Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Socialhealer]

I don't. I just specifically remembering it because my brothers and I were laughing about how inflated WoWs quarterly numbers are based off actual people playing.

such graphs don't include non max level players, probably some chinese accounts that pay to play not a monthly sub etc.

should we not count max level players on nost, or was everyone level 60 there?

[Eliseus]

You should be cautioned that our news polls come with caveats and that we don't usually capture all active accounts everywhere on the planet.

It wasn't a poll. It was data ripped from the armory based off activity over the last 30 days.

And aww okay, just saw the edit.

[Saeran]

because investing all their time and rescources into one product automatically means it's going to be good right? WoD is a good example of that even though they say their development team has never been bigger.

Better to invest time in an expansion to improve on the mistakes that they have made, than waste money and resources on something that had no long-term proof that it would ever have a commercial justification to warrant such a risk.

[aejt]

such graphs don't include non max level players, probably some chinese accounts that pay to play not a monthly sub etc.

should we not count max level players on nost, or was everyone level 60 there?

There was obviously a much bigger portion of the community below 60 on Nost compared to 100 in retail. You know why? Because level 100 is doable within 1/3rd of the time it takes to get 60 on Nost.

Either way, you're right, the only way that kind of information would be useful was if the same test was run during the last official report from Blizzard, that way you would've been able to compare it.

[MoanaLisa]

It wasn't a poll. It was data ripped from the armory based off activity over the last 30 days.

Sorry, that's what I meant and have changed the original post. Same thing applies. We don't capture every active account.

[Eliseus]

Better to invest time in an expansion to improve on the mistakes that they have made, than waste money and resources on something that had no long-term proof that it would ever have a commercial justification to warrant such a risk.

I feel part of the issue here is that people feel there can't be some coexistence. If Blizzard for example did bring in 150k subs, even for a month, there is without a doubt no reason they couldn't afford a handful of employees specifically directed to maintaining whatever type of server these would be.

[Darkeon]

The illegal server was not run on the same hardware Blizzard uses.
[..]

True.
Official Blizzard servers would probably crash if there was an insane amount of people in one place, similar to those "Nostralius closing" images :P

[Gadzooks]

I honestly think the "sponsoring/partnership method" would be the best solution for this, it would solve atleast a few problems;

Blizzard making Legacy Servers themselves is not profitable:
As previously stated, and we cant state this as a fact, but we can hardly assume it simply from Blizzard being a profit-oriented company and them not doing it, if they just let the current nost staff continue their work (and they stated themselves that they would continue it without charge) it wouldnt cost them anything, simple as that.

Blizzard has to defend their IP/Copyright:
If they accept a partnership with said non-profit organisation (for letting them use the warcraft IP) it would mean they dont have to defend their IP/(having to)sue them for using that.

New players could be confused by wich the "real" WoW is:
That along with having a guarantee of Blizzards quality is very hard, one idea could be just labeling it as a "new" or different product, but thats highly unlikely.


Now Blizzard could ask for certain things in this partnership, from having to pay for the license, to battle.net integration or enforcing the ToS/EULA, wich in return would force the Staff indirectly to taking donations or straight out selling a subscription/access.
The only risk i see for Blizzard here is definetly the Reputation along with the loss of retail-subs, they could just ask for a higher amount of money for the license but if a new player trys out the "other" WoW and gets frustrated its unlikely that he will try out Retail and vice versa, wich could lead to an even higher price for the license.

All of that seems to be more of a risk of reputation for Blizzard, wich they probably cant take at this moment, especially right after the movie. If anyone sees more Flaws in this theory feel free to add them or critize it as whole.

TL;DR: a Partnership between Blizzard and Nostalrius, even if it would help to solve some problems, is highly unlikely at the current moment imo.

The only way this could happen is if Blizzard gave copies of their servers and tech to licensees, and they do that already, it's called "Wow Asia". Just getting the paperwork for a deal like that takes years of management and lawyers to hammer out.

There is no way they're going to hand their trade secrets over to a small group of fans. It's as good as posting their source code for the entire game and servers on SourceForge. Highly unlikely? How about "Never fucking happening."

[Saeran]

I feel part of the issue here is that people feel there can't be some coexistence. If Blizzard for example did bring in 150k subs, even for a month, there is without a doubt no reason they couldn't afford a handful of employees specifically directed to maintaining whatever type of server these would be.

The problem is that it couldn't be just a 'handful of people', and see what Gadzooks said above.

[Akka]

He's not completely wrong though, it's not that much work for Blizzard to do if they'd be okay with using the old client without updating it to use b.net and such.

They managed to do it with Warcraft and Diablo, didn't they ?

[Thanatoss]

True.
Official Blizzard servers would probably crash if there was an insane amount of people in one place, similar to those "Nostralius closing" images :P

True. It only took about 6 million people logging into D3 on launch night to break the servers

[SoulSoBreezy]

Well considering the success is subjective (for the idea of this servers intended purpose, it was), this is completely contrary to Blizzards fear people would log on for 2 weeks and leave.

Guess you have a point, but I'd still put self-sustainability up there as a measure of success.
As for blizzard's fear? I'll need help understanding that.

[Eliseus]

The problem is that it couldn't be just a 'handful of people', and see what Gadzooks said above.

No, it absolutely can just be a handful of people. Also, Gadzooks has been wrong in every post, so it isn't good to reference him. If Blizzard had to recreate an entirely new MMO, I agree, it couldn't be just a handful of people. Well, a handful of people to create modern day quality in a reasonable time frame. They don't have to do that though. Think about legos for example. You would essentially just need a handful of people to make sure it is all being put together properly and maintained. Sadly though I can't say with 100% certainty how this would turn out, but seeing and reading what other MMOs have had to do to recreate the same, I don't know how Blizzard is magically different than the rest. It's success doesn't somehow change the process.

[Domcho]

You think you do but you don't - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuOY...&nohtml5=False

[Camthur]

Blizzard is going easy on those people. They're lucky I don't run Blizzard. If it were me, I'd sue whatever provider is hosting illegal servers to make them give me the IP addresses of everybody who accessed an illegal version of WoW. Then I'd hunt down each individual person's internet provider info and send a big fat legal letter to that company. By the time I was finished, anybody who logged on to an illegal version of WoW wouldn't have an internet service provider.

It wouldn't even matter whether I had a legal justification to go after each individual person. Who are these companies going to side with, a multi-billion dollar corporation with vast resources and legal teams or a bunch of criminals?

[aejt]

True. It only took about 6 million people logging into D3 on launch night to break the servers

I remember the server being unplayable during Wintergrasp in WotLK when there were 200-300 players fighting at the same time. Nostalrius didn't reach similar lag until at least 2000+ players stacked in Durotar/Dun Morogh spamming AoEs. Then again, WotLK was many years ago and hardware has improved, but the hardware Blizzard had access to back then should definitely be comparable to what they hosted Nost on.

Blizzard is going easy on those people. They're lucky I don't run Blizzard. If it were me, I'd sue whatever provider is hosting illegal servers to make them give me the IP addresses of everybody who accessed an illegal version of WoW. Then I'd hunt down each individual person's internet provider info and send a big fat legal letter to that company. By the time I was finished, anybody who logged on to an illegal version of WoW wouldn't have an internet service provider.

It wouldn't even matter whether I had a legal justification to go after each individual person. Who are these companies going to side with, a multi-billion dollar corporation with vast resources and legal teams or a bunch of criminals?

And that's why you'll never run a huge company.

[Froggy]

Blizzard is going easy on those people. They're lucky I don't run Blizzard. If it were me, I'd sue whatever provider is hosting illegal servers to make them give me the IP addresses of everybody who accessed an illegal version of WoW. Then I'd hunt down each individual person's internet provider info and send a big fat legal letter to that company. By the time I was finished, anybody who logged on to an illegal version of WoW wouldn't have an internet service provider.

It wouldn't even matter whether I had a legal justification to go after each individual person. Who are these companies going to side with, a multi-billion dollar corporation with vast resources and legal teams or a bunch of criminals?

I bet you fantasize about corporations while you have sex.

[Thanatoss]

I remember the server being unplayable during Wintergrasp in WotLK when there were 200-300 players fighting at the same time. Nostalrius didn't reach similar lag until at least 2000+ players stacked in Durotar/Dun Morogh spamming AoEs. Then again, WotLK was many years ago and hardware has improved, but the hardware Blizzard had access to back then should definitely be comparable to what they hosted Nost on.



And that's why you'll never run a huge company.

Server/client lag also has a lot to do with everything the servers do on the backend that you don't see. Warden is one thing that comes to mind which i highly doubt Nos had anything remotely similar running for their emulation

[SoulSoBreezy]

You don't know what you're talking about. You got the server cost wrong, and they rarely had problems reaching the cost in the last couple of months. It's funny how everyone here who dislike Nostalrius keeps spewing made up bullshit.

Here's another great example:

Yeah, numbers were off, but I'm talking about what was stated here. https://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=37403
I think it was darth who gave a basic breakdown of the costs of running a server like this with a paid team. It's pretty easy to drum up a narrative based on 150K active users who threw down considerably less than $15 a month.

[Deleted]

The larger question is how much of that huge chunk will be fine with a monthly subscription and will stay for a year versus moving off onto another free private server. I get it that it's not in your interest to see both sides of this but until you acknowledge that there is another side that involves how businesses run you and others will never make a compelling case for Blizzard to change their mind.

Well you're out in the blue too. Nost had over 150.000 Active players and you're saying that a lot of these people wouldn't play there if they had to pay a fee and that is most likely correct.

However... IF Blizzard announced a LEGIT server on their website, battle.net and started to advertise it you can sit tight damn safe that over 150K+ Players would AT LEAST check it out and be willing to pay a fee and a lot more would not doubt paying a fee for a LEGIT/Safe server made by blizzard.

It would attract more players and still get them more money in then you think.