just to bring it up as it's the only other thing i can relate to
Runescape
jagex made polls and tried to find data for a long time about making old-school servers but it just didn't add up for them. Even when they released it they didn't expect it to last more than a few months. But it was way more populare than any of them anticipated, their polls and their data wasn't even close to reality. From there the old-school team just started growing and the game have been growing as well because of it. It's even more populare than their main game now.
the only reason they actually went ahead and did it was that it didn't cost them much to set up a few unused servers and paying a small team to get it rdy for use. Even if it flopped hard they would only lose a handful of money.
Blizzard don't need to hire a huge team and invest a shitton of money to make it work. But they seem to simply refuse even wanting to try
Last edited by mmocc06943eaac; 2016-05-16 at 04:36 AM.
And if you polled the other stockholders, how many of them do you think would be okay with multi-million dollar gambles? As a stockholder, you should be happy with a stock that rises or at the very least maintains it's value - which they're doing, it's grown by 10% in the last 6 months - I could only wish all of my holdings did the same!
You missed my point though - they don't need to pump up WoW subs, to make a profit. They profited through what's now almost universally considered their worst expansion. That's all that matters. And since they don't need to pump up subs - for whatever reasons - that takes legacy servers right off the table. It may be they can barely handle getting expansions out - they are after all notorious for being VERY slow to develop. They could very realistically say "no" to legacy, because they just can't handle the workload - and they can't hire tons of people without a solid business plan behind it. That's what I think a lot of you don't get - the real reasons they say no are not personal, or an attack on you, it's simply business.
You're also fighting what they consider their vision for the game. They don't want to maintain two versions of the same game. Companies make these decisions all the time - Xeroc for example turned down ethernet and Postscript, even though both were invented in their lab at PARC - because it wasn't their business model. They maintained they were a copier company, not a networking or printer company (even though the later jumped into the ring on both). They also did this with personal computing, since they were first on the map with a lot of the technology we use every day, still. (And this is fact, my dad was part of that story, and it's documented in the book "Dealers Of Lightning") Sometimes companies make decisions that in hindsight are dumb, or shortsighted, or whatever. At the time, the execs at Xerox thought they were acting in the companies best interest. Maybe this will be the same thing - but it's their decision to make, and your want does not override it.
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100% speculation on your part, and contradicts what Blizzard has said all along, that it's a LOT of work.
It also assumes that the technical hurdles of Runescape are identical to the ones faced by Blizzard, which is a comparison that's impossible to make, considering you don't have access to either game's code to make that assessment. Looking at WoW and Runescape, it's easy to see it's two completely different games, and who knows how far apart the under-the-hood technology is.
The only way you could make this comparison is if both games ran on the same server technology. But they don't, so your theory is shot to hell right there.
they need to hire some people to sort out whatever bugs might appear and whatever might break they don't even have a small time limit, they could set aside a whole year for it if they wanted. The quests, the monsters, the music etc. everything is there they don't have to work on that.
if that requires a huge team and a big cash of money to accomplish i question what kind of management and what kind of technology they're using
blizzard have said that it requires work
and that they would do it if it was a simple as setting up a few server here and now.
which any idiot could conclude to, they never said how much work it requires just that it requires them to move their ass.
Last edited by mmocc06943eaac; 2016-05-16 at 05:07 AM.
@agnow, you're simplifying it heavily. There are many things they'd need to do:
- Integrate it into the new Battle.net and its SSO infrastructure
- Security patches to fix the many exploits of 1.12
- keep Vanilla code/assets completely separate from Live as there are going to many conflicts on the assets to Live
- Optimize the backend for servers to store larger numbers of players. As of 1.12, servers maxed out at about 5000 players per server. Thy can handle more now (even without crz) and if you guys are right about their popularity, this is extremely important.
- builing off last point, they need to decide what they want to keep authentic to the time period. Even Nost had to increase spawn rate nd add the code that spawns mos based on population in area
- determine how they're going to handle growth/decrease in popularity of the servers. Most Vanilla players would not be happy with cross-realm battlegrounds, crz, etc so there would need to be multiple servers. People would not be happy if thy needed to spawn more servers to handle or connected realms once thy decrease.
- Determine what content is available and if they'll do a 'progressive realm'. Code accordingly.
- Lots and lots of bug testing. This is dead code that hasn't been tested in 11 years.
This is not a simple job,and Blizzard will not release a half ass version of it. If they think about doing this, thy're going to build a platform that allows them to specify versions of an asset and load it accordingly.
The last few pages in a nutshell:
50k+ players at peak
likely much higher number of monthly active players
and i'm sure with the popularity of WoW that it can reach much higher numbers of active players and it being able to bring in more overall subs
anyway my point still stands at being that Jagex didn't see much profit from making legacy servers their data etc. didn't show it so it must be true.
Blizzard says the same over and over again.
legacy server won't save WoW but im sure it can turn a profit for them.
Last edited by mmocc06943eaac; 2016-05-16 at 06:17 AM.
Yeah and at launch they had what 10% of that start playing? I remember reading it was like 60k or something when those servers launched. So you are going to use Runescape as a good example? I mean hell 250k people turns into 25k people awfully quickly if we use runescape as an example.
Psst...using Runescape isn't a good example imo.
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Yup you nailed it. It was why I pointed out these things when people started long ago talking about "Well Runescape and Everquest did it!" and why it isn't the same thing.
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Because it is a discussion about WoW and legacy. I may be against it but I understand WHY people want it. I'm just trying to point out why I don't believe it will work. And I want to debunk things like the "Well Runescape did it!" argument.
Also I'd rather not see this thread turn into a circle-jerk with just pro-legacy people thinking that EVERYONE in the community thinks the same way as them.
I'm against official legacy servers, simply because I don't believe Blizzard would re-release their game as it once was. If they made legacy servers, they would change the game to suit their current playerbase with Battle.net, microtransactions, flying, dual specialization, perhaps not right away but it would only be a matter of time before Blizzard caves to the lowest common denominators within their game.
Instead, I would prefer if Blizzard would simply allow licensing of some sort to private server groups, if Nostalrius or K2 would become legitimised by Blizzard that would be the best, imo.
I mean if Legacy servers ever do happen I sure as hell don't want some other group handling them. I don't think it is a good idea to just going around and proclaiming that "Hey THIS group of copyright infringers is okay, they are doing it for LUV. So we're letting them handle it. But you guys over there, you can't do it! Bad!".