are not "bothered" whether its played by old, players or even new players; just the bottomline.
You are correct. However "New Players" Are already paying and playing BFA. These Old players let their subscription lapse years ago. Myself included I last payed for WoW in August of 2011. They want to recapture those players, because with the lack of any real MMORPGs out they have become an untapped market again.
Aside from the addition of the new PvP server and considering we're still almost a week away from launch. I'll go out on a limb and claim Classic WoW is in no way, shape or form in danger of ghost servers, even 18 to 24 months down the road. If you think about how many veteran players, such as myself who left before Cataclysm launched, a majority of us are returning to play on Classic servers. We are talking millions of players that fit that description.
And something else people have forgotten/or maybe never knew is that original WoW is the game that tore the roof off of the fixed relatively low population numbers that ALL PC games used to have. On the day WoW launched the highest population MMO was SWG at around 250k players and that was considered at the time a success. When WoW broke one million players not only did it cause the NGE but also brought gaming into the mainstream. Love or hate WoW but gaming was no longer taboo because of WoW so it was kind of a phenomenon and really deserves all the credit for what they did.
Errrr - not really. Tricky.
Simple corrections first. EQ1 had had the biggest mmo population prior to WoW. Peak was put at 650k. Doesn't change the fact that WoW was a very big mmo.
"Tore the roof off PC games."
Not really. The Sims was launched years earlier and sold well over 10M copies. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold tens of millions very quickly. Now this one is tricky since it was multi-platform but even today e.g c. 30% of ESO players are on PC. Probably a higher percentage of PC players back then when consoles were pretty new so - over 10M. There were other titles as well.
As far as making gaming "mainstream" - that expands things beyond PC only and brings in mega-tens of million selling titles, some going back to the 80s, such Pokemon, Mario, Sonic etc. Heck even the Wii Play sold 40M+.
What Blizzard did do - very successfully - was to develop and build the brand. And kept selling.
Which is why a few years ago they were able to say that the game had 100M accounts. The implication is that they were "losing" on average 10M subs per year. To lose them though you first have to have them!
The fact that other games are bigger doesn't diminish this huge success.
I agree with your point but Im fairly certain Lineage the Blood Pledge was near or in excess of 2 million subs by the time WoW arrived. Making it the highest population MMORPG at the time.
Eastern games usually count every single person who went into a netcafe and paid for time. It is similar to how some companies count trial accounts as users. Lineage 2mil subs could be a couple hundred thousand western people or more/less who bought the box and paid for the sub and the rest a netcafe goer who paid for 1 hour.
Let's be honest though. They will be merging servers or have dead servers in 2 months.
Almost everyone I know who is hyped about classic has never played classic.
Everyone you know is most certainly not the majority of players. I agree, a lot of retail WoW players who never experienced WoW Classic will most likely buckle under the pressure of a non instant gratification game play. A game that actually challenges them before they go raiding. However, this game wasn't brought back for THEM. It's being brought back for the players who DID actually play vanilla WoW. Which are precisely the kind of people who will stick with it a lot longer than a year. Retail WoW is a damn joke.
No.
Don't kid yourself Activision Blizzard are doing this to make money. Period.
They are not "bothered" whether its played by old, players or even new players; just the bottomline.
You are correct. However "New Players" Are already paying and playing BFA. These Old players let their subscription lapse years ago. Myself included I last payed for WoW in August of 2011. They want to recapture those players, because with the lack of any real MMORPGs out they have become an untapped market again.
Aside from the addition of the new PvP server and considering we're still almost a week away from launch. I'll go out on a limb and claim Classic WoW is in no way, shape or form in danger of ghost servers, even 18 to 24 months down the road. If you think about how many veteran players, such as myself who left before Cataclysm launched, a majority of us are returning to play on Classic servers. We are talking millions of players that fit that description.
And something else people have forgotten/or maybe never knew is that original WoW is the game that tore the roof off of the fixed relatively low population numbers that ALL PC games used to have. On the day WoW launched the highest population MMO was SWG at around 250k players and that was considered at the time a success. When WoW broke one million players not only did it cause the NGE but also brought gaming into the mainstream. Love or hate WoW but gaming was no longer taboo because of WoW so it was kind of a phenomenon and really deserves all the credit for what they did.
Errrr - not really. Tricky.
Simple corrections first. EQ1 had had the biggest mmo population prior to WoW. Peak was put at 650k. Doesn't change the fact that WoW was a very big mmo.
"Tore the roof off PC games."
Not really. The Sims was launched years earlier and sold well over 10M copies. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold tens of millions very quickly. Now this one is tricky since it was multi-platform but even today e.g c. 30% of ESO players are on PC. Probably a higher percentage of PC players back then when consoles were pretty new so - over 10M. There were other titles as well.
As far as making gaming "mainstream" - that expands things beyond PC only and brings in mega-tens of million selling titles, some going back to the 80s, such Pokemon, Mario, Sonic etc. Heck even the Wii Play sold 40M+.
What Blizzard did do - very successfully - was to develop and build the brand. And kept selling.
Which is why a few years ago they were able to say that the game had 100M accounts. The implication is that they were "losing" on average 10M subs per year. To lose them though you first have to have them!
The fact that other games are bigger doesn't diminish this huge success.
That is not true at all when it comes to talking about online games. Before Wow games like EQ were lucky to have 100k people online, Wow added another zero to that, big difference. Even to this day it still has a lot of subscribers and greater income than any other game. Even ESO does not have close to their numbers. Everyone knows the Sims was a complete joke and lost players as fast as it gained them. Wow was the first really big game in the PC era.
Let's be honest though. They will be merging servers or have dead servers in 2 months.
Almost everyone I know who is hyped about classic has never played classic.
Everyone you know is most certainly not the majority of players. I agree, a lot of retail WoW players who never experienced WoW Classic will most likely buckle under the pressure of a non instant gratification game play. A game that actually challenges them before they go raiding. However, this game wasn't brought back for THEM. It's being brought back for the players who DID actually play vanilla WoW. Which are precisely the kind of people who will stick with it a lot longer than a year. Retail WoW is a damn joke.
No.
Don't kid yourself Activision Blizzard are doing this to make money. Period.
They are not "bothered" whether its played by old, players or even new players; just the bottomline.
You are correct. However "New Players" Are already paying and playing BFA. These Old players let their subscription lapse years ago. Myself included I last payed for WoW in August of 2011. They want to recapture those players, because with the lack of any real MMORPGs out they have become an untapped market again.
Aside from the addition of the new PvP server and considering we're still almost a week away from launch. I'll go out on a limb and claim Classic WoW is in no way, shape or form in danger of ghost servers, even 18 to 24 months down the road. If you think about how many veteran players, such as myself who left before Cataclysm launched, a majority of us are returning to play on Classic servers. We are talking millions of players that fit that description.
And something else people have forgotten/or maybe never knew is that original WoW is the game that tore the roof off of the fixed relatively low population numbers that ALL PC games used to have. On the day WoW launched the highest population MMO was SWG at around 250k players and that was considered at the time a success. When WoW broke one million players not only did it cause the NGE but also brought gaming into the mainstream. Love or hate WoW but gaming was no longer taboo because of WoW so it was kind of a phenomenon and really deserves all the credit for what they did.
Errrr - not really. Tricky.
Simple corrections first. EQ1 had had the biggest mmo population prior to WoW. Peak was put at 650k. Doesn't change the fact that WoW was a very big mmo.
"Tore the roof off PC games."
Not really. The Sims was launched years earlier and sold well over 10M copies. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold tens of millions very quickly. Now this one is tricky since it was multi-platform but even today e.g c. 30% of ESO players are on PC. Probably a higher percentage of PC players back then when consoles were pretty new so - over 10M. There were other titles as well.
As far as making gaming "mainstream" - that expands things beyond PC only and brings in mega-tens of million selling titles, some going back to the 80s, such Pokemon, Mario, Sonic etc. Heck even the Wii Play sold 40M+.
What Blizzard did do - very successfully - was to develop and build the brand. And kept selling.
Which is why a few years ago they were able to say that the game had 100M accounts. The implication is that they were "losing" on average 10M subs per year. To lose them though you first have to have them!
The fact that other games are bigger doesn't diminish this huge success.
That is not true at all when it comes to talking about online games. Before Wow games like EQ were lucky to have 100k people online, Wow added another zero to that, big difference. Even to this day it still has a lot of subscribers and greater income than any other game. Even ESO does not have close to their numbers. Everyone knows the Sims was a complete joke and lost players as fast as it gained them. Wow was the first really big game in the PC era.
I didn't / don't dispute that WoW had a huge impact simply that SWG was not the biggest mmo pre-WoW and that WoW did not "tear the roof" off PC gaming as a whole.
Let's be honest though. They will be merging servers or have dead servers in 2 months.
Almost everyone I know who is hyped about classic has never played classic.
Everyone you know is most certainly not the majority of players. I agree, a lot of retail WoW players who never experienced WoW Classic will most likely buckle under the pressure of a non instant gratification game play. A game that actually challenges them before they go raiding. However, this game wasn't brought back for THEM. It's being brought back for the players who DID actually play vanilla WoW. Which are precisely the kind of people who will stick with it a lot longer than a year. Retail WoW is a damn joke.
No.
Don't kid yourself Activision Blizzard are doing this to make money. Period.
They are not "bothered" whether its played by old, players or even new players; just the bottomline.
You are correct. However "New Players" Are already paying and playing BFA. These Old players let their subscription lapse years ago. Myself included I last payed for WoW in August of 2011. They want to recapture those players, because with the lack of any real MMORPGs out they have become an untapped market again.
Aside from the addition of the new PvP server and considering we're still almost a week away from launch. I'll go out on a limb and claim Classic WoW is in no way, shape or form in danger of ghost servers, even 18 to 24 months down the road. If you think about how many veteran players, such as myself who left before Cataclysm launched, a majority of us are returning to play on Classic servers. We are talking millions of players that fit that description.
And something else people have forgotten/or maybe never knew is that original WoW is the game that tore the roof off of the fixed relatively low population numbers that ALL PC games used to have. On the day WoW launched the highest population MMO was SWG at around 250k players and that was considered at the time a success. When WoW broke one million players not only did it cause the NGE but also brought gaming into the mainstream. Love or hate WoW but gaming was no longer taboo because of WoW so it was kind of a phenomenon and really deserves all the credit for what they did.
Errrr - not really. Tricky.
Simple corrections first. EQ1 had had the biggest mmo population prior to WoW. Peak was put at 650k. Doesn't change the fact that WoW was a very big mmo.
"Tore the roof off PC games."
Not really. The Sims was launched years earlier and sold well over 10M copies. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold tens of millions very quickly. Now this one is tricky since it was multi-platform but even today e.g c. 30% of ESO players are on PC. Probably a higher percentage of PC players back then when consoles were pretty new so - over 10M. There were other titles as well.
As far as making gaming "mainstream" - that expands things beyond PC only and brings in mega-tens of million selling titles, some going back to the 80s, such Pokemon, Mario, Sonic etc. Heck even the Wii Play sold 40M+.
What Blizzard did do - very successfully - was to develop and build the brand. And kept selling.
Which is why a few years ago they were able to say that the game had 100M accounts. The implication is that they were "losing" on average 10M subs per year. To lose them though you first have to have them!
The fact that other games are bigger doesn't diminish this huge success.
You may be thinking about 650k total all time users including trial accounts. SWG had the highest paid population numbers of all SOE games, it was their flagship game. If EQ had 650k paying players in 2004 then the SOE toilet swirl would not have started after the NGE.
As for your comment about Sonic, Mario they were retro iconic but did not propell gaming out of the unspoken shadow nerd realm like WoW did. WoW Mr T commercials, movie/music stars talking openly on camera about how they played WoW making it "not weird" by society to play "video games" at 35 years of age. WoW being featured in movies like Zombieland. WoW t-shirts worn by college students with pride not fear of being ridiculed and for me the most obvious one was going on dates and being able to talk about my gaming hobby and not have the person get up and walk away cause guess what, they had a friend who played WoW. I've played Nintendo since I was 5 and it wasn't them who broke that barrier it was WoW.
EQ1 had a much longer history than SWG. And its peak was estimated at 650k. It was also an SoE only title -
And - in context - games like Sonic and Mario were worldwide mainstream a long time before WoW. Before them arguably there was no shadow! As for retro they were no more retro then than Pokemon Go - the current undisputed AR title so far - is reteo.
Even ignoring them though there were multiple huge titles - many cross-platform. And because they were cross-platform and because consoles were being heavily pushed back then lots of titles were on the TV screens. With much bigger advertising budgets than WoW.
Titles like GTA are bigger than WoW today and were bigger than WoW back in 2004. Add a 0! G
And again as far as "mainstream acceptance" goes the Wii was also huge. The Wii Fit made it into homes that had never even seen a computer. And whilst the 40M+ Sport sold 80M+.
WoW was a huge hit. Suggesting it was "the PC title" - nah games like Half-Life and Unreal probably had a better claim. They had t-shirts as well! By 2004 though PC gaming was already being challenged by consoles - leading to much greater sales.
I would be playing if I had friends to play with, even casual style. Since that's not the case I'd rather skip another solo experience with other players around. Sadly IDK why, I had issues meeting new ppl in any modern mmo. Ppl don't say hi, tend to ignore chat and just rush through any event or content.
You need to look for a good guild, one that emphasis maturity. A forum is a must and from that you should be able to get some idea of whether the guild is for you. Guilds have long insulated many of the players I know from the changing nature of MMO's, can't recommend that tactic enough.
Let's be honest though. They will be merging servers or have dead servers in 2 months.
Almost everyone I know who is hyped about classic has never played classic.
I give them about 4 months till all these people realize these aren't time lock servers an they have done all there is to do an have all the best gear they can ever get.
These ARE time lock servers, and they have already rolled out the plan showing the next 4 phases that will be added to the Classic servers over time btw.
I was talking about expansions. After they add in Nax in phase 6 that's it. That is all classic had, was the last event. Haven't seen anything from blizzard saying they are going to go with burning crusade, ect... So at that point it's game over in reality for content.
you didnt see anything, game will be dead, got anything else to say?
no one is holding your hand to play it and if you are here like all those minions in this forum bashing every damn game with negative comments to cause a scene for their own exposure since they have no signature on radar anywhere else in their pathetic life then be it!
Let's be honest though. They will be merging servers or have dead servers in 2 months.
Almost everyone I know who is hyped about classic has never played classic.
Everyone you know is most certainly not the majority of players. I agree, a lot of retail WoW players who never experienced WoW Classic will most likely buckle under the pressure of a non instant gratification game play. A game that actually challenges them before they go raiding. However, this game wasn't brought back for THEM. It's being brought back for the players who DID actually play vanilla WoW. Which are precisely the kind of people who will stick with it a lot longer than a year. Retail WoW is a damn joke.
No.
Don't kid yourself Activision Blizzard are doing this to make money. Period.
They are not "bothered" whether its played by old, players or even new players; just the bottomline.
You are correct. However "New Players" Are already paying and playing BFA. These Old players let their subscription lapse years ago. Myself included I last payed for WoW in August of 2011. They want to recapture those players, because with the lack of any real MMORPGs out they have become an untapped market again.
Aside from the addition of the new PvP server and considering we're still almost a week away from launch. I'll go out on a limb and claim Classic WoW is in no way, shape or form in danger of ghost servers, even 18 to 24 months down the road. If you think about how many veteran players, such as myself who left before Cataclysm launched, a majority of us are returning to play on Classic servers. We are talking millions of players that fit that description.
And something else people have forgotten/or maybe never knew is that original WoW is the game that tore the roof off of the fixed relatively low population numbers that ALL PC games used to have. On the day WoW launched the highest population MMO was SWG at around 250k players and that was considered at the time a success. When WoW broke one million players not only did it cause the NGE but also brought gaming into the mainstream. Love or hate WoW but gaming was no longer taboo because of WoW so it was kind of a phenomenon and really deserves all the credit for what they did.
Errrr - not really. Tricky.
Simple corrections first. EQ1 had had the biggest mmo population prior to WoW. Peak was put at 650k. Doesn't change the fact that WoW was a very big mmo.
"Tore the roof off PC games."
Not really. The Sims was launched years earlier and sold well over 10M copies. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold tens of millions very quickly. Now this one is tricky since it was multi-platform but even today e.g c. 30% of ESO players are on PC. Probably a higher percentage of PC players back then when consoles were pretty new so - over 10M. There were other titles as well.
As far as making gaming "mainstream" - that expands things beyond PC only and brings in mega-tens of million selling titles, some going back to the 80s, such Pokemon, Mario, Sonic etc. Heck even the Wii Play sold 40M+.
What Blizzard did do - very successfully - was to develop and build the brand. And kept selling.
Which is why a few years ago they were able to say that the game had 100M accounts. The implication is that they were "losing" on average 10M subs per year. To lose them though you first have to have them!
The fact that other games are bigger doesn't diminish this huge success.
I agree with your point but Im fairly certain Lineage the Blood Pledge was near or in excess of 2 million subs by the time WoW arrived. Making it the highest population MMORPG at the time.
Yep forgot about Lineage.
Probably because Lineage never had world wide appeal, the game is after all relatively unknown outside of the Asian market, not the only Asian game not to do well outside of their home market, but its a substantial market that can't really be overlooked due to its disproportionate size compared to the rest of the world, and its one that is also far more embracing of P2W mechanics than say NA/EU players are.
Comments
As for your comment about Sonic, Mario they were retro iconic but did not propell gaming out of the unspoken shadow nerd realm like WoW did. WoW Mr T commercials, movie/music stars talking openly on camera about how they played WoW making it "not weird" by society to play "video games" at 35 years of age. WoW being featured in movies like Zombieland. WoW t-shirts worn by college students with pride not fear of being ridiculed and for me the most obvious one was going on dates and being able to talk about my gaming hobby and not have the person get up and walk away cause guess what, they had a friend who played WoW. I've played Nintendo since I was 5 and it wasn't them who broke that barrier it was WoW.
And - in context - games like Sonic and Mario were worldwide mainstream a long time before WoW. Before them arguably there was no shadow! As for retro they were no more retro then than Pokemon Go - the current undisputed AR title so far - is reteo.
Even ignoring them though there were multiple huge titles - many cross-platform. And because they were cross-platform and because consoles were being heavily pushed back then lots of titles were on the TV screens. With much bigger advertising budgets than WoW.
Titles like GTA are bigger than WoW today and were bigger than WoW back in 2004. Add a 0! G
And again as far as "mainstream acceptance" goes the Wii was also huge. The Wii Fit made it into homes that had never even seen a computer. And whilst the 40M+ Sport sold 80M+.
WoW was a huge hit. Suggesting it was "the PC title" - nah games like Half-Life and Unreal probably had a better claim. They had t-shirts as well! By 2004 though PC gaming was already being challenged by consoles - leading to much greater sales.