Offical response from blizzard on legacy servers.

[Deleted]

the world in WoW could be completely removed and the game would not change much. In a world where you fly everywhere, queue up and teleport to dungeons, why even have a world? Why have dungeon entrances?

Why look for gear when you have heirlooms? Why make friends when the main goal is in-and-out as fast as possible? There is no sense of community due to cross-realm.

[rda]

beyond that, expansion on the meaning and definition of the key issue in 'We explored options for developing classic servers and none could be executed without great difficulty. " This is highly subjective and unspecific. does it mean

1) we really did manage to lose all useful secure-version backups. the horse learned to sing, the dog learned to eat code, etc.

2) great difficulty means we would be unable to do with within the budget and/or staffing parameters we would have to meet. What are those parameters (they won't say of course) and would they even be realistic for such a project or intentionally set to prevent it?

3) great difficulty as in extreme political difficulty internally.

4) great difficulty as in we could do it but it would need to be accessibilized in a way that would defeat the purpose of it (what I call the frankenstein option, or at least some parts of it)

5) some combination of the above

It means 2.

A post which might help: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...6#post40018146

[MoanaLisa]

beyond that, expansion on the meaning and definition of the key issue in 'We explored options for developing classic servers and none could be executed without great difficulty. " This is highly subjective and unspecific. does it mean

I see no useful purpose in exposing all of that beyond satisfying your curiosity. The main point is yes or no.

Whatever reasons they give just provide people fodder for calling them dishonest or whatever and extending the argument ad infinitum. Every reason they give will simply be countered by some forum person who believes they knows the easy way to do something in Blizzard's infrastructure (which they very certainly do not know much if anything about). And releasing all of the technical reasons why it's difficult is very likely to be handing out information about their network and methods that they deem proprietary. You're just curious is all. Expecting them to lay out their internal political discussions on the topic for all to see is ridiculous.

What we need to know is...yes or no.

[BiteytheVillain]

the world in WoW could be completely removed and the game would not change much. In a world where you fly everywhere, queue up and teleport to dungeons, why even have a world? Why have dungeon entrances?

Why look for gear when you have heirlooms? Why make friends when the main goal is in-and-out as fast as possible? There is no sense of community due to cross-realm.

i'm not meanin to ruffle feathers but! i do have a question about this -
i mean, really, if people wanted to run to dungeon entrances 'the old way', queue up via looking for people in trade/local chat 'the old way'- you still can? ive been running with the same handful of buddies for a while n whenever we wanna like, take our time and look around or just 'fly to the entrance while so-and-so gets his food then we can summon him' - thats something you still can do? like, just because LFR/LFG is THERE doesn't mean you have to use it- you're gunna be waiting for eeeever to find someone thats NOT, but dang, if theres so many people wanting to 'queue the way we USED TO!!' then maybe the wait wont be so long?
i don't think i'll ever understand why people would want the 'vanilla' server back, its not my cup of tea, i played vanilla and im happy the game moved away from that because it was ugly as sin and a nightmare to get anything done if you're on a low-pop server. im not happy with WoD either, theres a lot of content thats come out that i roll my eyes at and wonder why they didnt spend their time on something BETTER- but thats..the way games are........
i dunno, i kinda see the 'i want the OLD STUFF back!!' arguments as the same dudes that go into game stores and say 'GAMES ARENT GAMES ANYMORE!!!" when...they clearly are; theyre just not, yknow, hideous to look at and cater to someone that isn't 100% them :/?

just my two whole cents!

[Froggy]

So if you guys had to guess, do you think pristine realms will become a reality? And when will they release?

[rda]

So if you guys had to guess, do you think pristine realms will become a reality? And when will they release?

Depends on what people will say. Do you want them? Then write that you do on the official forums.

[Deleted]

The tool to build groups they added in WoD is fine (don't remember how they call it, the thing where you look what groups/raids are looking for more, and you can join or not), and is about the only good thing WoD added. It should be expanded (by showing WHO is already in the group for example), but it's a good tool.

The AUTOMATED grouping is an abomination that should never have appeared to begin with. Automation has no place in a social game.

Nope. You are free to socialise with people from other servers due to your battle.net account. You are still free to add people from your server to your f-list if you stumble across them in a random group. If you don't do it, it's you to blame.

[SoundOfGuns]

...

No offense, kiddo, but no. Their excuse is not bullshit. Its a very logical what he is saying. I didn't think about that myself actually. The american laws on such things is a fucking joke. Like most american laws but that's not the point. I suggest you look into them though. When Blizzard would ignore and tolerate a server of this size eventually someone else would walk by again (and has before already mind you. Its actually the second larger server Blizzard killed. The other one charged its users tho.) and charge money for the use of Blizzards Work. In a court the sheer existence of something like Nostalrius is a threat to their rights as you could very legitimately use them to say "Well, Blizzard clearly doesn't care for their IP otherwise they wouldn't tolerate THAT am i right?!". That has happened before. That's why some other Game Developers have brought much less reasonable courses to the curt in an instant. Nostalrius is not a victim of Blizzards greed its at most a victim of your laws on intellectual property.

The other part is very much reasonable too. Im sure it will be a while till the novelty of that server wears off considering that it was basically ripped from everyone's grasp by Blizzard but it was not that stable to be honest... It worked. And it worked VERY well for a privat server. And that's kind of the thing. The problems the server had on a technical side (and they were definitely there) would cause vast amount of shitstorms if it was a Blizzard server. So, no, a few guys in a basement did not do something blizzard can't do. Blizzard likely can do just that but then you would start moaning about it. Even if it was free. Because then its Blizzard. Its not as easy as a lot of people think it is and i can tell you that for a fact. Thats not an excuse. That's very much how programming works. And trust me... you don't really want the original vanilla back. I got around 70 Free Days in my account history from 2004 alone. And if you don't know what those meant you likely really don't know what you were in for back then.

[Deficineiron]

I see no useful purpose in exposing all of that beyond satisfying your curiosity. The main point is yes or no.

Whatever reasons they give just provide people fodder for calling them dishonest or whatever and extending the argument ad infinitum. Every reason they give will simply be countered by some forum person who believes they knows the easy way to do something in Blizzard's infrastructure (which they very certainly do not know much if anything about). And releasing all of the technical reasons why it's difficult is very likely to be handing out information about their network and methods that they deem proprietary. You're just curious is all.

What we need to know is...yes or no.

is 'you're just curious' the new debate response equivalent to 'you're just nostalgic.' ?

A normal person without really knowing much about the topic and no bias, might think 'great difficulty' means it would be an extraordinary and unreasonable effort on blizzard's part.

A person used to parsing blizzard comments and corporate comments in general might wonder whether it means something quite different. If it helps, not all of these things are negatives for blizzard - some could be VERY flattering to blizzard. it may well be that if blizzard itself could make this decision, including budgeting and personnel, without impact on corporate politics and/.or overall measured metrics with ATVI for all purposes, they would have already or would now.

I understand you aren't going to see relevance or difference, but a lot of posters will. "need' as defined in your last sentence is completely subjective.

[Deleted]

So if you guys had to guess, do you think pristine realms will become a reality? And when will they release?

We don't want pristine realms, we want vanilla legacy servers, the two are complete opposite and there would be an uproar even more than the nost shutdown if they decided to do pristine realms.

[Froggy]

Depends on what people will say. Do you want them? Then write that you do on the official forums.

I certainly want them, if their goal is to make lvling more challenging. I mean if they just remove the XP accelerating features, it still leaves us with leveling content that can be plowed through with ease, even in bad gear. Mobs need to be tuned so that there is actually danger in the world.

- - - Updated - - -

We don't want pristine realms, we want vanilla legacy servers, the two are complete opposite and there would be an uproar even more than the nost shutdown if they decided to do pristine realms.

I'd like both.

[Barnabas]

So on a game that has steadily lost subs the freeloaders from a private server are demanding that Blizzard needs to add more costs to their business? Laughable if you ask me.

[Deleted]

We don't want pristine realms, we want vanilla legacy servers, the two are complete opposite and there would be an uproar even more than the nost shutdown if they decided to do pristine realms.

Well.... Then there will be, but it shouldn't be your problem

[Turtlewithnoshell]

I have my own server that I log on and fly around just to look at the old stuff, if I can do that they can do it easily.

[RickJamesLich]

I get what people are asking for with vanilla realms but an underlying subtext in many of them is "loss of community". If that's a primary root cause for the unhappiness then the pristine realm proposal is a idea and laboratory of sorts for resolving that. If you play exclusively on that realm for all effective purposes, LFD/LFR are removed from the game. CRZ is removed from the game. That by itself makes the idea worthwhile to try out.

If 'perfect' is the enemy of better then the desire for vanilla realms, which are unlikely in any case, are going to be the enemy of pristine realms (which many might think better). And that's the path to getting nothing at all except for retail.

If Brack or any of his minions happen to see this I would welcome a more complete explanation with some actual specifics and details of what they have in mind instead of a single sentence checking off some bullet points derived from a Powerpoint presentation. It would also be nice that if what Brack posted the other day means "No" for vanilla realms they just say that. All they do by talking around the main point instead of confronting it directly is extend the pain and increase the damage.

The problem is that these types of servers only offer *some* solutions but not to the degree that players will want. And again, I don't speak for everyone but I personally haven't seen many interested in this. For example, the leveling process is still going to have a lot of turn offs - you can do the whole thing solo without having the need to socialize. Worse still you can solo a lot of the dungeons depending on your class which IMO would make doing dungeons a lot more tricky for those that can't. Then we have the issue of botting going unchecked by blizzard, which isn't as big for leveling as it is for battle grounds. Would blizzard put in restriction on tools that allow players to get an advantage in pvp? I'm specifically looking at the programs that allow you to automatically interrupt a spell.

World pvp is another issue and this one is much more tricky. Besides the obvious issue of flying mounts, even if that is solved you have other issues, such as raiding trivializing the need to leave the world. If there is no need to hit up 5 mans after the first few weeks, you will definitely see a smaller world. Ditto if professions do not provide meaningful upgrades. Ditto with max level questing, if the stuff is easy to complete solo, or in very small groups, that as well makes the world smaller, or quests that do not provide meaningful upgrades. What I'm getting at is that it would a pretty complicated thing to duplicate this type of thing on a Pristine server essentially.

A lot of the elements are intertwined, but essentially the reason why Nost always had so many people on in just about all of the zones was because there were always major incentives to be out there. If you can get rewards by hanging out in your class hall, doing follower missions, that essentially takes away incentives to leave it. Ditto if professions are over simplified, for example, on Nost you pretty much *needed* black lotus for raiding, hence the spots where they spawn were heavily farmed. If there's not an equivalent here, then naturally, that's going to be another reason for less people to be in the open world. Now taking out one reason or two reasons to go out into the open world by itself is not a huge thing, but once a few of these different reasons added are mixed in, they have almost a multiplicative effect.

So while I think they have *some* ideas right here, IMO the server by no means would capture the experience legacy server guy's are looking for, even when you discount stuff like... they want to play on the legacy server lol.

[rda]

I have my own server that I log on and fly around just to look at the old stuff, if I can do that they can do it easily.

That server you log on and fly around on is full of issues. You don't see them partly because you don't know what to look for and partly because the number of users is low (just you?). That's a mile off from what they'd have to do.

[Turtlewithnoshell]

That server you log on and fly around on is full of issues. You don't see them partly because you don't know what to look for and partly because the number of users is low (just you?). That's a mile off from what they'd have to do.

I'm aware of this, but they make it out like it's impossible.

[rda]

I'm aware of this, but they make it out like it's impossible.

It's not impossible, but really hard.

[Turtlewithnoshell]

It's not impossible, but really hard.

Look man, if they can make the damn game from nothing they sure as hell can relaunch it's original version. You're never going to convince me it's so hard its not worth it. But I guess for the idiots who think ashran is good enough to bring into legion it just might be too hard for them? They seem to struggle with the simplest things like listening to the community.

[Deficineiron]

So while I think they have *some* ideas right here, IMO the server by no means would capture the experience legacy server guy's are looking for, even when you discount stuff like... they [THINK THEY]want to play on the legacy server lol.

well if we look at it as a trial balloon, it serves a number of purposes -

divert discussion into a topic that blizzard might be able to pull off internally. as far as I can tell, it involves reworking mob damage &xp level ratios? they could almost just do that with a blanket script back end. disabling features of certain things as well. refusing revenue from xfers etc another. This would undoubtedly be much cheaper than the work on classic modern version.

possibly impact the rate of seasonal subs by giving them something else to do. (oh but did you do it on pristine????) that actually might be the major intended impact of this.

associate it with a shared desire for classic wow to appear to relate the two among the pissed-off crowd tired of excuses and 'great difficulties' and 'you think you do' stuff.

the most interesting takeaway from that blue post is 1) greatly changed tone. 'we agree with you but we cannot' rather than 'it isn't what is best for you' - someone upstairs got a message from the response to nost closing. 2) the noted pristine trial floater 3) is talking to some nost folks meaning 'our lawyers are talking to them to discuss terms of their personal financial survival' or something actually productive on a technical side?