Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Coconut]

Can someone with knowledge elaborate on Blizzard's Hardware argument? I.e.Jeff Kaplan's "The old code is designed to run on the old hardware. "

Is this a legitimate issue or fabricated, seeing how Private Server operators get them to run on today's hardware?

I can't claim full knowledge, but from what I understand, the old databases are not compatible with the new equipment, meaning they'd have to be recreated, since items, spells, etc changed characteristics on the current version.

[Sosoulsu]

EQ is technically a dead game. Wow is not.

If legacy servers are profitable for EQ, what makes people think they wouldn't be for WoW?
For an active game with a large part of people who have played it for more than 5 years not wanting to play it anymore in its current state, in what way would a legacy server be a bad idea?

People just don't want people to have nice things.

[Addict]

In that case, you might want to practice some intellectual honesty in your debates.

But all you do is deflect, misrepresent, demand, and thinking you can ignore other voices while demanding yours to be heard. Every time I made a good argument presenting the challenges of legacy servers as I see them, people ignored them, built absurd strawmen (like you literally couldn't read what was written and replaced it with something else), or laughed them off without providing a counter.

And I wasn't the only one. I'm pretty sure if someone decides to go through these 1000+ pages, they'll find a lot of good arguments against, drowned out in a sea of lies and whining.

You want to be heard? Start learning how to listen, and maybe you'll say something worth hearing.

We want to be heard! But we dont want to hear you.

[Deleted]

Can someone with knowledge elaborate on Blizzard's Hardware argument? I.e.Jeff Kaplan's "The old code is designed to run on the old hardware. "

Is this a legitimate issue or fabricated, seeing how Private Server operators get them to run on today's hardware?

If an (partially) educated guess does the job:
Probably Blizz's code (Multi-Threading, Thread Safety patterns, type sizes etc.) and compilation process (Processor architecture/optimized instruction sets/32 vs 64 Bit, # of cores, etc.) was heavily optimized for a specific target platform. On compiler opts alone I've made personal experiences with getting them wrong while setting up a Gentoo system which basically fucked up the OS, so yeah there's a certain point to be made.

As for Private Server operators: I ain't sure, but my take one it is that they run on reverse engineered code.

I wouldn't call the issue entirely fabricated, however it's more a thing of "Can't just simply plug the old Servers on new rigs" instead of "Utterly impossible to do"

[PenguinChan]

If legacy servers are profitable for EQ, what makes people think they wouldn't be for WoW?
For an active game with a large part of people who have played it for more than 5 years not wanting to play it anymore in its current state, in what way would a legacy server be a bad idea?

People just don't want people to have nice things.

Population and community difference. Those are the two major things that come to mind when I think of why it works for EQ, and others do not for WoW. I don't AGREE with those who think it wouldn't be profitable, but we all have our opinions. I'd assume it's easier to make old school EQ functional again compared to old school WoW.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Personally my main gripe with Legacy servers is the fear of them drastically increasing my main issue with the current state of WoW: Fracturing of the player base. I just can't see how having yet another division in the player base wouldn't end up worsening the issue of insular player groups on current expansions. And while I certainly can emphasize with people enoying and/or prefering Vanilla/TBC/WOTLK, my interests lie with Legion, and I see Legacy servers as detrimental to that.


Off topic: While I certainly understand that this goes both ways - but you know how confirmation bias goes yadda yadda - I've become hellishly sick of Nostralius somehow becoming the central topic for pretty much any point of discussion on this forum.

I understand your point. Polls seems to indicate that a major part of those interested in Vanilla servers are not currently subscribed, but the polls are infinitely small and probably unrepresentative. In any case, I see what you mean. To this, I would like to add that if they wish to fix this, they need to fix it through Legion social systems. Whatever happen next, they have to make sure it coalesce positively together; at this point, it won't matter if you have 5 million or 10 million players on modern servers. As for people who like to claim one version is superior to another, they're just jerks and they'll always be jerks.

Sadly, nothing we can do about. As for the central topic on the forums, I'd take Nostalrius over Feminism issues any day. Not that it's wrong to debate these, but they've been done to death on this forum.

Are you also going to call Nostalgia on people who enjoy, say, earlier versions of Zelda to the newer, more polished ones? That's a faulty train of thought, sorry.

People like different things. Deal with it.

Exactly. Shooting down an idea without analyzing what creates the need in the first place is the issue here. For instance, I loved Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess. Yet some others prefered Wind Waker or Skyward Sword. I didn't. But Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess are from two completely different era of games - yet people will claim that nostalgia is what makes me love Ocarina of Time, without taking the time to analyze that it was a variety of factors; gameplay, story, ambiance - three things that both Twilight Princess and Ocarina of time have in common.

You do not help your cause when you claim that Mark Kern's past is some sort of anti gamergate conspiracy.

That said his involvement is being massively overstated by both sides of the argument. He is going to deliver the petition, nothing more, although I assume that the people at Blizzard have access to some sort of internet connected device making its delivery kinda redundant.

That's not what I claimed. I did say that I believe some claims are wrongly made. I also know that some were debunked officially through a variety of mediums. I also know some others are on point. But he has a bigger weight than me - after all, he was one of the top dev on Vanilla Wow, which was at Blizzard. He have a historic there, which is what makes him so key to the event. People trying to put him down as "bad" don't understand why he's important in the first place.

In that case, you might want to practice some intellectual honesty in your debates.

But all you do is deflect, misrepresent, demand, and thinking you can ignore other voices while demanding yours to be heard. Every time I made a good argument presenting the challenges of legacy servers as I see them, people ignored them, built absurd strawmen (like you literally couldn't read what was written and replaced it with something else), or laughed them off without providing a counter.

And I wasn't the only one. I'm pretty sure if someone decides to go through these 1000+ pages, they'll find a lot of good arguments against, drowned out in a sea of lies and whining.

You want to be heard? Start learning how to listen, and maybe you'll say something worth hearing.

We want to be heard! But we dont want to hear you.

I've answered you so many time. As in so many time. You brought points. I answered with solutions. Real, tangible, technical solutions that can be applied. You are not interested in them. You will try to find the slightest weakness in any argument and extrapolate on them. You will then claim that the system is not viable because of it, yet its so far down the extrapolation road and fallacious arguments that it cannot be taken seriously. There is a reason why you're being ignored by almost everyone here. And it's not just because of your position on the subject.

So ironically, you should listen to your own advice.

[Marakesh]

All of the sudden Nost is the best thing ever but before shutdown a lot of people playing there were complaining about the lag, large amount of Chinese players who couldn't communicate in English and various bots, battleground AFK-ers and node campers. (Granted, some of that stuff still happens in current WoW)

I wonder how big the Chinese community was actually, I'm fairly sure those numbers of active accounts would deflate immensely with them out of the picture. And if we assume Blizzard would eventually release separate US and EU legacy servers that number would be even smaller. Sure, I bet people playing legacy vanilla realms would enjoy it but I don't think it's profitable enough for Blizzard to even think about it at this point in time.

Server lag was mostly a problem early on, as were bots. The did a good job on both of those, it did make me wonder how cautious Blizz is about banning. Farmers on the other hand ... that was an issue. I would guess the proportion was about the same as early WoW. I didn't find it noticably better or worse than retail WoW which is pretty amazing since its a private server. I remember losing 50g worth of crafting mats to a lag hiccup back in vanilla. I cried, it still hurts a little, that was a lot of money back then.

[Blackcoffin]

That's fine and all but Blizzard and their players have been iterating on this for nearly 10 years. The "Wall of No" wasn't just made up. It's a compilation of all the times they've been asked about this and come back and said no. You're making it sound a bit as if this is the first time it's come up. It isn't. It's another louder-than-normal episode in a very long argument.

Reminds me of the "no-flying" discussion. Blizzard has no clue and the playerbase seems divided.
Murphy's Law is the rule, not the exception when it comes to Blizzard communication strategies.
I wouldn't be surprised if they came up with something entirely different. I'm merely speculating here:

They will end up opening classic experience servers. Not the actual content, but the literal experience.

No character transfers/name changes allowed.

No Looking for dungeon/Looking for raid.

No heirlooms, no flying mounts.

No Transmogs.

Level squish to 60, all content from vanilla and up is level 60 content.

All raids are attuned progressively for 40 men level 60. Mc > Bwl > Aq > Kara > etc..

[Marston]

I am interested if people who want Legacy servers would be willing to, let's say, finance a Kickstarter that covers cost of development and server cost for the first month, after which Blizzard would decide whether those server would actually be profitable (since the number of subscribers would bring in enough money to pay for the servers and the staff working) or have to be canned, because they only suck out the companies money.

How much would such a kickstarter even cost? 10 million ? 100 million? Even more?

[Jokerfiend]

Why do you feel the need to misrepresent everything Greg Street said. He's not saying the same thing as Kern in any way at all. Let's compare.

First off, I have to say Ghostcrawler said something, to misrepresent what he said. I am saying what he DIDN'T say, is saying more than what he said.

To be in denial of omission, is simply dumbfounding. He has EVERY reason to take Blizzard's side. But he doesn't, as a matter of fact he states his disagreement of Blizzard communication on the aspect.

So let's take it base by base -

-- I've been asked this a lot. I'm not going to pick a side about who is right or wrong because it's probably not that simple

Why not? What could you possibly have to lose by taking a side? The only thing he could lose if he wants Vanilla. He was a big advocate of a harder game. If Blizzard couldn't(Which Blizzard said so) do Legacy servers he would come right out and say it. Why wouldn't he?

-- I definitely feel for the players who lost something.

Why does he feel for them? They were taking away revenue out his pocket, his mouth, yet feels for people that have taken from him? Why?

-- But I'm sure Blizzard had good reasons. Maybe they had to protect their IP, because you can lose it if you do not. IDK.

He absolute DOES know, and doesn't agree with it.

-- I think most of you know that one thing Blizzard and I do disagree on is how much you should communicate with players.

Openly states a disagreement with Blizzard on the subject of communication. Which leads from his previous statement, that he doesn't necessarily agree how Blizzard has handled it. Why would he disagree with people taking from his friends, and from him?

-- I try to be as transparent with players as I possibly can be.

As I possibly can, which mean he is contractually obligated not to speak of the matter, which means. If it was in favor of Blizzard, they wouldn't push the issue, spoke out and helped them. Yet, won't speak on the matter because it could add fuel to the fire, and would damage Blizzard, something they would push against.

-- Blizzard had a different philosophy, which is fine. I don't begrudge them that.

Which means, he acknowledges Blizzard hand in the matter, but doesn't agree with them on the matter.

Which if you take the first paragraph in the Mark Kern interview, he says the same thing.

Sorry, but I'm not misrepresenting shit.

- - - Updated - - -

There is so much misunderstanding in your post its startling. He said he will not pick any side, then stated that he feels for the people who lost something (the server shut down), then says Blizzard had reasons for doing it. The biggest comment he made with any clear definition is that in his opinion Blizzard should give a clear cut answer as to why, but that's still his opinion (his words), and one of the things he disagrees with (again, his words as he said he always tries to be transparent). I don't see anything with him agreeing or disagreeing or even being for or against what is happening. And exactly what would he have to gain by slamming a private server?

Saying by omission, I have laid it out. Sorry, but you are wrong.

[Coconut]

I've answered you so many time. As in so many time. You brought points. I answered with solutions. Real, tangible, technical solutions that can be applied. You are not interested in them. You will try to find the slightest weakness in any argument and extrapolate on them. You will then claim that the system is not viable because of it, yet its so far down the extrapolation road and fallacious arguments that it cannot be taken seriously. There is a reason why you're being ignored by almost everyone here. And it's not just because of your position on the subject.

So ironically, you should listen to your own advice.

Dude, you outright misrepresented the argument. I meant X, so you said I mean Y and demonstrated why I can't arrive at Y from my arguments for X.

And then you claimed a preference spread doesn't matter, because we can just go with the option 35% voted for, and everyone will be happy because they have Legacy Realms.

And then you just let it get buried by other posts before coming back to say anything.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Dude, you outright misrepresented the argument. I meant X, so you said I mean Y and demonstrated why I can't arrive at Y from my arguments for X.

And then you claimed a preference spread doesn't matter, because we can just go with the option 35% voted for, and everyone will be happy because they have Legacy Realms.

And then you just let it get buried by other posts before coming back to say anything.

You outright made a debate out of something that does not warrant it. You asked for preferences then claimed the community couldn't unite under one same ideology. Of course not! Because you force one single choice. It's either black and white, which is thoroughly misleading and misrepresentative. But the reality is that it's shades of grey. This 35% is only representative of what these 35% of people would consider optimal. Had you offered multi-option poll however, it would've been much more split evenly. But you didn't do that, because it wouldn't have pushed your ideology. So your claim that the community is split apart is fallacious and made from inaccurate data. I even gave you a literal example of where you were wrong, but you chose to ignore it, which is why I didn't answer (and went to sleep, actually).

So my claim is that 35% of people consider it optimal, but a much, much bigger percentage consider it viable or preferable to nothing at all.

[Coconut]

You outright made a debate out of something that does not warrant it. You asked for preferences then claimed the community couldn't unite under one same ideology. Of course not! Because you force one single choice. It's either black and white, which is thoroughly misleading and misrepresentative. But the reality is that it's shades of grey. This 35% is only representative of what these 35% of people would consider optimal. Had you offered multi-option poll however, it would've been much more split evenly. But you didn't do that, because it wouldn't have pushed your ideology. So your claim that the community is split apart is fallacious and made from inaccurate data. I even gave you a literal example of where you were wrong, but you chose to ignore it, which is why I didn't answer (and went to sleep, actually).

So my claim is that 35% of people consider it optimal, but a much, much bigger percentage consider it viable or preferable to nothing at all.

Ok, let me explain again. I made these claims:

- People will want several expansions if Blizzard accepts the idea of legacy servers
- People want to experience the progression, so once that ends, profits drop (2 years projected lifespan per title)
- People are split on whether they want time bubble servers that coexist or a single progressive experience through all expansions

In addition, an argument can be made about a preference split based on specific features that would or wouldn't be added from the current game to legacy realms.

The poll does not require multiple answers, because conclusions can be done by cumulating options, and most of them include eachother. Except the last, which is a preference split. So picking B over A doesn't mean you don't want A, it means you want A + something more.

It's simple as hell. Ofc, you want us to just not think of this, because a can of worms is much harder to justify than simply opening Vanilla realms with no foresight whatsoever.

[shimerra]

Why not? What could you possibly have to lose by taking a side? The only thing he could lose if he wants Vanilla. He was a big advocate of a harder game. If Blizzard couldn't(Which Blizzard said so) do Legacy servers he would come right out and say it. Why wouldn't he?

What does he have to gain? You're yet to prove that either. Actually your own later comments speak as to what he could lose which goes to the absolute sloppyness of your argument "which mean he is contractually obligated not to speak of the matter" but you falsely and incorrectly go on to assume that it's because it's something bad. Because you know Blizzard probably doesn't want him speaking out about project X after he left without their permission. He's not going to stick his foot in his mouth and make a big stink because unlike Mark Kern he's still a valuable commodity in the gaming industry.

Why does he feel for them? They were taking away revenue out his pocket, his mouth, yet feels for people that have taken from him? Why?

I feel bad for the guy who in a moment of passion murdered someone his wife was cheating on him with. Doesn't mean I think it was right, condone it, or otherwise I agree with what he did. You can have sympathy for someone while at the same time not agreeing with or condoning what they did. Just like he can feel bad for Nost players wanting to play old Vanilla again but at the same time think what they were doing by using blizzard's work wrongly.

He absolute DOES know, and doesn't agree with it.

Wait wait wait here you are talking about what he said now you gobble up your bull shit "i'm going to read things into statements that clearly aren't there," but when he says something you don't like he's lieing? Nothing he's said has taken a position one way or the other. Stop pretending you have something when you don't.

Openly states a disagreement with Blizzard on the subject of communication. Which leads from his previous statement, that he doesn't necessarily agree how Blizzard has handled it. Why would he disagree with people taking from his friends, and from him?

Yet again, you're conspiratorially reading into things that aren't there that funny enough conform 100% perfectly into your world view. Him disagreeing with Blizzard's communication means his disagrees with how blizzard communicates, he could still very easily be extremely opposed to legacy servers and what Nost did or indifferent to them just as much as he could support them.

As I possibly can, which mean he is contractually obligated not to speak of the matter, which means. If it was in favor of Blizzard, they wouldn't push the issue, spoke out and helped them. Yet, won't speak on the matter because it could add fuel to the fire, and would damage Blizzard, something they would push against.

Already talked about this one. This is wild speculation and nothing more.

Which means, he acknowledges Blizzard hand in the matter, but doesn't agree with them on the matter.

Which if you take the first paragraph in the Mark Kern interview, he says the same thing.

Sorry, but I'm not misrepresenting shit.

Agree with what part? The only thing he explicitly stated he doesn't agree with them is how they've communicated their thoughts. Not that he disagrees with their actions to shut down Nost and decide not to implement legacy servers.

They do not say the same thing and honestly the mental gymnastics you have to take to contort that thought into anything coherent are impressive if they were just so depressingly wrong.

Saying by omission, I have laid it out. Sorry, but you are wrong.

"Aka he didn't actually say it so I read inbetween the lines and hey oh look an entire novel where he says exactly what I wanted him to say,". Funny how that worked out.

[Pann]

That's not what I claimed. I did say that I believe some claims are wrongly made. I also know that some were debunked officially through a variety of mediums. I also know some others are on point. But he has a bigger weight than me - after all, he was one of the top dev on Vanilla Wow, which was at Blizzard. He have a historic there, which is what makes him so key to the event. People trying to put him down as "bad" don't understand why he's important in the first place.

His history with Firefall is well documented and his involvement with GG is further of his character or lack of it. He is not important at all, the 200k+ signatures will be what makes Blizzard sit up and take notice, and the more faith put in him the easier it becomes for people to dismiss your argument.

[Deleted]

I understand your point. Polls seems to indicate that a major part of those interested in Vanilla servers are not currently subscribed, but the polls are infinitely small and probably unrepresentative. In any case, I see what you mean. To this, I would like to add that if they wish to fix this, they need to fix it through Legion social systems. Whatever happen next, they have to make sure it coalesce positively together; at this point, it won't matter if you have 5 million or 10 million players on modern servers. As for people who like to claim one version is superior to another, they're just jerks and they'll always be jerks.

Sadly, nothing we can do about. As for the central topic on the forums, I'd take Nostalrius over Feminism issues any day. Not that it's wrong to debate these, but they've been done to death on this forum.

Hmm, I can see your point. Generally there is a lot of work to be done on the games social structure, and it really should start being more of a focal point for Blizzard. However, as it stands I do not think that it's a matter of technical development / features and more of a community issue. I really do believe Blizz ought to look into soft-skill community based solutions, like say heavily increased ingame presence promoting player cohesion.

Interestingly enough, being a "blizzdrone" myself I guess (Edit: I'm not accusing you of calling me that, I just have the feeling that I'd commonly be considered one), the one way I'd unambigously support Legacy Servers would also basically require a major investment of development time and/or resources: Basically a timewalking+ mode that'd allow you to play an alternate version of your character at different points in the games history (Say Vanilla pre and post AQ, TBC, WOTLK) on the same server. There'd be an issue with new races/classes, however I see a certain potential for integrating Monks, DKs and DHs in that mode (which would basically need a new class design for each of the new classes in old content) as it would add interesting meta.

Off topic: Dunno, the whole feminism issue is distanced enough for me to read the threads in "soap opera" mode. WoW discussions hit far closer to home so to speak.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Ok, let me explain again. I made these claims:

- People will want several expansions if Blizzard accepts the idea of legacy servers
- People want to experience the progression, so once that ends, profits drop (2 years projected lifespan per title)
- People are split on whether they want time bubble servers that coexist or a single progressive experience through all expansions

In addition, an argument can be made about a preference split based on specific features that would or wouldn't be added from the current game to legacy realms.

The poll does not require multiple answers, because conclusions can be done by cumulating options.

It's simple as hell. Ofc, you want us to just not think of this, because a can of worms is much harder to justify than simply opening Vanilla realms with no foresight whatsoever.

I've already answered this. Let me rephrase my answers.

- If people want several expansions if Blizzard accepts the idea of legacy servers, as you say, then it all depend on the initial success of Vanilla. If Vanilla is successful, then it's only logical to expand it. But we're speaking of 2+ years.
- It's not true. Based on a separate model of monthly payment, maybe. That's assuming people don't want to progress on progressive realms when they are released and that each server have a different monthly fee. If you remove these two problems, by offering server copy instead of forced migration and use a widespread monthly fee to access legacy servers, then it's a non-issue, because older servers will be funded by newer expansions. Then you take in consideration that you can drastically reduce the price of older legacy servers by merging them when they're not longer populated enough to warrant a full array of servers and you even save money on these older servers.
- Yes, but here's the thing; it's a non-issue, because both can coexist together. You offer different servers for different expansions. Eventually, all of these servers will come to their "slow death", which is where a core, self-sufficient community will be built. For everybody else who want progression, character copy to the newer servers will fix that problem.

No, you cannot mix single-answer data with multi-answer data. You force a split. Most people would be fine one way or another, so no, you cannot correlate data from it.

Yes, it's simple as hell. I'm not sure why you're shooting me the same arguments again.

You seem to confuse your opinion with fact. As for all of the stuff you claim to know, you really don't. But I think my favorite part is this here in bold. Post after post after post says otherwise in this thread. I mean its so easy is like the number argument for the servers.

Hey, I have an idea. Lets generalize and assume the worst in everyone. Because a community is only as good as its worse participant!

Not to mention you have to open servers in each region, they have to be pvp and pve. What about the RP's? So suddenly you are looking at a lot of servers, not a single one like nost.

Nost had two different servers. One for PvP, one for PvE, and they were about to expand on TBC.

[Marakesh]

Ok, let me explain again. I made these claims:

- People will want several expansions if Blizzard accepts the idea of legacy servers
- People want to experience the progression, so once that ends, profits drop (2 years projected lifespan per title)
- People are split on whether they want time bubble servers that coexist or a single progressive experience through all expansions

In addition, an argument can be made about a preference split based on specific features that would or wouldn't be added from the current game to legacy realms.

The poll does not require multiple answers, because conclusions can be done by cumulating options, and most of them include eachother. Except the last, which is a preference split. So picking B over A doesn't mean you don't want A, it means you want A + something more.

It's simple as hell. Ofc, you want us to just not think of this, because a can of worms is much harder to justify than simply opening Vanilla realms with no foresight whatsoever.

You could run that poll on anything in the current game and claim there's no consensus. How many would vote for more dev time spent on pet battles? Also, raiding might go extinct.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

I dont want to wait for vanilla server to expand. I want a TBC and MoP legacy server. Why do I have to wait two years so you can play your vanilla server?

Oh, so that's what you think this is about? I see why you think this way then. That's because you assume that everyone is like this.

Because there is no possible way that Vanilla is a good starting point, is it? Oh. Right. Because you like to think that everyone want something now. So you see people throwing a tantrum because their expansion isn't there.

I won't claim these people don't exist. They probably do. But, see, they're such a small percentage - and they exist on retail wow about a variety of issues too. Yet, you generalize this to a whole community. That's one hell of a logical leap right there.

[deadman1]

Are you also going to call Nostalgia on people who enjoy, say, earlier versions of Zelda to the newer, more polished ones? That's a faulty train of thought, sorry.

People like different things. Deal with it.

Yes I'm going to call nostalgia on the people playing 20+ year old games ... Was that your gotcha moment? Because it fell flat.

Legacy servers are never going to happen ... deal with it.