Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Vineri]

Because they have no alternative. I won't defend Pristine servers for being the answer, but at least that's a mention towards an alternative that doesn't involve a significant investment of resources. And yes, despite what experienced software engineers with years of experience are telling us, Legacy requires a significant cost beyond bug fixes and new server code.

If you have financial concerns over an alternative, Pristine servers will not solve your issues. Low cost, low interest. Gain potential is nil.

Well, for all the reasons that any corporation would have that may not logically make sense to us the fans. Like I said, fan support and interest does not equate to financial success. There are still major drawbacks to bringing back Legacy, like the lack of long-term sustainability and the lack of potential growth in the future. This is easily indicated by Nost's own numbers. They don't work in their benefit, it actually works against them. Consider that Nost's popularity stems from word-of-mouth amongst the veterans and WoW streamer-fans. It wouldn't really be markettable to any group outside of this fanbase; and corporate execs don't care about small fry group of dedicated fans.

If this were as simple as flipping a switch or dedicating a small team to fixing, like bringing back Warcraft 2 or Lost Vikings, then it's a no-brainer for new revenue. Legacy needs to be maintained though. Full time. Over a course of years. Sure, it may be able to sustain itself financially by its core group of players; but those aren't the numbers Blizzard (corporate) wants to see with their investment. Consider that a relatively small amount of resource investment poured into a small team was able to produce Hearthstone. Which would Blizzard corporate want to side with more? Pleasing a few hundred thousand old fans with an inevitable drop rate, or bringing millions back with potential growth? Apply this to WoW and pouring those resources into a new expansion for Live. There's simply way more potential for growth and long-term play in a new expansion or a new product. That's what Legacy faces on a corporate decision level.

I've seen game projects cancelled by Activision Blizzard for less reason than I'm giving you here. It has nothing to do with being anti-Legacy or thinking it's too hard to do. It's about how difficult this will be to sell to Blizzard Corporate.

Long term sustainability -- gone. WoW lives on new blood, not old. (SRC: quote about more people who quit than currently play WoW by BLUE)
Long term growth -- gone.. WoW is in decline. New expansions give some oxygen, but overall it's not going to be as good as 3 months ago, or 6 months, or 9, or 3 years ago, etc.. Alive? Yes. Growing? No.

Having Legacy might not be just pleasing a few hundred thousand fans. To many, Vanilla WoW will be new, and may be enticing to many who see it as a new game (some on Nostalrius saw it as new too btw).

It really depends if Blizzard opens Legacy servers for paying accounts, or they just legally off it to Nostalrius. Honestly it would be awesome if they just open it in-house for a $12-$15 WoW account, IMO. What they do, who knows. It sure would be nice though.

[Eliseus]

With WoW on the decline I don't even think it is anymore if they will or won't do it, but when they will. If Legion proves to be a smash success I'm sure it will deter this significantly, but if history repeats itself it's safe to assume the population will be roughly half of what it is now within roughly a year. I linked an article back in this thread that talked about some of these major companies talking about porting games and remaking games being cheaper and easier to sell than making a new game. I think Blizzard knows there is potential for a Classic server, but when. That is why the majority of responses have always been "not at this time".

I have been curious though if a Classic server will exceed not just their expectations, but the MMO genres expectations, just as the launch of WoW did.

[Thimagryn]

If you have financial concerns over an alternative, Pristine servers will not solve your issues. Low cost, low interest. Gain potential is nil.

Pristine servers aren't a corporate mandate. It's developer driven, as it was something a developer mentioned looking into to provide an alternative to players who wished to see a more hardcore experience. We already know how the developers feel about Legacy.

Long term sustainability -- gone. WoW lives on new blood, not old. (SRC: quote about more people who quit than currently play WoW by BLUE)
Long term growth -- gone.. WoW is in decline. New expansions give some oxygen, but overall it's not going to be as good as 3 months ago, or 6 months, or 9, or 3 years ago, etc.. Alive? Yes. Growing? No.

Having Legacy might not be just pleasing a few hundred thousand fans. To many, Vanilla WoW will be new, and may be enticing to many who see it as a new game (some on Nostalrius saw it as new too btw).

It really depends if Blizzard opens Legacy servers for paying accounts, or they just legally off it to Nostalrius. Honestly it would be awesome if they just open it in-house for a $12-$15 WoW account, IMO. What they do, who knows. It sure would be nice though.

Expansions almost guarantee returning players. Players who will be shelling out full-game asking price to play through new questing content. We've seen it happen with WoD, and though the numbers may not hit 10m, it will ultimately rise again with Legion. That's what Blizzard is banking on. It should be obvious.

Warcraft does not live on new blood, it is actually being sustained by whales. New blood suggests that WoW is still in a state of growth, which you already pointed out it's not.

As for the rest of your argument, it's really nothing new that I haven't heard. Again, I'm not Blizzard, and again, I'm pro-legacy, so you need not try to convince me that Vanilla has its merits where its worth. But those merits will be something Blizzard has to weigh as being worth it or not. And frankly, considering WoW's antequated designs and the given attention span of millenials and young gamers in this era, it's going to be a mighty hard sell as enticing to new players. This isn't Dark Souls or Bloodborne we're talking about, it's WoW as an old game that might interest a new player for a month or two for shits and giggles before they move on to something else. This is why they're making new games like Hearthstone and Overwatch that appeal to a new generation of gamers, rather than the RPG and Story-based games that we used to have. Even WoW's casualized gameplay reflects this. Whether any of us agree with this or not is unimportant - the reasoning is sound from a game design perspective that the core gamer audience has changed and thus WoW has to evolve with it.

For Vanilla WoW to be popular again is simply a testament to the strong feelings many gamers have towards it. This is a powerful statement for Blizzard to have Legacy servers; and the Devs ARE listening - but will the execs who only care about the bottom line? There simply is no data to prove that Legacy is worth it, and thus the best bet we have is with Mark Kern and Nost's meetings.

[Struggle]

Pristine servers aren't a corporate mandate. It's developer driven, as it was something a developer mentioned looking into to provide an alternative to players who wished to see a more hardcore experience. We already know how the developers feel about Legacy.



Expansions almost guarantee returning players. Players who will be shelling out full-game asking price to play through new questing content. We've seen it happen with WoD, and though the numbers may not hit 10m, it will ultimately rise again with Legion. That's what Blizzard is banking on. It should be obvious.

Warcraft does not live on new blood, it is actually being sustained by whales. New blood suggests that WoW is still in a state of growth, which you already pointed out it's not.

As for the rest of your argument, it's really nothing new that I haven't heard. Again, I'm not Blizzard, and again, I'm pro-legacy, so you need not try to convince me that Vanilla has its merits where its worth. But those merits will be something Blizzard has to weigh as being worth it or not. And frankly, considering WoW's antequated designs and the given attention span of millenials and young gamers in this era, it's going to be a mighty hard sell as enticing to new players. This isn't Dark Souls or Bloodborne we're talking about, it's WoW as an old game that might interest a new player for a month or two for shits and giggles before they move on to something else. This is why they're making new games like Hearthstone and Overwatch that appeal to a new generation of gamers, rather than the RPG and Story-based games that we used to have. Even WoW's casualized gameplay reflects this. Whether any of us agree with this or not is unimportant - the reasoning is sound from a game design perspective that the core gamer audience has changed and thus WoW has to evolve with it.

For Vanilla WoW to be popular again is simply a testament to the strong feelings many gamers have towards it. This is a powerful statement for Blizzard to have Legacy servers; and the Devs ARE listening - but will the execs who only care about the bottom line? There simply is no data to prove that Legacy is worth it, and thus the best bet we have is with Mark Kern and Nost's meetings.

People will return, that's where the money is. Not bringing in new players.

How many people who played Vanilla, TBC, and Wrath don't play anymore? How many of them would come back? Contrary to popular belief, millions of players in the early iterations of the game played casually and had plenty of fun. Sure, some of us have gotten older and can't play as much as we used too, but I'd still definitely sub and play when I could if there were Vanilla-Wrath official servers for me to play on. I doubt I'm the only one.

[Relapses]

People will return, that's where the money is. Not bringing in new players.

How many people who played Vanilla, TBC, and Wrath don't play anymore? How many of them would come back? Contrary to popular belief, millions of players in the early iterations of the game played casually and had plenty of fun. Sure, some of us have gotten older and can't play as much as we used too, but I'd still definitely sub and play when I could if there were Vanilla-Wrath official servers for me to play on. I doubt I'm the only one.

This mysterious quota of ex-WoW players who'd come back for Legacy likely isn't as huge as you'd like to believe. Most of the players who played back then are much older now and in different phases of their lives than they were when it was relevant. WoW -- especially Vanilla WoW -- is an extremely time-intensive video game and while a lot of these players may have been able to devote the necessary time when the game was new doesn't mean they can do the same now. Legacy isn't going to reignite a second Renaissance for the game. It'll garner interest, assuredly, but I can't help but wonder how sustainable the Legacy model would be after the initial surge dies down.

[Eliseus]

This mysterious quota of ex-WoW players who'd come back for Legacy likely isn't as huge as you'd like to believe. Most of the players who played back then are much older now and in different phases of their lives than they were when it was relevant. WoW -- especially Vanilla WoW -- is an extremely time-intensive video game and while a lot of these players may have been able to devote the necessary time when the game was new doesn't mean they can do the same now. Legacy isn't going to reignite a second Renaissance for the game. It'll garner interest, assuredly, but I can't help but wonder how sustainable the Legacy model would be after the initial surge dies down.

Interesting that being older is a factor. I know of 5 different families at the moment that would love to start over in Vanilla with their kids. Maybe the problem is you are trying to find too many excuses at to why someone wouldn't play, with no credibility. Time hasn't somehow disappeared and the days magically shorter. People who were working full time during classic are still...... wait for it....... working full time. Kids that were in school and playing wow are still...... wait for it....... working the same amount of hours.

I agree though that the game may NOT reignite anything, but Blizzard also only expected 450k active subs. So I wouldn't say it is far fetched to assume that there is a possibility these servers could bring back a significant population. Other games that have done this have brought back pops larger than their current servers. I don't know if a Legacy server in WoW at this current time could do that considering the size of the current pop, but I also wouldn't say things are unrealistic when Blizzards own expectations didn't exceed the reality.

When will the initial surge die down? If we use Nost, again, the initial surge never died till the server was shutdown. I think there is a high possibility if the game stays in classic forever. This is why I've always been a proponent for progression servers that get re-released every like 7/8 years, or whatever would be an appropriate time frame. Now you may argue, "but Nost was free". Well, I guess we will just have to see. Almost every person I have seen you argue with has stated they would pay, if not every person you have argued with.

[Thimagryn]

How many people who played Vanilla, TBC, and Wrath don't play anymore? How many of them would come back?

Million dollar question. If anyone knew, the Legacy debate would be over already.

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Interesting that being older is a factor. I know of 5 different families at the moment that would love to start over in Vanilla with their kids.

Anecdotes don't mean jack shit to the ones deciding whether Legacy happens. Who are you trying to convince here? It's not like we won't believe what you say, but please realize that these 5 families you know mean very little to the executives who will thumbs up/down Legacy servers. These are people who will compare the investment cost and return-of-investment of Legacy to other Blizzard projects like Hearthstone or Overwatch. That's the reality of the situation.

[Jeniwyn]

Yeah, in the end this discussion obviously boils down to a number of variables we don't know. Man I'd love to be a fly on the wall on these meetings.

[Struggle]

This mysterious quota of ex-WoW players who'd come back for Legacy likely isn't as huge as you'd like to believe. Most of the players who played back then are much older now and in different phases of their lives than they were when it was relevant. WoW -- especially Vanilla WoW -- is an extremely time-intensive video game and while a lot of these players may have been able to devote the necessary time when the game was new doesn't mean they can do the same now. Legacy isn't going to reignite a second Renaissance for the game. It'll garner interest, assuredly, but I can't help but wonder how sustainable the Legacy model would be after the initial surge dies down.

It really isn't. This is one of the biggest fallacies to plague the Warcraft community all these years.

You don't have to be a hardcore raider or player to enjoy vanilla WoW or TBC. All of my RL friends who played with me back then were casuals, and I was a hardcore raider. We all still did shit together, ran dungeons and BGs, PvP'd, farmed, etc. The game had plenty for casual players to do, and it was actually difficult (time consuming) and thus immersive. You actually went out in the world, talked with people to quest and do dungeons instead of queuing with some unknown person from whatever server. Hell even waiting on zeppelins was a social experience, emoting and complaining back and forth as to why it was taking so long.

Just because we're older and can't play as often as we used too doesn't mean we can't or won't play. And luckily I won't fall for that "I don't have enough time to invest to play old WoW" bullshit that people try to push these days as though NO casuals ever played this game before Wrath.

There's plenty of people who would come back.

[psyquest]

you might want to bookmark this post.

Blizzard is unlikely to create legacy servers.

what they are going to do, in my opinion:

rework the broken leveling experience. They acknowledged it is broken.
they will work on putting the new leveling tech in all zones. ie, mobs stay at your level.
they will review rewards from quests and instances whislt leveling.
they will buff mobs when and where needed by zone.
they will create pristine servers where migration does not work, items linked to account cannot be used.
they will add achievement for creating a character in a pristine server and leveling it to max level.
they are going to block migration, lfr, lfd, shared zones for these servers.


thats about it.

You might feel the need to keep this thread alive, but in my opinion blizzard has already set a plan in motion and it does not include legacy vanilla servers.

Looks like Blizzard is taking the direction I wrote about few posts back.

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve rolled out a series of hotfixes aimed at improving overall pacing and playability of the low-level (1-20) experience. We started by adding a number of modern conveniences to our low-level quest experience, and will continue to roll these improvements forward across other legacy content in the future. We’ve also made some improvements to the overall pace of combat at low levels: Due to the accumulated effect of years’ worth of max-level tuning adjustments, many classes were killing low-level enemies nearly instantaneously, even without heirloom gear or other advantages.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/4...ril-11-may-24/

[Struggle]

Looks like Blizzard is taking the direction I wrote about few posts back.





http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/4...ril-11-may-24/

They acknowledged leveling needs fixing though, even retail players were asking for it.

Seems unrelated to me.

[psyquest]

They acknowledged leveling needs fixing though, even retail players were asking for it.

Seems unrelated to me.

Hopefully you are correct.

[Daffan]

As has been said before. Vanilla is an objectively inferior game to WoD in the same sense that The Empire Strikes Back is objectively inferior to The Phanthom Menace.

Yes, the graphics and the effects and overall tech is way better. But a game (or a movie) is so much more than that. And many qualities are intangible.

I personally have a hard time understanding how people can actually prefer dungeons where the best tactic is to pull everything you see and AoE it down vs the careful vanilla gameplay but it is clear that many do prefer the "You are a superhero" gameplay.

In vanilla I have fun, in WoD I don't. After that stuff like tech and graphics become a moot point.

Well stated.

I think Vanilla mechanics are garbage. I hate 40 man raids, I hate how the classes have useless specs and I do miss a lot of features.

But the game has meaning behind it and it just -feels- more satisfying. AOE zerg dungeons, catchup welfare gear and everything like that totally diminishes the -experience- for me.

[skannerz22]

Nice work by Blizzard!

All P-Servers should be closed asap.

yep......................

[Uurdz]

Not if they enter a contract, as a franchise..

They authorize Nostalrius, and Nostalrius pays royalties. No other private server, for the same reason nobody else is allowed to open a Taco Bell without a contract.

The franchise never claims to own the IP, but they work hard to stay in business, and the founding corporate assumes no risks. Financially or legally.

Not.going.to.happen. Nostralius is dead and gone.
Omg your comment about the risks associated with franchising makes me want to shoot you. Please refrain from talking about things you clearly know very little about

[Eleccybubb]

They acknowledged leveling needs fixing though, even retail players were asking for it.

Seems unrelated to me.

Said it before and I'll say it again. Go back to the style of Wrath. Wrath had the mixture of easy and hard leveling and it was perfect imo. Was still a decent leveling pace as well.

[Deleted]

+1 internet for you, sir.

It's amazing how delusional and narrow minded the legacy folks are.

By saying that, you're actually narrow minded. Then again, we think you are delusional. 3 Xpacs of pure shite and you paid money for it. Enjoy the next one.

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Well stated.

I think Vanilla mechanics are garbage. I hate 40 man raids, I hate how the classes have useless specs and I do miss a lot of features.

But the game has meaning behind it and it just -feels- more satisfying. AOE zerg dungeons, catchup welfare gear and everything like that totally diminishes the -experience- for me.

I think BC fixed alot of those issues that Vanilla had. They extended the mechanics while keeping the Threat and Rescource Management from Classic.

[Eleccybubb]

By saying that, you're actually narrow minded. Then again, we think you are delusional. 3 Xpacs of pure shite and you paid money for it. Enjoy the next one.

Again I thought MoP was amazing. Actually had story to it. Cata was decent for me because it was my first expansion I was going into. "Shite" is subject to opinion and you know that. WoD however was atrocious.

[skannerz22]

[Daffan]

By saying that, you're actually narrow minded. Then again, we think you are delusional. 3 Xpacs of pure shite and you paid money for it. Enjoy the next one.

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I think BC fixed alot of those issues that Vanilla had. They extended the mechanics while keeping the Threat and Rescource Management from Classic.

It's one reason BC was my favorite expansion up until Sunwell, when I took a massive break.