Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Tuesdays]

Sure it does.. SURE... IT....DOES... *eyes roll*

Blizzard didn't even bat an eye at losing 5M subs, what makes you think they care about 150k?

[shimerra]

You complained about my methods. Feel free to correct them.

Not how it works. He's not your teacher. Long as the criticism's of the method are valid, and they are, the onus is on you to fix them not be hand held through your ignorance.

[Charge me Doctor]

Now, there are things we don’t like about threat as a mechanic. It’s fairly gamey as game mechanics go and we think there are probably better ways to communicate it to players. There are some mods that do a very credible job given the limited information we provide, but overall we’d like to present threat better since we’re asking you to take it seriously in the PvE game.
-Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft and the skipper of a very nice ship where they serve cute sandwiches with the crust removed. And gin.

I would post the blog itself, but i cannot atm, if someone would like to do that for me i would appreciate it very much. This is just the first blog i could find where it is defined as a mechanic. This is from Ghostcrawler.

Sure, they can call it whatever they want, but if they fail to deliver it to players (fact is, that in modern PvE you simply ignore threat whatsoever, it's irrelevant. In old content you did the same, except after waiting for tank to get initial aggro. Somewhere in wotlk you could overraggro the tank by doing huge DPS (or by tank not doing shit TPS due to lack of expertise of being unlucky with soft cap of expertise) but it was eventually "fixed" by giving all tanks "this ability generates crapton of threat", which made threat irrelevant, again) - then it's not a mechanic.

[Perkunas]

Problem is the server might not be profitable enough to justify them keeping it going.

The same situation could be a reality even on retail.

I think they owe it to the community to give it a shot. If it doesn't pan out they've gained money from subs for x duration prior to the realm going dry.

[Mullet Man]

Not how it works. He's not your teacher. Long as the criticism's of the method are valid, and they are, the onus is on you to fix them not be hand held through your ignorance.

I'm not your teacher either.
As Ielenia said "I'm not going to do the legwork for you. "

[Thanatoss]

I'm not your teacher either.
As Ielenia said "I'm not going to do the legwork for you. "

Exactly. You compared the retention rates to retail and you were told to do equal comparisons for it be to valid

[Tuesdays]

Another cinematic, good watch!

They shouldn't be playing it anyways, it's rated 12+

Honestly though, that was terrible.

[Aituul]

Sure, they can call it whatever they want, but if they fail to deliver it to players (fact is, that in modern PvE you simply ignore threat whatsoever, it's irrelevant. In old content you did the same, except after waiting for tank to get initial aggro. Somewhere in wotlk you could overraggro the tank by doing huge DPS (or by tank not doing shit TPS due to lack of expertise of being unlucky with soft cap of expertise) but it was eventually "fixed" by giving all tanks "this ability generates crapton of threat", which made threat irrelevant, again) - then it's not a mechanic.

Threat was definitely not an irrelevant mechanic. Look at BC tanking , for example. It was highly regarded as being very difficult, mostly attributed to the fact that threat was so difficult to manage. They should also work to improve on the things that would make it irrelevant, instead of removing it outright. I believe the design philosophy of removing things outright, instead of improving on them, ultimately hurt the game more than anything.

[Tuesdays]

I think they owe it to the community to give it a shot. If it doesn't pan out they've gained money from subs for x duration prior to the realm going dry.

They don't owe vanilla crowd anything, they do however owe the WoD player base a whole lot.

[Mullet Man]

Exactly. You compared the retention rates to retail and you were told to do equal comparisons for it be to valid

As Ielenia said "I'm not going to do the legwork for you."
If you don't like my method, you are free to go get the numbers for the comparison you want.

[Tuesdays]

Terribly good! Can't get enough of it, currently in ER sewing my sides together : D

Because you're are in denial, you're actually losing your shit.

[Holtzmann]

That looks like maybe a third rogues and warriors. Lets compare to the live game, as reported on realmpop, and there's a quarter playing hunters and paladins - and that's with more classes.

Also, I barely made level 30 after several months of play. I was still having a good time at that point, there's a lot more people in the live game that are under 10 hours per week than you would think. Other factors - the pve server started in Oct, level 30 is a lot more hours than maybe even max level now, twinks were a bigger thing back then, alt's aren't all at or close to max level, etc, etc, etc....

I think we need more qualified game production experts than the ones we have in this thread.

I think we need people who can contextualize numbers better in this thread, because you're affirming that, in a year, only 6% of characters created in that server made it to level 30 and that's normal. I fail to be convinced by that argument, particularly since you being a slow leveler is anecdotal evidence at best. No amount of twinks and casual players should give you 94% of all characters created in the server below level 30. And by the way, the chart I was using gave us only the stats for the PvP server. The PvE server being new and its population not having time to level up has nothing to do with those numbers.

Also, if your reply to "three classes take up almost 50% of the realm population" is "two classes take up a quarter on Retail!", then you really need a better argument. Warriors, Rogues and Hunters on Nost give you 1 tanking spec and 8 DPS specs taking up 48 to 49% of the population. On Retail, the 4 most popular classes from level 30 onwards are Death Knights (13%), Hunters (11.5%), Paladins (10.2%) and Druids (10%), with about 4 to 5% to spare compared to Warriors, Rogues and Hunters. That's 3 tanking specs, 2 healing specs and 9 DPS specs. While the ideal distribution for a game with 11 classes is 9% for each, Retail's distribution is more balanced than Nost's was. It would be even more so if Death Knights didn't start the game at level 55 (which skews their numbers somewhat since they're such popular alts for people who don't feel like leveling).

[Thanatoss]

As Ielenia said "I'm not going to do the legwork for you."
If you don't like my method, you are free to go get the numbers for the comparison you want.

We weren't the ones comparing it though, you were. I honestly don't give a shit what Wow's was back in 2006. 20% is still not much you can make a business argument for in this day. You know... business, money, profits. The stuff that's important to businesses and shareholders

[Guy4123]

Exactly. You compared the retention rates to retail and you were told to do equal comparisons for it be to valid

Even though it's an unequal comparison with the only data available it's all irrelevant anyway because you people are incorrectly assuming 18.75% retention is BAD.

That's not bad at all for game retention. That's actually very good. I'm not sure what kind of retention numbers you guys are assuming is normal.

[Mullet Man]

We weren't the ones comparing it though, you were. I honestly don't give a shit what Wow's was back in 2006. 20% is still not much you can make a business argument for in this day. You know... business, money, profits. The stuff that's important to businesses and shareholders

You guys are the ones complaining about my comparison numbers and want a different comparison instead.
I'm not stopping you from doing that legwork.

[Holtzmann]

Even though it's an unequal comparison with the only data available it's all irrelevant anyway because you people are incorrectly assuming 18.75% retention is BAD.

That's not bad at all for game retention. That's actually very good. I'm not sure what kind of retention numbers you guys are assuming is normal.

In an MMORPG, a genre that rewards long-term playing, and on a server that people specifically sought out because it was Classic World of Warcraft (with all the baggage that entails) and was known for having a solid community? Yes, I'd consider an 82% turnover in a year to be pretty bad. Particularly with the server demographic issues I talked about in other posts (only 6% of all characters making it to level 30+). That would be an average of 3.18 characters per account, so a lot of those accounts never had a single level 30+ character in them. Say what you will about "it's about the journey, not the destination", but unless the server was populated by chronic altoholics with only two hours a week to play, I feel the number should be considerably higher than 6%.

[Orkwuzhere]

Unfortunately, I think this is how their higher-up's see the issue.

That's Bobby Kotick for you.

[Roadblock]

In an MMORPG, a genre that rewards long-term playing, and on a server that people specifically sought out because it was Classic World of Warcraft (with all the baggage that entails) and was known for having a solid community? Yes, I'd consider an 82% turnover in a year to be pretty bad. Particularly with the server demographic issues I talked about in other posts (only 6% of all characters making it to level 30+). That would be an average of 3.18 characters per account, so a lot of those accounts never had a single level 30+ character in them. Say what you will about "it's about the journey, not the destination", but unless the server was populated by chronic altoholics with only two hours a week to play, I feel the number should be considerably higher than 6%.

You're math illiterate, I don't see how that is our problem.

Originally Posted by DeleteMyAccountMMOCSUX
True.
Nost is a 12 year old version of the game with nothing new to offer and has 18.75% retention.
Retail had an update in 2015, has modern graphics, and a ton of QoL changes. 5% retention.
Not only that, but if they weren't too busy shitposting to read the thread they'd have seen that "legal" F2P games barely even break 6% retention

Originally Posted by Shoopuf
https://www.superdataresearch.com/bl...mmo-retention/


150k out of 800k would be 3 times the average of a f2p mmo at the 1 year mark.

[Guy4123]

In an MMORPG, a genre that rewards long-term playing, and on a server that people specifically sought out because it was Classic World of Warcraft (with all the baggage that entails) and was known for having a solid community? Yes, I'd consider an 82% turnover in a year to be pretty bad. Particularly with the server demographic issues I talked about in other posts (only 6% of all characters making it to level 30+). That would be an average of 3.18 characters per account, so a lot of those accounts never had a single level 30+ character in them. Say what you will about "it's about the journey, not the destination", but unless the server was populated by chronic altoholics with only two hours a week to play, I feel the number should be considerably higher than 6%.

Your personal opinion on what are or aren't good retention numbers doesn't matter. What matters is what the retention numbers for other games is and how it compares to them.

It being on an illegal private server worked way more against it than it being free did too. Who wants to invest 100+ hours on a private server when they can and routinely do go poof.

[Deficineiron]

Your comparison still fails. Since Nost is 'Vanilla WoW', you should compare it to WoW's retention rate in its first year. You know, equivalent comparisons? WoW has been around for almost twelve years, while Nostalrius has been around for barely a year. Compare the two retention rates of the same period of their lives. If you want to compare WoD, find a WoD pirate server to compare it to.

I don;'t think it is in any way established that the 100m number even includes china. Typically blizzard does NOT includes the9/netease in their 'numbers.'

- - - Updated - - -

Silly fuckers eh? What do they know about running a gaming company.

running a gaming company is only tangentially related to making games for gamers. Activision-blizzard has been very successful at one of those.