Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Deleted]

I am real, last time they were around 5.5 million before they stopped with the reports.

But let's play it your way, ok, let's assume they are down to 4million. Akka estimation is still around 80-100 million vanilla-tbc players.
That's not being real. Is actually being delusional.

See, this is the amount of intellect we see on these forums. Nowhere he said Vanilla-TBC players, he said ex-WoW players. Now he can easily back up his statement, because Blizzard has published the amount of created accounts quite a few times. So there are indeed that many ex-players.

[Deleted]

I agree that it wasn't perfect. It was more balanced than Vanilla at least. It is why I'm leery of retro realms because so many classes weren't balanced very well. I mean look at Nost with the huge amount of warriors for an example.

Indeed.

If i was running a private server in vanilla or TBC i'd do something about class balance as one of the first things. But i'm only really interested in PvE and i guess most people on private servers are interested in the "adventure of leveling in vanilla" or some such shit

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See, this is the amount of intellect we see on these forums. Nowhere he said Vanilla-TBC players, he said ex-WoW players. Now he can easily back up his statement, because Blizzard has published the amount of created accounts quite a few times. So there are indeed that many ex-players.

Quite a few of those accounts are multiboxers or people who bhought new accounts over time.

So not really

[Byronorpheus]

They have to protect their IP, that is why he called it 'protecting their business'. You have to try and protect your IP or you could risk losing it. If Blizzard did nothing EVER and just let any and all private realms go, what is to stop them from having a free running version on the current patches. Hey because Blizzard does nothing it MUST be okay. In that hypothetical situation, who would pay for WoW if free servers NEVER had a risk of shutting down.

Probably about 5.6 million people.

[Kyanion]

Indeed.

If i was running a private server in vanilla or TBC i'd do something about class balance as one of the first things. But i'm only really interested in PvE and i guess most people on private servers are interested in the "adventure of leveling in vanilla" or some such shit

To each their own I guess, I mean it seems PvP is sought after as well, nostalgia for early AV. I'd say Tarren Mill vs Southshore but I think PS have BGs open fairly early so who knows if that area is like it was. I mean if they want a slow grind in levelling + questing to get small rank ups on abilities every couple levels I'm not one to judge them for it.

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Probably about 5.6 million.

Most of those private servers of even near current content don't even work. There are many many issues that those realms have to deal with. Maybe it is one reason why Vanilla is so popular is that it is easier to get everything working.

[AeneasBK]

I agree that it wasn't perfect. It was more balanced than Vanilla at least. It is why I'm leery of retro realms because so many classes weren't balanced very well. I mean look at Nost with the huge amount of warriors for an example.

Genuienly think the large number of warriors is simply because it is well documented and recorded that if you want to tank you MUST play a warrior. That and the fact that 100% of your players can't play one of the classes, I'm not surprised the popultion spread is where it's at.

I'm not sure what there being 20% warriors is so bad in and of itself.

[Deleted]

To each their own I guess, I mean it seems PvP is sought after as well, nostalgia for early AV. I'd say Tarren Mill vs Southshore but I think PS have BGs open fairly early so who knows if that area is like it was. I mean if they want a slow grind in levelling + questing to get small rank ups on abilities every couple levels I'm not one to judge them for it.

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Most of those private servers of even near current content don't even work. There are many many issues that those realms have to deal with. Maybe it is one reason why Vanilla is so popular is that it is easier to get everything working.

That and nostalgia most likely

[Mosotti]

I think a lot of us get that but the point of all this was proof that there is a market for it and Blizzard ignores that.

It really isn't any market, compared to the effort needed to create and maintain those servers. There won't be 100,000 people willing to pay a subscription, no fucking way. But even ignoring that, there are a lot of other issues associated with legacy servers, for example the content consumption speed. Now let's say that Blizzard opens up many vanilla servers due to the "great demand". What will happen? Well, those people have already played on multiple private servers and they will consume the content in no time, because the server is at the latest patch, with much better gear that was available when WoW started and also people are much more experienced in raiding.

Creating "progressive" servers like Nost won't happen because it's too much work to do it properly, and Nost didn't, having shit gear from earlier patches on the latest client. So they will have to somehow release it as a new server at the latest patch, which I think I've extremely pessimistic to assume that it won't be cleared in 5-6 months. If Blizzard artificially delays content, people will stop playing or start bitching that there's no content or both.

There's a lot of retarded bullshit about vanilla, like "man, in those they it took MONTHS to level". I did not play retail vanilla so of course I tried to check that on a 1x private server. It took me under 7 (SEVEN) days /played to get to level 60. And that was because I also stopped to mine and pick flowers and shit. Now it's true that if you only play 1 hour per day it will actually take you 6 months to get to level 60, but really...

Then there's the population issue, let's say they open n servers and they are all full and nice in the first week, the people start giving up and the servers become desolate. What happens then? Server merges? Nost was not a normal server, I would call it retarded. It had a population that WoW was not designed for, and it was actually pretty fucking impossible to level, hence the miriad of qq threads on the forums. I still remember the advice people would get "find a quiet spot and grind". Yeah, that's exactly how WoW was intended to be played lol. Blizzard would never make a server with 3-4 times the maximum population. You will either end up on a shit server or have to deal with a queue.

But the real issue is that pretty fast vanilla would be consumed and people would not be willing to pay for virtually "nothing to do"...

[Deleted]

Genuienly think the large number of warriors is simply because it is well documented and recorded that if you want to tank you MUST play a warrior. That and the fact that 100% of your players can't play one of the classes, I'm not surprised the popultion spread is where it's at.

I'm not sure what there being 20% warriors is so bad in and of itself.

Being a fury warrior was one of the coolest thing in late vanilla though. Your dps was so much better then the rest

[AeneasBK]

Most of those private servers of even near current content don't even work. There are many many issues that those realms have to deal with. Maybe it is one reason why Vanilla is so popular is that it is easier to get everything working.

I thought it was reported in this thread that it is infact much easier to emulate post 3.0.1 stuff, and that's why Nost producing a closely Blizz-like experience was so touted. By many account there are shedloads more WotLK PS out there making bank, than there are Vanilla ones.

[Kyanion]

Genuienly think the large number of warriors is simply because it is well documented and recorded that if you want to tank you MUST play a warrior. That and the fact that 100% of your players can't play one of the classes, I'm not surprised the popultion spread is where it's at.

I'm not sure what there being 20% warriors is so bad in and of itself.

It is because they had more than 1 really strong spec in Vanilla. Only real tank, great dps spec, strong in pvp. I mean rogues were all over as well, in ACTUAL live Vanilla the class breakdowns weren't THAT bad. But this is going back in Vanilla with all information well known in advance so I'm not surprised as the class breakdowns.

[Byronorpheus]

Most of those private servers of even near current content don't even work. There are many many issues that those realms have to deal with. Maybe it is one reason why Vanilla is so popular is that it is easier to get everything working.

So what you're saying is that people are willing to pay developers to maintain and develop software and servers rather than go to a more buggy free version? It seems like a pretty interesting concept. I really hope this thread focuses in on that and figure out a way that blizzard could make their older fans happy and hopefully make a profit on that.

[AeneasBK]

I
There's a lot of retarded bullshit about vanilla, like "man, in those they it took MONTHS to level". I did not play retail vanilla so of course I tried to check that on a 1x private server. It took me under 7 (SEVEN) days /played to get to level 60. And that was because I also stopped to mine and pick flowers and shit. Now it's true that if you only play 1 hour per day it will actually take you 6 months to get to level 60, but really...

186 hours? I remember when that was about as much entertainment as you could hope to get out of a title... There was a dungeon crawler I had as a kid that came with a guarantee "If you play this for 200 hours and are unstaisfied you can get a full refund"

[Kyanion]

It really isn't any market, compared to the effort needed to create and maintain those servers. There won't be 100,000 people willing to pay a subscription, no fucking way. But even ignoring that, there are a lot of other issues associated with legacy servers, for example the content consumption speed. Now let's say that Blizzard opens up many vanilla servers due to the "great demand". What will happen? Well, those people have already played on multiple private servers and they will consume the content in no time, because the server is at the latest patch, with much better gear that was available when WoW started and also people are much more experienced in raiding.

Creating "progressive" servers like Nost won't happen because it's too much work to do it properly, and Nost didn't, having shit gear from earlier patches on the latest client. So they will have to somehow release it as a new server at the latest patch, which I think I've extremely pessimistic to assume that it won't be cleared in 5-6 months. If Blizzard artificially delays content, people will stop playing or start bitching that there's no content or both.

There's a lot of retarded bullshit about vanilla, like "man, in those they it took MONTHS to level". I did not play retail vanilla so of course I tried to check that on a 1x private server. It took me under 7 (SEVEN) days /played to get to level 60. And that was because I also stopped to mine and pick flowers and shit. Now it's true that if you only play 1 hour per day it will actually take you 6 months to get to level 60, but really...

Then there's the population issue, let's say they open n servers and they are all full and nice in the first week, the people start giving up and the servers become desolate. What happens then? Server merges? Nost was not a normal server, I would call it retarded. It had a population that WoW was not designed for, and it was actually pretty fucking impossible to level, hence the miriad of qq threads on the forums. I still remember the advice people would get "find a quiet spot and grind". Yeah, that's exactly how WoW was intended to be played lol. Blizzard would never make a server with 3-4 times the maximum population. You will either end up on a shit server or have to deal with a queue.

But the real issue is that pretty fast vanilla would be consumed and people would not be willing to pay for virtually "nothing to do"...

You make up some good points and it is one of the things I try and mention but get very little feedback from people that actually played there. I asked what bugs were on that game and got some mentioned. I asked if some specs didn't even function as they used to. And gearing is far easier than actual Vanilla because all the content is basically there including honor options.

I think on Nost's infographic from a few months ago people averaged about 10 days to level. That is because gear is easier, all the information is known and so on. And that is just an average, it means people that were serious about endgame were blazing through the content.

[AeneasBK]

It is because they had more than 1 really strong spec in Vanilla. Only real tank, great dps spec, strong in pvp. I mean rogues were all over as well, in ACTUAL live Vanilla the class breakdowns weren't THAT bad. But this is going back in Vanilla with all information well known in advance so I'm not surprised as the class breakdowns.

Yeah ONCE you've got the gear though. Warrior DPS undergeared (much like they have always been in every expansion) is weak, and low geared warriors in PvP suffer too.

So yes the class breakdowns are a result of the classes known imbalances. But something else to consider is that broken specs also work a LOT better than they did back then due to people knowing how the game works a lot better too. I'm not syaing they work well enough to be "the best" but certainly they work well enough to "get the job done"

[Kyanion]

So what you're saying is that people are willing to pay developers to maintain and develop software and servers rather than go to a more buggy free version? It seems like a pretty interesting concept. I really hope this thread focuses in on that and figure out a way that blizzard could make their older fans happy and hopefully make a profit on that.

And I'm also pointing out that people willing to play on a FREE buggy version does not mean they'd shell out money for a paid version. We don't know what it would cost to create and maintain and staff these realms for what Blizzard would do. Then player retention is also a factor.

[AeneasBK]

You make up some good points and it is one of the things I try and mention but get very little feedback from people that actually played there. I asked what bugs were on that game and got some mentioned. I asked if some specs didn't even function as they used to. And gearing is far easier than actual Vanilla because all the content is basically there including honor options.

When I first levelled on Nost (about 9 mo ago) they had the pre 1.4 gear, which was fooking awful, and no honor catch up gear either, no WSG vendors, no Alliance quartermasters etc.

As the server progressed they released them later. So after the (was it 1.4, I could be wrong) gear rework yeah life became easier for the experienced players to level but before that the gear was awful :P

[Deleted]

So what you're saying is that people are willing to pay developers to maintain and develop software and servers rather than go to a more buggy free version? It seems like a pretty interesting concept. I really hope this thread focuses in on that and figure out a way that blizzard could make their older fans happy and hopefully make a profit on that.

I am an older fan. Blizzard can make me happy by making Legion good.

Seems good so far.

+1 for Blizzard i guess

[Santoryu]

Seems like one of the mainstream media has caught up with the issue: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36044000

[Deleted]

I dont care why they took donations.

It helped them personally pay for the server. It doesnt really matter what they used the money on. If they used it on candy they had to pay for the server anyway.

The thing is if you want to put up a private server thats fine with me(its not fine with everyone). But that then means having to pay for it yourself. You are essentially making money. its like buying a car and accepting donations for the car. "but i'm not making money tis all going to the car"

But if i donate to pay the server costs i get to play a game i love and if i donate so you can buy a car i cant get any fun of it .

So next time try another example because the one you gave is fuckin terrible

[Perr]

If Blizz made their own legacy servers and even slightly advertised them, they would get 500k long term subs (>6months) easily. Easily.