Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Kyanion]

I guess some ppl in this thread will be really pissed off if at this year's Blizzcon it's announced that during 2017 they will open classic servers.

I don't know if it will happen or not, i know that it is a possibility as good as any, and tbh the 2-3 posters that are constantly fueling their hate and insulting pretty much everyone that doesnt see the world as they do would do a favor to just f... off from here or grow up and start posting something that doesnt look like it was posted by a 5yr old in a tantrum.

Oh look someone that talks about other people being fueled with hate and then insults those '2-3' posters without naming names. Yeah sorry I have no intentions of leaving this thread so it turns into some circle jerk.

If Blizz announces Legacy during Blizzcon I won't be pissed off. I'll just wait and see what happens after that announcement when a can of worms is opened with people demanding everything under the sun. And if Legacy fails shortly down the road I'd get frustrated at that point because I think it will hurt retail.

[Jeniwyn]

It's very debatable whether Blizzard cares for its "fans" and what it even means to "care" for them in the context of a big company. Individuals may "care", but that's irrelevant in the corporate machine. They WILL make Legacy servers if it suits an abstract agenda (PR for example) or they are sure it will bring a lot of profits, I don't think anybody would "disagree" about this. The problem is that those are the only conditions in which they will do it, nothing else, i.e. no amount of "care".

You can't make precise calculations on a lot of these things so what you do is that you hire people who really do care and then you listen to them and, within limits, do what is perceived by them to be the right thing to do. Subject to costs and fair implementation and such considerations. Where the line gets drawn is often very arbitrary.

Note that we aren't talking game design here, but more community stuff and such. So while the company doesn't care, the people influencing the decisions very often do.

[Deleted]

You can't make precise calculations on a lot of these things so what you do is that you hire people who really do care and then you listen to them and, within limits, do what is perceived by them to be the right thing to do. Subject to costs and fair implementation and such considerations. Where the line gets drawn is often very arbitrary.

Note that we aren't talking game design here, but more community stuff and such. So while the company doesn't care, the people influencing the decisions very often do.

You'd be surprised how well they can calculate these things, but maybe you are right, we'll see how everything turns out.

[Chaelexi]

Oh look someone that talks about other people being fueled with hate and then insults those '2-3' posters without naming names. Yeah sorry I have no intentions of leaving this thread so it turns into some circle jerk.

If Blizz announces Legacy during Blizzcon I won't be pissed off. I'll just wait and see what happens after that announcement when a can of worms is opened with people demanding everything under the sun. And if Legacy fails shortly down the road I'd get frustrated at that point because I think it will hurt retail.

I will start this with saying I am vanilla player that played at some of the highest levels at the time and have played through every expansion. I am also logical to a fault and will look at both sides and logically break down a request. Lastly I am an IT Manager for a multinational company where I have handle both IT and the developers in our company so I have experience in this field. This is the exact reason you will not see a true push from Blizzard on legacy servers until the WoW story is nearing the end. The risk of leaching from current WoW player base is a true possibility. There are other issues that I will detail below:

The first issue is that a legacy server will be a stagnant server with no updates other than bug fixes(which there were a lot of game breaking/exploitable bugs that were announced after being fixed) and that with out new content these will only keep a large portion of the population for a year or less. Thus making it only profitable for a short period of time and inorder to extract as much money out of this it will have to be on a separate subscription cost and even possibly a separate game purchase(initial cost of 19.99 for WoW legacy) as it will be a separate game from WoW. This leads into the next issues that were addressed in the Nost statement. The volume of work to integrate, update and replace missing code is larger endeavor than the legacy coloured glasses people will like to believe. And those who use Nost as an example are extremely shortsighted as Nost, while being an amazing show of what a group of interested people can put together, is no where near up to Blizzards standards for quality, security and sustainability. All of these updates will cost a lot of money and the only way to insure they get this back is separate costs.

The other big one will be updating the choices on how to update the game play(pathing, controls, mod code base), graphics(new hardware compatibility) and battle.net integration while it still remaining legacy server. One of the larger one in this is the mod/api scripting that could be done in classic wow was almost scary, you could write mod that would almost play the game for you. I know this as I had a computer engineer friend that designed a mod that would raid heal for him, it would scan the raid, look for the lowest people, determine how low they were, cast a rank appropriate heal + shield on them, and move on with pressing 1 button. He would top healing charts in a raid from this. Near the end of Vanilla he had it so it would monitor the other raid healers to make sure they were not already casting on this person and it would move to the next. This level of control from mods should not be in a game and would be changed by blizzard. But all of this would have to be a very delicate design process as it would be very difficult to keep the essence of vanilla legacy while making the game up to current standards, once again this comes to MONEY.

I understand the desire for legacy servers as a mix of nostalgia and desire for the old WoW community back. I would rather see blizzard put their efforts into making the next expansion be about the community and less about the individual player. This would satisfy many of the legacy server people as this is what is truthfully missing in WoW. This is because WoW has become a game that is able to be played in a 30 minute session instead of a game that requires an investment into the community to be successful.

[TriHard]

Blizzard's official stance on Legacy realms hasn't changed much since that post.

The difference now is that we know there are developers at Blizzard who would like to see Legacy happen. Blizzard does in fact still care about its fans and even if the Legacy movement amounts to a vocal minority, they're at least sensitive to this group's concerns. But we still haven't received an official yes or no. The last few pages of this thread have been players looking at the same set of data (the results of the Nost/Kern meetings) and drawing conclusions which meet their personal slant.

They've changed from a complete and utter "No, you think you want it but you don't" to a "We'd like to give you what you want, but it will be difficult" (See the latest interviews about this and the recap from the meeting)

That is a huge step imho

[Chaelexi]

They've changed from a complete and utter "No, you think you want it but you don't" to a "We'd like to give you what you want, but it will be difficult" (See the latest interviews about this and the recap from the meeting)

That is a huge step imho

Remember that the recap from the meeting is coming from people with very tinted glasses. Also if Blizzard went into a meeting with them being completely on the otherside saying no there would have been no constructive conversation to what there endgame is(unknown yet) but would have been an argument with Nost leaving early. I have been through many meetings when I have feigned interest just to get details from a company of how they set things up just so I can implement one small feature of how they do things but never actually wanting what they are selling.

[voidillusion]

I understand the desire for legacy servers as a mix of nostalgia and desire for the old WoW community back. I would rather see blizzard put their efforts into making the next expansion be about the community and less about the individual player. This would satisfy many of the legacy server people as this is what is truthfully missing in WoW. This is because WoW has become a game that is able to be played in a 30 minute session instead of a game that requires an investment into the community to be successful.

I agree with many of your arguments but this last idea is flawed by the simple fact that it was already attempted and failed miserably. Example: At the begining of Cata the Dungeons were made a bit harder to demand a higher lvl of cooperation, you should remember this. Result, it failed miserably because the majority of the current playerbase doesnt want that anymore it seems. Most ppl still enjoy to queue, run for 10 mins and leave. It's the current pace of the game.

Given this you have 2 options, ignore the portion of the playerbase that still aspires for that intricate level of time investment and character build up and keep slowly beeling more subs there, along with the remaining that leave for all other reasons, or leaving the current game in it's current path, serving a well estabilished portion of the playerbase and at the same time open up an alternative to the remaining players.

There is also a fundamental disagreement about the possible impact of that on the game overall, some think it would harm the current version, i think it would actually do wonders if the chosen model was the correct. Meaning, if you actually needed a standard subscription to play on classic servers, it would for sure also open the door for players aspiring to play on classic servers, also playing on the remaining servers. I don't see why this has to be black and white, why any user can have some chars on a classic server, and some chars on legion servers, the sameway many ppl play on both alliance and horde and have chars scattered across several servers.

[Chaelexi]

I agree with many of your arguments but this last idea is flawed by the simple fact that it was already attempted and failed miserably. Example: At the begining of Cata the Dungeons were made a bit harder to demand a higher lvl of cooperation, you should remember this. Result, it failed miserably because the majority of the current playerbase doesnt want that anymore it seems. Most ppl still enjoy to queue, run for 10 mins and leave. It's the current pace of the game.

Given this you have 2 options, ignore the portion of the playerbase that still aspires for that intricate level of time investment and character build up and keep slowly beeling more subs there, along with the remaining that leave for all other reasons, or leaving the current game in it's current path, serving a well estabilished portion of the playerbase and at the same time open up an alternative to the remaining players.

There is also a fundamental disagreement about the possible impact of that on the game overall, some think it would harm the current version, i think it would actually do wonders if the chosen model was the correct. Meaning, if you actually needed a standard subscription to play on classic servers, it would for sure also open the door for players aspiring to play on classic servers, also playing on the remaining servers. I don't see why this has to be black and white, why any user can have some chars on a classic server, and some chars on legion servers, the sameway many ppl play on both alliance and horde and have chars scattered across several servers.

I see the subscription model happening in 1 of 2 ways. It will either be an additional cost over and above the normal Sub cost, say normal sub cost of 14.95 and then 9.95 for the legacy servers. The other option is it being total separate cost. It would not be profitable if it is just given free with current sub.

I think this expansion is starting on bringing communities back together as the place you are sitting in is not your own personal garrison. I would still like to see a major city end up being the place but class garrisons are at least a start and we will see if it helps. I am also happy they are keeping the no flying till close to the end of the xpac in the game.

[Deleted]

The first issue is that a legacy server will be a stagnant server with no updates other than bug fixes(which there were a lot of game breaking/exploitable bugs that were announced after being fixed) and that with out new content these will only keep a large portion of the population for a year or less.

While this is true you are neglecting the possibility of the server going through all the expansions until it is on the "current" one. That means even more work for Blizz though, to recreate ALL the expansions.

once again this comes to MONEY.

Oh, Blizzard do have money, don't worry about that aspect. If they play their cards right Legacy servers may invigorate this stagnant, bloated beast of a game and make them more money than making a new expansion can. It's about what they calculate is the more profitable route. If they continue bleeding subs and people stop buying expansions when they realize this game is going nowhere they'll either pull the plug or make Legacy to skin us one more time.

I think this expansion is starting on bringing communities back together as the place you are sitting in is not your own personal garrison. I would still like to see a major city end up being the place but class garrisons are at least a start and we will see if it helps. I am also happy they are keeping the no flying till close to the end of the xpac in the game.

If only it was so simple. Vanilla/TBC WoW is different on a design and even philosophical level. Forcing people to interact with one another hardly matters in the face of those. It's also the way the game forces us to cooperate (not that I think "community" is what is missing, but anyway). Vanilla and TBC forced us because of its difficulty (this includes the active dynamics between mobs and players), so it was a natural extension of the game itself. There is no way WoW can go back to that, I don't think even the people at Blizzard know how to do it because they haven't shown the most intelligent and elegant design for the past ~4 expansions.

[Chaelexi]

While this is true you are neglecting the possibility of the server going through all the expansions until it is on the "current" one. That means even more work for Blizz though, to recreate ALL the expansions.

This is a ridiculous pipe dream. The cost and time for this endeavor would significantly out weigh the gain.

Oh, Blizzard do have money, don't worry about that aspect. If they play their cards right Legacy servers may invigorate this stagnant, bloated beast of a game and make them more money than making a new expansion can. It's about what they calculate is the more profitable route. If they continue bleeding subs and people stop buying expansions when they realize this game is going nowhere they'll either pull the plug or make Legacy to skin us one more time.

Blizzard has money because they know how to make it and it does not mean they will waste it on things that do not make money. As for your making more money then an xpac can...... that is pushing it as every xpac has a spike of 2-4 mill subscribers plus the current base that is already on it. Especially when they can make a couple piles of pixels called ingame pets and mounts and make a version that cost 40 dollars more that people flock to. You seriously underestimate the value an expansion has as it keeps players more than a legacy server. And lastly as stated elsewhere legacy will be a separate cost(at first at least if it starts struggling they will merge it)

If only it was so simple. Vanilla/TBC WoW is different on a design and even philosophical level. Forcing people to interact with one another hardly matters in the face of those. It's also the way the game forces us to cooperate. Vanilla and TBC forced us because of its difficulty (this includes the active dynamics between mobs and players), so it was a natural extension of the game itself.

As for the game being harder. Nope I played end game content. This current raid(on mythic) is significantly harder than anything in the past. Mechanics have become more precise, tanks and healers have to manage significantly more cooldowns, DPS have to manage trinket procs, cooldowns and other damage abilities much further than anything in Vanilla. There was not a world mob in Vanilla that I could not solo(except world raid bosses but I did 2 man the blue dragon) on my warlock with a little creative fear, dot and banish kiting. I could solo many instances up to the first half of BRD as well. The game in general was easy and the only difficult part was due to poor design, tanks getting instagibbed even though they did things perfectly, mobs getting linked in the world so that when you pull one a group of 30 come running at you. Things like this were the only reason the game was hard. Hell I 3 manned UBRS in T1 gear with a priest and a warrior by using AOE fear kiting and creating LOS pulls. The community was there due to the need to find groups and the curiosity of discovering a new game.

[Deleted]

This is a ridiculous pipe dream. The cost and time for this endeavor would significantly out weigh the gain.

Of course it is. Although it depends on when they started actually keeping prior versions of the expansions. Unless they didn't keep anything, which is shortsighted to the extreme, but maybe it's true.

Blizzard has money because they know how to make it and it does not mean they will waste it on things that do not make money. As for your making more money then an xpac can...... that is pushing it as every xpac has a spike of 2-4 mill subscribers plus the current base that is already on it. Especially when they can make a couple piles of pixels called ingame pets and mounts and make a version that cost 40 dollars more that people flock to. You seriously underestimate the value an expansion has as it keeps players more than a legacy server. And lastly as stated elsewhere legacy will be a separate cost(at first at least if it starts struggling they will merge it)

This is true and that's why I said that they are going to do it when people stopped buying expansions and stopped subscribing.

As for the game being harder. Nope I played end game content. This current raid(on mythic) is significantly harder than anything in the past.

Mythic raiding yes, but not the whole game in general. I also find it difficult to believe that you soloed instances up to the first half of BRD, if it's true that doesn't really change anything, since it's probably only doable by a warlock. 2 manning Azuregos sounds probable, but it's probably something non-standard like Feral Druid/Disc Priest and with good gear, i.e. something better than he can drop. Whether that is poor design or not is debatable. Yes, the classes were awfully designed and could've been better, the problem is that Blizzard no longer wish (and probably don't even know how) to create the same relationships between mobs and players no matter how amazingly (they aren't really) designed the classes are now.

Or, you know, they can just give the green light to the Nost people to do their thing.

[Chaelexi]

Mythic raiding yes, but not the whole game in general. I also find it difficult to believe that you soloed instances up to the first half of BRD, if it's true that doesn't really change anything, since it's probably only doable by a warlock. 2 manning Azuregos sounds probable, but it's probably something non-standard like Feral Druid/Disc Priest and with good gear, i.e. something better than he can drop. Whether that is poor design or not is debatable. Yes, the classes were awfully designed and could've been better, the problem is that Blizzard no longer wish (and probably don't even know how) to create the same relationships between mobs and players no matter how amazingly (they aren't really) designed the classes are now.

Azuregos was hunter kiting me DPSing, he was soloable by a hunter. Soloing instances took being Demo and lots of pulling back to the start of an instance and fear kiting, there were some bosses that could not be done but most could be. Especially any the had magic damage on the tank. Felpuppy with ability spam pulled more threat then any tank in the game. It was done through a mix of fear juggling, kiting and poor dungeon pathing design. There were numerous places you could get a mob to get stuck on a pathing loop without him being able to get to you or going evade.

[Deleted]

Mechanics have become more precise, tanks and healers have to manage significantly more cooldowns, DPS have to manage trinket procs, cooldowns and other damage abilities much further than anything in Vanilla.

Vanilla was all about strategy and problem solving (as a team), post 3.0 wow is all about APM and reactivity. While the game is indeed harder on a micromanagement standpoint now, it used to be significantly harder back in vanilla on a macro-management one.

2 different games, 2 different types of difficulty for 2 different type of players.

Soloing instances took being Demo and lots of pulling back to the start of an instance and fear kiting

You could only solo select few instances (like one of the wing of dire maul, the one with all the demons), and it took forever.

The first issue is that a legacy server will be a stagnant server with no updates other than bug fixes(which there were a lot of game breaking/exploitable bugs that were announced after being fixed) and that with out new content these will only keep a large portion of the population for a year or less. Thus making it only profitable for a short period of time and inorder to extract as much money out of this it will have to be on a separate subscription cost and even possibly a separate game purchase(initial cost of 19.99 for WoW legacy) as it will be a separate game from WoW.

That argument is flawed because the old game system is much more player-dependant than the new one (which is content dependant). Meaning most of the gameplay used to come from what your teammates were doing, and you adapting to their gameplay. Nowadays, most of what you're doing is tied to contextual mechanics of the content (bosses or monster) you face.

Therefore, the current game is much more dependant on a steady flow of content (to keep the players entertained) than the old game system, as most of the gameplay, back then, came from how the players interacted with each other.

Hence, a vanilla server is much more likely to see a steady amount of players than a modern one. Plus it'd take a long time for most players to complete all vanilla content (and when they are done, they could just go play retail wow). You could even imagine than a retail wow player would be able to play vanilla (if he wants to) during content drought.

Also, some tabletop RPG have been released 30 years ago and are still being played today. Not by the same players, but that's ok, nobody has to devote their life to a game for it to be profitable (players come and go all the time from the current wow).

[Deleted]

Vanilla was all about strategy and problem solving (as a team), post 3.0 wow is all about APM and reactivity. While the game is indeed harder on a micromanagement standpoint now, it used to be significantly harder back in vanilla on a macro-management one.

2 different games, 2 different types of difficulty for 2 different type of players.

True. It just changed genres when it changed design philosophies, from RPG-like to a pure action game. Blizzard started making it like the other shamefully popular "short burst" games like MOBAs, Shooters and the like. The same design philosophy that spawned Hearthstone. Vanilla/TBC WoW is a different game compared to even WotLK, it was better designed from a "whole picture" point of view, every system complemented the others (like difficulty affecting community, the scarcity of loot giving the professions more importance, lack of easy transport making the world immense etc. etc.), which is what a game should be, not just a random string of disconnected events and systems that mean nothing in- and out-of-context.

That argument is flawed because the old game system is much more player-dependant than the new one (which is content dependant). Meaning most of the gameplay used to come from what your teammates were doing, and you adapting to their gameplay. Nowadays, most of what you're doing is tied to contextual mechanics of the content (bosses or monster) you face.

Therefore, the current game is much more dependant on a steady flow of content (to keep the players entertained) than the old game system, as most of the gameplay, back then, came from how the players interacted with each other.

This is also true.

[Chaelexi]

Vanilla was all about strategy and problem solving (as a team), post 3.0 wow is all about APM and reactivity. While the game is indeed harder on a micromanagement standpoint now, it used to be significantly harder back in vanilla on a macro-management one.

2 different games, 2 different types of difficulty for 2 different type of players.

Here is a secret to most of the fights in Naxx, or how Deus Vox at least approached it. If it was not dying, throw more DPS at it. Swap a healer/hunter for a rogue or a mage. If you did not have any more, they went to the lower guilds on laughing skull and recruited a geared mage or TF rogue/warrior and went at it again. The most precise boss was C'thun but that was only the run in and where you stood(easily fixed by a range tracker) not even that much of an issue. A lot of fights did not have much for problem solving, the mechanics were very vanilla, even in Naxx or AQ40. DPS rotations were noting special, Lock put up corruption and COE/COR, spam shadowbolt, make sure curse does not fall off. Mage, go Fire you are not in MC/Ony/BWL, spam fireball if not it is frost and spam frostbolt, click trinkets, be top dps. How fury warrior, macro HS into every ability, pop DW, hit heroic strike when possible and EXECUTE. Rogue, gets a bit harder but buff tracker made it easy, spam combo point builder, at 4 or 5 combo points(depending on spec) put up bleed or SnD if both have time remaining hit evis, use any cooldowns as needed. Hunter may have been the hardest spec to dps with but a proper swing timer(shot timer) it gets easy, right after you autoshot you aimed shot, multishot.

And for any other DPS spec.....you were not a DPS spec you were a waste of a raid space if you were not healing.

[sabe]

Hope they open Vanilla servers but don't get greedy and try to sell people something like "pristine vanilla expansion".

[Chaelexi]

Hope they open Vanilla servers but don't get greedy and try to sell people something like "pristine vanilla expansion".

In order for them to do it, it needs to be profitable. They will do what is needed to make money off of it. You see it as greedy, they see it as sustainable.

[sabe]

In order for them to do it, it needs to be profitable. They will do what is needed to make money off of it. You see it as greedy, they see it as sustainable.

Subs only should be enough. They won't be making a new game. Another game package will be greed, nothing else.
I will pay the sub but i am not paying for same game again.

[Gadzooks]

Blizzard's official stance on Legacy realms hasn't changed much since that post.

The difference now is that we know there are developers at Blizzard who would like to see Legacy happen. Blizzard does in fact still care about its fans and even if the Legacy movement amounts to a vocal minority, they're at least sensitive to this group's concerns. But we still haven't received an official yes or no. The last few pages of this thread have been players looking at the same set of data (the results of the Nost/Kern meetings) and drawing conclusions which meet their personal slant.

It wasn't exactly a secret that there were devs who were interested in the idea, Chilton said as much at least once, from the Q&A's, if my memory is correct. The devs are gamers, most often pretty hardcore, and they are interested in the same things players are, so it's not surprising that some are open to this idea, and some may be really into it.

But you can't say that Blizzard doesnt care about it players if they don't have any interest in vanilla servers - this whole "bring back the original game" idea is an outlier in the industry, and to negate the care and passion they have over the work they do over this one issue is about as insulting as you can get.

The devs have stated pretty consistently from TBC that while there's support for legacy realms, the costs and effort was the roadblock, not "We don't care about players" or any of the other accusations thrown around. Brack is the "You think you want it" guy, he threw that monkey wrench into the works - but overall Blizzard's stance on them has been consistent from day one. The only real information I've gotten from all of this is the specifics of what they need to do, to make it happen, which is consistent with what they've said all along, but painted with a broader brush.

Chilton's comment of "We'd like to do it someday" is the clincher - that says they have no clear path to get this done, no decisions have been made, and while the door is open, it doesn't look like they'll decide anything soon. That doesn't mean he doesn't care about players, it means they don't know how to get it done, yet, or if it can be done at all.

- - - Updated - - -

Subs only should be enough. They won't be making a new game. Another game package will be greed, nothing else.
I will pay the sub but i am not paying for same game again. I don't care what they see, i control my money.

It's easy for you to say that, as the only risk you have is the cost of a monthly sub. But as a business, Blizzard has to justify the time spent - they're doing well, but not so well off they can commit the time and cost to get this done and write it off as charity, because you won't pay. You either have a fundemental misunderstanding as to how much this could potentially cost, or you're putting "I want!" ahead of everything else, and calling Blizzard "greedy" for expecting to profit off of their work.

You can do whatever you want with your money, but having $15 in hand every month does not give you the right to dictate that they throw millions away, so you can get something free or included in a sub you already pay for. That's just childish thinking - and far more greedy than anything you're accusing Blizzard of.

You're expecting Blizzard to spent a considerable amount of time to rebuild and retool a game from 11 years ago, which will either pull people off of the real game's development, or will require a new team to be hired, and then new servers to run on, and all of the support costs - and then you expect to use all of that for free?

And you have the NERVE to call them "greedy"?

[sabe]

It's easy for you to say that, as the only risk you have is the cost of a monthly sub. But as a business, Blizzard has to justify the time spent - they're doing well, but not so well off they can commit the time and cost to get this done and write it off as charity, because you won't pay. You either have a fundemental misunderstanding as to how much this could potentially cost, or you're putting "I want!" ahead of everything else, and calling Blizzard "greedy" for expecting to profit off of their work.

You can do whatever you want with your money, but having $15 in hand every month does not give you the right to dictate that they throw millions away, so you can get something free or included in a sub you already pay for. That's just childish thinking - and far more greedy than anything you're accusing Blizzard of.

You're expecting Blizzard to spent a considerable amount of time to rebuild and retool a game from 11 years ago, which will either pull people off of the real game's development, or will require a new team to be hired, and then new servers to run on, and all of the support costs - and then you expect to use all of that for free?

And you have the NERVE to call them "greedy"?

I don't care how much it potentially cost, i already paid that cost in 2004. I am not expecting them to rebuild something new, i am not expecting to add the game anything new. I just want the old stuff back which already exist. They can use Nostalrius codes if they want to, i don't mind.

Is Guild Wars 2 a charity game? Are their servers running with air? I am not asking anything free, i am paying sub. Asking me pay for same game again is greed.