Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Kyanion]

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.

Of course this is running under the assumption that Nost is being truthful with their numbers. And fuck if anyone can prove or disprove that nugget.

[MarizzaDraenor]

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.

You are raiding on a Monday? Content not cleared yet? Makes sense i guess almost every single decent guild has quited retail by now just a few exceptions left. Gl progressing!

[urasim]

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.

Everquest has been dead for years. It's wasn't ever anything close to the situation WoW is in.

[Kyanion]

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

Yup it just would open yet another can of worms when it comes to PS.

[Djriff]

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.

From a business stand point, I don't think blizzard would ever do it. I'm sure they have certain standards (lol) to putting products out. To the point they would have to perfect everything, test everything internally and not just release it to the masses. A lot of people that don't care for a Vanilla server would whine about the waste of resources being spent towards this endeavor when the current patch of the game is already in a terrible spot. Honestly if blizzard took some queues from Runescape of all games, it would be a huge step in the right direction.

[D3athsting]

Lol @ ppl saying blizz can't put up a vanilla realm because of technical reasons, i tell you this, some years ago i put a vanilla and a tbc server up and running on my home pc (just a 3 days fun) and i know sh** about sql db, (bosses weren't scripted ofc)

[Deleted]

Less than 12 million looks better than what he said. You're not very good at this. Also, everything goes in a decline after some time. This doesn't magically exclude games.

Think of it this way. There was 7 million people at the end of classic, yet classic servers, that are FREE, can't even get close to those numbers.

You're not good at it either. He spins number to make current wow look like the best game. I use a different set of numbers to show current WoW isn't as good.
Everything does go in decline but why did it happen with Cata? Why did the 10 mill from Wod drop down to current numbers this fast? It must be because the game has never been better yeah?

As for your second part, you're comparing apples to oranges. The free server was private, aka illegal, so that pushes people away. It also doesn't have the official Blizzard name to it. Plenty of reasons for it to never, ever be able to reach that 7 million (so the entire "let's compare numbers" debate is incredibly flawed).

But apparently you're good at "this" as you just showed eh?

[Djriff]

Yup it just would open yet another can of worms when it comes to PS.

I don't actually see it being a bad thing. Competition in business is healthy and can promote innovation.

[Wolfheart9]

Of course this is running under the assumption that Nost is being truthful with their numbers. And fuck if anyone can prove or disprove that nugget.

No way in hell 1 server had 150k players. MAYBE pulling a final fantasy of they've had 150k player accounts created, which again, it was free. A lot of folks probably signed up for that, not vanilla.

Also free accounts, easy to open multiple ones per person for multiboxing.

[Kyanion]

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.

And I've heard Nost people say there were features that didn't work properly. So which is it? EVERYTHING worked perfectly fine? I highly doubt it.

[Deleted]

Lol @ ppl saying blizz can't put up a vanilla realm because of technical reasons, i tell you this, some years ago i put a vanilla and a tbc server up and running on my home pc (just a 3 days fun) and i know sh** about sql db, (bosses weren't scripted ofc)

I don't think anyone is saying they can't.
I think most here are arguing they won't.

[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.

Also, another note. There are people here who've admitted to having several active accounts(that count towards that 150k total) that they use for botting and such. There's no telling if that 150k figure is even true, if they'll pay, or if they're even that many unique people playing. There's just no justification here from a business stand point.

[Kyanion]

I played it quite a bit and I honestly didnt have a problem a good 90% of the time, there was quite a few broken things, quests being the main one for me.

I know some abilities were a bit off at times, but as far as im aware they kept fixing such issues.

To summarise: There were issues, and sometimes it would halt you in your tracks, but ultimately it wasnt bad enough to deter from the experience.

So the game had been around a year and had issues 10% of the time? That is pretty brutal considering they are running stuff that was patched/bug fixed a lot back in Vanilla and later.

Abilities were off, so did that mean fight mechanics not work properly sometimes? Could be all sorts of things that would take away from a 'true Vanilla experience' and also point out that those guys wouldn't be capable of running something for Blizzard if Blizz was crazy enough to hire these goons.

[fooliuscaesar13]

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.

The way that I understand it (and I'm sure someone will correct me, because Internet), is that the server-side code is actually an open-sourced framework (MaNGoS usually, but not always) and they go through the game and script out (using Lua, I think) NPC actions / questing / etc, a lot of which is stored in MySql databases.

This is not how Blizzard does it to the best of my knowledge. I want to say they even had a proprietary database engine written also (something about needing faster client/server reads...but I might be dreaming that part up).

So from that point, how Blizzard did it back then could be completely lost to time. Sure - they could use MaNGoS - but I'd be willing to bet there'd be a massive lawsuit if they were found to use that code.

Source? I haz none. Just what I remember reading, except the MaNGoS / WoW emulator stuff - you can google it and check it out. It's pretty slick, from a coding perspective.

[Barkloud]

kind of strange no response from Blizzard. this forum is exploding with threads and posts. the official forums cannot keep up with the deletes about this topic. most major video game magazine, blogs, etc. have written about Nostralius.

still with all of this no word from blizzard. no comment in articles. just strange. imo bad pr move on their end

[Jester Joe]

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.

And is it not feasible for Blizzard to run an emulator of the server themselves though then? I mean, if it works, it works. I don't think many people care about the technical aspect if it works.

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?

I don't know, but neither does anyone else know how many won't pay. But 150k isn't the only amount of players interested in this, it's not as if this is the only private server to exist ever, and that doesn't even include the people like me who would be interested, but don't want to play on a private server.

[Nest]

No way in hell 1 server had 150k players. MAYBE pulling a final fantasy of they've had 150k player accounts created, which again, it was free. A lot of folks probably signed up for that, not vanilla.

Yeah it was 150k accounts.
And I know for a fact that there was a good business on running bots to level characters to 60, and then selling those for either real money or gold on retail realms.

[Deleted]

No way in hell 1 server had 150k players. MAYBE pulling a final fantasy of they've had 150k player accounts created, which again, it was free. A lot of folks probably signed up for that, not vanilla.

Also free accounts, easy to open multiple ones per person for multiboxing.

Nope it was 150k active accounts and 1 mil registered.

[Djriff]

kind of strange no response from Blizzard. this forum is exploding with threads and posts. the official forums cannot keep up with the deletes about this topic. most major video game magazine, blogs, etc. have written about Nostralius.

still with all of this no word from blizzard. no comment in articles. just strange. imo bad pr move on their end

Actually it's probably a good PR move on their end. More towards the side of legal things. What should they say about this?

[Kyanion]

You are raiding on a Monday? Content not cleared yet? Makes sense i guess almost every single decent guild has quited retail by now just a few exceptions left. Gl progressing!

*pats you on the head* Awww aren't you just the cutest little thing. You DO know that some guilds use Monday as a raid night and just don't raid on Tuesday and clear all the content right? LOL and all the 'decent' guilds quit. Suuuuuure they did. You are just so bitter over Blizz taking away your toy that you have to rain on other people's parade. Too bad it does not bother me. I'll go swim around in my gold, do my raids, mess around with pet battles and enjoy the game. You on the other hand get to sit around and hope some PS shows up that is playable and then hope that Blizz does not get wind of it.