Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Loffemega]

I love how people keep bringing up their financial situation, of course they had problems maintaining a positive cashflow to pay for upkeep. That will always be a problem when you're running something that is illegal which also happens to cost money. Finding a good way to get people to pay you money for doing something illegal is very dangerous business and basically paints a HUGE target on your back.

Do you think Blizzard would let any private server live for months, even years, if they charged a subscription fee and reeked in hundreds of thousands of dollar on a monthly basis? They would shut that down so fast you wouldn't believe it, followed by a massive law-suit since now they've got credible data to prove a loss of income in a court of law.

So what do these small-time guys do? They could charge a minimal fee as low as a dollar a month to help with upkeep, again, painting a target on their back the size of a football stadium. Or they could going with something that is a bit more grey; optional donations for upkeep, trying their best to have a balance of both hiding said option to the general public to not raise to much attention, while still having it there for their loyal fanbase. See, there is a problem when you're trying to hide something, yet you want people to see it so they can help support your cause.

Secondly, how many do you think are interested in donating for a cause that might very well be gone the next day? Probably not that many, although that is just a guess from my part.

Third, let's flip your guys' argument around. Let's say Blizzard one day stopped accepting subscriptions and instead they put up an optional donation button on their website. Do you think they would retain even a fraction of their profits going from subscription to donations?(Talking subscriptions versus donations here, not cash-shop or other premium features) Of course they wouldn't! Does that mean that the product isn't worth people's money? Does that mean that if they would charge a sub fee for their game, that people would refuse to pay and forget about ever returning to Azeroth again? Of course not! Guess what; people rarely pay anything if they don't have to, people are cheap and opportunistic like that.

Look at Wikipedia, prime example. One of the largest and most visited websites in the world and guess what; they're having financial problems on a regular basis, barely making ends meet. Obviously a whole different scale here but the point still stands; if you don't have to pay for something, odds are; you won't.

So stop arguing that a private servers financial problems equates to there not being enough interest and that its not worth anyones time of day. Because with that logic we probably shouldn't have Wikipedia either.

[Deficineiron]

to me it looks like we have here there reason why Blizzard shut it down. Their costs were super low and they sure as hell got more than those little costs as income through donations. I mean 150k active players. Even if that's 100k unique players and only 1% of those donated a dollar per month, that's enough to pay their servers. And they definitely got more than a dollar from 1% of their players.

To me, it sounds more and more like a money grab and now they just play the "we are so humble fans and can't understand why Blizzard is so angry" show.

They had 150k active players, 800k accounts in total, super low costs because they exploited their "employees" (did the work for free) and had cheap servers and a donation functionality.

Historically, Blizzard only intervenes in fan projects when those fans tried to make a profit out of it and this looks just like another of those cases.

I have no idea if you are right or not. that said, the reported monthly COSTS look low.

as far as blizz only intervening with profit-issues present, the only caveat I have is that this project was getting much more publicity than anything ever.

this stuff does tend to come out over time, eventually.....

[parcus]

Yeah, I think we can all agree that WoD was a filler so they could bring WoW back to it's glory with Legion. You can see the warlock class hall in a video data-mined during 5.2, they are definitely busy making the game better. Better being subjective, but I have a gut feeling it will be nothing like WoD.

Almost like Legion is a vanilla reboot, without all the awkwardness and bloat.

Nope, Legion sounds like it's going to be the worst WoW expansion ever. The whole thing sounds like it's made for braindead people. Everything about it sounds casual and boring.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Yeah, I think we can all agree that WoD was a filler so they could bring WoW back to it's glory with Legion. You can see the warlock class hall in a video data-mined during 5.2, they are definitely busy making the game better. Better being subjective, but I have a gut feeling it will be nothing like WoD.

Almost like Legion is a vanilla reboot, without all the awkwardness and bloat.

Would explain why they dropped the ball so hard after MoP, but then again...this could all be wishful thinking, Legion could still end up just like WoD. 4 leveling zones has me worried for one.

[MoanaLisa]

The Blizzard stockholm syndrome is so fucking real in this thread.
One of the very first posts: "good riddance, one less shitty pserver in the web"
Let me translate this Blizzdrone-ese: "other people are having fun and this upsets me even though it has absolutely no effect on me"

Honestly though, what possesses the Blizzard Internet Defense Force to so tirelessly defend everything Blizzard does? I can understand if you want to play the absolute pile of shit that WoW is right now, because hey, different strokes. But I've literally never seen anyone successfully defend their logic in not hosting a legacy server while simultaneously shutting down private servers. So, if you are the kind of person that actually supports shutting down private servers and constantly spams about how Blizzard "should never make legacy servers" (and I know there's tons of you here) please re-evaluate your life, and look at how objectively retarded you are, as you flail around, completely failing to make a cogent argument for the 5000th time.

Extreme positions on both sides contribute nothing to the discussion. Honestly, the Blizzard Attack Force is just as bad if not worse. If you want a logical argument it's really pretty easy: They will shut down private servers to protect their IP and trademarks. They won't put up their own because they have determined that it won't be profitable enough to bother with. In both cases it's completely their choice and there are certainly facts and projections involved few people here knows about.

It's not complicated. It's their own argument and follows both law and their own internal business principles.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Nope, Legion sounds like it's going to be the worst WoW expansion ever. The whole thing sounds like it's made for braindead people.

Then again, people have been saying that WoW is made for braindead people since it first came out, and outsiders would argue that playing games in itself is "braindead"...care to elaborate WHY you think it sounds like it is?

[stomination]

Thats the best you got? Bam! PayPal SAFE Boom! Paysafecard SAFE. Try again..

People started a fundraiser and it wasn't enough to keep them going. Obviously not enough of those people wanted to pay.

[Deleted]

For a multibillion company 150k players means nothing. NOTHING.

So why are they doing this ? It's not that they were making money of it. It's not that they were picking players of them. There were still alot of sub players also playing nos.

If they were made that some stupid ass streamers promote nos ? Well let the streamers be banned on twitch etc

It was a nice community project , destroyed for rly nothing , there was no need for it

And stop with the thief bulls*** like there is a person on the internet that NEVER dl something illegal....

[RobertMugabe]

Yeah I don't think there was ever a suggestion of fighting it. The papers were served and they did the right thing and shut down.

Yeah. If my only aim was to bring back some vanilla memories (by not making any profit) and then get sued by one of the biggest gaming companies in the world, I'd do the same thing like the Nostalrius founders.

btw. A big Cataclysm server, based in the EU, was actually sued by Blizzard and nothing happened, they simply changed their host and have thousands of active players to this day.

[zorkuus]

...And other days it's "no wonder why they lose subs when they listen to the playerbase!!"...
And "wouldn't even need maintaining" sounds nice, but if people were paying to play on the server I'm certain there'd be demands. Not to mention the technical stuff.

I'd like to see how long a classic server would last before blowing up in hot smoke due to lack of proper maintenance. 36 hours?

[Tuesdays]

The forums are a terrible place to get customer feedback. If you can't afford $15 per month for a game then you should probably be focussed more on how you're going to provide for your family.

Yeah, but these are people supporting Nos, quick read on reddit proves that they had money problems. Why did they have money problems with people being so eager to give their hard earned money for the vanilla experience?

They weren't parting with money, they were playing a great game, for free.

I'm not saying there isn't a demand for vanilla, tbc, wrath, ect.. I am saying would people pay to play? As stated above shows indeed they wont.

It was nothing more than a popular free to play alternative. No buying bag space, no buying special weapons, no buying power, ect.. A gamers wet dream come true.

[Deleted]

there will always be a demand for a classic server so there will be another one

[Tuesdays]

Nope, Legion sounds like it's going to be the worst WoW expansion ever. The whole thing sounds like it's made for braindead people. Everything about it sounds casual and boring.

Subjective, you don't speak for me, but you're entitled to your own opinion.

EDIT

Nice casual jab, but WoW is a casual game, and if you think it was hard in vanilla, you're the scrub. Games before WoW were soul crushingly hard.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I'd like to see how long a classic server would last before blowing up in hot smoke due to lack of proper maintenance. 36 hours?

Well considering everyone's always raving on about how fun it was "bugs and all!", I'd imagine that it would NOT be able to stand for long before maintenance would be needed. Hell, I wonder how long it would take for people to start demanding access to a number of QOL-changes made over the years. How many Nos players used addons, for one?

[RobertMugabe]

In what way is it a "grey zone" (which isn't a legal term, anyway, it's a purely speculative term used by people trying to justify crime)? France is a signatory of the Berne Convention, which gives Blizzard the right to sue for copyright violations, and France has to uphold them as well - and France has to conform to the EU copyright laws, which give Blizzard further protection and rights to pursue cases like this.

Just because they haven't pursued the other servers *yet* proves nothing.

The only thing you stated that has anything resembling reality is your first one. And that's easily proven given the people running the server have been pretty blunt that it's why they're shutting down.

Just hosting a private WoW Server is not violating copyright laws in the EU, it's only violating Blizzards own rules.
A private WoW server is not stolen software from Blizzard, but it's an Emulator.

[zorkuus]

there will always be a demand for a classic server so there will be another one

Have fun starting from scratch again then. And again and again and again.

[Moxal]

Its their intellectual property, so they had the right to issue a cease and desist order. -shrug-

[Uurdz]

i have followed a/b and kotick over time, and he is pretty clearspoken that if a property or project isn't a 9-digit annual revenue potential, he isn't doing it.

I think classic server, not an LFR or gamestore version, could get into low-to-mid- 8 digits revenue pretty easily. It doesn't take that many subs to do so. there are any number of models for pricing/access they could use, that is almost a peripheral discussion.

I don't think they would do that for 1) lack of larger revenue potential and 2) institutional bias against promoting non-accessible products (yes they really do have a bias). the way classic worked as a game world is almost alien compared to how they measure 'success/fun' of wow now internally.

now would they turn it into an fast and easy leveling, LFR world with a gamestore and push it to their current crop of subs? well that is actually not too far-fetched down the road. 'relive the glory days of wow. kill cthun & KT (in a couple of months)'

re: (1) It would all come down to how large this project is and how it compares to any work done on legacy products like Diablo II and Warcraft 3. At a senior level, sure they're not going to care about this too much as they're much busier trying to get into eSports and the mobile gaming Cash Cow.
(2) Can't really speak to this. Also I don't fully understand what you mean by non-accessible products although I can infer a few ideas.

Would it be correct to say you mean Blizzard doesn't like to support content which is challenging and only a limited number of players will achieve or attain it in a short timeframe? (short being sub 6 months)
This makes sense. You'd really need to establish what type of demographic they are going after currently and how a vanilla WoW demographic differs from this. It may be that the business simply does not want to cater for that demographic at all.

Would be a shame if nothing comes of it though, I played Diablo II on the recent ladder reset and it was quite fun. I stopped around the latest patch thought because uh...gameplay was uh... impacted....

[parcus]

Then again, people have been saying that WoW is made for braindead people since it first came out, and outsiders would argue that playing games in itself is "braindead"...care to elaborate WHY you think it sounds like it is?

1) No intention to make dungeons challenging again.
2) No intention to make leveling difficult again.
3) LFR
4) Free legendaries.

Blizzard addressed none of the issues with current wow in Legion.

[Tuesdays]

Would explain why they dropped the ball so hard after MoP, but then again...this could all be wishful thinking, Legion could still end up just like WoD. 4 leveling zones has me worried for one.

It could, but the game is bleeding out, they have the money and resources to turn it around. If nothing else long enough to keep money flowing while they work on the next mmo (Diablo) since Titan didn't work as expected...one can hope.