Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Deleted]

Oh please, no one ever advocates for the Roleplayers - now suddenly everyone is worried about them. As a roleplayer myself, Blizzard has neglected Roleplaying to the point of it being mostly Guild-Based and with little to no interactions to the outside world. I find myself, having playing in a RP-PvP realm most of my time on WoW, to be severely outnumbered by people who have no interest in RP - and by those who actively, publicly mock it. And no one, nor Blizzard, does anything about it.

Safe to assume that, for an experimental phase of implementation of said Legacy Servers, merely a PvP and a PvE (as both servers types massively clash in terms of different in playstyle) would be more than enough to sustain the population.

You and I both know, that in the hypothetical situation that blizzard would create legacy servers. People will complain that there are no RP or RPPVP server, because blizzard is always doing something wrong.

[Kyanion]

Which I still don't understand how some random people can managed to get it working fine then with some hiccups possibly, yet Blizzard says no.

What I want to know (and still haven't had answered) is just how many/what kind of hiccups there were. I've heard a number of things through this thread and it sounds like there was a fair amount of things that didn't work properly and thus wouldn't be a true Vanilla experience for people that actually played during that time.

[Jester Joe]

Absolutely different implementation, hence it's called emulator.

I'm not quite sure how that changes that it's still running and working. It would be like calling Nintendo out for having GBA games on the 3DS run through an emulator.

People are willing to put up with a lot more when its free.

Doesn't change my point though that a small group of people can get it done, so Blizzard should be able to do it even better.

What I want to know (and still haven't had answered) is just how many/what kind of hiccups there were. I've heard a number of things through this thread and it sounds like there was a fair amount of things that didn't work properly and thus wouldn't be a true Vanilla experience for people that actually played during that time.

Honestly, I have no idea either.

I'm just assuming there, it doesn't seem uncommon for Private servers to have issues, but I've never played on one personally so I don't know.

Then again, I find it a bit funny to claim that people would forgive more if it's free, yet Vanilla had boats sailing through landmasses apparently during the opening of AQ.

[Alyxanna]

Which I still don't understand how some random people can managed to get it working fine then with some hiccups possibly, yet Blizzard says no.

Because Blizzard isn't going to start to piece it together from an emulator that was designed to enable illegal private servers.

[MarizzaDraenor]

Oh boy a tribute! Thanks Nost for hosting an illegal server so I could play WoW for free! You guys were awesome! *eyeroll*

Dont be jelly cause you haven't seen so many people since Cata launch.

We are still awesome just waiting for the dust to clear before we reroll.

More options available also now! And all this thanks to Nost <3

[Kyanion]

The Nostalrius team has offered to work with Blizz on this... for free.

And if Blizzard worked with people who were running an illegal server there would be a freaking firestorm of criticism and rightly so.

[urasim]

I'm not quite sure how that changes that it's still running and working. It would be like calling Nintendo out for having GBA games on the 3DS run through an emulator.



Doesn't change my point though that a small group of people can get it done, so Blizzard should be able to do it even better.

They can do it, but the cost of it isn't worth it. There's more to it than what you might be thinking.

[Jester Joe]

Because Blizzard isn't going to start to piece it together from an emulator that was designed to enable illegal private servers.

And why not? I don't see any reason to refuse aside from maybe some form of pride or something.

[Djriff]

I'm failing to see how archived patch data can be considered an emulator. It's literally snapshot of wow at the current patch.

[Kyanion]

Dont be jelly cause you haven't seen so many people since Cata launch.

We are still awesome just waiting for the dust to clear before we reroll.

More options available also now! And all this thanks to Nost <3

Seen so many people since Cata launch? What is that supposed to be some sort of fucked up badge of honor. Wow grats you had a ton of people on the screen and lag ruled the day. Throw a party or something. While you wait on the dust to clear I'll be going to raid tonight in my fully functional WoW. Good luck on your 'options' until Blizz just shuts down the next server.

[Mrbubbles17]

When you look at photos of large groups of players having fun on Nost, and then ghost towns in retail, that's the problem. Retail is designed so that even with a population of millions, you feel isolated and alone and everything is automated and streamlined so you never need to talk to anyone. In Nost, you had maybe 15k players but there was a community. And that caused Nost to start growing like a weed.

You are completely missing the point of what Nost accomplished and why. You are making the same error Wildstar made. Wildstar thought the "secret sauce" was a much more difficult game, so they made a harder game and also made it completely antisocial and it failed.

I look at the astounding growth of Nost and use that as evidence that, if Blizz just returned the strong social tools to the game, Wow would grow back to 10 million subs, heck I believe 20 million subs could be hit.

I couldn't agree more with this. What Vanilla WoW and TBC offered were communities, group and social play. None of that is available with the intense amount of phasing and queuing up dungeons in today's retail version.

Look, I'm a HUGE fan of this game overall and a HUGE fan of Blizzard as an organization and what they've been able to accomplish since the beginning. And as much as I loved the experience I had in Vanilla WoW and TBC, I don't think the masses want to go back to the same content that existed in Vanilla WoW. However, I think the Nostalrius experiment certainly proved that there is an outcry for a sense of community in this game again. People want to log on to this game to go on an adventure with friends and to overcome a difficult objective with a group of individuals and feel a sense of progression. Players are longing for the day that they can log in and organize a group themselves to tackle a certain boss, raid, elite quest, or world event that makes them feel like they are moving forward with their toons.

The problem lies with their current formula for progression which becomes more repetitive than anything else: "Normal, Heroic and Mythic." Before the progression lied in creating a more difficult and diverse raid than the one that was released prior. Now you are playing the same raid over and over in the form of 3 different difficulties which doesn't feel like progression. It becomes repetitive and all you're doing is screwing around with numbers to make things more "difficult" - however the challenges are the same.

I don't think legacy servers will ever exist. However I hope that this "hiccup" in Blizzard's career is a learning lesson for the development team and that they move this game in the right direction again and make it the legendary game it once was.

[Deleted]

And if Blizzard worked with people who were running an illegal server there would be a freaking firestorm of criticism and rightly so.

Well that's literally what Everquest did. And they were accepted with joy. Reading about it, the project even seemed very similar to what Nost was.

[Jester Joe]

They can do it, but the cost of it isn't worth it. There's more to it than what you might be thinking.

I'm thinking that if one private server can get 150k players, there's enough demand spread out among the rest and those players to play the game still.

Whether or not the cost is worth it depends on how much they're willing to pay to play the Vanilla servers again, but if a group of people can keep one server running for 150k people with their spare money and donations I think was mentioned, Blizzard should be able to easily.

[urasim]

And if Blizzard worked with people who were running an illegal server there would be a freaking firestorm of criticism and rightly so.

Would also encourage others to create a private server in hopes of Blizzard hiring them.

[Holtzmann]

That's what I mean though, it doesn't seem like it's honestly that hard for Blizzard to get the code again.

Unless they don't want to resort to that because people will laugh if they found out Blizzard got their code back from private servers.

Jester, the private realms don't run on Classic server code. They run on an emulator, using assets extracted from the Classic game client. It's close, but not quite, and it's still full of bugs and incomplete things that the people running the private servers have to script themselves.

To run a proper World of Warcraft server you really need the kind of set-up Blizzard used back in the day. Which was made for a very specific hardware and network configuration. Trying to run the same code Blizzard used back in the day on a machine today would probably result in things breaking, hence why I keep saying the server code would have to be rewritten pretty much from scratch. Libraries, tools and even the programming languages and patterns have evolved in the past 12 years. It really is a lot more work than people expect.

[Kyanion]

How, how great of them!

Those guys are fucking heroes! Man just don't give up on your dreams okay? Break some laws, fuck it, you are doing it for the PEOPLE. Then when the MAN gets you down just turn it around and say "Hey man, it is a passion project, we'll help you...for FREE" and all is forgiven and gold rains down from the heavens and world peace happens...or something like that.

[urasim]

I'm thinking that if one private server can get 150k players, there's enough demand spread out among the rest and those players to play the game still.

Whether or not the cost is worth it depends on how much they're willing to pay to play the Vanilla servers again, but if a group of people can keep one server running for 150k people with their spare money and donations I think was mentioned, Blizzard should be able to easily.

Out of 150k people playing for free.. How many do you think will pay for it? How much do you think is enough to cover the costs of all that work Blizzard will have to do?

[Deleted]

And why not? I don't see any reason to refuse aside from maybe some form of pride or something.

Ive seen this a few times, people think because its made for a private server its shittly made the phrase "duct taped together" comes up.

The fact that its perfectly functional, is aparently irrelevant.

If its not coded by blizzard its a buggy mess of crap that blizzard would need to spend vast amounts of resources to shore up and make "proper".

The fact that it demonstrably works is aparently irrelevant.

[Gib Lover]

And if Blizzard worked with people who were running an illegal server there would be a freaking firestorm of criticism and rightly so.

Why? Antivirus companies hire people that write viruses and malware all the time.

[Kyanion]

Well that's literally what Everquest did. And they were accepted with joy. Reading about it, the project even seemed very similar to what Nost was.

And Everquest is a far different beast from WoW, much much easier to run/host it because of how ancient the game is. Also by the time project 99 rolled around Everquest was free to play I believe.

Also don't ignore the fact that EQ did time-locked servers however they put THAT aspect of the game behind a pay wall. So yeah....