Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[ls-]

I think you people are vastly overestimating the cost. I bet they spent 3x on the whole Alliance/Horde motorcycle thing than 5 years of legacy servers would cost.

Also, they don't need to release them all. Not all at once at least. They could release them just like they did originally. And they should only do it after they're done with expansions (which is probably sooner than people expect) to not split the playerbase.

Not really, we did some maths 600 pages earlier in this thread. But you guys tend to overestimate amount of people, who are interested in P2P Vanilla WoW. Even if it's released, private realms won't disappear.

To waste money on a fraction of a fraction of community, sure, smart move

- - - Updated - - -

That's it. #Trump2016 confirmed.

More seriously though, Runescape have more subscribers than World of Warcraft right now, which is really sad when you think about it. But then again, Legacy servers turned out to be much, much bigger and profitable than initially expected.

Almost all F2P games, especially browser ones, have more players than any P2P project T_T You can't be serious.

[Coconut]

~snip~

Imagine Blizzard has to invest X resources in order to create and upkeep legacy realms (with timed patches, transfers, server mergers and the like). It brings an increase of P1% in profits. Right now they are working on Legion without those extra resources. If they invest the same amount of resources into Legion, they would increase profits with P2%. If P2 > P1, then they are better off investing in Legion.

If they invest X in a new game, they can earn P3% more profits, so that may even be better than Legion for them. A game like Hearthstone. But how is HS different than legacy servers? It has the promise of a future. Those devs who work on it will keep making content for years to come, and the money will flow. Legacy is a very contained project; maybe it will draw a "Wrath Baby" like yourself, because if you started in Wrath all your veteran friends were bringing it up to you. But it will not attract a fresh audience, an audience not already interested in WoW.

That's not to say legacy realms would NEVER be a good idea. Like I said several times, when WoW reaches the end of its life cycle, trying to widen your audience by providing them with more varied environments to try out or retire to, to remember their golden days. But that's not now.

I guess this is why so many people are against you: you want a feature that belongs in a dead game, in fact some of you, like Uurdz, actually want the game to die, while we still enjoy it a lot.

[lordblasey]

Initially I was all for Legacy servers, but I really don't see it sustaining itself in the long run. It seems impossible to attract brand new players to the game, and once we have cleared all the content then it will be finished and we will leave. The server reset concept goes against the core of what makes MMOs successful.

[jvbastel]

FFS, Runescape? lel... Good, I'll say it one more time then, cuz I really wanna see Trump as a president of US :3 Legacy servers will eventually cannibalise part of retail community.

They will cannibalize a small part of the retail community, but I think most of the people who pay to play on retail wil still play retail if the sub fee is shared across it and legacy.

It will also bring players back to the game, and assuming you'll need a sub + all expansions (how I would do it), they will also check retail out. Thus maybe upping the amount of players on retail.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Almost all F2P games, especially browser ones, have more players than any P2P project T_T You can't be serious.

You do know that Legacy Runescape require a 10$/month subscription, right? And that they have more than 2 million active players on runescape legacy servers alone, right?

[Aggrophobic]

You do know that Legacy Runescape require a 10$/month subscription, right? And that they have more than 2 million active players on runescape legacy servers alone, right?

What does it matter?
LoL has millions of players but no legacy mode. Must mean legacy stuff is bad, right?
You're starting to sound a bit desperate here.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Imagine Blizzard has to invest X resources in order to create and upkeep legacy realms (with timed patches, transfers, server mergers and the like). It brings an increase of P1% in profits. Right now they are working on Legion without those extra resources. If they invest the same amount of resources into Legion, they would increase profits with P2%. If P2 > P1, then they are better off investing in Legion.

If they invest X in a new game, they can earn P3% more profits, so that may even be better than Legion for them. A game like Hearthstone. But how is HS different than legacy servers? It has the promise of a future. Those devs who work on it will keep making content for years to come, and the money will flow. Legacy is a very contained project; maybe it will draw a "Wrath Baby" like yourself, because if you started in Wrath all your veteran friends were bringing it up to you. But it will not attract a fresh audience, an audience not already interested in WoW.

That's not to say legacy realms would NEVER be a good idea. Like I said several times, when WoW reaches the end of its life cycle, trying to widen your audience by providing them with more varied environments to try out or retire to, to remember their golden days. But that's not now.

I guess this is why so many people are against you: you want a feature that belongs in a dead game, in fact some of you, like Uurdz, actually want the game to die, while we still enjoy it a lot.

I don't want the game to die. I've stated it several time. If anything, I'm part of the crowd who'll play both.

But there's a notion you need to understand - and many people actually need to understand this - is that game creation velocity drop exponentially the bigger the amount of employees you have and the bigger amount of money invested. There comes a point where a game has reached its maximum velocity point; pushing it further actually reduce the speed of conception. I know this because I am in the industry, but take a minute and go read about it, you'll realize that there's always a contingency point where quality and speed start to drop. Best example I can give is Destiny (original) and SWOTOR, which had millions upon millions invested in their respective games - and it ended up exactly as you guess. They had to switch business model after absorbing tremendous debts.

So the same amount of money invested in Legion would not actually help its velocity the same way that investing in a new team on a new project - like legacy. It would be in fact the clever choice.

Initially I was all for Legacy servers, but I really don't see it sustaining itself in the long run. It seems impossible to attract brand new players to the game, and once we have cleared all the content then it will be finished and we will leave. The server reset concept goes against the core of what makes MMOs successful.

Seasons, as described, does not mean server wipe. It means server merge when the season is finished, the exact same way Diablo III does it. And then, if successful, there is a lot of possibilities to create content - if the demand is there, once again. Don't forget that legacy =/= live, and that it would be handled by a different team.

What does it matter?
LoL has millions of players but no legacy mode. Must mean legacy stuff is bad, right?
You're starting to sound a bit desperate here.

1. LoL was released in 2009. 2. It's an e-sport. Runescape have more in common with World of Warcraft than World of Warcraft and LoL will ever have.

[Coconut]

~snip~

I'm sorry, but you strike me as arrogant and hateful, as much as you try to downplay it.

You act like you understand Blizzard's market better than Blizzard.... and yet you're being snide about popular additions to the game, like collections, pet battles and transmog. Hell, even LFG seems to be highly popular.

I don't think you actually want vanilla because it is a better game... I think what you ACTUALLY want is to feel better than others... better than other players, better than Blizzard, better than whoever disagrees with you. What you liked about Vanilla was the things that allowed you to spit on other people's heads. What you liked about it was that the "haves" were so much farther ahead than the "have-nots".

You don' care that right now you can obtain highly exclusive rewards like Mythic gear, mythic mounts, Challenge Mode mogs, realm best titles, arena vanity tiers and gladiator mounts. You care that they don't stand out so much, because that scrub can have a pretty mog too, or can have a neat and rare mount. You care that a working mom can be better at the game than you and achieve more without sinking half her life in farming gear and atonements.

You care that people don't look at you thinking you're smarter than all Blizzard devs, and hailing you as a hero for being addicted to a game. Why can't you enjoy WoW for what it is and play Diablo 3 if you want a "seasonal" game? It's made by the same company.

[Keltas]

What does it matter?
LoL has millions of players but no legacy mode. Must mean legacy stuff is bad, right?
You're starting to sound a bit desperate here.

Except league is a moba.
runescape is an MMORPG, literally the exact same genre as WoW.

It's the literal perfect example of how profitable legacy servers are. your comparison is absolutely awful. It's not even close to the same type of game, and honestly legacy league servers would be almost the exact same as live servers.

The one who is desperate is you. Legacy servers not only work, but Runescapes legacy servers have *5* developers, and 2+ million players. You realize how much money they rake in based on the legacy server idea right? It works.

To add on for those calling runescape an f2p browser game. You haven't been able to play it in browser for years, it has a client you have to download. You also have to pay a subscription (which multiple million people pay for) to access 90% of the content. Honestly F2P runescape contains about as much content as WoWs F2P does.


I just don't understand those who hate on anyone who wants legacy servers. If you aren't going to play on them, then it has zero effect on you. It might even give them money to reinvest into the hollow shell of a game they have now (not that they ever would put money into it). You would lose nothing, and could very safely ignore them forever. Telling people they don't deserve them because, well I really can't find any real reasons, is stupid.

[ls-]

There is no need to "maintain" any of those realms since they won't receive any new features.

It can just sit there.

If you sell a product you have to provide support and maintenance, otherwise your sorry ass may and certainly will be sued. It works differently for opensource software, freeware and abandonware though.

[Coconut]

I don't want the game to die. I've stated it several time. If anything, I'm part of the crowd who'll play both.

But there's a notion you need to understand - and many people actually need to understand this - is that game creation velocity drop exponentially the bigger the amount of employees you have and the bigger amount of money invested. There comes a point where a game has reached its maximum velocity point; pushing it further actually reduce the speed of conception. I know this because I am in the industry, but take a minute and go read about it, you'll realize that there's always a contingency point where quality and speed start to drop. Best example I can give is Destiny (original) and SWOTOR, which had millions upon millions invested in their respective games - and it ended up exactly as you guess. They had to switch business model after absorbing tremendous debts.

So the same amount of money invested in Legion would not actually help its velocity the same way that investing in a new team on a new project - like legacy. It would be in fact the clever choice.

If you are in the industry, don't act like you have such a big stake in this... Try to take what Blizzard says and does as a learning experience instead of assuming you already know better than them. You may end up better at what you do. Don't you want that more than legacy realms?

[lordblasey]

Seasons, as described, does not mean server wipe. It means server merge when the season is finished, the exact same way Diablo III does it. And then, if successful, there is a lot of possibilities to create content - if the demand is there, once again. Don't forget that legacy =/= live, and that it would be handled by a different team.

That's a great solution but for Diablo III, when the new season starts, you start from scratch again. I can't grasp the notion that;

1.) a significant amount of people will want to create a fresh lvl 1 and spend the time grinding again (not everyone wants to lose their character)

2.) a significant amount of people will want to log in to a finished game (no more content left to complete)

Those numbers would surely diminish quickly. And I want to know how you suggest more content could be created? I personally want to replay Vanilla WoW as it was with no bonus content, it seems overreaching to me.

[Deleted]

All difficulties, I haven't finished WoD raids on Mythic however.

I really don't have the patience to do the raids 3 times.. Hell I don't even have the patience to do the raids on two difficulties nowadays, I honestly prefer the old style raids without the right clicking portrait to set difficulty bullshit (I'd love for some more Ulduar style encounters though, I loved the idea of activating the hardmodes through the fight).

I don't really raid more than one difficulty anymore, except when the new raid tier comes out. Heroic and down doesn't challenge me. I do agree though that I preferred the old way, but I think you'd be even more likely to disappoint one part of the community. Either it'd be tuned too easy and all the current top tier raiders would rolfstomp through the content on first day, the interesting world first race would be gone. Or it'd be too hard and all the casual raiders would be crying for nerfs.

It would need some attention I agree but the current method of abandoning every previous raid and including ways to catchup in ilvl really increases how quickly content is phased out, It's not good for the game as a whole.

I don't like it either, but I sort of blame HFC LFR and normal for it. The drops from both are better than much of the gear from previous raids for less effort than going back to HM or BRF and doing them on heroic.

It really was the atmosphere for me, We had a lot of banter in chat which took away most of the tedium. It was also surprisingly fun teasing people who were after certain items which refused to drop (T2 shoulders never dropped for me in fact, rip).

Aside from progression we were always messing around in the farm runs, Pissing off my class leader by DPSing as Holy on trash.. Using the Piccolo of the Flaming Fire while the entire group was stacked up after Garr (I actually can't remember why we were stacked up, Some tactic or whatever). It really just boils down to having fun and not chasing epics.

That doesn't require a 40 man raid though, I've had the same experience with my mythic raiding guilds.

[Aggrophobic]

1. LoL was released in 2009. 2. It's an e-sport. Runescape have more in common with World of Warcraft than World of Warcraft and LoL will ever have.

Grasping at straws are we?
We'll Blizzard have made some questionable business decisions befor, maybe you'll get lucky in time.

[Uurdz]

I guess this is why so many people are against you: you want a feature that belongs in a dead game, in fact some of you, like Uurdz, actually want the game to die, while we still enjoy it a lot.

I'll leave freedom to reply to the other mistakes you've made and focus just on this. Even in this forum it's about 50/50. As I said in my previous post, I get it you feel like legacy servers threaten your current game. I don't want wow to die, I'll be taking time off work for legion and I'm working on my pre-legion setup right now. What I do want is for when I grow tired of the new content they blast out, to be able to go and play legacy servers.

I can be pro retail and pro legacy you know

[Aggrophobic]

Except league is a moba.
runescape is an MMORPG, literally the exact same genre as WoW.

It's the literal perfect example of how profitable legacy servers are. your comparison is absolutely awful. It's not even close to the same type of game, and honestly legacy league servers would be almost the exact same as live servers.

The one who is desperate is you. Legacy servers not only work, but Runescapes legacy servers have *5* developers, and 2+ million players. You realize how much money they rake in based on the legacy server idea right? It works.

To add on for those calling runescape an f2p browser game. You haven't been able to play it in browser for years, it has a client you have to download. You also have to pay a subscription (which multiple million people pay for) to access 90% of the content. Honestly F2P runescape contains about as much content as WoWs F2P does.


I just don't understand those who hate on anyone who wants legacy servers. If you aren't going to play on them, then it has zero effect on you. It might even give them money to reinvest into the hollow shell of a game they have now (not that they ever would put money into it). You would lose nothing, and could very safely ignore them forever. Telling people they don't deserve them because, well I really can't find any real reasons, is stupid.

It was meant to be a ridiculous comparison. Just like comparing a browser game and WoW.
I'm sorry if that was not clear.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

If you are in the industry, don't act like you have such a big stake in this... Try to take what Blizzard says and does as a learning experience instead of assuming you already know better than them. You may end up better at what you do. Don't you want that more than legacy realms?

I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. The industry is not in a good state right now. CEO are still under the illusion that more men and more money = bigger profits. Sadly, it's not true. That's why so many AAA games fail to even pay their own cost.

Now, I wasn't accusing Blizzard of doing that - I was saying that your argument of investing the same amount of money in live server would result in more profit was wrong. That's what I said.

That's a great solution but for Diablo III, when the new season starts, you start from scratch again. I can't grasp the notion that;

1.) a significant amount of people will want to create a fresh lvl 1 and spend the time grinding again (not everyone wants to lose their character)

2.) a significant amount of people will want to log in to a finished game (no more content left to complete)

Those numbers would surely diminish quickly. And I want to know how you suggest more content could be created? I personally want to replay Vanilla WoW as it was with no bonus content, it seems overreaching to me.

New content could be implemented in the seasonal server. When the season end, what happen in Diablo III? Do you lose that character? No, you don't. It gets moved to the main server. That's exactly the idea behind seasons in Vanilla. One seasonal server, which get transfered when season's end, and one main server that is "permanent".

Grasping at straws are we?
We'll Blizzard have made some questionable business decisions befor, maybe you'll get lucky in time.

The content of your argumentation is astounding. You should feel bad, wasting data transfer to write so little meaning.

[QuiksLE]

You do know that Legacy Runescape require a 10$/month subscription, right? And that they have more than 2 million active players on runescape legacy servers alone, right?

Isnt OSRS f2p aswell?

[Uurdz]

I'm sorry, but you strike me as arrogant and hateful, as much as you try to downplay it.

You act like you understand Blizzard's market better than Blizzard.... and yet you're being snide about popular additions to the game, like collections, pet battles and transmog. Hell, even LFG seems to be highly popular.

I don't think you actually want vanilla because it is a better game... I think what you ACTUALLY want is to feel better than others... better than other players, better than Blizzard, better than whoever disagrees with you. What you liked about Vanilla was the things that allowed you to spit on other people's heads. What you liked about it was that the "haves" were so much farther ahead than the "have-nots".

You don' care that right now you can obtain highly exclusive rewards like Mythic gear, mythic mounts, Challenge Mode mogs, realm best titles, arena vanity tiers and gladiator mounts. You care that they don't stand out so much, because that scrub can have a pretty mog too, or can have a neat and rare mount. You care that a working mom can be better at the game than you and achieve more without sinking half her life in farming gear and atonements.

You care that people don't look at you thinking you're smarter than all Blizzard devs, and hailing you as a hero for being addicted to a game. Why can't you enjoy WoW for what it is and play Diablo 3 if you want a "seasonal" game? It's made by the same company.

I can see now that I've struck a nerve with you and sorry for any offence you've taken. I understand business and I understand blizzard business. I don't think I know better than them but I am invested enough into this thread to point out information that explains why certain posts and viewpoints are wrong.

I won't say anything further on this, with you, as You've started to make it very personal rather than fact or opinion driven.

Good luck to you.

[Tome]

Isnt OSRS f2p aswell?

No, OSRS needs a subscription to be able to be played on, and it's more popular compared to the newer RuneScape, which IS free-to-play.