Offical response from blizzard on legacy servers.

[MoanaLisa]

The problem is that these types of servers only offer *some* solutions but not to the degree that players will want.

The perfect is the enemy of the better.

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.

They haven't said they are trying to recapture the legacy experience. They're trying to make a realm using elements from the past that might enable a better community. Those two things are not the same.

[Deficineiron]

The perfect is the enemy of the better.

embracing 'better by committee design' can produce interesting results. Would you agree that every feature/addition to wow which was less than was originally proposed/.desired/publicly described but went live in abbreviated form was actually good?

[rda]

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.

I said already that yes, they can relaunch the original version of the game. I am not sure why you think it's not so hard that it's not worth it (in reality, the latter is "doesn't seem to be worth it", because nobody knows for sure how many people are going to pay for that in the end, etc).

I don't even know if it's so hard that it's not worth it myself, I have no data. I just know that it's really hard, the amount of coding is big, easily above things like CRZ + flex raids + a couple of other big coding features combined, because I am a dev myself and I kind of know what's involved. But whether it's worth it, I don't know, it's for them to decide - they think it isn't worth it, and I don't see why I shouldn't believe them on that, it can *absolutely* be true.

[Namalia]

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

I would imagine that is what they are "talking to the team from Nostalrius" about. What features would work best on pristine realms. If I had to make a guess, based on Brack's post...

I'd say that they have moved on from the idea of the "extreme difficulty" of legacy servers and are focusing on "capturing the nostalgia" with pristine realms and are getting the Nost team's input on those. I would say that they are focusing internal efforts there, but we won't see anything more on them until after Legion releases in August at least.

[Deficineiron]

I would imagine that is what they are "talking to the team from Nostalrius" about. What features would work best on pristine realms. If I had to make a guess, based on Brack's post...

I'd say that they have moved on from the idea of the "extreme difficulty" of legacy servers and are focusing on "capturing the nostalgia" with pristine realms and are getting the Nost team's input on those. I would say that they are focusing internal efforts there, but we won't see anything more on them until after Legion releases in August at least.

it can get creative once you think like that. How about a deal where certain legal measures are not taken and some nost names 'endorse' pristine realms as blizzard 'doing the best it can' given the 'great difficulty' in classic realms?

i find it very hard to imagine blizzard actually talking about their own development initiatives with outsiders, particularly private server cowboys (or, as Forum Logic adherents allege, hardened criminals).

[toon181]

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.

Can't tell if troll...

Input = output

[RickJamesLich]

The perfect is the enemy of the better.

Not disagreeing here. Keep in mind, with the success of Nost though, other private servers are in the process of popping up and are already avoiding the mistakes that Nost did (like placing their server in a country where blizzard had an easy time going after them). Between blizzard's pristine server and new private legacy servers, which do you suspect players are going to pick? This problem IMO is going to get bigger as time progresses too.

As I mentioned earlier, blizzard's ideas here are definitely a step in the right direction, but IMO it would take more steps before they really capture the interests of that Nost crowd. And again, this is my own speculation.

They haven't said they are trying to recapture the legacy experience. They're trying to make a realm using elements from the past that might enable a better community. Those two things are not the same.

The whole purpose is to try to reign in the legacy crowd though.

[Namalia]

it can get creative once you think like that. How about a deal where certain legal measures are not taken and some nost names 'endorse' pristine realms as blizzard 'doing the best it can' given the 'great difficulty' in classic realms?

i find it very hard to imagine blizzard actually talking about their own development initiatives with outsiders, particularly private server cowboys (or, as Forum Logic adherents allege, hardened criminals).

Yeah, that's why I said what I did. Getting the Nost team's input on features for pristine realms, not actually on how servers are coded and things like that. I think they're focusing on pristine realms and they once again considered and shot down the idea of legacy servers while there is an actively evolving version of World of Warcraft with WoD now evolving into Legion.

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The whole purpose is to try to reign in the legacy crowd though.

I'd say the whole purpose is actually to shut up the legacy minority.

[Deficineiron]

The whole purpose is to try to reign in the legacy crowd though.

hard to know what the real agenda is behind pristine. It may be a way to offer a slightly harder server to impact the season unsub pattern. maybe it was given an impetus by this nost stuff, or they are just tossing it out to try to give the dog a bone (they would be fools not to throw the mob SOMETHING to chew on).

[RickJamesLich]

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?

The problems with leveling extend beyond hp and damage though. Player mechanics typically trivialize mobs - damage classes usually have a couple of ways to self heal (that don't involve eating or bandaging lol), for an example. And while increasing the hp of a mob may be an easy thing, altering mechanics of the classes themselves is something I can imagine blizzard would have no intentions of doing here. Just my guess though. But as I stated before, if this stuff is made too easy, it dis-incentivizes the need to be social. Having too many of these things in the game is the real problem though, one or two by themselves is no biggie.

And I hate to come off as a negative nancy here, but the pristine server is the equivalent of taking your girlfriend out to a 5 star restaraunt on the first anniversary, and the next anniversary you take them to In and Out burger lol. Yeah In and Out burger is good, very good, but definitely not what they wanted.

And I do agree with you that it seems they at least admit that players know what they want. Very good thing, and I'm not under the illusion that this means "legacy servers are coming!" It's still a very long shot off, but worth a try. So there is some good news out of this!

[sabe]

WoW is obviously going down. People been asking for this for long long time and they were never this positive(not even positive).
If classic WoW is back, i will hear the help screams of Blizz and resub.

Wonder if they will release a game package "Pristine WoW" or something like that and milk more from players.

[Akka]

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.

That's the stupid narrative of the fanboys to blame the flaws of the game on the players. Just like "hey, if you think the leveling is too easy, you can do it naked, with both hands tied in your back and a blindfold !". But fact is, it's up to the game to have the appropriate design - that's the whole fucking point of design.

[Deficineiron]

The problems with leveling extend beyond hp and damage though. Player mechanics typically trivialize mobs - damage classes usually have a couple of ways to self heal (that don't involve eating or bandaging lol), for an example. And while increasing the hp of a mob may be an easy thing, altering mechanics of the classes themselves is something I can imagine blizzard would have no intentions of doing here. Just my guess though. But as I stated before, if this stuff is made too easy, it dis-incentivizes the need to be social. Having too many of these things in the game is the real problem though, one or two by themselves is no biggie.

And I hate to come off as a negative nancy here, but the pristine server is the equivalent of taking your girlfriend out to a 5 star restaraunt on the first anniversary, and the next anniversary you take them to In and Out burger lol. Yeah In and Out burger is good, very good, but definitely not what they wanted.

And I do agree with you that it seems they at least admit that players know what they want. Very good thing, and I'm not under the illusion that this means "legacy servers are coming!" It's still a very long shot off, but worth a try. So there is some good news out of this!

for the record, it sounds like you are saying the perfect (5 star rest. on anniversary) is the enemy of the 'better' (in-n-out), which is certainly better than nothing, right? At least this is how I understand the slogan. I am studying whether I can integrate it into my comprehensive Forum Logic system. It is good because anytime you do something half-way or half-effort- or just kind of middling, you can use that argument and make it sound better than nothing.

the girlfriend is being unreasonable in demanding the perfect, clearly.

[A dot Ham]

The problems with leveling extend beyond hp and damage though. Player mechanics typically trivialize mobs - damage classes usually have a couple of ways to self heal (that don't involve eating or bandaging lol), for an example. And while increasing the hp of a mob may be an easy thing, altering mechanics of the classes themselves is something I can imagine blizzard would have no intentions of doing here. Just my guess though. But as I stated before, if this stuff is made too easy, it dis-incentivizes the need to be social. Having too many of these things in the game is the real problem though, one or two by themselves is no biggie.

And I hate to come off as a negative nancy here, but the pristine server is the equivalent of taking your girlfriend out to a 5 star restaraunt on the first anniversary, and the next anniversary you take them to In and Out burger lol. Yeah In and Out burger is good, very good, but definitely not what they wanted.

And I do agree with you that it seems they at least admit that players know what they want. Very good thing, and I'm not under the illusion that this means "legacy servers are coming!" It's still a very long shot off, but worth a try. So there is some good news out of this!

I prefer 5 guys to in n out.

You're from California... I see it!

In -n- Out is soooooo not worth the wait.

[Deficineiron]

That's the stupid narrative of the fanboys to blame the flaws of the game on the players. Just like "hey, if you think the leveling is too easy, you can do it naked, with both hands tied in your back and a blindfold !". But fact is, it's up to the game to have the appropriate design - that's the whole fucking point of design.

this is too easy, you can just consult my guide and read the responses to your post before you post it.

I believe the proper Forum Logic answer is "The game is just as social as ever - nothing is stopping you from chatting when in an lfd/lfr run in wod."

[Turtlewithnoshell]

I said already that yes, they can relaunch the original version of the game. I am not sure why you think it's not so hard that it's not worth it (in reality, the latter is "doesn't seem to be worth it", because nobody knows for sure how many people are going to pay for that in the end, etc).

I don't even know if it's so hard that it's not worth it myself, I have no data. I just know that it's really hard, the amount of coding is big, easily above things like CRZ + flex raids + a couple of other big coding features combined, because I am a dev myself and I kind of know what's involved. But whether it's worth it, I don't know, it's for them to decide - they think it isn't worth it, and I don't see why I shouldn't believe them on that, it can *absolutely* be true.

I guess I'm just biased by my own frustrations with this topic and those against it that I pushed that onto you a bit in my replies.

We pretty much agree on this lol, we both know what it takes to do this kind of thing, it's really just up to blizz if they want to or not.

[MoanaLisa]

As I mentioned earlier, blizzard's ideas here are definitely a step in the right direction, but IMO it would take more steps before they really capture the interests of that Nost crowd. And again, this is my own speculation.

The whole purpose is to try to reign in the legacy crowd though.

I'm not so sure the last is true. If Blizzard has been talking about this for a while, as Brack indicates, that means they have been privately wondering if they could get a substantial number of players back by segregating a realm off and implementing the removal of the primary things that people talk about making them leave, LFD, CRZ and the rest of the list.

A lot of the Nost crowd, despite forum assurances, aren't going to be interested in being charged $15/month--or whatever it is--for the privilege. People can argue about the percentages but a primary component of private servers is that they are free. Nothing is going to change in that respect.

There are literally millions and millions of people who don't play on private servers who might return for a look at a realm with the restrictions that Blizzard has proposed with the idea of starting a new community, leveling from 1, one that is restricted to the realm itself. Potentially, it's a much larger crowd to bag than what can be found on private servers, never mind that many people, myself included, play or have played on multiple servers so adding up how many people play on private servers tells you less than you think.

All of that said, if they go ahead with this I hope they do two more things: 1) Increase the health and damage on quest mobs to the point where you need to pay attention and 2) Scale XP for leveling so you don't level out of the zone before 40% of the quests are done. I would like to see them bring back group quests as well but unfortunately I think the best way to assemble a group for those uses the scenario system and that appears to be a non-starter on a pristine server. But bring them back anyway and people can try to make a group for them or skip them (like we did before they mostly went away).

Maybe I'm the only one but I'm not confused at all that a pristine realm as proposed is an idea that is going to satisfy anyone that wants back pre-Cataclysm Azeroth or any of that. But I believe that it could be a much better experience than retail and for that reason I hope they give it a go. Those that simply say the idea is garbage and give us vanilla realms are really advocating for neither. Blizzard isn't doing legacy realms but they've offered this as a trial balloon to have people say what they think. If enough people say garbage then I'm sure they'll be OK with just giving us retail and leaving it at that.

[Akka]

this is too easy, you can just consult my guide and read the responses to your post before you post it.

It certainly fits Forum Logic, that's true

[Deficineiron]

A lot of the Nost crowd, despite forum assurances, aren't going to be interested in being charged $15/month--or whatever it is--for the privilege. People can argue about the percentages but a primary component of private servers is that they are free. Nothing is going to change in that respect.

I think this is it, and thus my comments above about this having been designed to try to alter seasonal sub patterns, etc.

I think if they want to attract the private old version server crowd, the best way to do that would be release old version servers. This was put into that post to try to give the crowd some meat to chew on and generally confuse the issue, as well as it being an easy source of publicity and feedback.

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It certainly fits Forum Logic, that's true

You are supposed to say 'but with lfr/lfd no one talks anymore.' I wrote the response to that one weeks ago

[Gavan]

I'm curious to see how they're going to handle the 'pristine servers' concept.

This might be enough to bring me back, but it's going to have to be level locked and/or progression in nature. If they just remove all the toxic "features" and force everyone into garrisons (soon to be orders or whatever they repainted it as) then it' does absolutely nothing to solve any of the actually problems with the game and completely fails to give even an iota of what the community is asking for.