Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Holtzmann]

How are they suppose to do the math to figure out how many people are interested in paying to play vanilla again without actually polling anyone?

They have absolutely no way of knowing. The only math they can do is figure out what they need to be profitable.

And forgive me if I find Blizzard's math a bit...well, bad. But remember the WoD launch fiasco. They couldn't even prepare the servers for the correct amount of players.

Market research is a very interesting thing. Also, they have internal metrics, and... well, when you unsubscribe they do ask you why you left. :P

As for the WoD launch fiasco, just look back to any launch they've had in the past six years. None of them has been seamless, because it makes no sense to prepare yourself for a burst of 100,000 concurrent players when your server is only going to hold 20,000 players at peak times. Once the amount of people trying to play the game stabilizes, you're left with an enormous amount of computing power that's effectively wasted. So they deliberately take the PR hit during the first few days of an expansion, because the problem solves itself with time.

It's like putting six front doors in your house that allow for 12 people to go through at once, when 99,99% of the time only one of the doors is going to be used. Sure, you could do it, but then you'd have a lot of expensive doors that never get used, and you still have to pay for maintenance for them.

[Akka]

A Vanilla and TBC legacy server should be fairly non problematic to implement, providing people don't expect any modern improvements WoW has currently.

In fact, adding any kind of modern "improvements" would be extremely divisive to such community, considering it's the shift such "improvements" have caused which is the very reason why they don't like the game today and prefers the one of yesterday.

[Jester Joe]

To be fair no one expected that many players, even the players themselves. I don't think any company would be ready for that explosive amount of users. I think it was 4 millions increase on release, maybe 3? That's insanely high, if you ask me. Although a lot of the problems on release were more than just handling players as a total, a lot of quests were breaking the servers.

It was insanely high, yes, around 3-4 million of an increase.

But they still knew the amount pre-ordered at the very least, but apparently there was a "spike in sales" at launch day or something like that according to them.

[Kyanion]

This has been discussed before but here we go again. You want a TBC server, others want Wrath, some vanilla. Does each region get one? PVP or PVE? Both? What about RP's? What version of the expansion?

I know I'd want a TBC server over worthless ass Vanilla. Better be PVE too because fuck PVP. I want 2 versions of TBC though, one that progresses patches a bit faster than Wow's cycle and then another one that has everything unlocked and is near the end of TBC's cycle.

[Akka]

I agree, but I want to see legacy crash and burn.

Spoken like the true bitter, mean-spirited selfish killjoys the anti-Vanilla crowd is at heart, behind the veneer of honesty they try to put on

[Ielenia]

You completely miss the point, on top of being completely wrong about the technical aspect...

Of course I'm wrong. And the only reason I'm wrong is because you said I'm wrong. Of course. (/sarcasm)

As for your point, I imagine it was companies not always making good decisions, and not always 'knowing' what the customer wants? Am I correct?

[PenguinChan]

I had not problems at launch myself. There was also 10 million+ subs at launch, I know some people got it horrible but I think for most it went well.

You must've played a few days after launch, if not a week after. Constant crashes, DC's, and servers being down en masse because of over loaded servers (whether through intentional DDoS or just plain player count). I really doubt you're telling the truth.

It was insanely high, yes, around 3-4 million of an increase.

But they still knew the amount pre-ordered at the very least, but apparently there was a "spike in sales" at launch day or something like that according to them.

That would fuck with any predictions, certainly. And the above is mentioned, as the influx of players (and possible DDoS) made the first few days almost unplayable.

[Adlian]

Decided to throw my opinion into a video as well.

That video pretty much sums all. Fully agree.

[Deleted]

No, I think they're not gonna do it at all, but I'm not sure how having a working server is a bad thing.



How are they suppose to do the math to figure out how many people are interested in paying to play vanilla again without actually polling anyone?

They have absolutely no way of knowing. The only math they can do is figure out what they need to be profitable.

And forgive me if I find Blizzard's math a bit...well, bad. But remember the WoD launch fiasco. They couldn't even prepare the servers for the correct amount of players.

Yeah I agree. I really think a Jagex style public vote of interest would be nice, or any poll at all. It would give a real word of how many are interested in it. As it is Nostalria gives an image that it's really in-demand.

[urasim]

Spoken like the true bitter, mean-spirited selfish killjoys the anti-Vanilla crowd is at heart, behind the veneer of honesty they try to put on

Not all of us are against legit classic servers. Some of us just want to see thieves punished.

[Darkeon]

To be fair no one expected that many players, even the players themselves. I don't think any company would be ready for that explosive amount of users. I think it was 4 millions increase on release, maybe 3? That's insanely high, if you ask me. Although a lot of the problems on release were more than just handling players as a total, a lot of quests were breaking the servers.

While I admit that it was a crazy jump that no one would have expected - I'd say that Blizzard, with all the data and information they have available to them via Pre-orders and the likes, should have had a better idea of what to expect.

[Kyanion]

I think this has been mentioned multiple times now (And by me), they have had no reason to. Even if they did the only time they even revealed that they considered this openly was back in 2008. To my knowledge there has been no public polls about this, nor did they even admit to looking for legacy servers through any public path. So it would've been kept secret, controlled tests -- all of which are worthless by now.

The question was answered as recently as November at Blizzcon. They were asked if they'd do retro/classic servers and were told no they are not doing it at this time.

[Deleted]

This has been discussed before but here we go again. You want a TBC server, others want Wrath, some vanilla. Does each region get one? PVP or PVE? Both? What about RP's? What version of the expansion?

This is an excellent point as well, talking about it in guild a guildie mentioned he plays on a Wrath private server, they're released ulduar in 2 weeks or something and he's looking forward to it.

But everything is on the ICC patch balancing already and has been since it was launched. If memory serves me rightly, back in Naxx armor pen was king for quite a few specs and in Ulduar it was removed. It's not even close to how it actually was at the time in that regard.

[Deleted]

Yeah I agree. I really think a Jagex style public vote of interest would be nice, or any poll at all. It would give a real word of how many are interested in it.

It wouldn't be adequate because that number wouldn't necessarily show if people would commit longterm, or in fact, if people are really telling the truth.

There's an old saying: put your money where your mouth is.

[Unlimited Anza]

That video pretty much sums all. Fully agree.

Nice video, good job.

Thanks, I didn't dive into it but I was thinking more about staggering the release of the older content midway between patches so once people are tired of current content until the next patch hits legacy servers would have something new to do as well.

[Ghier]

I think this has been mentioned multiple times now (And by me), they have had no reason to. Even if they did the only time they even revealed that they considered this openly was back in 2008. To my knowledge there has been no public polls about this, nor did they even admit to looking for legacy servers through any public path. So it would've been kept secret, controlled tests -- all of which are worthless by now.

It is important to note that any poll on their official forums or a fansite like this one would have significant bias, because most of the people on them are still interested in the current game. 100% of the people on their official forums are current subscribers even. People that have been long gone, but would be interested would likely never hear about the poll.

[Froggy]

Yeah I agree. I really think a Jagex style public vote of interest would be nice, or any poll at all. It would give a real word of how many are interested in it. As it is Nostalria gives an image that it's really in-demand.

This would be amazing if Blizzard would do an official poll.

[Jester Joe]

They have all the data they need over 95 million accounts have closed. Even if .1%(POINT ONE PERCENT) of those people who closed their accounts said they wanted classic server, it's all the data they'll ever need to create one. They've also talked with thousands of players and they can see the success of private servers. 150k being the biggest doesn't bode well for convincing anyone.

You're assuming that people actually quit because of there being no legacy servers, and that people actually cared enough to fill out the survey at the end.

I had not problems at launch myself. There was also 10 million+ subs at launch, I know some people got it horrible but I think for most it went well.

3-4 hour queues for a majority of servers just to crash and get kicked back out was "for the most part, going well"?

MoP I'd say went well for the most part, and that was even including the alliance helicopter garbage.

But Blizzard never actually had to come out and say they had to readjust the servers for the influx.

Market research is a very interesting thing. Also, they have internal metrics, and... well, when you unsubscribe they do ask you why you left. :P

As for the WoD launch fiasco, just look back to any launch they've had in the past six years. None of them has been seamless, because it makes no sense to prepare yourself for a burst of 100,000 concurrent players when your server is only going to hold 20,000 players at peak times. Once the amount of people trying to play the game stabilizes, you're left with an enormous amount of computing power that's effectively wasted. So they deliberately take the PR hit during the first few days of an expansion, because the problem solves itself with time.

It's like putting six front doors in your house that allow for 12 people to go through at once, when 99,99% of the time only one of the doors is going to be used. Sure, you could do it, but then you'd have a lot of expensive doors that never get used, and you still have to pay for maintenance for them.

Like I said above, the unsub thing isn't really the same as a survey with the point of trying to figure out the interest, and none have been "seamless" sure, but none were to the scale of WoD, where Blizzard flat out said "We didn't expect this many sales", which is my point. That Blizzard themselves was not able to tell the amount of interest in their newest expansion. Let's not try moving away from that, I know I get sucked into debating other points rather easily, but the launch itself is rather irrelevant, it's the fact that Blizzard did not expect it to be so popular.

[MarizzaDraenor]

Which was illegal, the end.

Life is a tad more complicated then darkness and light young paladin.

[Kyanion]

Nope, I got that garrison bug, took like an hour break, came back and I was fine. I know people had horror stories but I was fine. Played on Greymane-US.

Some servers were bad for as far as 3 days after launch, I know my home server was a disaster for many of the players. Some were able to quest fine and some were stuck in lag hell, couldn't connect, crashes etc. It got fixed fairly quickly but it was true that the launch of WoD was pretty bad for a fair number of players.