Legacy Realms - What's your verdict

[tankbug]

There's a thread on a different game forum about a bunch of private servers running vanilla. I don't play myself, but I've checked it out from time to time, and it seems that people in that thread loved it for a little while, then got bored. I think we can assume that there isn't a market for legacy realms. But I guess that Blizzard could keep maybe a couple of realms decently populated, but I do think it requires too much administration for them to implement them. Maybe they aren't really compatible with battle.net anymore, I don't know...

[Syio]

While not surprised, I am pleased by the poll results.
The majority of a good sampling have chosen.

[Outofmana]

And how many months go by when there is no new content or change, and you are playing either A: With old, outdated class and game mechanics or B: An imbalanced game because current class and game mechanics break older things, that it isn't worth dev time to fix, when it isn't new content, before you realize "This isn't so worth it, nothing changes, no new content, this sucks"?

What a ridiculous excuse not to launch one. There is a private server that does this thing fine, with gated release (went live in August with MC, BWL being released now) and it works perfectly fine and gated release is the way to do this imo should blizzard decide to release one. I don't see any reason not to launch one since there is a demand for it and a lot of people want to play it. Let them, playing rollercoaster tycoon 1 again is a blast sometimes too.

[ZeroEdgeir]

People would just get bored after clearing content - then the "legacy" realms would be empty. People always want stuff because of nostalgia and then regrets it.
Remember in wotlk when forums were full of posts requiring harder heroics back like in bc. What happened in cata? Harder heroics and everyone cried and unsubscribed.
More content and daily quests like in BC? Look at MoP daily quests, everyone qq and unsubscribed.

Instead of "legacy realms" there should be scaleable content with a lfr, ofc you would get less valor/ilvl gear than current content but this way everyone could visit and "raid" the older dungeons and raids

I agree with the first half of your statemenet.

The scaling system has a few problems:
1) Dedicating a sizeable amount of dev time to re-balancing a ton of old encounters to take new game mechanics into play. Basically having to re-tune every single raid from Classic to Cataclysm, in regards to how current classes work. Not a small undertaking at all.

2) If you use an LFR system, you have to break-point the raids into smaller chunks, which horribly diminishes the overall immersion of the content. One of the best elements of Karazhan is the structure itself. That place is fantastic to run around and roam in. It's HUGE. Probably the biggest raid zone to date, as far as explorable space goes (Ulduar might match it due to the sheer scale of space in the siege engine/tank part at the start).

3) Loot. So do we reward items like Scenarios, or do we get scaled up gear from back in the day with the same models we can... already get... on our own... and use via transmogrification? And what level do you make the loot to keep it relevant? Update it with every raid tier? Every expansion? How do you handle that without stepping on the toes of Heroic Dungeons at the start of a new expansion?

4) Difficulty. If it is anything like LFR, it won't be as "epic" as it was. It can't be, cause an LFR group won't be as coordinated. Now, if it was with the new Flex system, then maybe, yeah, it could work. But the above points still carry a lot of questions to feasibility.

[Nerevar]

And how many months go by when there is no new content or change, and you are playing either A: With old, outdated class and game mechanics or B: An imbalanced game because current class and game mechanics break older things, that it isn't worth dev time to fix, when it isn't new content, before you realize "This isn't so worth it, nothing changes, no new content, this sucks"?

Well, I play on BC/Vanilla pirate realms since wrath, and since I still play there, that should be an answer enough?

[Twosteps]

What a ridiculous excuse not to launch one. There is a private server that does this thing fine, with gated release (went live in August with MC, BWL being released now) and it works perfectly fine and gated release is the way to do this imo should blizzard decide to release one. I don't see any reason not to launch one since there is a demand for it and a lot of people want to play it. Let them, playing rollercoaster tycoon 1 again is a blast sometimes too.

You don't seem to realize that "gated releases" still do not solve the problems brought up by ZeroEdgeir in the first place. Eventually all the content will be released - what's after Naxx? Nothing. There will be a point when "content" stops being released, and things will develop into the situation where there is no new content and change.

So, when that inevitably happens, what will people want then? For Blizzard to reset servers to patch 1.0.0 or whatever over and over so they can re-level from level 1 and wait for the same gated content to be released over time? Sounds fun!

Or maybe they'll want Blizzard to develop new content? They did. Long ago. They're called expansions.

[Xzan]

Opinion: Legacy servers are a waste of resources, Mists is the best expansion to date.
Fact: Blizzard will not put money into this, 2 reasons, look at the poll, very few people actually want it, just because the minority that do want it are very loud doesn't mean everyone does and its not like blizzard has a backup server handy with all the legacy content, they would have to redo it all over again.

On the contrary, there is a very strong playerbase on private servers that do offer the older versions of WoW. Those people rarely check mmo-c, as the information is barely relevant to their gameplay anymore.
There's a lot of low-pop servers, consolidating the few players there into bigger realm(s) would result in spare hardware that could easily be used for Legacy realms. One per expansion would suffice for starters...

[Outofmana]

You don't seem to realize that "gated releases" still do not solve the problems brought up by ZeroEdgeir in the first place. Eventually all the content will be released - what's after Naxx? Nothing. There will be a point when "content" stops being released, and things will develop into the situation where there is no new content and change.

So, when that inevitably happens, what will people want then? For Blizzard to reset servers to patch 1.0.0 or whatever over and over so they can re-level from level 1 and wait for the same gated content to be released over time? Sounds fun!

Or maybe they'll want Blizzard to develop new content? They did. Long ago. They're called expansions.

Then they release another realm from scratch, it's not like the realm will run out of content in a damn week you know, try more like years. And yes it does sound fun to me, like many others. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it cannot be fun for anyone else, seriously.

[Alvito]

I doubt even Blizzard would just hit it and quit it. That wouldn't make sense, so much as changing the balance around so this isn't as prominent. Plus legacy servers usually have an arbitrary release on patches, or at the very least unlock (Or the potential to unlock) raids and dungeons over time. I don't see why or how people think past expansions would be stuck on one balance patch.

So you think an old version of the game that ppl have been asking for will end up being a new version with things they didnt do in the past to patch it? If that is the case it is even more likely they sure as hell aren't going to make a bunch of servers for a small niche of the player base then have to keep spending time developing old parts of the game.

[Deleted]

hmm ....

a realm on its own who only hosts one single expansion wouldnt be a good idea.

however, what id imagine people would absolutely like, is a server with individual progress, with some simple rules:

- ALL equippable items are impossible to be traded
- levels cap, fitting each individual expansion (or classic WoW)
- professions cap fitting your respective level
- you have to beat a complete raiding tier to be able to enter the next one.
- it is impossible to equip something with an item level that does not fit into your respective "active expansion"
- upon beating the "final" raid of an expansion, your level cap is lifted and you can go on to the next one

when you have managed to do this up to the current content, you are rewarded with an account-wide achievement and a unique title ", Vanquisher of Evil" and the right to purchase account-bound rings that scale up to level 90. this way, it would be quite some fun for LOTS of people. random groups can start doing this purely for fun, without any need to hurry or anything.

it would just be some sort of funny "sidegame" without any ways to cheat it by getting overly strong gear (e.g. MoP 85 rares and so on)

[Outofmana]

hmm ....

a realm on its own who only hosts one single expansion wouldnt be a good idea.

however, what id imagine people would absolutely like, is a server with individual progress, with some simple rules:

- ALL equippable items are impossible to be traded
- levels cap, fitting each individual expansion (or classic WoW)
- professions cap fitting your respective level
- you have to beat a complete raiding tier to be able to enter the next one.
- it is impossible to equip something with an item level that does not fit into your respective "active expansion"
- upon beating the "final" raid of an expansion, your level cap is lifted and you can go on to the next one

when you have managed to do this up to the current content, you are rewarded with an account-wide achievement and a unique title ", Vanquisher of Evil" and the right to purchase account-bound rings that scale up to level 90. this way, it would be quite some fun for LOTS of people. random groups can start doing this purely for fun, without any need to hurry or anything.

it would just be some sort of funny "sidegame" without any ways to cheat it by getting overly strong gear (e.g. MoP 85 rares and so on)

It wouldn't be any fun, cap these characters today at level 60 and go into Molten Core with 10 of them, you would kill Ragnaros before the sons because with these talents/spells/mana changes we would be like gods. It doesn't have anything to do with the gear or professions. The spells, the regen system etc are totally different.
It was:
- cast too much and you go oom (and you went oom fast) = wipe back then, instead of
- cast too little and die, which is the case these days more or less.
The whole mechanics changed to cast-a-lot instead of too little over the years. Only a vanilla realm would work at this point.

[Deleted]

So basically this is a poll showing players who either:

a) Realise that when the rose-tinted glasses are taken off, there are a lot of issues with the game in its former states, and though its far from perfect now it's still the best it's ever been.

b) Were OP in a previous expansion/patch and want the fun times back.

It would seem there are a lot of a)'s voting, so good for you for not falling for all the nostalgia fueled exaggeration and imagined-glory days.

[Syio]

Then they release another realm from scratch, it's not like the realm will run out of content in a damn week you know, try more like years. And yes it does sound fun to me, like many others. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it cannot be fun for anyone else, seriously.

Doesn't seem like the percentile reflected on this poll justifies a large enough minority for this to go ahead with.

What's wrong with the private Vanilla servers people are currently playing on now, btw?

[Outofmana]

Doesn't seem like the percentile reflected on this poll justifies a large enough minority for this to go ahead with.

What's wrong with the private Vanilla servers people are currently playing on now, btw?

Mainly the little bugs and the incorrect tuning of raidbosses and not being sure the private realm is going to keep exsisting in the future.

---------- Post added 2013-06-20 at 03:21 PM ----------

So basically this is a poll showing players who either:

a) Realise that when the rose-tinted glasses are taken off, there are a lot of issues with the game in its former states, and though its far from perfect now it's still the best it's ever been.

b) Were OP in a previous expansion/patch and want the fun times back.

It would seem there are a lot of a)'s voting, so good for you for not falling for all the nostalgia fueled exaggeration and imagined-glory days.

......yeah because just because you cannot see the fun in it it's not fun right? Did you even log a vanilla realm lately or are you just throwing stuff out there?

[orioxez]

I think I did mention it earlier in the thread, but why what about progression realms with a slow release of content?

its a good concept on paper, but in reality its not the same experience as progressing on content when its fresh. the game has changed so much they would either need to host the actual patch from the time period (which would take loads of time to get right) or just create a new patch specifically to host that content. either way its a lot of work for a very small amount of demand. very dedicated private servers like this exist for vanilla and tbc which already provide this service for free basically, so there would be little incentive for people to pay blizzard to provide the service unless they were able to support it well.

So basically this is a poll showing players who either:

a) Realise that when the rose-tinted glasses are taken off, there are a lot of issues with the game in its former states, and though its far from perfect now it's still the best it's ever been.

b) Were OP in a previous expansion/patch and want the fun times back.

It would seem there are a lot of a)'s voting, so good for you for not falling for all the nostalgia fueled exaggeration and imagined-glory days.

mainly the people wanting a legacy realm are people who never really experienced or exhausted the content when it was relevant and want to go back and beat it in a legitimate environment, theres nothing wrong with that. the exclusivity of content created interest in the content, something which could only be obtained through a good guild and skilled players. thats something which doesnt exist anymore really, and its why nobody will be clamoring for a cata realm or mop realm in the future, theres very very little content that is exclusive to the hardcore players.

[Pejo]

Mainly the little bugs and the incorrect tuning of raidbosses and not being sure the private realm is going to keep exsisting in the future.

I think this is a good reason for not playing on private servers. All of the AI had to be rewritten by the Private Server's programmers and from what I hear can range quite a bit. Blizzard has done an excellent job with their mob/boss AI and it isn't something one normally thinks about until they don't see it anymore. It's not to say all of them are bad and some of the servers are aiming for mobs to act as 'skilled' as possible so it's very interesting.

I think that from the poll results, there is definitely one thing you're able to see: these type of server would have a consistent server population as there would be people who only play there and then those who are curious/feeling nostalgic for temporary play. I'm still sticking with that even though this kind of server would be quite interesting, it would lead to more work done by Blizzard. This could come in the form of them doing friendly bug fixes for the servers, having to dedicate a new forum to this feature and/or physically maintaining the server (which is very minimal as they are doing this for low pop servers as well). Even if they left it completely alone, they're going to have to manage the forum complaints/bug reports as not everyone is going to understand/accept that.

I'm curious though - how do people want these to work? My guess is server has last patch of each xpac and then you just play that forever? After you beat the game, do you continue playing? When these were live, some of these patches lasted up to 13 months and there was quite a bit of complaints/sub loss on the forum because of it. Do they start over? If so, wouldn't that upset the people to lose all of their work? *boggled*