Open Letter to Blizzard Entertainment from Mark Kern

[Desparil]

Yes, because other companys never hire poeple from the modding community or anything like that, that would never happen, especially if they are such filthy criminals like the nostalrius team that is currently in contact with Blizzard to probably find a solution.

"One other note - we’ve recently been in contact with some of the folks who operated Nostalrius. They obviously care deeply about the game, and we look forward to more conversations with them in the coming weeks." that contact can also be cut this crap out or you will be sued.

Blizzard has no need for them if they want to remake vanilla they know how to do it this is just publicity stunt to calm sobbing nostalgic masses.

[Deleted]

Make WoW great again!

[Desparil]

This topic is almost as fucking trash as the weekly 'get rid of LFR/LFD' threads.

Jesus christ move on, talk about a fad that no one will give 2 fucks about once another bandwagon arrives.

When vanilla was out there wasnt any less of the whine threads that there is now. People complained about certain things so they took them out now all of a sudden a minority of people want it all back. And i say minority because im bet most people that are riding this shitty fucking badwagon didnt even play it back in 2004 and up to whatever year you class as 'vanilla'.

Hopefully Blizz do the right thing...for once and ignore you all,move on and put more effort into making the future wow better.

Also this, those 200k can go and circle jerk in some other game hopefully far faaar away from this one.

[deniter]

So what's the situation with that petition?

240k+ signs so far.

[Kalador]

So what's the situation with that petition?

it's like 242k..... but no one knows how many individual people signed it cause you can sign it as many time as you want.

[Reapocalypse]

"One other note - we’ve recently been in contact with some of the folks who operated Nostalrius. They obviously care deeply about the game, and we look forward to more conversations with them in the coming weeks." that contact can also be cut this crap out or you will be sued.

Blizzard has no need for them if they want to remake vanilla they know how to do it this is just publicity stunt to calm sobbing nostalgic masses.

i said probably, ofc its just a publicity stunt and noone knows what exactly they talk or talked about.

"We explored options for developing classic servers and none could be executed without great difficulty. If we could push a button and all of this would be created"

How does that imply that they have no need for them? you are stating that as a fact yet the staff of Nostalrius has stated multiple times that they would gladly help Blizzard if needed, being in contact with them after seeing a great demand for these servers just seems logical to me, but all of that is just speculation.

[Desparil]

i said probably, ofc its just a publicity stunt and noone knows what exactly they talk or talked about.

"We explored options for developing classic servers and none could be executed without great difficulty. If we could push a button and all of this would be created"

Thats just nice way to say we don't think we will make money on that or too much fuss for little gain.

How does that imply that they have no need for them? you are stating that as a fact yet the staff of Nostalrius has stated multiple times that they would gladly help Blizzard if needed, being in contact with them after seeing a great demand for these servers just seems logical to me, but all of that is just speculation.

Oh they would help blizzard? How kind of them /s

Do you really think company that actually made that bloody game needs help from pirates which emulated it? Nost people have nothing to bargain with they are doing this for self promotion in hope they will be hired by blizzard and blizzard can easily tell them to fuck off and take that petition and 200k people with them.

If blizzard wanted they would remake it again but they dont think it will pay off so they are not doing it and all this pr is just nice way to say big fat NO to all of you.

You may get pristine servers since they cost jack shit to implement but vanilla ones no.

[PixelFox]

The two biggest things that support this message and really should make Blizzard take notice:

That the Nostalrius people were not in it for the money. If it had been a subscription or pay-to-win server then it would have been easy for everyone to write it off as Blizzard protecting themselves from unfair/illegal competition. If that were the case then we would never have gotten to where we are.

And that there's very clear proof that the number of people who want to play WoW is in the millions but Blizzard is not giving them what they want and so they are not currently paying Blizzard anything for WoW. In the run-up to WoD, WoW reached 10,000,000 subscribers. Millions of old players came back and subscribed again because they HOPED to get a genuine WoW quality experience. Then not too many months later, they had lost literally 50% of those subscribers. I can't imagine another company where business would just go on as usual after a disaster like that.

2015: "We did nothing and three million subscriber showed up out of nowhere!" "Excellent! Bonuses for everyone on the team. Cary on."
2016: "More than half our subscribers up and quit on us." "Oh well! Bonuses for everyone on the team. Carry on."

[Vestig3]

Tbh now i think of it 240k signs over ten's of million of players new and old is realy nothing lol.

[Varitok]

Lol give me a break "i liked game most in vanilla so it must be that he cared about players" hes been booted from his own company for being a retard, he is doing this for self promotion same as all those shitheeled youtubers and twitchers using this sorry ass crowd to get subs/views because they know you will hurl in flocks to anything that shits on current wow and praises vanilla.

Question, Why do you not like people liking things? Serious question. You are so damn bitter and seem to have mentality of a 5 year old "STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE". Anti legacy people are the worst drones to blizzard.

[Reapocalypse]

Thats just nice way to say we don't think we will make money on that or too much fuss for little gain.



Oh they would help blizzard? How kind of them /s

Do you really think company that actually made that bloody game needs help from pirates which emulated it? Nost people have nothing to bargain with they are doing this for self promotion in hope they will be hired by blizzard and blizzard can easily tell them to fuck off and take that petition and 200k people with them.

If blizzard wanted they would remake it again but they dont think it will pay off so they are not doing it and all this pr is just nice way to say big fat NO to all of you.

You may get pristine servers since they cost jack shit to implement but vanilla ones no.

I dont think Blizzard needs help to do it, stating that it is too difficult for them in combination with them offering their help for free just lowers the cost for them, wich is definetly in Blizzards interest if they ever want to do it.

Again, your implying random shit like that they want to get hired out of what context exactly? oh right they offered a product Blizzard no longer supports or offers and put work into it without asking for anything in return.

[Varitok]

They are a niche minority, and many of them "think they want it", but will be bored after a few days anyhow...

People have some serious nostalgic pink glasses when it comes to remembering Vanilla...

Holy fuck stop with the nostalgia bullshit. God damn, People wouldn't have played on Nost for over a year if it was nostalgia. maybe people just PREFER THE GAME AS IT USED TO BE. It is completely different from current WoW. Its like me saying i'd rather play witcher over skyrim. They are completely different games but you want to pretend its nostalgia. I understand you dont want people having fun and enjoying a game but don't imply that its nostalgia. That is what really pisses me off during these arguments because anti legacy people have no other arguments other than "its nostalgia!" and "they will play for a few days and get bored" which just aren't true. Objectively.

[Desparil]

Question, Why do you not like people liking things? Serious question. You are so damn bitter and seem to have mentality of a 5 year old "STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE". Anti legacy people are the worst drones to blizzard.

I don't care if you like it or not and i don't care if you get vanilla server or not (if it doesn't affect main game), its that few 100s of you infested every thread here with vanilla whine and its getting tiring. You got your nice no answer from blizz now chill until they close another ps or you get pristine servers.

- - - Updated - - -

I dont think Blizzard needs help to do it, stating that it is too difficult for them in combination with them offering their help for free just lowers the cost for them, wich is definetly in Blizzards interest if they ever want to do it.

Again, your implying random shit like that they want to get hired out of what context exactly? oh right they offered a product Blizzard no longer supports or offers and put work into it without asking for anything in return.

Context is they offered help to blizzard and they might do it for free for a while but be sure it wont last and they will want to monetize it.

[Reapocalypse]

Context is they offered help to blizzard and they might do it for free for a while but be sure it wont last and they will want to monetize it.

"Again, your implying random shit"

[DeadmanWalking]

Blizzard isn't going to do a vanilla server anytime in the near future. You may want it, you may only want to play it but it's not going to happen anytime in the near future. They are months away from a new expansion and they will not take development away from future content (because they get raked over the coals for long periods without new content) and they don't want to pull attention away from the new shiney.
Probably the easiest thing they could do is license others to run private servers but I don't see that happeneing either as it would still require policing to maintain the Blizzard seal of approval.
And yes, Blizzard has to be adamant about its IP licenses, if it lets people freely use their content without licensing agreements they will not be able to stop others from stealing their IP as they can argue in court that 'Blizzard doesn't care about these people stealing from them so I should be allowed to take what I want from them." IP laws are complicated and companies spend millions to keep their IP protected. Corning Glass created a product called Pyrex and then someone stole their IP in a product called Pyro King to steal market share from the creating company, Corning glass basically invented a ceramic that could resist thermal shock up to 450 degrees (great for baking) without shattering and pyro King came in and basically stole the product and rode the back of the original product by taking a name that was simular to it and making billions in profits. Corning Ware maintains legal claims against pyro King for decades later mainly to stop other companies from replicating what pyro king did due to the cost of litigation. When Pyro King came Pyrex lost 50% of its market share, if another company were to do it the share would reduce to 33%, and so on and so on.

It may be a disadvantage to you personally if you like vanilla servers but IP legal battles are the way of the corporate world and not everything that happens in the world is based on you being the center of the personal pleasure universe.

[A dot Ham]

I was just saying that because somebody got fired from a company, doesn't mean he was necessarily doing something bad.

And I'll refrain from commenting on the capitalist and socialist tags you arbitrarily added.

Are you for real?

Steve Jobs and John Sculley had an on going feud. The board just sided with the wrong person. But there was a reason, and the turmoil was creating an unhealthy environment.

Mark Kern was quite literally bankrupting Red 5. So there was a reason. Poor performance.

The difference is that firing Jobs was bad for apple... like really bad. Whereas for Red 5, firing Kern was the best thing they could have done.

So your comparison is shit.

Jobs, and apple are in the business of protecting their own IP. Capitalist.

Kern cares about individual consumer rights, which is great for popularity, and bad for business. Communist.

You can ignore it if you wish, it wasn't arbitrary. Fundamentally the 2 people couldn't be more different.

[Deleted]

By now, every gamer who has ever wanted to try WoW, has already done so. WoW is simply so big, that there are no huge swaths of untapped gamers to attract to the franchise, but there are veterans, millions of them, and they miss their home and their community. If you provide a home for these veterans again, they will come back, and they will likely play both the new content, and the legacy content.

The best part, IMO, and the one I hope Blizzard hears if nothing else.

I don't believe in this claim of millions. I know some people who have played WoW sometimes in their history - they never stated that they would come back if WoW would only return to Vanilla status. The reasons vary - but mainly, their lives have changed and they feel no need to "warm up" a past "gaming relationship" to WoW. And there are people who have stopped playing WoW because of Garrison chores. They probably will come back when Legion is out, because then the chores would not be as overwhelming as they are now, so to hope. There are many reasons why people don't play WoW anymore, and only a share of these reasons is the change away from Vanilla.

Vanilla servers could be sustainable with some hundred thousands of players, if these players would come to stay, so to speak, and would pay for this service (no matter how, it could be a sub, it could be microtransactions). F2P servers with a special shop could possibly break the Vanilla feeling, though (pay2win concerns, introduction of vanity items that have not been there in Vanilla etc.), besides requiring higher numbers of players to be sustainable - because you usually only monetise a small fraction of all F2P players.

But most important thing is, Vanilla servers could damage the reputation of the game, of Blizzard, because it's not an innovative move, it's a regression. Do you like companies which have to resort to regressing to keep operational? Yes, there are "evergreen" flavours in food and perfumes - but games are quite different products. I would think that WoW is about to die when they set up Vanilla servers. Also, we have witnessed the fate of Wildstar, which was marketed exactly to appeal to Vanilla veterans who don't get their fun from the current WoW anymore. Something similar could happen to Vanilla servers as well.

[Mosotti]

Looks like a loser to me, did nothing (good) in the last 10 years. In the meantime, "Mike" made several billion dollars and doesn't give a panda fuck about this crazy shit.

[Mustardisbad]

I was really surprised to see this video, I wonder how much of an influence he will have on further discussions. I also want his shirt.

[Ielenia]

If there is one game developer that has the money to acquire new resources, it is Blizzard.

Two things:
One: money isn't infinite; and
Two: regardless of how much money they have, they won't spend it willy-nilly without making sure the chances of returning a worthwhile profit are high enough.