Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Jerichofr]

If the Nostalrius team is a bunch of hack-job-scripters, then why did they accomplish what Blizzard said they could not?

I don't see many complaining if Nostalrius put what they have into an official game. It's more than what can be currently bought, and perhaps years ahead of its time. Do it Blizzard.

Except that they didn't "accomplish what Blizzard could not". Their server was not a Vanilla server, it was a hacked-together emulated APPROXIMATION of Vanilla from YEARS of spotty research on various portions of Vanilla that no longer exist except in video & web archives. It was also 10 years AFTER its time. (Not ahead of it.)

It would take Blizzard a LONG time and a LOT of resources to rewrite Vanilla's database.

Don't do it, Blizzard.

[Vineri]

Except that they didn't "accomplish what Blizzard could not". Their server was not a Vanilla server, it was a hacked-together emulated APPROXIMATION of Vanilla from YEARS of spotty research on various portions of Vanilla that no longer exist except in video & web archives. It was also 10 years AFTER its time. (Not ahead of it.)

It would take Blizzard a LONG time and a LOT of resources to rewrite Vanilla's database.

Don't do it, Blizzard.

Yeah, yeah. Blizzard says they can't. Let someone in who can.

Sure Blizzard did it once, but the important people involved were fired or they quit, seeing the direction of their "baby" gone wrong.

There is not currently anyone at Blizzard capable of realizing what was done in the past. I'd say, stick to people who know the game better than current personnel, even if that means outsourcing. Nostalrius knows the game better than (current) Blizzard.

One of the former dev's was involved with Nostalrius. Who better to consider involving?

[kunah]

I'm getting the feeling that Chilton is doing what the dude who said that the source code was lost is doing and misrepresenting the facts without intending to.

I find it hard to believe that they don't have a single snapshot of the server-side data from like mid 2006 to before WotLK. Any such snapshot would answer 99% of questions like "what amount of HP" etc.

I'm sure there are issues, but getting basic mob data and such surely cannot be.

I find this hard to believe as well. The "technical" difficulties are a smoke screen. They just don't want to do it.

[Kyanion]

If the Nostalrius team is a bunch of hack-job-scripters, then why did they accomplish what Blizzard said they could not?

I don't see many complaining if Nostalrius put what they have into an official game. It's more than what can be currently bought, and perhaps years ahead of its time. Do it Blizzard.

Fans crying that resources are being taken away, suddenly get their argument taken away as well.

Our argument is taken away? The hell you talking about. That interview basically says it would take a ton of work to get those servers to happen. That means a ton of resources. That interview strengthened our argument it didn't take away from it. Spin it how you want, that interview likely sunk the hopes of many of the pro-legacy people.

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Yeah, yeah. Blizzard says they can't. Let someone in who can.

Sure Blizzard did it once, but the important people involved were fired or they quit, seeing the direction of their "baby" gone wrong.

There is not currently anyone at Blizzard capable of realizing what was done in the past. I'd say, stick to people who know the game better than current personnel, even if that means outsourcing. Nostalrius knows the game better than (current) Blizzard.

One of the former dev's was involved with Nostalrius. Who better to consider involving?

You are trying so hard to believe that Nost's people can do it with Blizzard coding and Bnet intergration. You are just ignoring what was said in that interview and trying to..I really don't know what you are trying to do. Ignore reality?

[Jerichofr]

Our argument is taken away? The hell you talking about. That interview basically says it would take a ton of work to get those servers to happen. That means a ton of resources. That interview strengthened our argument it didn't take away from it. Spin it how you want, that interview likely sunk the hopes of many of the pro-legacy people.

At least for several years, if they decide to move forward with it. But of course, some of the legacy fanatics (like the person you quoted) will try to spin everything into something anti-Blizzard.

[Kyanion]

I find this hard to believe as well. The "technical" difficulties are a smoke screen. They just don't want to do it.

If they don't want to do it for whatever reasons then they don't want to do it. Simple as that. You can believe what you want.

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At least for several years, if they decide to move forward with it. But of course, some of the legacy fanatics (like the person you quoted) will try to spin everything into something anti-Blizzard.

Yup they think Blizzard is already secretly working on Legacy and will SURPRISE them at Blizzcon 2016 or some shit. When you see an interview like that and it basically comes out and says "What Nost did wasn't what we'd do and we can't use that data" it is pretty cut and dry.

[Jerichofr]

I find this hard to believe as well. The "technical" difficulties are a smoke screen. They just don't want to do it.

Even if that's the case (which I doubt, as I understand exactly what they're saying), there's nothing at all wrong with them not wanting to devote the resources necessary to do it.

[Relapses]

Even if that's the case (which I doubt, as I understand exactly what they're saying), there's nothing at all wrong with them not wanting to devote the resources necessary to do it.

Nevermind the fact that if Legacy realms were as easy as pro-Legacy folks love to say they are, they'd already exist.

[Jerichofr]

Yup they think Blizzard is already secretly working on Legacy and will SURPRISE them at Blizzcon 2016 or some shit. When you see an interview like that and it basically comes out and says "What Nost did wasn't what we'd do and we can't use that data" it is pretty cut and dry.

That's part of why I copied that from the Kotaku interview. They go into much more detail than the Nost "post meeting wrap up" post did, and what they said in the Kotaku interview makes a TON of sense. Finally learning what some of the limitations are, and how much would have to go into it to make it a reality. It really was a great interview.

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Nevermind the fact that if Legacy realms were as easy as pro-Legacy folks love to say they are, they'd already exist.

Yeah, pretty much. Especially if the developers are as "interested" in legacy realms as they've said they are.

[Kyanion]

That's part of why I copied that from the Kotaku interview. They go into much more detail than the Nost "post meeting wrap up" post did, and what they said in the Kotaku interview makes a TON of sense. Finally learning what some of the limitations are, and how much would have to go into it to make it a reality. It really was a great interview.

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Yeah, pretty much. Especially if the developers are as "interested" in legacy realms as they've said they are.

Yup when you take away the Nost spin on what happened on the meetings you get the real information of how the meetings went. Pro tip: They didn't go as well as Nost said they did.

[zorkuus]

Yup they think Blizzard is already secretly working on Legacy and will SURPRISE them at Blizzcon 2016 or some shit.

They were never prepared to take a no for an answer anyway. Let them keep hoping. Meanwhile blizzard has effectively given them their 15 mins of fame for the sake of PR and can just wait for the hype to die down.

[kary]

No matter what the devs say or explain, the posters here still believe that blizz can legit direct port nostalrius' work onto their architecture.
It is what it is.

[Vineri]

So many anti-Legacy trolls in this thread. I often wonder why it bothers them so much. Other people having fun, outside of retail? *click* *click* must stop *defend Blizzard* *click*.

Even when their precious resources are protected by outsourcing to Nostalrius and sparing resources by Blizzard .. they still get upset.

Ugh. I don't care who runs Legacy, so long someone does. Certain people want neither - they accept neither alternative and bitch, moan, and cry. Then complain and form adhominem's to deter discussion.

I guess WoD is boring enough to need to spend an evening in arguments on your fan site. If WoW is awesome, play it, don't play forums. /boggle.

[kunah]

Even if that's the case (which I doubt, as I understand exactly what they're saying), there's nothing at all wrong with them not wanting to devote the resources necessary to do it.

That I agree with. But let's not say technical difficulties. Any enterprise would take full backups the day before a major release(in this case,,BC) for disaster recovery and roll back purposes. Let's just be honest and say we don't want to devote resources at this time.e.

[Kyanion]

They were never prepared to take a no for an answer anyway. Let them keep hoping. Meanwhile blizzard has effectively given them their 15 mins of fame for the sake of PR and can just wait for the hype to die down.

You are right, I think it will die down in this thread as well. They can circle-jerk all they want, that interview basically sealed Legacy's fate for the next long while.

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So many anti-Legacy trolls in this thread. I often wonder why it bothers them so much. Other people having fun, outside of retail? *click* *click* must stop *defend Blizzard* *click*.

Even when their precious resources are protected by outsourcing to Nostalrius and sparing resources by Blizzard .. they still get upset.

Ugh. I don't care who runs Legacy, so long someone does. Certain people want neither - they accept neither alternative and bitch, moan, and cry. Then complain and form adhominem's to deter discussion.

I guess WoD is boring enough to need to spend an evening in arguments on your fan site. If WoW is awesome, play it, don't play forums. /boggle.

We don't want WoW outsourced. We don't want Nost a part of anything official by Blizz. Plenty of us do not want Legacy because we think it would harm WoW in the long run. You slam us for defending Blizz yet here you are *click click clicking* away trying to defend your precious Legacy.

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That I agree with. But let's not say technical difficulties. Any enterprise would take full backups the day before a major release(in this case,,BC) for disaster recovery and roll back purposes. Let's just be honest and say we don't want to devote resources at this time.e.

Believe what you want. I'll take Blizz's word on this one as it isn't that important of an issue.

[zorkuus]

Even when their precious resources are protected by outsourcing to Nostalrius

Blizzard doesn't want to do it that way. Deal with it.

[Gadzooks]

Yeah, yeah. Blizzard says they can't. Let someone in who can.

Sure Blizzard did it once, but the important people involved were fired or they quit, seeing the direction of their "baby" gone wrong.

There is not currently anyone at Blizzard capable of realizing what was done in the past. I'd say, stick to people who know the game better than current personnel, even if that means outsourcing. Nostalrius knows the game better than (current) Blizzard.

One of the former dev's was involved with Nostalrius. Who better to consider involving?

I called it. Chilton said, in pretty plain English, that what Nost did has nothing to do with how Blizzard would have to do it, and that the usual suspects would ignore that or call them liars.

Which is why I stopped responding to them. There's no point. They're going to believe what they want to believe, and nothing else, and stick their fingers in their ears and go "NAAAH I CANT HEAR YOU!!!!".

This post is an excellent example of that. Unless Blizzard says "We going to recreate Vanilla exactly, and do it in a month, and it will be free", it's more accusations of Blizzard lying, wild unsubstantiated claims and boasts, and just plain old goddamned nonsense.

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That I agree with. But let's not say technical difficulties. Any enterprise would take full backups the day before a major release(in this case,,BC) for disaster recovery and roll back purposes. Let's just be honest and say we don't want to devote resources at this time.e.

People keep expecting Blizzard to act like Citibank who have legal reasons to keep backups of their servers. It's a fucking game. They didn't think it was that serious, Chilton said there was nothing in place to back it all up.

Get over it. The numbers are gone, and have to be recreated by hand. Lets be honest and stop accusing Blizzard of shit because you're butthurt they can't just snap their fingers and give you everything you demand.

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Even if that's the case (which I doubt, as I understand exactly what they're saying), there's nothing at all wrong with them not wanting to devote the resources necessary to do it.

Don't forget, either, that while guys like Ion and Chilton and someone in the art department might want to do it, they need approval from Brack and Morhaime to do it. They were hired to work on the current game, not ressurect the old game - they have their jobs to do first - and I'd bet a year's sub that one of the hurdles to getting this done is finding the budget, the people, and the time. The devs can't just decide to abandon whatever they're working on right now, to work on this - they're not that kind of company. This is even more difficult to get done if Brack is against it, and the devs have to convince him it's a worthwhile thing to do.

People seem to forget that the devs are just workers, they don't have that much power, when it comes to what they actually work on. They were hired to do a specific job. They can't just decide to devote all their time recreating vanilla.

[xChurch]

Blizzard comes out with a full fleshed out reason as to why it's not happening and all some people see is "Blizzard is really interested in doing a vanilla server". Pretty par the course.

[Ringthane]

So many anti-Legacy trolls in this thread. I often wonder why it bothers them so much. Other people having fun, outside of retail? *click* *click* must stop *defend Blizzard* *click*.

Even when their precious resources are protected by outsourcing to Nostalrius and sparing resources by Blizzard .. they still get upset.

Ugh. I don't care who runs Legacy, so long someone does. Certain people want neither - they accept neither alternative and bitch, moan, and cry. Then complain and form adhominem's to deter discussion.

I guess WoD is boring enough to need to spend an evening in arguments on your fan site. If WoW is awesome, play it, don't play forums. /boggle.

Well, there's your interpretation, and then...

There's how things really are.

This thread reminds me of the flying/no-flying thread from WoD. You go around and around and around about this, and does anything change? It's not what pro-legacy server players want. It's not what anti-legacy server players want. It isn't even what players who couldn't give two craps one way or the other want.

It's about what Blizzard wants.

Blizzard owns the game. Period. This is a fact. You do not own the game. You do not own a copy of the game when you buy or download it. You lease it. It's the same thing as when you lease office space. You do not own the space. You cannot just change whatever you want (rip up carpet, knock down walls, add on to the back). Yes, you can paint. Yes, you can put up window treatments and the like. But if you make a change the owner of the building does not allow you to do, you will most likely be evicted and you will most likely be sued. It's the same thing here. And no matter how loudly you protest, if Blizzard does not want legacy servers, there will not be legacy servers, no matter what you say, or the Nost guys say, or the man in the moon says.

Why simple concepts like these are so difficult to understand I'll never know.

[Gadzooks]

The database structure, quest info, mob info, etc. Nost used MySQL. I seriously doubt that's what Blizz uses.

From: http://kotaku.com/blizzard-talks-wor...mor-1781753136

Blizz uses the heavy iron versions of Oracle, a completely different product from MySQL. (Oracle owns MySQL). I don't do database stuff, but the people I know who do, say that the differences between MySQL and what a Blizz server would use is like the difference between Photoshop and MS Paint.

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I don't think it's completely unreasonable for them not to have the data since they may have (stupidly in retrospect) thought there would never be a time such data would be relevant again.

They're also not an entity like a bank, that needs to keep records for legal reasons, or a company keeps sales records. It's a game. In the larger scope of things, how much HP a mob had on 2004 is WAY, WAY, WAY, WAY low on their list of priorities to back up and save. To expect them, in 2004, 2006, 2008, or 2010, to hoard every number ever punched into the database is an unreasonable expectation for a game, nobody had any plan or idea to recreate vanilla then.

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What "they" are saying is this -



In the context of the interview it sounds like "the data" is dmg and hp numbers of a lot of things. What I was proposing is just taking the numbers the Nost people guesstimated and run with it. It was fine and nobody would care or notice a few % differences. What is more muddy is his saying that "ultimately the way they implement their [Nost's] data is in no way similar to the way we [Blizz] do it", which doesn't explain anything but sounds catastrophically vague and even out-of-context with the rest of the interview.

And what chilton is saying, and it's been said before, the computations Nost were making were not the same as what Blizzard had. Every time you use an ability, the game does a bunch of calculations to get the result. Nost might have conjectured that a + b - c / d = e, but the actual Blizzard code was t +w + j /x *z +m, n, o - and that caculation has changed over the 11 years since they wrote it, so they don't know what the starting point is.

So they can't "run with it", because writing scripts to parse what Nost did (if it's even the correct information and data), or recoding the stuff by hand is what Chilton and others are saying is a considerable task.

This is all confirmation bias - Chilton was clear enough on the issue - you're the one confusing things.