Should Blizzard release Vanilla servers?

[Eliseus]

Really?
I haven't been following many MMO's the last few years, which ones (that actually have had expansions) have (non-pirated) legacy versions?

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Sadly (for you) that is not how the world works.

It is exactly how the World works. WTF are you talking about?

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Really?
I haven't been following many MMO's the last few years, which ones (that actually have had expansions) have (non-pirated) legacy versions?

There aren't many games that had a lot of success as of recently, however, there are a few that did release legacy servers.

Runescape (in fact, the devs did an AMA this week, and there's this very interesting article made by massively with a dev interview here: http://massivelyop.com/2016/04/17/ru...assic-servers/ )
Everquest (Both the original and the second)
Lineage II

But there are also smaller MMOs that did so, like Conquer Online and Ragnarok Online.

It's not an outlandish concept, honestly. Everquest II was released a few months prior to World of Warcraft, but they still come from the same batch of MMOs. Runescape is even older, yet classic server became its own thing with its own dedicated team.

[Lilija]

Well, if they employ a team completely separate from the current WoW team to deal with Legacy Servers then it would be okeish.

Many people who are against simply don't want current WoW team to use their resources to deal with Legacy Servers.

[Robotron]

I'm curious how many people who voted no actually experienced this game before Wrath, Cata, or Pandaland--i.e. people who literally have no clue what they're missing out on and are basing their opinions on what Blizzard says at Blizzcon and hearsay. What I find funny about who whole yes/no debate of legacy servers is not everyone has to play them. If they come out, people content with playing the current game are more than welcome to continue doing so, and legacy servers won't harm it at all. Your Garrison is safe. You'll be able to play Facebook games in WoW to your heart's content after we get legacy servers. It's not like losing friends to the legacy servers is an issue, either, as the in game community has been dead and soulless for years (one big reason we want legacy servers in the first place). Honestly, how many meaningful human interactions and friendships do you build outside of your raiding guild? And if you're in a serious Mythic guild, those players likely will be too invested in live to even consider playing legacy servers.

The only resources Blizzard has to devote to releasing the servers beyond stuff like the hardware is having Devs/QA make sure the patches work exactly the way they originally did. From there, they can implement patches with the push of a button. From there, they just need to hire enough new GMs to staff the servers and make sure everything's still running.

The best part? If legacy server access is rolled into the retail subscription, not only would I be giving Blizzard a monthly WoW subscription again--something I haven't done for nearly five years--I'd be inclined to give retail a try while waiting for the next tier to drop in whatever Vanilla/TBC server I'm playing.

[Lilija]

I'm curious how many people who voted no actually experienced this game before Wrath, Cata, or Pandaland--i.e. people who literally have no clue what they're missing out on and are basing their opinions on what Blizzard says at Blizzcon and hearsay.

You know who is the strongests agains Vanilla servers? People who played Vanilla and don't find it appealing in current standards. People who haven't played it are more inclined to try what it's about.

As I said above your post. I don't care if Legacy Servers exist. What I care about is that they are dealt with by a separate team.

[Deleted]

I'm curious how many people who voted no actually experienced this game before Wrath, Cata, or Pandaland

I voted no and i played almost all of vanilla.

Most stuff was annoying in it and just drag out time.
I remember walks to dungeons, 10 min walks from North and South barrens for just 1 quest and that was till level 40 then i got a slow mount that increased my speed abit and the carrot on stick for a small boost.
Epic mount cost me a lifetime of farming (cant even remember the name of the stuff anymore) in felwood for professions to sell on the AH.
I remember that i needed to wait like 20 min for all to get to the dungeon because we had no warlock in the group and there was no s stone outside the dungeon, and had a 1 hour tradechat spam before that to get the group together (thats 80 min of nothing for 1 dungeon run).
I remember that you needed to buff 40 ppl with buffs after all wipes.
I remember that i would need to level my priest with fear + wand dps and kill 1 mob in 1min.
I will stop right there you can see that i did not really liked the gameplay back then.

The only things i liked in vanilla was the community (and they will never return because ppl change) and i miss the walljumping and having fun in raids instead of being all serious and need to down stuff asap go go go then just talk and have a nice relaxed time.

[Robotron]

You know who is the strongests agains Vanilla servers? People who played Vanilla and don't find it appealing in current standards. People who haven't played it are more inclined to try what it's about.

As I said above your post. I don't care if Legacy Servers exist. What I care about is that they are dealt with by a separate team.

My response was in general, not specifically directed at any one person. I also find your point a bit curious, as I started playing in mid-2006 (Vanilla), and would love nothing more than to have official Vanilla/TBC servers, as the game has grown too casual and anti-social for my tastes. Obviously, there are aspects of the game that have received huge improvements, but many of the changes to the design philosophy have changed WoW from the game I wanted to play into the game I didn't.

I'm also not being rose-tinted-goggles-nostalgic and talking out my ass when it comes to this; I played on Nost for all 13 months of its existence, and I still want to play Vanilla and TBC. Yes, I farmed MC until I was Exalted with Hydraxian for months. I spent a fortune on Nature Resist gear in preparation for AQ40, and I raided BWL until I had full Tier 2. And I want to do it all over again on official legacy servers.

I voted no and i played almost all of vanilla.

Most stuff was annoying in it and just drag out time.

<snip>

The only things i liked in vanilla was the community (and they will never return because ppl change) and i miss the walljumping and having fun in raids instead of being all serious and need to down stuff asap go go go then just talk and have a nice relaxed time.

I know Vanilla servers aren't for everyone, and that's fine. As for the community... you're definitely wrong on that one. Playing on Nostalrius definitely felt like 2006 again. We even had 2006-style trashtalk threads on the forums. Thing is, most of those things you hated about retail is exactly what me and plenty of people on Nost wanted back. I'd much rather be in a world that feels like, you know, a world, than to push a "queue" button a few hundred times in Orgrimmar in order to go from level 15-100 and deck myself out in pre-raid BiS. Again, though, all we need is enough people who share my opinion (150,000 people on Nost certainly did, plus who knows how many more if Blizzard sanctions legacy servers rather than them being non-advertized, "on the sly" operations) to justify opening them up.

The little things you'd accomplish in Vanilla felt like something and felt rewarding because of how long things took. Hell, I started to feel like something was wrong (over the top) with quality of life additions when I'd be sitting in Shat on my epic flying mount and could go to most important areas in the game by walking through a convenient portal. Wrath and Cata took that to whole new extremes. I don't have any comments about Pandaland/Warlords because I quit before Firelands was released.

As for development time, all Blizzard has to do is make sure the patches that they've already designed work on the servers. Once that's done, they just have to expand their GM team a bit.

[Lilija]

My response was in general, not specifically directed at any one person.

That is the problem with generalizations - they don't prove anything cause appart from your own experience you have now way of knowing how many people really think the way you assing them to.

I also find your point a bit curious, as I started playing in mid-2006 (Vanilla), and would love nothing more than to have official Vanilla/TBC servers, as the game has grown too casual and anti-social for my tastes. Obviously, there are aspects of the game that have received huge improvements, but many of the changes to the design philosophy have changed WoW from the game I wanted to play into the game I didn't.

This is called subjective taste. I'm a hardcore raider that always wants to do the hardests content in the game. From my perspective Vanilla/TBC didn't require much skill to do the hardests content compared to what came later. What it did require was huge amounts of free time and being a guild jumping douche (unless you weren't lucky enough to just meet the right group of people when you started playing). The game did become more casual in terms of being more accessive. But at the same time it's progressivly getting harder when you are the player who really wants the challenge and not just be forced into one kind of content and no alternative. As someone who plays WoW since 2005 constantly, there is no single thing I miss about Vanilla nor TBC. Ok, there is one thing from the TBC times really - the feeling of working together as a guild on attunments. But I wouldn't really want the Vanilla/TBC attunments to come back: for the feeling itself I would love guild attunments (meaning 1 attuned person is enough to get into the raid). So basicly, I want those to be a one time experience for the guild - not something you have to do for every single new person (I've done prisson break for new people in guild over 50 times and it was the most annoying and broken experience ever).

And don't even get me started on the social aspect. Socially, everything outside my guild was cancer. Dealing with random people could cause a person to go insane. The amount of unsubstantiated elistism and just simple stupidity was overwhelming. I can deal with bad players. I can't deal with dumb people who think they know better and try to dictated you how you should play the game according to the little world in their heads. The only reason I haven't quit WoW during TBC was my guild. I was close to quitting in SWP when my server went to hell and recruitment basicly died (both tanks going on vacation during summer ment the end of raiding for us).

I gave WoW one more chance only because I had nothing better to do in my life at that point and I don't regret cause for me the game was just getting better and better from the begining of WotLK. Sure, there were some hicups and there are plenty of things I would love to see changed in WoW (lifting the raiding restrictions between servers and factions completely, fixing many issues with earler leveling experience, ...). But for most part, Blizzard have been changing the game in the way that suits me. If WoW hasn't changed the way it did after TBC I would be forced to quitting because since I'm getting older and have more and more real life obligations, I would be in no way to be able to put the time that was required for raiding in early WoW.

So as you can see it's the case of perspective. There is no wrong and right here. We just have different views and different expectations. The thing, among WoW fans it seems I am within the majority since the game went the way that suits the most and keep having fun.

[jayeffkay]

If there is a market for it, sure. Make it work its way up to the end of Wotlk. Rinse and repeat. They would also be able to remove the longer downtimes/lulz between certain patches. SWP for example could come out sooner.

[Paranoid Android]

Now is this an old thread that got necro'd since Nostralius or a new thread after Nostralius?

[Selah]

No, I'm not paying a sub for content I've already cleared, bugs and abuses that have been otherwise fixed, for broken specs and some classes outright, and I'm really going to be irked if I'm paying to loose access to three classes (8 specs) and five continents. I think it's an absolutely terrible idea to fracture the WoW community and the resources going into the game for another product that is going to be broken and a decade or more out of date that will never see content updates, that's stupid.

[Canitnerd]

I think it's an absolutely terrible idea to fracture the WoW community and the resources going into the game for another product that is going to be broken and a decade or more out of date that will never see content updates, that's stupid.

The thing you seem to misunderstand is that Legacy servers would more than pay for themselves, so no need to take resources from Live, and that it wouldn't "fracture the community" because the majority of people interested in Legacy servers have already quit Live, or are so dissatisfied with Live they do little more than log in to raid.

[Lilija]

The thing you seem to misunderstand is that Legacy servers would more than pay for themselves, so no need to take resources from Live, and that it wouldn't "fracture the community" because the majority of people interested in Legacy servers have already quit Live, or are so dissatisfied with Live they do little more than log in to raid.

If the Legacy Servers wouldn't mean taking resources from Live servers they would be up already. Welcome to the real world.

[Robotron]

So as you can see it's the case of perspective. There is no wrong and right here. We just have different views and different expectations. The thing, among WoW fans it seems I am within the majority since the game went the way that suits the most and keep having fun.

This is mostly correct. One thing to keep in mind is subscriber numbers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but WoD's subscriber numbers have plunged so low, Blizzard is too ashamed to report them anymore. I believe the numbers dipped below what Vanilla had, which makes WoD objectively less successful than Vanilla or The Burning Crusade.

And, of course plenty of people still want to play retail. That's completely fine. People who want legacy servers just want to do their own thing, and I feel there are more than enough of us out there to justify it. I, too, was a hardcore retail raider. I was part of the world 14th Heroic Anub'arak (25) and world 50th Heroic Lich King (25) kills back in Wrath.

No, I'm not paying a sub for content I've already cleared, bugs and abuses that have been otherwise fixed, for broken specs and some classes outright, and I'm really going to be irked if I'm paying to loose access to three classes (8 specs) and five continents. I think it's an absolutely terrible idea to fracture the WoW community and the resources going into the game for another product that is going to be broken and a decade or more out of date that will never see content updates, that's stupid.

I see two major flaws to your argument. First of all, WoW doesn't have a community anymore. Any soul WoW had is long, long dead. Cataclysm, Pandaland, and Garrisons of Draenor saw to that. Plus, there won't be much fracturing. A lot of people who want legacy servers, such as myself, haven't been WoW subscribers for years. I'm coming up on my 5th anniversary of quitting retail, as a matter of fact. There aren't even any major WoW streamers left aside from Sodapoppin, who, if you haven't noticed, is an ardent supporter of legacy servers, and has made multiple videos pushing for them since Nost's shutdown. It's also not like you have to pay for legacy servers if they're implemented; they'd be their own separate subscription or included with the current retail fee, and legacy servers appearing wouldn't cause you to lose anything you have on live.

Also, what resources? You speak like it'd be an enormous drain on the company. The content and patches are already there. They need only adept them to their current server hardware, bring new servers online, and hire new GMs to maintain them. No actual development is required beyond the adaption phase. Don't forget that Blizzard just devoted resources into a new Diablo 2 patch. They still support a 15-year-old game, so why not give hundreds of thousands of players what they want and implement legacy?

[Zandalarian Paladin]

If the Legacy Servers wouldn't mean taking resources from Live servers they would be up already. Welcome to the real world.

If that was true, then Blizzard would never recruit anyone, because forming new team members take time, money and staff. Yet, they do.

[Selah]

The thing you seem to misunderstand is that Legacy servers would more than pay for themselves, so no need to take resources from Live, and that it wouldn't "fracture the community" because the majority of people interested in Legacy servers have already quit Live, or are so dissatisfied with Live they do little more than log in to raid.

Really? Because I've read innumerable times that Nost could barely make ends meet if at all, and that's just to pay for the server not even dev time or other resources that would be needed for Blizzard to do it. On top of that you have no idea if people who would be interested in Nost has already quit live, if they're still playing, or if they're just waiting for Legion. You have no way of knowing that.

Still doesn't address the other problems either, no content, broken specs, out of date content that everyone knows how to beat, bugs, and so on. What happens when you're geared in full Naxx gear? You're going to unsub because you don't want to run it again, then you'll stay unsubbed because there is never a new update. Not to mention the 8 specs that would be gone, and the other five continents, what about the thousands upon thousands of quests, the 5-mans, the raids, BGs? Why on earth would I pay to lose content? Makes zero sense.

[Lilija]

If that was true, then Blizzard would never recruit anyone, because forming new team members take time, money and staff. Yet, they do.

They recruit people for things that can bring profit. And it seems they don't suppose Legacy Servers would get enough interest to be worth the hassle. Only because people are loud on forums doesn't mean there would be enough to actually want to pay for those servers.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

They recruit people for things that can bring profit. And it seems they don't suppose Legacy Servers would get enough interest to be worth the hassle. Only because people are loud on forums doesn't mean there would be enough to actually want to pay for those servers.

Honestly, this is the only grey area argument that can truly be had about legacy servers. History tell us it works. But history is not World of Warcraft, and World of Warcraft is not a typical mmo. To be fair, I believe it would shatter any numbers from past classic servers - on any MMO - that ever was, but we have no proof of that. What we know is that there is great interest in it - as per Nostalrius and this 900+ page thread - and that old MMOs that release classic servers tend to double their subscribers, but that's it.

[Robotron]

Really? Because I've read innumerable times that Nost could barely make ends meet if at all, and that's just to pay for the server not even dev time or other resources that would be needed for Blizzard to do it. On top of that you have no idea if people who would be interested in Nost has already quit live, if they're still playing, or if they're just waiting for Legion. You have no way of knowing that.

Still doesn't address the other problems either, no content, broken specs, out of date content that everyone knows how to beat, bugs, and so on. What happens when you're geared in full Naxx gear? You're going to unsub because you don't want to run it again, then you'll stay unsubbed because there is never a new update. Not to mention the 8 specs that would be gone, and the other five continents, what about the thousands upon thousands of quests, the 5-mans, the raids, BGs? Why on earth would I pay to lose content? Makes zero sense.

You realize it'd take years to get to full Naxx gear, right? It'll take a month or two to hit level cap, weeks of dungeon grinding to get pre-raid, months of farming each tier before going into the next, months to clear Naxx, and then more months to farm it. Plus, they'd ideally release legacy servers with progressive patches, so there'd be several months between content patches. I played on Nost for 13 months, and I still needed a couple items from BWL. AQ40 wasn't even out, and it'd take my guild months of farming before we had the gear to begin Naxx. And when you're "done" with Vanilla? Play the TBC server. Or, if retail stopped being like Facebook, maybe play there and check out new content.

Also, you seem to forget one thing. Nost was 100% free to play. There were zero incentives to donate. I and many others would gladly pay $15 US/month to play on an official legacy server. Nost's upkeep was in the neighbourhood of a grand a month, which is peanuts compared to how much money people who are otherwise not paying for WoW would give Blizzard.

[ornichi]

it's just horrible to realise there are people, who vote for "Yes". Guys, when you go to the Nissan shop, you see new models, not the 1982 Nissan Violet despite it being comfy for your ass or whatever.

They will never open a vanilla server, they will rather just "kill" wow. Basically, the main reason for that is, you know, the versatility of their client base. I, for example, don't want 1.12.1, i want 1.4.1 patch, where you could cast Arcane Missiles on evading mobs. Someone else wants 2.3 with prenerf Zul'Aman. My friend loved Isle of Thunder dailies and Throne of Thunder raid, so he wants a 5.2 back, neither 5.1, nor 5.3, but 5.2.

So you see, they just can't open a goddamn server for every crying bitch who loved a certain moment of the game. Furthermore, only 20% of Nostalrius population would pay for that. I played on Nost, but I cba paying 13 euro/month for buggy old shit.