Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Deleted]

Really those numbers tell me a different story. On a server where one had to find it and get invited to it( which means people way more into it) and was free to play they lost more than 80% of thier subs. So why would you assume when people had to pay for it they wouldn't do the exact thing. Check it out play for awhile then stop since nothing new is ever coming. Maybe blizz did some research into this and found out the cost to get it up and running and maintained isn't worth it. People cry now when raid tiers last to long what will they do when they last forever?

That's almost fair. How about those that would only play if it was legal? I agree with you on that we can't know for sure what would happen, but biased or not I lean toward a good outcome for Blizzard and the fans of Vanilla. Maybe they have done the research. What most people seem to want is a proper response from Blizzard.

[Dahij]

There goes saying that "Good things are worth waiting", ever heard it before? What is your point again?

On one hand you have an automated and efficient system that also allows you to do something while waiting, on the other you have a manual system that requires you to actively look for people, it's slow and requires you to stay in an area where people are.

Now tell me which one is better? Sure you're probably still going to say the one that takes longer and stops you from doing other things, but i'm pretty sure most people would go with the first one.

I'm not a huge fan of the LFD tool, but I still understand that it's way better than how it was before that. The best would be removing the LFD and instead using the group finder tool and having to manually go to the dungeons.

[corebit]

Then they will play on Live or on another legacy server. Keep in mind that only a small minority of players cleared Nax 40. A legacy server would give players much more time to actually clear the original raid dungeon as it was originally meant to be cleared.

If they so desired.

Blizzard should consider making legacy servers a part of the existing subscription fee. There's an argument to be made here. Now if WoW goes F2P then legacy servers aren't viable except to promote Blizzard's brand (and they do that easily elsewhere). What I am arguing is WoW can maintain a sub fee for years to come if Blizzard invested in real demand. Obviously they will want this to be measured somehow.

Look at the current views for this topic alone, for example.

The only way it would make economic sense for Blizzard is requiring every vanilla server player to have a live WoW subscription and then pay X amount on top of that. That way even if the vanilla servers don't turn out to be as profitable, they still have your sub money to act as cushion.

[Mustardisbad]

Then they will play on Live or on another legacy server. Keep in mind that only a small minority of players cleared Nax 40. A legacy server would give players much more time to actually clear the original raid dungeon as it was originally meant to be cleared.

If they so desired.

Blizzard should consider making legacy servers a part of the existing subscription fee. There's an argument to be made here. Now if WoW goes F2P then legacy servers aren't viable except to promote Blizzard's brand (and they do that easily elsewhere). What I am arguing is WoW can maintain a sub fee for years to come if Blizzard invested in real demand. Obviously they will want this to be measured somehow.

Look at the current views for this topic alone, for example.

Plus Nost alone had HUNDREDS of thousands of people make an account for their server. That obviously shows some huge interest in a vanilla legacy server.

[MoanaLisa]

as far as not making money, even 150k subs would make quite a bit of money. what do you think, they are going ot hire 300 100k$ people for this?

That's presuming that you could find 150000 people to pay a $10 dollar a month subscription fee. So about $18 million a year. OK.

Activision/Blizzard's revenue for 2015 was something like 4 and a half billion dollars which roughly calculates out to ~500k an hour. So $18m a year in revenue is basically a day-and-a-half of Activision/Blizzards revenue, 36 hours.

As I've been saying, that looks like a lot of money to us but it really isn't to a company with high fixed costs.

Assuming retention losses of 50% over the first year (optimistic) that's less than a day's revenue after 12 months ($9 million). It's too small. And that is assuming there's no cost at all for servers, development at startup, maintenance, GM's and support.

That's why they won't do it. It's a charity project for them.

[Deficineiron]

Plus Nost alone had HUNDREDS of thousands of people make an account for their server. That obviously shows some huge interest in a vanilla legacy server.

from numbers I saw, about 10% of those total accounts were banned for either goldselling or botting. that in itself is pretty impressive, if bots are actually making money off your private server, you have something going good.

[Deleted]

He helped pay for it i think you missunderstood me i didnt say he intended to pay for everything with 150 dollars. To clarify it was a small sum to help out i never said it would pay for everything. "AHAHAHAHAHAHA" how funny and respectful you are and people wonder why the community in Wow is even more toxic these days.

What did you expect from a guy, who has more than 7k posts in this shithole forum, where MoP babies circle-jerk in their ivory tower to Blizzard logo and talk about how good game WoW is nowadays and all other games suck. It is really sad how delusional these fanboys are. It is like hanging on your ex because you just can't let go.

WoW is dead game guys, get a fucking clue. Subs are barely at 4 million now. It is done boys. Move on.

[Deleted]

I do not know who posted this because I got it as a message, but I suggest you read it before posting more toxic comments here:

Quote:

"There is a lesson that I learned very quickly when I first began dabbling in the world of Vanilla servers in 2012: One day, you will wake up and all of your work will be gone.

It is inevitable; the illusion that your character will continue to exist forever is not even rational. We spend hours upon hours grinding, farming, and working to improve our characters, as if there is some finishing point. But what is that finishing point, really? Farming Naxx and one-shotting people with your full T3 for all of eternity? Or hopping over to TBC, and essentially starting from scratch?

The truth is that we choose to play this gimmicky, imbalanced, grindy, and occasionally frustrating 11 year old game for a reason. That reason is the journey. People love to say that investing time on a private server is “pointless” or “a waste of time.” I say that’s bullshit. Unless you are among the world’s elite DotA or CS players, then you are “wasting your time” no matter what game you choose to play.

We play for the journey. We play for the experience. We play for the friendships and the rivalries. We play for the drama. We play for the feeling of slaying a new boss and seeing BiS loot drop. We play for the feeling of hitting your PvP rank after weeks of hard work and sleep deprivation.

We play for the feeling of riding into Blackrock Mountain with 39 other people who love this game as much as you do, running beside you and laughing in TeamSpeak. We play for 6 hour battles at world bosses. We play for 100+ player battles over Devilsaur Leathers.

We play for the feeling of venturing out into Azeroth and never knowing what lies around the corner, which is a feeling that Vanilla produces better than any game ever has or ever will.

We play for the journey. That is the reason that players like us choose to replay this severely outdated game on a bootleg server. Because this game has a journey that is truly unlike any other game. This journey is a beautiful thing, and it was more beautiful than ever on Nostalrius.

I will never regret a single one of my 127 days /played here on Nostalrius. Why? Because I wasn’t playing for some imaginary end result. I was playing for the journey. Believe me, I am just as disappointed as anyone else that we will never see Naxx. But disappointment does not have to include regret.

I beg ALL of you, as a community... don’t regret the hours that you spent playing here, cherish them. You got to be a part of something that was truly incredible. Nostalrius was not like other private servers. Nostalrius was legendary. And there will probably never be a private server experience quite like Nostalrius ever again.

Cherish the time you spent here. Cherish the journey. Because in the end, thats what it is really all about."

STOP Quote.

Now this is a hero. My unknown hero. Not the average forum troll who delights in other ppls misfortune. Yeah, Blizz has made the latest content not so appealing to some, but for the love of THRALL stop with the bickering !!! Yes, it's Blizz's fault for releasing crappy content which lowered subs, but all of you who are here behaving like the inquisition, stop it ! You are only hurting yourself in the end. If tools like LFG and LFR began the dissolution of the community -> it's you who are going to deliver the final blow with your shitty attitudes and overgrown egos. For each constructive post there are 50 more that destroy it. Like one of my former GM's love to emphasise -> "Monkeys throwing their feces at the wall will eventually break down the wall". No wonder people log to retail once or twice a week and then go play on private servers.

Every time I log here on the forums I prepare myself for a walk on the "bad side of town". That's why I'm logging less frequently. You really wanna kill your precious MMO ? Keep at it then. Make the forums a place so undesirable and you will succeed. LFR takes care of the rest in-game. Yet here I am, still writing for a game I'm not playing anymore. Still writing because there are people out there, like my unknown hero and many more, who restore my faith in the community. But they are becoming a rare thing, while you, the people who have filled 300 pages with insults and mockery are becoming the vast majority. That is the really sad picture here.

I wanna hug you sir.

[Deficineiron]

That's presuming that you could find 150000 people to pay a $10 dollar a month subscription fee. So about $18 million a year. OK.

Activision/Blizzard's revenue for 2015 was something like 4 and a half billion dollars which roughly calculates out to ~500k an hour. So $18m a year in revenue is basically a day-and-a-half of Activision/Blizzards revenue, 36 hours.

As I've been saying, that looks like a lot of money to us but it really isn't to a company with high fixed costs.

Assuming retention losses of 50% over the first year (optimistic) that's less than a day's revenue. It's too small. That's why they won't do it. It's a charity project for them.

right, i assume you are arguing the % revenue issue for illustration purposes, as you know I am the first to point out kotick doesn't greenlight small stuff. the conversation is predicated on the 'what if.' issue. it is also the equally dubious 'what if' blizzard didn't pervert it into a modern LFR game. I think they would almost have to - their current revenue model for wow depends in part on value-added service sales.

I think the issue here is who owns wow, not would it be profitable. I think it would very, very easily be profitable, just not in a way significant to activision-blizzard. Other older mmos are doing it with small fractions of wow's former and current playerbase.

also you do not seem to have factored in any possibility that retail demand is higher than nost population was. I think that is a given - folkd dont want to deal with priate servers, hadn't heard of this one, or dont like lag from north america, etc.

I wold set an upper range multiples higher than the 150k 10-day actives on nost.

wow is doing about 700-800m worldwide revenue for blizzard now.

[Namalia]

Good for Blizzard. I resubscribed on both of my accounts on retail simply because they shut down Nostalrius and re-affirmed their stance on no legacy servers. You steal, you're eventually going to get burned. All those pirates are whining because their FREE game got taken away.

[Pwellzor]

offcourse everybody would be upset if they took your work and put it online for free. But i still find it a little hypocrit. Like you would pay 800€ photoshop licence for altering your personal photo's to put on instagram. (you could use trial program for 30 day's and then it's done) Still there is no low budget photoshop program.

Then suddenly every one is oké with it , that you use a illegal version. Let the big comany's that use it pay for it ...

WE ALL STEAL intellectual property from random companies. Don't be hypocrit about it.

Is it wrong ? YES

Are we more holy then the pope ? Doubt it

Not being a hypocrite. I'm also not saying "ITS OK BECAUSE THEY DID IT TOO" like a child

[corebit]

Plus Nost alone had HUNDREDS of thousands of people make an account for their server. That obviously shows some huge interest in a vanilla legacy server.

That's not comparable when it's free to make an account, it's akin to those F2P games who brag about having hundreds of millions of accounts, because of course there is no risk/commitment in trying them out.

[Micronetic]

Weirdest thing is that there are more private servers out which are longer playable than Nostalrius and are still up, no bannerino etc.

[MoanaLisa]

Other older mmos are doing it with small fractions of wow's former and current playerbase.

Of course they are but the money they make for that is significant to their bottom line on a percentage basis. It wouldn't be to Blizzard.

A few million dollars looks like one thing to a studio that has say 100m in revenues a year. It's nothing at all for a company that has revenues in the billions.

[Deficineiron]

The only way it would make economic sense for Blizzard is requiring every vanilla server player to have a live WoW subscription and then pay X amount on top of that. That way even if the vanilla servers don't turn out to be as profitable, they still have your sub money to act as cushion.

right. also require the latest expansion box purchased to access the classic server, etc. lots of ways to set it up as a premium service.

[Toxigen]

[Teebone]

You know, I hope Blizzard at least learns something from this. Honestly, WoW is an old game and if anything it needs some user-created content to bring some life back into this. User created scenarios, dungeons and the like could only benefit WoW. If they truly want to protect their IP, why not open up the IP in an official way?

[Deficineiron]

Of course they are but the money they make for that is significant to their bottom line on a percentage basis. It wouldn't be to Blizzard.

A few million dollars looks like one thing to a studio that has say 100m in revenues a year. It's nothing at all for a company that has revenues in the billions.

i am a bit surprised at your reply. that is a HIGHLY selective quotation used in contrary sense from a post that pretty much said what you said, but in more detail and with more specifics.

[Deleted]

On one hand you have an automated and efficient system that also allows you to do something while waiting, on the other you have a manual system that requires you to actively look for people, it's slow and requires you to stay in an area where people are.

Now tell me which one is better? Sure you're probably still going to say the one that takes longer and stops you from doing other things, but i'm pretty sure most people would go with the first one.

I'm not a huge fan of the LFD tool, but I still understand that it's way better than how it was before that. The best would be removing the LFD and instead using the group finder tool and having to manually go to the dungeons.

I understand what you mean, it was hard to get group in vanilla, but because it was hard it was actually very rewarding and execiting. WoD dungeons don't feel rewarding at all, none really even cares if you AFK 80% of the time in dungeon. I would say best model would be somewhere between vanilla and current system, more towards vanilla though.

But there are many things in vanilla that make up for bad group finder system. I like slow progression and world that actually feels like world.

[Ghier]

The key point is, not enough people are trying to give that money to justify the cost.
I'm pretty sure Blizzard loves money way more than you do.
If vanilla servers is as profitable as you say it is, they would have long set those up and running.

It is quite obvious to me that they underestimated the demand. I think a conservative estimate of the active players an official vanilla server would have is 5 to 1 of what Nostalrius had. 150,000 x 5 = 750,000. 750,000 x $15 = $11,250,000 per month. That is just for vanilla. Where do I get the 5 to 1? Blizzard marketing is very powerful, something like this would be shown at Blizzcon and would spread through the internet like wildfire. Everyone that has been wanting to play vanilla for all these years would hear about it. The simple fact that it is official would bring in a lot of people that weren't willing to play on private servers. Also, the latency would be way better for a lot of people, and there would be less bugs. If they offer it WITH the current game; they aren't even competing with themselves. Vanilla and current WoW together for $15/ month would be a great deal, and people would be a lot less likely to unsub. Not to mention if they added BC, WotLK etc at some point.