Private Servers: The Experience vs The Cost

[OreoLover]

If the player "generation" prefers facebook games, and WoW has turned into a facebook game, then why have the subs fallen to early vanilla levels? Shouldn't subs have skyrocketed since the number of gamers is increasing? In the meanwhile MMORPGs are doing better than ever. We have GW2, FFXIV, EVE hitting their highest numbers ever, Minecraft being a mega hit, Rust, etc. etc. The reality is that the audience didn't change, WoW changed, and no longer appeals to the audience.

Price model, market share, product maturity, "nostalgia" (too loaded to list)... a lot more to consider.

[Azgraal]

The vast majority of people who play on private servers do so because it is free. Then a small part of those play a specific era server because that was their favourite patch/expansion and of those only a smaller portion plays vanilla for vanilla.

Then you have to take into account those who play vanilla because they're arguably the most advertised illegal servers out there, and if you were about to start playing you wanted a server with good reputation that wasn't prove to be days offline or other nonsense.

So all in all, the "huge numbers" in favour of vanilla for its experience are just a drop in the ocean of illegal servers who tend to enlarge their numbers to favour their cause, while being very obnouxiously vocal about it, as all malcontent minorities do.

[Deleted]

The vast majority of people who play on private servers do so because it is free.

And you base this claim on what exactly?

[ls-]

Well, the newer the expansion on private server is, the more broken it is. It took fucking ages to make playable Vanilla, TBC reached more or less good blizzlikeness by the end of WotLK on retail, and so on... Many people DON'T want to play broken game even for free. So number of players could be higher and eventually will be, but in few years.

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And you base this claim on what exactly?

Because it's the nature of software piracy O_o

[PaladinBash]

It's free and that's why people play there. No matter how you rattle the bones, people will have fun with shit for free all the time. Look at Team Fortress 2. Very fun game and it's free. Lets say it cost $15/month to play it and some guy said "hey you can just play on my private server for free" and tell me there wouldn't be people who would play it for free but won't pay $15/month for it.

[Deleted]

Because it's the nature of software piracy O_o

But it isn't? Valve figured this one out: "Piracy is a service problem." Give the players a legitimate, easy way to pay a fair price for the games and they will do it instead of pirating. Hence Steam's insane popularity.

[Qnubi]

was vanilla/tbc/wrath nice? Yes, they were amazing and I have countless great memories. But its in the past. Let it be in the past. The people who want legacy are the same people who would like all old classic movies to be remade. Leave them the fuck alone and remember them.

I can, to this date, watch all my favorite old movies I loved, just like I can still play old WoW... oh wait..
None here wants old wow content to be remade (wtf), we just want to play it again.

It puzzles me why people can't fathom the concept to go back and re-experience something you enjoyed. Basically everything in life can be experienced again when it comes to entertainment, EVERYTHING, and something like this is out of the question? Ridiculous reasoning on top of that.

[rda]

OP, you do understand that the newer expansion is, the more broken PS of said expansion is, right?

In fact, I am struggling to find a core which would even implement something from MoP / WoD. The best I can find is something that looks like it can work with the modern client, but there is basically nothing for MoP / WoD, it's all older expansions and even Cata looks far from complete.

I guess the OP took his numbers from ads. "Guys, guys, we have a WoD server, 100% Blizz-like, bla bla bla, 18000 users", that kind of thing.

[ls-]

But it isn't? Valve figured this one out: "Piracy is a service problem." Give the players a legitimate, easy way to pay a fair price for the games and they will do it instead of pirating. Hence Steam's insane popularity.

Yet many people still pirate software and game, it's still quite widespread. TBH, some analytics dun even consider pirates as potential customers.

[DesMephisto]

Your sources are false and altered with, logged in on multiple of those so called "WoD and MoP" servers with over 6000 players. They're empty. It's no secret that they alter the numbers to make it more appealing for others to join.

In addition to that. You can't compare WoD with Vanilla. People who play WoD =//= Vanilla Private servers. People who want to play free would do so on a WoD server. Who would do that to play Vanilla? Again, your demographic is out of place.

1. People who want to play Vanilla WoW aren't new players, they're old players, veterans that no longer feel the games in terms with what they believe it should be.
2. There hasn't been a single server that has been big as Nostalrius or Kronos. No, MoP / WoD Private server with 6K players aren't server with 6K players. They probably have about 100.
Just because they promote for 10K players, 20K players means nothing. On the other side, log into the Nostalrius server and you wouldn't be doubting it at all. Just before you hit Goldshire you'd see over 200 players. It was packed.
3. There's major amount of players who don't play on Vanilla servers, Private Vanilla servers because it isn't being hosted by Blizzard. Why? Because it's understandable. It's unrealiable, it can go down any time. That's the biggest reason I didn't play them, because they kept doing down, same happened to Nost. Luckily I don't care anymore.


Anyway, you need to stop talking the hype of Nostalrius down with false information.
7323 (this number is taken from four out of hundreds of Warlords servers, but only the most popular ones)
Lies. And more lies.

And what OP did NOT mention is that multiple, if not all of these server have rates such as "100x". He is simply using false data to faking reports. Unreliable sources, from a unreliable person with a subjective post.

You condemn all of his information but then say "But Nost is different"

[Atelniar]

So for a while I've been thinking about Legacy servers because of the highlight around them at the moment. So let's talk about them from my analogy.

My primary thought is: Are Private Servers popular for the Experience or the Cost? As you know, it costs nothing to play a Private Server. So I ran an experiment.

As of now, at 7:00AM EST on Friday, the 29th of April - there is the following:

Warlords of Draenor Private Server players: 7323 (this number is taken from four out of hundreds of Warlords servers, but only the most popular ones)
Mists of Pandaria Private Server players: 8535 (this number is taken from four out of hundreds of Pandaria servers, but only the most popular ones)

Please note: This is the total opposite of peak times. During peak times, I expect nearly double the amount of players to be online.



So with the completely overwhelming amount of players on the Warlords of Draenor and Mists of Pandaria servers - are private servers popular for the experience or for the cost? What does this data tell you? Let me know.

Your data would be much better if you included realm type, among the four chosen servers, and individual number of players per realm type. You should also include everything leading back to Vanilla. Otherwise you don't have any means of making any evaluation on anything beyond the two specific expansions in question. You are lacking a lot of data.

in other words: this data doesn't tell me much, because it's focused on two specific expansions that are quite recent. If your idea is to make some conclusion about experience vs. cost, you should include every possible expansion. Otherwise your data becomes too narrow, too selected, aka: redundant.

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You condemn all of his information but then say "But Nost is different"

The OP's selection of data is lackluster, considering the goal which he stated: comparing the attractiveness of private servers based on experience vs. cost. He conveniently selected data from the two most recent expansions... Not to mention that key elements in measuring "experience" is lacking, such as realm types, etc...

It's just not good data. No details, just a random number of players. You can't make an evaluation on that.

How is that not worthy of critic?

[ls-]

In fact, I am struggling to find a core which would even implement something from MoP / WoD. The best I can find is something that looks like it can work with the modern client, but there is basically nothing for MoP / WoD, it's all older expansions and even Cata looks far from complete.

I guess the OP took his numbers from ads. "Guys, guys, we have a WoD server, 100% Blizz-like, bla bla bla, 18000 users", that kind of thing.

Well, I rewrote my comment a bit, it looked aggressive, hehe.

I think in few years, number of players on WoD and/or MoP private servers may reach Nost levels.

[Deleted]

Yet many people still pirate software and game, it's still quite widespread. TBH, some analytics dun even consider pirates as potential customers.

How many and which analytics?

[tinybaby]

Paying for wow in gold with tokens makes it Free to play. That would make both live and private servers free. The difference is people want something different to play. You have to understand sometimes people just like to go back to how something was originally. Its like when you see gamers go back and play on an original nintendo and have a blast just because it was old and fun.
Old players love vanilla server and bc content which was their first true experience of the game.
Newer players have never got that chance to see how it was and experience.

The truth is vanillia/bc days warcraft was a community based game, people logged on and meet up with friends or new people. played tons of hours together, chatting in guild and just experiencing the game. Now people just log in do their garrison missions, do LFR raids because its easy, spend minimal time playing and log off till the next week.

Warcraft has become more of a single player game, where most people dont communicate with anyone at all because they dont need to. They can just do everything alone. Logging into wow to spend your days getting a mount achievement to fly in the game doesnt seem like a real reason to be playing the game.

[cFortyfive]

What does this data tell you?

About as much as asking the magic conch.

[Azgraal]

And you base this claim on what exactly?

Why else would someone play even on WoD servers with the constant possibility of having their progress wiped, server closed, or a myriad of problems, when legitimate WoW is so cheap?

[ls-]

How many and which analytics?

IIRC, guys from Stardock, I'm too lazy to try to remember and/or google right now. There are companies, that dun see pirates as potential customers and say that software developers should ignore them.

[Yizu]

WoD retail is almost free to play because of tokens, and if you have the time to invest on a vanilla server that same time investment would probably get you 10 tokens a month if you play on retail lol.


People play for experience

[cFortyfive]

WoD retail is almost free to play because of tokens, and if you have the time to invest on a vanilla server that same time investment would probably get you 10 tokens a month if you play on retail lol.

Sure everyone who managed to level a single char to 60 on vanilla also would have had the patience to get ten garrisons rolling within a month on a previously blank account pretty legit argument.

[Deleted]

The vast majority of people who play on private servers do so because it is free. Then a small part of those play a specific era server because that was their favourite patch/expansion and of those only a smaller portion plays vanilla for vanilla.

Then you have to take into account those who play vanilla because they're arguably the most advertised illegal servers out there, and if you were about to start playing you wanted a server with good reputation that wasn't prove to be days offline or other nonsense.
i
So all in all, the "huge numbers" in favour of vanilla for its experience are just a drop in the ocean of illegal servers who tend to enlarge their numbers to favour their cause, while being very obnouxiously vocal about it, as all malcontent minorities do.

If people play it because its free explain me why people spent alot of money in some ps in items and another stuff.