Official Reply to Vanilla Servers and Nostalrius

[Deleted]

This is a wierd statement though. Vanilla had very little atcual content. Everything took time to do, I'll give you that but there was not a lot to do.
You had a few dungeons, most obsolete at max level, no achivements, a few reptutations, most pointless with little rewards and of course raids but you didn't do them so... What did you do and why can't you do this in the current version of WoW that has WAY more content?

You cannot repeat this often enough. The amount of content in Vanilla is not comparable to any other expansion, it's less, just more time consuming and tedious.

I already have a job. I don't mind spending time in achieving things which matter to me. I have maxed out both main professions on all my characters, have maxed out cooking on most of them, and work on fishing currently. I return to old content for leveling or farming transmog, mounts or achievements. I also revisit festival events on at least one character just for fun. But I don't want the little content available to be streched with artificial time sinks. I rather replay the content with another character if I feel that it's not sufficient to fill up my gaming time.

The only things I would wish to get back are the old versions of revamped dungeons at their respective level (so I could farm the ZG tiger which I could not never win when it dropped), or having a TW for the old ZA amani bear (same bad luck on rolls every time we made the time run). I would also possibly like to revisit old Desolace just because it was perfect in capturing the feeling back then. But I also would like to get another chance on MoP CM transmog sets. It's not specifically Vanilla I miss. Because I already did most things I wanted to do in Vanilla, and I want to experience something new.

[Thes]

Pristine Realm? No. Classic realm? Yes. TBC realm? Yes. Wrath realm? Yes.

I, like many others, am not only disappointed in how easy things have become, between the heirloom gear and LFD tools, but I also don't like the direction the story took. I don't like a lot of the newer classes/races. I also don't like how practically every profession is just bought now, there's no grind for anything. Class quests are gone. Talent trees are gone. What I liked about old WoW? You couldn't train for all of your late-game spells and abilities... some you had to farm for in dungeons, etc.

Unless Blizzard listens to people, Pristine Realms just won't be what people want. Not everyone wants the live version of the game! Some like the older content and are content to stick to that! Let the people who want to do that do that, let the people who want to enjoy where the story and game go, do that!

Concepts.

You talk about disappointment and easy content and then you want Wrath? Do people not realize that Wrath had the most pushover ez mode content of all time? That expansion made the game like this, not Cataclysm like many do seem to think.

I'd still take Wrath over this current shit, but if you really wanted a legacy server then Wrath would most definitely not be that.

[curtislow011]

You talk about disappointment and easy content and then you want Wrath? Do people not realize that Wrath had the most pushover ez mode content of all time? That expansion made the game like this, not Cataclysm like many do seem to think.

I'd still take Wrath over this current shit, but if you really wanted a legacy server then Wrath would most definitely not be that.

Just curious as how that expansion was the most pushover ez mode content. Lets keep the answer civil. Im not attacking, just asking a question.

[Captnrex]

They are just pure assholes, we had vanilla server and they ruined it and now want to give us this shit pristince crap. It's like arguing with retards that cant learn how to read or count to 10.

and here is an example of the "vanilla" crowds behavior they see, nothing but bitching

[Thes]

Just curious as how that expansion was the most pushover ez mode content. Lets keep the answer civil. Im not attacking, just asking a question.

There was no boss fight until something like Firefight that felt like a real challenge. Obviously 3 drakes with crap gear was also hard. That said, at the start of Wrath you had seen all the content within a week from launch, lol. Even content locking would have been better than us being able to beat all raids in a week.

Heroics were downgraded to normal dungeons in terms of difficulty. At least at the start of TBC you couldn't just AoE everything down.

[vinmmo]

They are just pure assholes, we had vanilla server and they ruined it and now want to give us this shit pristince crap. It's like arguing with retards that cant learn how to read or count to 10.

If they weren't in the business to make money, there would be no wow. Corporate greed is generally what drives the market. No profits? No jobs. No jobs? No games. No games? I'd have to go outside. Reading complaints like "they're assholes who want to make money" reminds me how ridiculous gamers can be. You want games? They need to make the company money. Something not going to make money? It's not likely to happen.

[Aekero]

Everyone's going to have different opinions on what they'd like to see legacy servers look like. I for one would prefer something like pristine (all content, but no crz, remove heirlooms and other leveling buffs, remove the xp reductions from previous expansions) but I'd also do away with flying mounts and dungeon finder etc... make people actually travel through the world instead of getting in queue for everything from one spot.

That's what made it feel like a world, instead of a dungeon/arena runner, and imo those are some of the things that killed world pvp. I know the odds of getting something exactly as I want are next to none, but that's my opinion man. The idea of anything close to that i.e. pristine is interesting enough, I'd give it a shot.

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Also I don't get all the people arguing against something like this as a whole, (I don't have time for level grind etc).... Stay on your current realm?

[blankfaced]

It continues to astound me how many people don't understand what is attractive about vanilla servers. I can only imagine that the vocal opposition are fans of cata onwards and just don't get it.

You do realise that they never had achievements in vanilla wow right? You postulate that the old school game will lose its chant without new school features doesn't make any logical sense. Nost showed its popular for an extended period without any of the new games 'perks'

And they did it while not charging a dime. Do you really think people who played on Nost will come flooding to a vanilla server if Blizzard charged 15$ a month for it? I'm not claiming that people want new features with vanilla wow gameplay, i'm claiming it needs a carrot on the stick and nostalgia isn't going to be enough to keep people playing it (while paying for to play that is.)

[wooters]

It's a little bit more complicated than that..
I am pretty sure, somewhere in the legal wall of text of Blizzards terms of service you will find a paragraph that says how all legal dispute is handled in the courts of California, the state where the company's headquarter resides. Yes, whether French law was violated is to be determined.. BUT.
Since it is an US company, doing business in the US, and their disclaimer says so, the people running the server can be charged in US courts and trialed by US law.
So, at the end of the day it's a rather tricky thing. and not as clear cut as "I am not in the US, US jurisdiction doesn't apply"..

no..if you have a problem with any foreigner in their country, and he is doing the issue you are having a problem with there..you have to try it in that country unless he is arrested in your country ofc..(but even then the american justice system would perhaps have a problem if he were on home soil doing it, and didn`t break the law) or your government applies for the individuals to be extradited. but that would never happen in a case like this

this is why scams like "Nigeria letters" are almost impossible to resolve in court anywhere as courts are very often nationally biased, the laws of justice differ, and they are "always" carrying out their scams on home soil.

a pre written disclaimer btw often have less value in Europe..as the customer wasn`t included in negotiating the terms. and the disclaimer refers to regulations that maybe aren`t even present in that country

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Information Society Directive, it does not need to go to court to be proven illegal. The cease and desist that Blizzard sent to Nost/its hosting company is enough to prove that it was illegal otherwise they would not have had to take it down. EU copyright law follows Information Society Directive which is highly similar to American Copyright law but with some changes to allow for Civil Law adaptations. Basically they were illegally using IP of Blizzard to make a game server. This all falls under WIPO Copyright Treaty that is an international treaty. So they have to follow this which France has signed and therefore the laws in the US and France are the same internationally. But nice try.

someone bullying you with court threat are often enough for people to cave in...nost following the letters threat/advice doesn`t prove at all..if what they did was illegal.

anyways I think you miss my point somewhat. I'm not stating nost was legal. really I don`t. I'm just saying..if they was disagreeing with blizzards claims and decided to take it to the justice system.. their server wouldn`t be deemed illegal in france until verdict was said. that is just a "fact". maybe the case was indeed obvious, and would never be tried...but that would also be a "verdict" by a french/european judge. get me now? there are plenty of cases with unexpected outcomes when we talk about patents and copyrights. every country have their own interpretation of the copyright issue. where I come from just to have it mentioned.. it is legal to copy any copyrighted material, as long as it is for nonprofit personal use. that include also to share with family and friends. friends can be..a broad term. that said..nost would probably faced big issues with taking it to court

[Wiredmana]

“pristine realm”. In essence that would turn off all leveling acceleration including character transfers, heirloom gear, character boosts, Recruit-A-Friend bonuses, WoW Token, and access to cross realm zones, as well as group finder. We aren’t sure whether this version of a clean slate is something that would appeal to the community and it’s still an open topic of discussion.

So, all the hardships, none of the positives such as level caps, talents, raids, reverting class changes... Got it.. Why would anyone?

[Deleted]

VERY wrong Poll that leads into a VERY wrong direction!

Why don't you ask the community "Do you want a real Classic-Server or a Pristine-Server?".
I bet it would not be like 50/50.

[Smeller]

Is there anyway a company can make a public speech and not be accused of this? people just love to envision businesses as big evil greedy monstrosities.

Yes, they can. They just have to prove that they are sincere and there is only one way to do that. If they don't prove it it's just another attempt to appease the community.

[Foulisfair]

Hope Blizz is reading this

PRISTINE SERVERS are not the answer

Classic, untouched, vanilla only content servers are what the players want. NO BUFFS, NO FANCY SYSTEMS, NO LFD, LFR, NO XREALM, ETC

Nothing

Just classic, untouched wow like we could play back in 2004.

Period.

Now this poll...TOTALLY MISLEADING POLL.
This is not about playing a 'pristine' or 'regular' server. Pristine servers, as described by Blizz, are not what players want. Players want REGULAR UNTOUCHED VANILLA WOW.

Now go.

[Chaelexi]

Then we have a problem. You can't have everything. Vanilla didn't suffer from all the crap they've added in past years, so i say no bnet is a blessing. Or just let Nostalrius live without greed killing fun and last little respect people had for this company before it turned into greed before players.

Did you not read anything about protecting their IP. It has nothing to do about greed and everything to do with being able to protect their IP in the future. If you allow people to steal the IP in game form what is stopping someone from making a movie, TV show or anything else from it and then you having no leg to stand on as the precedent was set that free use of the IP is ok.

Now for Blizzard licencing a Nost server, it will not be cheap to do so and the Nost server will have to go through substantial upgrades(to increase security to blizzard standards) and other costs and it would no longer be a free venture. It is one of those thing of be careful of what you wish for(Blizzard can even limit it to costing more than a wow subscription as that Blizzard would have the competitive edge). The licencing costs would likely be on a per user basis that may even include an initial start up fee. I wonder how many people would pay 17-20 dollars a month to play on a vanilla server with an initial startup fee.

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someone bullying you with court threat are often enough for people to cave in...nost following the letters threat/advice doesn`t prove at all..if what they did was illegal.

anyways I think you miss my point somewhat. I'm not stating nost was legal. really I don`t. I'm just saying..if they was disagreeing with blizzards claims and decided to take it to the justice system.. their server wouldn`t be deemed illegal in france until verdict was said. that is just a "fact". maybe the case was indeed obvious, and would never be tried...but that would also be a "verdict" by a french/european judge. get me now? there are plenty of cases with unexpected outcomes when we talk about patents and copyrights. every country have their own interpretation of the copyright issue. where I come from just to have it mentioned.. it is legal to copy any copyrighted material, as long as it is for nonprofit personal use. that include also to share with family and friends. friends can be..a broad term. that said..nost would probably faced big issues with taking it to court

Do you understand that French Laws are black and white, there is no judge making a ground breaking change to current law. This is Civil Law, if you are breaking the rules set in a law you are guilty. It is not like the American common law system which allows judges to make a determination how the law is interpreted and then it would be changed. So cases with unexpected outcomes rarely happen in civil law and the definition of friend turns from broad to black and white.

[Xoss]

The excuse that it is too hard has lost all meaning when a handful of dedicated volunteers can make it happen.

And no we don't want your garbage repackaged retail wow. Keep your pristine servers and its ridiculous talent system, simplistc game play, and concepts of class balance. The only way to do it is to start with a vanilla patch (1.3, 1.8, 1.12) and build forward. Starting with 8.0 or 10.0 or whatever patch you will be on is a complete non-starter. It's like asking for dark souls and asking if we would play candy crush instead. You are out of your mind.

Sincerely,
A voice that cannot post on retail forums.

[Gamez]

I hope they dont do this, the last thing they should do is split player base in half because some people cant get over their nostalgic crap and cause expansions to take twice as long and contain half the content they should have.

Make legacy realms, they will last 3 months (thats being generous) and then its going to be a dead wasteland after the hype fades.

[Stormdash]

That post sure was conspicuously absent any reiteration of the firm "no" of the past, wasn't it?

[mmonym]

I hope they dont do this, the last thing they should do is split player base in half because some people cant get over their nostalgic crap and cause expansions to take twice as long and contain half the content they should have.

Make legacy realms, they will last 3 months (thats being generous) and then its going to be a dead wasteland after the hype fades.

Why would you think that hosting servers running old code would cause expansions to take twice as long or halve their content? Every private server is run by amateurs in their spare time - I'm pretty sure Blizzard could manage it without using this as an excuse for even longer content droughts.

And even if you think this, wouldn't the fact that they will only last 3 months (being generous) and then be a dead wasteland mean that Blizzard won't have to spend much time or expense on them?

People who don't like the idea of legacy servers don't need to play on them - they have the retail game and that's not going away. No need to automatically object to other players having fun with older versions of the game.

[Deleted]

It still makes me laugh a lot when people say :

But vanilla was hard.
- If you call grinding hard then you obviously have no idea what hard is, call it time consuming yes, but hard no.

But vanilla raiding was hard.
- If you call artificially gated and bugged content hard then yes.

But vanilla was as easy as WoD is now.
- That's why the gap of a good and bad player (or a good and bad guild) with same item level, has never been higher.

But vanilla was amazing.
- Yes it was, just like other expansions have been, because it was new. New content is always amazing the first time you do it, doing it for another 3 years isn't going to be as amazing, you'll do it once and you'll get bored and stop. Now you see why blizzard won't make vanilla servers? Because you aren't even sure you are going to keep playing it for years. Thus uncertain incomes out of it.

But Blizzard should listen to the community.
- We all know how that went in WoD, where they tailored to the community and 90% of the active population hated it.

But Blizzard only cares about money.
- If you are a company, a big one, it's rather obvious you'll care about the profits. Just like you care about your paycheck being correct at the end of the month.

But why doesn't blizzard hire the nost server guys?
- Because doing that would give incentive to other pirated realms to appear in the hopes of being recruited by blizzard themselves, and it would eventually create a grey area in the legal department that blizzard encourages pirated content and they would eventually lose the rights to defend their own franchise. So you can be sure the Nost guys won't be hired, they'll still get sued, just because blizzard has to, to keep their IP rights.

But how come Nost could provide servers for free with no funds.
- You can rent servers for as low as 30 dollars per month, that would be well overkill for WoW Vanilla and because Vanilla isn't very taxing on the server, you could easily have a peak population of 100k. Which is succeeding the actual active population of Nost by nearly 20 times. Yes some people checked the Nost claim that they have 150k active players. It actually ended up with around 2-3k players on a daily basis, with double of that in weekends, so take it more like 150k unique players per month.

This discussion will go on for ages, but no matter what it comes down to one simple fact:

What people liked and found great about Vanilla is up to the individual.

If people like vanilla better than [current wow] (or did not like), that is up to that individual.
Why they prefer either new or old instalment can be for many good reasons, all depending on the individual.

For some, the part they liked about vanilla is things that you cannot recreate such as the beauty of the first global MMORPG and the fact that everyone were terrible at such games at the time so simple tasks, such as jumping to cross bridges, were hard tasks.

For some, the part they liked about vanilla, however, is valid points that is in no way related to the specific time the game was released but a fundamental change in design of WoW.

Finally, whether or not Blizzard should do it and whether or not people will play it for 1 day, 1 year or 10 years, or whether or not they should "waste their time" about it, is also related to what each individual thinks about earlier instalments or changes to the philosophical model of WoW, such as pristine realms trying to enforce server community.

All I can say is that:

If Blizzard create vanilla servers that last for 2 years, that is 24 months of extra income from a playerbase at somewhere between 50k and 10mil (the upper limit is hard to estimate, and I doubt its 10mil)

If we assume that many of those players interested in vanilla are not currently playing and would resub for a vanilla server, then that is a valid market to try and scoop up and earn cash on. That should be in the interest of Blizzard.

If we assume that a group of people will ignore it while a group of people will love it, why shouldnt Blizzard do it? Isnt the goal of Blizzard to get as many happy customers? And if the vanilla servers require a sub to WoW, then they are earning money too.

In the event, which non of us can really predict, that a vanilla server, or a pristine server, becomes a huge failure, is it not good to get it tested out, so that Blizzard can finally get facts about the situation? After 8+ years people are still craving vanilla servers.

While private servers are showing increasing popularity, non of us can say for sure why people do it, because it is an Individual experience. Some do it because its free, some do it for nostalgia and some do it for valid gamedesign reasons.

So get off your high horse and accept that people are different and for whatever reason someone hates/loves earlier instalments of WoW, its all about the personal experience one got from said instalment of WoW.

[ripped]

Not interested in this at all unless it has leveling to 60 and old world raids, titles and whatnot. Not this pristine take away leveling buffs garbage. We want our old world back.