Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Thirstblood]

I seriously doubt that blizzard would add up legacy servers but we don't know for sure but i'm pretty certain they wouldn't bother... IT does really piss me off. Some of us here we like to revisit older contents nostalgia. Since titans and other their project fail/flop why not spend their resource/time for legacy server? It really couldn't hurt... really seriously you could never know how many people could actually return.. But whatever blizzard/activision.. do whatever you fucking want but ok... I guesss money>Customers

[Lolsteak]

Actually, I never found specific data on what exactly Mark Kern did at the old Blizzard games.

Team lead, sure... but does that mean the leader of Team 2? Or just the Lead o a sub-team with in it? There were 60 ppl working on WoW.

He isn't mentioned by name on this rather cool article about the making of WoW. That article, however, does mentions smaller teams (Mac team, sound team, etc.) And on Team 5, the Hearthstone team, there is no "Team Lead" position, on Lead designers, lead arists, etc.

Would appreciate an informed response.

For one he designed most of the cities in vanilla, He also talked about how the world was half as wide as it is today and that it needed to be much wider and to quote him "Cut and paste was helpful for that".

Also in response to a question about the area "Beggar's Haunt" in Darkshire he replied "Remember, not everything went through an approval pipeline. Zone designers often put stuff in we had no idea was there."

Then again that's all still irrelevant to the discussion at hand, He was the team lead of a much smaller WoW team and that's that.

He has inside knowledge that none of us do, He's even spoken about not wanting to violate an NDA by releasing some of Blizzards numbers (Subscriber / financial data from Vanilla), I would think that not everybody in the company would be privy to such information

[Edit] You could simply tweet him asking for clarification, He's very active on Twitter

[Coconut]

For one he designed most of the cities in vanilla, He also talked about how the world was half as wide as it is today and that it needed to be much wider and to quote him "Cut and paste was helpful for that".

Also in response to a question about the area "Beggar's Haunt" in Darkshire he replied "Remember, not everything went through an approval pipeline. Zone designers often put stuff in we had no idea was there."

Then again that's all still irrelevant to the discussion at hand, He was the team lead of a much smaller WoW team and that's that.

He has inside knowledge that none of us do, He's even spoken about not wanting to violate an NDA by releasing some of Blizzards numbers (Subscriber / financial data from Vanilla), I would think that not everybody in the company would be privy to such information

[Edit] You could simply tweet him asking for clarification, He's very active on Twitter

I can't say that's telling me much, map design has little to do with gameplay. And I won't make a Twitter account just to ask Mark Kern a question :P

[blufiz]

I personally dont think Nostalrius did anything wrong. It was blizzards epic game that they took away from the players and wont let them live it again. Haters are going to hate.

[Deleted]

OK tinfoil hat time:

Once upon a time Blizzard let Dota 2 exist with all the character names they came up with during the original Dota. Then they decide to tell Valve that they have to change the names. Valve did, obviously, but Blizzard did that because they were planning on releasing HotS and probably didn't want any confusion between the two games. That's fair, I think.

So what if Blizzard is closing the largest of the private servers as part of a plan to open their own version of legacy servers. They don't want people being confused or playing on any unsanctioned servers, so they take down Nost, because they plan to do their own. Still not as cool as Daybreak allowing P99 to exist, but close enough, maybe.

Would looove this to be true. But i think this will end up line dota for blizz, missed opportunity

[Lolsteak]

I can't say that's telling me much, map design has little to do with gameplay. And I won't make a Twitter account just to ask Mark Kern a question :P

I'm just relaying what he has commented upon, I can't tell you what he hasn't said.

I still personally find the insight interesting, Like how they never even imagined how important Cross Roads would become.

[Coconut]

I'm just relaying what he has commented upon, I can't tell you what he hasn't said.

I still personally find the insight interesting, Like how they never even imagined how important Cross Roads would become.

Read the article I linked, lots of cool stuff there too

[Marakesh]

Actually, I never found specific data on what exactly Mark Kern did at the old Blizzard games.

Team lead, sure... but does that mean the leader of Team 2? Or just the Lead o a sub-team within it? There were 60 ppl working on WoW.

He isn't mentioned by name on this rather cool article about the making of WoW. That article, however, does mentions smaller teams (Mac team, sound team, etc.) And on Team 5, the Hearthstone team, there is no "Team Lead" position, on Lead designers, lead arists, etc.

Would appreciate an informed response.

He must have been risen quite high by that point in time, his name was right at the top between Morhaime and Metzen in the credits.

edit - This is just to show how he moves up the chart with time, what any of these guys are individually responsible for I have no idea. Since these are some of the best PC games I have played, and we might assume the other people working at Blizzard then weren't idiots, it stands to reason Mark Kern has/had some talent in this field.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/starcraft/credits
http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/diablo-ii/credits
http://www.mobygames.com/game/window...rcraft/credits

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Would looove this to be true. But i think this will end up line dota for blizz, missed opportunity

I initially thought this, too. It became clear it wasn't when the only server to shut down was Nostalrius. To be entirely honest, there's at least two other servers right now which ate a good part of the Nostalrius crowd.

What does this mean? I can't tell this early. It could've been a warning shot to say that they allow these servers to live as long that they remain reasonable. It could also be a direct attack against legacy philosophy - after all, the old mentality versus the new is causing a massive split in the community. It could also mean they're working on something on their side. Or it could simply mean they're protecting their IP.

What we know, however, is that there is a demand to incorporate an official legacy server hosted by Blizzard. We know there has been precedent done by various companies. We also know that current subscription numbers are lower than Vanilla. Finally, we also know that there's a healthy market out there who's just waiting behind their screen to throw money at them - once again validated by the customer management at Blizzard.

[Jokerfiend]

He must have been risen quite high by that point in time, his name was right at the top between Morhaime and Metzen in the credits.

edit - This is just to show how he moves up the chart with time, what any of these guys are individually responsible for I have no idea. Since these are some of the best PC games I have played, and we might assume the other people working at Blizzard then weren't idiots, it stands to reason Mark Kern has/had some talent in this field.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/starcraft/credits
http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/diablo-ii/credits
http://www.mobygames.com/game/window...rcraft/credits

He did quality work at Blizzard. You don't rise high in Blizzard, becoming the damn Team Leader, with shitty work ethics. Which means see all those leads you see under him? He coordinated and helped Mike Morhaime sign off on their work. If you want to say, Mark Kern took everything WoW Project was, and assembled it. He built the puzzle, not the pieces. Not an easy thing to do, not something to scoff at.

[Coconut]

He must have been risen quite high by that point in time, his name was right at the top between Morhaime and Metzen in the credits.

edit - This is just to show how he moves up the chart with time, what any of these guys are individually responsible for I have no idea. Since these are some of the best PC games I have played, and we might assume the other people working at Blizzard then weren't idiots, it stands to reason Mark Kern has/had some talent in this field.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/starcraft/credits
http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/diablo-ii/credits
http://www.mobygames.com/game/window...rcraft/credits

So he has.

But he's always in a producer position. Meaning he was doing things like these:

An internal producer is heavily involved in the development of, usually, a single game. Responsibilities for this position vary from company to company, but in general, the person in this position has the following duties:[1][2]

Negotiating contracts, including licensing deals
Acting as a liaison between the development staff and the upper stakeholders (publisher or executive staff)
Developing and maintaining schedules and budgets
Overseeing creative (art and design) and technical development (game programming) of the game
Ensuring timely delivery of deliverables (such as milestones)
Scheduling timely quality assurance (testing)
Arranging for beta testing and focus groups, if applicable
Arranging for localization
Pitching game ideas to publishers
In short, the internal producer is ultimately responsible for timely delivery and final quality of the game.

For small games, the producer may interact directly with the programming and creative staff. For larger games, the producer will seek the assistance of the lead programmer, art lead, game designer and testing lead. While it is customary for the producer to meet with the entire development staff from time to time, for larger games, they will only meet with the leads on a regular basis to keep updated on the development status.[2] In smaller studios, a producer may fill any slack in the production team by doing the odd job of writing the game manual or producing game assets.[1]

For most games, the producer does not have a large role but does have some influence on the development of the video game design. While not a game designer, the producer has to weave the wishes of the publisher or upper management into the design. They usually seek the assistance of the game designer in this effort. So the final game design is a result the effort of the designer and some influence of the producer.[2]

In general, the producer is not the "boss" of the people on the game development team, but the "boss" of the game. So while a programmer may answer to a programming director, where matters of the game are involved, they answer to the producer. Producers may issue reprimands or issue accolades, but usually the fate of the developer's employment is not in the hands of the producer. So while they may suggest termination or promotions of certain employees, the producer normally cannot fire or promote team members single-handedly.

Not really a person involved directly with either design or programming, not for Blizzard games which already had leads for these departments.

In any case, help for providing the links.

[FluFF]

To continue the Nostralius bandwagon, surprise surprise Kungen is suddenly back and doing salty twitch streams about how old shit is better and taking donation cash from the Nostralius bandwagon people watching him.

So obvious he's cashing in on the subject, I feel sorry for everyone actually thinking he is ''fighting for the legacy cause'' and donating to him.
People need to realize legacy isn't gonna happen, drop it and move on with the current game or stop playing -_-

[Lolsteak]

So he has.

But he's always in a producer position. Meaning he was doing things like these:



Not really a person involved directly with either design or programming, not for Blizzard games which already had leads for these departments.

He's commented that he worked on most of WoW's cities himself, Stormwind being the first one they created.

[Jokerfiend]

To continue the Nostralius bandwagon, surprise surprise Kungen is suddenly back and doing salty twitch streams about how old shit is better and taking donation cash from the Nostralius bandwagon people watching him.

So obvious he's cashing in on the subject, I feel sorry for everyone actually thinking he is ''fighting for the legacy cause'' and donating to him.
People need to realize legacy isn't gonna happen, drop it and move on with the current game or stop playing -_-

I would say highly unlikely, but NOT going to happen. I dunno about that, we will see sometime after Legion drops.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

To continue the Nostralius bandwagon, surprise surprise Kungen is suddenly back and doing salty twitch streams about how old shit is better and taking donation cash from the Nostralius bandwagon people watching him.

So obvious he's cashing in on the subject, I feel sorry for everyone actually thinking he is ''fighting for the legacy cause'' and donating to him.
People need to realize legacy isn't gonna happen, drop it and move on with the current game or stop playing -_-

What, you mean a streamer doing his job? He's a public entertainer, what did you expect?

I would say highly unlikely, but NOT going to happen. I dunno about that, we will see sometime after Legion drops.

That's my line of thought, too. Although I think the more we move forward, the more likely it is to happen. Once again, as I've said, there are servers already fighting right now to continue where Nost left off.

[Coconut]

He's commented that he worked on most of WoW's cities himself, Stormwind being the first one they created.

That is hardly anything. WoW started out on the Warcraft III map creation system. It was easy as fuck to place things around, I made a lot of maps too. "Working on Stormwind" is pretense artistry at best. Could have been just as well sitting behind the game world designer with a studied mien and telling him to move that building to the left.

[snackfeat]

I watched for 2 minutes. He tried to say healing was much tougher, I laughed and moved on.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about if you think healing in current wow is harder than it was in classic. You have tools for literally every situation now, in vanilla you were not able to instantly top off the entire raid if something went wrong.

[FluFF]

What, you mean a streamer doing his job? He's a public entertainer, what did you expect?

When I think of streamers I think of people like Towelliee or Slootbag or people like that who stream mostly daily while playing the game they like and interacting with chat.
Kungen goes of Twitch or the WoW section for months, comes back when shit happens and then just plays stupid ass youtube videos for 2 weeks to cash in on the subject at hand.
All he did this week was play shitty ass vanilla videos and speaking for everyone saying everyone wants vanilla back.

Kungen ain't a entertainer, he's a money grabber who shows up when shit happens and then disappears again.

[Lolsteak]

That is hardly anything. WoW started out on the Warcraft III map creation system. It was easy as fuck to place things around, I made a lot of maps too. "Working on Stormwind" is pretense artistry at best. Could have been just as well sitting behind the game world designer with a studied mien and telling him to move that building to the left.

Strawman arguments don't do anything for the discussion.

https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/43...720?lang=en-gb
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/72...153?lang=en-gb

Again we can only go on what has been stated and not speculation, You might find this conversation interesting

https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/72...000?lang=en-gb

[Deleted]

You must be new to thread. People blatantly against it just because (nothing to support their view).

There are very few people against it 'just because'.

Some people are against it because they think it would take resources or focus away from the 'live' game. It's also quite clear that there is no agreement on what exactly a 'vanilla server' would be - proponents vary widely in what they say they want: at least a few people want the game to run all the way through until the end of WotLK and then be reset again.

Blizzard own their IP and they own the rights to exploit it. Even if Vanilla servers would turn a profit and please a lot of players it still doesn't mean it's the right thing for them to do. Any company has a strategy and a budget to achieve it. I find it very easy to believe that while legacy servers might generate a return, if this doesn't further their long term strategy then it won't happen.

That said, there's nothing to stop Blizz launching legacy servers if they can convince their board it's the right thing to do, but it is still a Blizz business decision and not something they 'owe' their loyal fan base or that can be dictated to them. Hence it's not something I feel a need to support either way.