Official Reply to Vanilla Servers and Nostalrius

[Kawlisse]

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.

yeah thats why they are millions of players on vanilla, tbc, and wrath private servers, just nostalgia !!!

[gamingmuscle]

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

There is a world of difference between getting it to work and doing it right by the companies standards.

Blizzard could probably slap something together that works easily(ish). But it likely wouldn't mesh with their primary system, and nor would it adhere to their quality standards. Which I can understand why that makes it a non starter for them.

[Wildpantz]

Let's not kid ourselves. Vanilla has little to do with it. The predominant reason those people play in there is because it's free.

Exactly 90% of the people wont pay

[scorpious1109]

Hey guys, we're not gonna give you vanilla servers, we're jsut gonna give you the current game, but with even less stuff in it.

[TheLimonTree]

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.

Problem being even if they are sincere a lot of people will doubt it anyway for the sheer sake of hating something.

[Uurdz]

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.)

Yes. This has been stated time and time again. People who want to play WoW pay the subscription fee, that's just normal.
Your nostalgia argument has been debunked numerous times also. Both are weak arguments that just go around in circles. $15 a month for vanilla content is much better value than $15 per month for WoD content. Regardless most of your veterans who would return are players who've invested years worth of sub fees, they're not just going to bleat about it now. Besides even free to play games end up costing money when you start getting invested in microtransactions.

As for nostalgia? Get out of town mate, the size and excitement of nost far outshon the impact of WoD. Most of the people playing retail now will probably dabble but then leave because .... It's a different game. But your lost millions of players over the years? They'll stick around.

I don't think it'll be a flood, it'll be a fucking tsunami

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Exactly 90% of the people wont pay

Fake statistics floated by children with no income.
#yourargumentisajoke

[luckydan79]

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.

Nah man the MAIN reason why Blizzard won't do it cause it's creating two contending products at the same time. They could of in fact resetting everything in CATA and force us create a new character and let Outland and Northrend both got obliterated by Deathwing and do a FFXIV do over which would of been better re-do a whole new branch of the story. If they allow Vanilla and if that became popular they are fearing What the hell we done to WOW in the last 8+ years. I think it would be good for Blizzard to do this and figure out for even stats and beta testing and figure out what went wrong, not only can this serve as lesson in game design but they could create a new template and a new MMORPG by resetting the world.

Wow now is similar to Diablo III is pretty much the same except Diablo III has more support, Wow from CATA onwards is pretty much a solo player experience. You can solo everything besides the latest raids and (sorry *Heroic* and *Mythic* in WOD latest patch) dungeons and even then you can solo Blackhands lair if you gear up and pick the right talents by yourself if you pick a Death Knight (you can the former raids with half the members
with the right gear). Not only that unlike Diablo III the classes really have lost their Independence with skills swapping all over the place and trunacing the wrong abilities and spells which made the classes independant, Blizzard seemed to have acknowledge that WOW is pretty much turned into Diablo III by adding keystones, Artifacts you can find in drops and even adding Diablo III spells which pull the classes back into "I do this well game again". They need something else besides just developing raids and pvp.

But WOW has raids, Diablo doesn't you counter, Diablo has raids they are rifts and as much as mythic raids people compete in finding the gear and skills to clear the rift with ease and have leaderboards... Except due to support doesn't die in a month.

IMHO they added too many specs, they could of eliminated a fair few which would of made the game much more managable, people don't have to agree with the class changes but making every class "Must HAVE" a dps spec is following the hero design of league of legends to having a "must HAVE" escape ability, you can see it in the past 8 fucking years of patch notes where almost 90% of it is on class design rather than the game itself.... Diablo III proved you Don't need a DPS for every class, look at the crusader or Witch Doctor for example they are more of a Tank and Support class respectively with real independence

I like to add, the game expansions aren't really expansions and per se, the latest expansion makes the previous content irrelevant which make more like a Mini Multiplayer game with existing characters per 1/2 years. AN expansion suppose to expand the game not make the old content irrelevant or reduce to redundant gear/mount collecting. That's the reason why people finding the game so short and lasting only a month. If a game can be played without revisiting the old content when your maxxed level only for collecting gear to look good... Then you haven't really created an expansion at all. All you done was create another game with your characters/avatar copied over from one game to another.

[Deleted]

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.

Yet they won't make their own vanilla servers because it would cost them money and not being profitable, right? Right! So they are actually saving their money because they are doing it for free! Just few more years and it will fall into abandonware category and Blizz can just suck it.

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

We had server, we didn't bitch, they took our servers we start bitching. Circle of life.

[DeltrusDisc]

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.

Right now I am playing on a Vanilla private server, been playing every day for the past 10 days, I'm now at level 42. It's getting tough. But you know something? I'm questing with a real life friend and in a guild that has 30+ people, often times pushing 50 and above, on at any one time! And the server as a whole usually has over 900 people online playing! It's insane how active the server is.

Wrath, while maybe the heroic dungeons became ezpz, still had some of the best damned story-telling, some of the most gorgeous zones, and some of the most epic raids, but perhaps it's not all worth it for just that.

I think Vanilla and TBC are a good minimum, however. Vanilla for those who want to experience how tough that was, TBC, the same.

[Addict]

Yet they won't make their own vanilla servers because it would cost them money and not being profitable, right? Right! So they are actually saving their money because they are doing it for free! Just few more years and it will fall into abandonware category and Blizz can just suck it.

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We had server, we didn't bitch, they took our servers we start bitching. Circle of life.

They took? Werent the servers going down anyhow? >> But yeah, blizzard took your servers, that totally isnt their IP to begin with that was used in a unlicensed manner. You're totally in the right to be bitchin'.

[Vzz]

I would suggest them to make a different dimension, a hub to which you can port from current game into the old vanilla world, where the character and gear scales to 60 while making old raid items still more powerful than the scaled pieces.

[Deleted]

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.

As if the player base isnt split in half already? We are below 5 million subs now, people along my self have simply stopped subscriping? Some quotes from blizzard in the past could be:

"We will release raids faster than ever before" .. ye we have seen that with the 1year+ raid we have going on atm? Like what are you even doing now days? I would LOVE to be able to play Vanilla again and come back to the lastest expansion now and then to try out the new raids and what not. But wow sucks balls and if you, yourself, didnt play vanilla nor on Nost, you really have no clue what you have been missing out on.

All this being said Prestine realms has NOTHING to do with Vanilla, we want vanilla NOT Prestine realms!

"You think we want Prestine, but we dont!"

[Durff123]

I've finally decided to make an account for mmo-champion because of this topic.

I am for Vanilla servers but I've voted No on the pole because what Blizzard is offering isn't what people are asking for. These Pristine Servers they propose is the current game with a few micro-transactions removed from the game. This is their band-aid for the topic? What this looks like to me is them not expecting such a large backlash from taking down Nostalrius and then thinking, "Oh hey, there's a lot of noise being stirred up by this. How to we trick them into quieting down?" Blizzard does not want servers of previous expansions to exist for the reasons that have been stated by many before me.

Blizzard wants to protect its trademark and copyright, yes that is a given, but it's not the only reason for shutting down servers and refusing to create Legacy Servers. The money they make from this game is in the expansions. They fear that the existence servers set in previous expansions will take away business from them which makes absolutely no sense. If they have their own old version servers they can still make money off of it by charging a sub fee. If they fear that having these older servers will have people not buy their new expansions then that just means their new expansion isn't worth buying. Think of non-MMO games, video games that up pop in a console or open up on Steam, and remember how you can just choose to not buy a new game coming out and keep on playing the games you already have without anybody taking it away from you and demanding, "Hey you can't play that game anymore. You have to play this now."

That's the thing, Blizzard, you're taking our old game away from us. These Pristine Servers seem like a quick and easy fix, but they aren't even that. You give the excuse to us how difficult it would be to create and maintain these servers, you a multi-billion dollar company. Tell me exactly how many people built and maintained Nostalrius because by my count it was 23 including the Admins and Game Masters so less than half of that number was actually doing technical work. These people did this as a passion project without earning a cent from it and even trained people to do development work by themselves. There is also the idea going around that no people do no want actually want Vanilla servers. Why, I ask you, would thousands of people be playing Vanilla servers then? With all the illegal servers out there, there must be something like ten thousand active players including the ones stripped of Nostalrius? Maybe less maybe more?

I'm calling bullshit, Blizzard. I am sticking by my thoughts on your irrational fears of loosing business. I firmly believe that you are unwilling to release a true Legacy Server. You could only gain business by capitalizing on previous versions. Whoever is reading this I thank you for taking the time to wade through my rant.

[Deleted]

They took? Werent the servers going down anyhow? >> But yeah, blizzard took your servers, that totally isnt their IP to begin with that was used in a unlicensed manner. You're totally in the right to be bitchin'.

They filled complaint about infridgmenent that will lead to lawsuit so they complied with Blizz and took it down. So by that logic Blizz took their servers.

[blankfaced]

Your nostalgia argument has been debunked numerous times also. Both are weak arguments that just go around in circles. $15 a month for vanilla content is much better value than $15 per month for WoD content. But your lost millions of players over the years?

I would really love to see the debunked nostalgia posts. People playing something for a year that's 10+ years old, doesn't mean it isn't nostalgia. The weak argument is that nostalgia and the fact it's free aren't factors in Nost's popularity. And it being a better value is your opinion and it's probably not shared by many, especially once people chew through everything vanilla had. I'm an old vanilla player, started shortly before ZG was put out, and in my opinion the game is in a better place now than it's ever been. With a single caveat of content droughts, they're becoming too common and far far too long. I would dip a toe in a vanilla server, but it's lack of content would kill it for me eventually (as i'm sure it would for a lot of people.) And I feel that's why a lot of people ran to Nosts vanilla server. It's something a lot of people never got to experience, but once they have that's it. It's game over man. There's just a hollow shell of a game with nothing to do in it but dance on mailboxes.

(Who in their right mind would voluntarily choose to grind out 1k gold for 100% mount speed on a vanilla server, it's ludicrous I tell you! And not even getting a mount until 40, just insane in the membrane!)

[Uurdz]

I would really love to see the debunked nostalgia posts. People playing something for a year that's 10+ years old, doesn't mean it isn't nostalgia. The weak argument is that nostalgia and the fact it's free aren't factors in Nost's popularity. And it being a better value is your opinion and it's probably not shared by many, especially once people chew through everything vanilla had. I'm an old vanilla player, started shortly before ZG was put out, and in my opinion the game is in a better place now than it's ever been. With a single caveat of content droughts, they're becoming too common and far far too long. I would dip a toe in a vanilla server, but it's lack of content would kill it for me eventually (as i'm sure it would for a lot of people.) And I feel that's why a lot of people ran to Nosts vanilla server. It's something a lot of people never got to experience, but once they have that's it. It's game over man. There's just a hollow shell of a game with nothing to do in it but dance on mailboxes.

(Who in their right mind would voluntarily choose to grind out 1k gold for 100% mount speed on a vanilla server, it's ludicrous I tell you! And not even getting a mount until 40, just insane in the membrane!)

Haha nice attempt at trolling but im not falling for it. 10/10 good job.

[CasCrow]

that implies that they would get to endgame when more then half of them would stop leveling below 30-40 due to how retarded shitty slow and boring leveling was

Not gonna lie, I enjoyed how slow leveling was back then. The world was still new and I enjoyed doing dumb things due to my lack of knowledge.

[Chaelexi]

You're wrong.

We went ahead and tried it and guess what? We do want vanilla servers, because we loved that game.
It's fine that you don't feel the same way, but stop assuming that everybody feels the same as you do.

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Thanks for pointing that out. But considering that they'd probably double their subscriber count, would it not be worth it? It still sounds like a tiny investment in comparison to other things they're working on. They don't need to write the code itself, they only need to check it over. They probably have some automatic software to do that. They already have battle.net with multiple games and extra realms (beta, ptr, arena) wired in. All they need to do is add another, albeit for another game client.

Where do you get double the subscriber count. Nost has around 100k subs and 30k active. Even if half of those came over to pay to play option that would be 15k active subs, add in maybe another 15k from other options and get 30k total. That is a far cry from 6 million that they have for subs currently that will expand to 8 million when legion launches and taper back off to 5-6 million again. the under 1% increase is not worth the effort of going backwards. Companies that move forwards are successful, companies that stagnate or worse regress fail.

[Deleted]

I agree that most vanilla raids weren't as hard or complex as later expansion, but the latter raids of vanilla (AQ40/Naxx) were definitely not much easier either. Also, I'd definitely argue that TBC had the hardest raiding. SWP is comparable to the hardest bosses out there today, and you actually had to progress there from T4, not just skip 3 tiers by getting free gear.

Nah. You could farm Kara and HC's for badges, and get T6 equal Gear in Dalaran. Set Bonuses weren't that powerful back then, stats mattered.

[Tart]

Like I said, there are many that could care less about 40 man, and being the obsolete best on the server in terms of progression. We are playing the game for fun, so honestly who cares if "we are doing it wrong." 40 man raiding is not for everyone, to much of a hassle to get that many together to only get 2 to 3 drops, but some people do enjoy that. There were many other things you could do in the game besides just 40 man raiding. I am not denying Vanilla had its flaws, but every iteration of the game has. Many of the balance issues were resolved in BC anyway, and I believe BC did have better raiding.

Im really stunned at the amount of ignorance from people who so desperately do not want to accept that reason. Part of modern warcrafts problem today is its became a serious business, its a solo race to max level then dive into a raid and out do each other. Long gone are the days where you could take your time in a zone and enjoy it.

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I would really love to see the debunked nostalgia posts. People playing something for a year that's 10+ years old, doesn't mean it isn't nostalgia. The weak argument is that nostalgia and the fact it's free aren't factors in Nost's popularity. And it being a better value is your opinion and it's probably not shared by many, especially once people chew through everything vanilla had. I'm an old vanilla player, started shortly before ZG was put out, and in my opinion the game is in a better place now than it's ever been. With a single caveat of content droughts, they're becoming too common and far far too long. I would dip a toe in a vanilla server, but it's lack of content would kill it for me eventually (as i'm sure it would for a lot of people.) And I feel that's why a lot of people ran to Nosts vanilla server. It's something a lot of people never got to experience, but once they have that's it. It's game over man. There's just a hollow shell of a game with nothing to do in it but dance on mailboxes.

(Who in their right mind would voluntarily choose to grind out 1k gold for 100% mount speed on a vanilla server, it's ludicrous I tell you! And not even getting a mount until 40, just insane in the membrane!)

It is debunked though as im telling you from experience. Its the game of choice i prefer and would quite happily exchange it for modern warcraft.