Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Vineri]

As in how many of these freeloaders will put their money where their mouth is.

None.

That is a very strong statement from someone with no credentials or supporting followup.

Many in this thread have said they would pay. I know it's difficult to wrap your mind around new ideas, but try it sometime. Don't close out ideas just because you think you don't want them, but you do (tm).

[Deleted]

but will you PAY FOR BOTH? If so, great. If not... well....

Personally, yes, i do. If they have an offer of...play both for 20$ a month, hell yeah. If they charge me 15$ and 15$...probably only play the vanilla version. But if they give me a good offer for play both, yeah, no doubt.

[Chaelexi]

Yeah, but what they need is not to make content faster but make content that is not consumed fast. aka classic wow.

Anything in classic wow took time and effort.

I beg to differ, AQ40, first day it was open I cleared to Huhu with my guild, next week we spent farming NR gear for melee and some ranged dps, cleared to twins, killed twins a couple days later and got stuck on bosses that were unkillable for 3 months till blizzard fixed bugs all while farming gear with frost proc and killed Visc while gearing up. They fix C'thun and get world 3rd kill that night(within 20 minutes of world first) and get world second on Ouru. They were fixed in same patch
Now move on to Naxx, first night clear spider wing, and 2 other bosses. Nothing took time it just took the same thing that current mythic raiding takes, ability and teamwork. Even leveling did not take time if you knew how to do it(power leveling through BRD), You could carry a bad in MC.

- - - Updated - - -

Assuming that costs of running, maintaining and supporting servers are roughly similar to when Blizzard announced that WoW cost approx. $50million per annum (in 2008) this would put the break even point to run a server at under 1000 people subscribing (assuming $15 per month sub fee) for the year. Whilst it appears as if a legacy service would easily be profitable the hurdle it needs to over come is would it be profitable as one of ATVI's other franchises.

This does not include the development costs to make the game integrate into current battle.net framework, make it optimized for current hardware on both the client and server side, this includes updating it for new hardware releases, driver subsets, etc. They would also have to patch all the bugs found(including ones they announced after the being fixed that were not common knowledge), a lot of these bugs were fixed with BC launch and would have to be retroactively included. The server up time costs are just the tip of the iceberg it is all the rest that the supporters want to ignore but like the titanic would sink the ship if blizzard dove head first into this without a good plan.

[Deleted]

This does not include the development costs to make the game integrate into current battle.net framework, make it optimized for current hardware on both the client and server side, this includes updating it for new hardware releases, driver subsets, etc. They would also have to patch all the bugs found(including ones they announced after the being fixed that were not common knowledge), a lot of these bugs were fixed with BC launch and would have to be retroactively included. The server up time costs are just the tip of the iceberg it is all the rest that the supporters want to ignore but like the titanic would sink the ship if blizzard dove head first into this without a good plan.

How much would it cost to Blizzard to do all of that? 50 million to make it possible and running for...1 year? To say a number. Do people think that Blizzard cannot win money with that move investing 50 milion?

They put in the trash +200 million dollars in the Titan Proyect...and for MAYBE make something like that people is so upset and afraid? Really?

Making this for Blizzard is not a money problem, that is for sure. At this point, Activision Blizzard have no money problem to make ANYTHING in the videogame world. Hell, even if they have to spend 700 or 900 million dollars in a super super production,they are not gonna have money problems. Plus, all whe know that today the most expense when making this type of games is give money to the videogames press to make a "nice review" of your product, so...

Adapt Vanilla to the Battlenet system, put personal working on maintenance, running the servers, launch the game, publicity...that's nothing for blizzard at the moment. The thing is...how much time they need to adapt the old tecnology to the battlenet service? THAT is the real question here. Whe don't know how much they work to put on games like Diablo 2 or Warcraft 3 in the Battlenet system, so...

And in the AQ40 theme, it's true, until the 1.9 patch they don't fix C'hun and Ouro, so until that, they where impossible to kill.

[Molis]

It is the new Friday hip thing to do.
Bump this thread so we can circle jerk again.

Legacy would only be a pet project that would take 2 years to implement Blizzards way.

Face it Legion and the next expansion is going to be 99% of the WoW teams focus.

[Pann]

This does not include the development costs to make the game integrate into current battle.net framework, make it optimized for current hardware on both the client and server side, this includes updating it for new hardware releases, driver subsets, etc. They would also have to patch all the bugs found(including ones they announced after the being fixed that were not common knowledge), a lot of these bugs were fixed with BC launch and would have to be retroactively included. The server up time costs are just the tip of the iceberg it is all the rest that the supporters want to ignore but like the titanic would sink the ship if blizzard dove head first into this without a good plan.

It is unclear whether the figure released by Blizzard included product development, although it is possible that it does and in which case it would more than likely include the costs of Battlenet integration, bug fixing, etc.

I am curious as to what you think the costs of the things you mentioned might be and as to why you think they are insurmountable.

[Tharkkun]

Yeah, but what they need is not to make content faster but make content that is not consumed fast. aka classic wow.

Anything in classic wow took time and effort.

It didn't take effort. It took time. Well this is 2016. Games aren't being created anymore for the sole purpose of wasting your time. That was the Everquest design. It's gone.

Sitting in one place farming something or running a dungeon 150 times instead of 15 doesn't make it any more difficult.

The reason vanilla felt hard was because of latency, poor class design, a new game and the fact that 99% of the players were idiots. 12 years later most players understand all the concepts of this game and are quite proficient at it.

[Deleted]

The thing is @Tharkkun, that maybe there are part of the community thay maybe like to do things like 12/10/8 years ago in World of Warcraft. And that people, like the people who like and love retail, shoud be respected. That's all.

The time change? Absolutelly. But the people who wan't this Legacy servers up, don't wan't to implement that way of playing in today's retail wow, they wan't to have the opportunity to play that game APART from the retail version. Maybe today's community don't wan't to play like the old days, that's for sure, but these community should not denied the old community to express their feelings and ideas to the table.

And if Vanilla was hard, well, in mechanics of mobs, npcs, bosses, etc...maybe not, cause the majority of that have like 2/3/4 mechanics, so in that case no, but the ame was more slow, the bosses took more life when they hit, groups and raids have to mannage with thread (IMPORTANT), you needed to farm a lot of stuff to enter some raids, etc...

That was hard? Maybe not, maybe only slow and grindy, but some people like that way to play. When vanilla launch, i have 19 years old. Now i am almost 32, so i'm a different person, but when i play a videogame, still like the old ways to do some kind of content. In that case, yes, i preffer the old wow gameplay, but that doesn't mean that i don't like today's wow. Hell yeah, i'm enjoying Legion, including mechanics and all, but for me, it's not the same game no more. It's not a 100% MMORPG, is 50/50 between MMORPG and MOBA. I like it, don't get me wrong, but i prefeer the old way.

And yes, today we understand better the game and how to do it, maybe whe don't need 3 months to level cap and 2 other months to get ready for Onyxia and Molten Core, but still we like that way of playing.

BTW, sorry about my english, not my language ^^

[Chaelexi]

How much would it cost to Blizzard to do all of that? 50 million to make it possible and running for...1 year? To say a number. Do people think that Blizzard cannot win money with that move investing 50 milion?

They put in the trash +200 million dollars in the Titan Proyect...and for MAYBE make something like that people is so upset and afraid? Really?

Making this for Blizzard is not a money problem, that is for sure. At this point, Activision Blizzard have no money problem to make ANYTHING in the videogame world. Hell, even if they have to spend 700 or 900 million dollars in a super super production,they are not gonna have money problems. Plus, all whe know that today the most expense when making this type of games is give money to the videogames press to make a "nice review" of your product, so...

Adapt Vanilla to the Battlenet system, put personal working on maintenance, running the servers, launch the game, publicity...that's nothing for blizzard at the moment. The thing is...how much time they need to adapt the old tecnology to the battlenet service? THAT is the real question here. Whe don't know how much they work to put on games like Diablo 2 or Warcraft 3 in the Battlenet system, so...

And in the AQ40 theme, it's true, until the 1.9 patch they don't fix C'hun and Ouro, so until that, they where impossible to kill.

It is all about ROI and the ROI on Legion is significantly higher than a Vanilla server that may have a decent initial spike in numbers early but constantly decrease in numbers as people run out of stuff to do. I am sure that with what I know about Vanilla me and an organized guild could have it all cleared in 4 months. (this would take some serious clearing and leveling the first chars to 60 would be the longest portion)

The difference about the DII and WC3 updates to the Bnet system was about saving money by migrating to a unified SSO login system(this is what Bnet is) over multiple different credential interfaces that they were having to maintain. This would be launching a new game(this is because this game is not available and the code base has to be redeveloped).

And the Titan project, a lot of those resources went into Overwatch, it was more a gear shift over a tear down and scrap.

[Deleted]

Well if u say that, u can say the same about the content since Cata. Cata toke it in 12, down at 10. MOP at 10, end at 7. WoD to 10, drop to...last time around 5, propably worst. Right now, Legion is probably have around that 10 million...let's see at the end. And yes, the content in Vanilla at the end is gonna be ending, OBVIOUSLY, but u only have to make a simple math. Back in the day, Vanilla ended around...7 million people sub. In EU and USA servers, there was...around 1.2 level 60 characters. On these, only 18% enter in a raid in Vanilla. From those, only 1% ENTER NAXX. With the content that Vanilla have, Wizard can have people playing doing things for 3 years. Easy.

And in what is the return of investment is higher in Legion that in Vanilla? Less content, less dungeons, less raids...proffesions are not as much important than back in the day...so...if u talking about the money for Blizzard, probably making new content is more expensive that put a legacy server running. More publicity, new game, more expenses...

And you are saying that in 4 months, u can clear all vanilla (i suposse PVE content)? So...u hace to equip first between Scholo and UBRS, the attunement for Onyxia, equip in Onyxia, go to Molten Core, clear molten core, equip in Molten Core, go to Blackwing Lair, clear it, equip yourself, now Zulgurub, run it and equip, then AQ20, run it and equip, then AQ40, run it and equip, then Naxx till the end...including farming mats, reputations, items especify for the raids (water elemental shit in MC for example), professions, materials...in 4 months?

Dude. DUDE. Ok maybe playing 12 hours a day, 7 days a week...MAYBE...ok...but dude, seriously.

Respecto to the Titan/Overwatch, yes, maybe they took like some of the characters and stuff like that, but overwatch is not a 200+ million dollar proyect. People know that. So even if they took part of Titan proyect for Overwatch, propably they expend more money in Overwatch to make it.

[Thimagryn]

Sub numbers don't reflect ROI correctly. You assume that the player retention and sub numbers equate to profit, but you forget that even in Cata, they were beginning to bank on other types of transactions such as selling pets, transmog items, tokens and paid service changes. Even Cata had a lot of people switching factions and race changing after they opened up the new combos.

Also a lot of the numbers of subs are skewed by way of China and other countries that don't use the $$/m model. Only now is China changing to the subscription model.

Vanilla has very low potential for growth. It will retain a niche core of enthusiasts. That number will only see an eventual decline, unlike Legion which is tailored for both returning AND new players. Even if Legion declines, it has far more potential to reach out to new players due to artificial catchup mechanics like level boosts. Something like that wouldn't fly in Vanilla, since its content will forever be static.

This isn't to say a Vanilla server is impossible; but it would have to piggyback itself off of a player's subscription for WoW in general. I don't think returning veterans (non-Vanilla enthusiast, just returning players) would care to pay an extra $15/m just for Vanilla. It's a fair compromise to the enthusiast who wants Vanilla, but it's not going to sell many people who are on the border to go back to such an old game. The whole 'Nost was free' argument is tired, but true. It was easy to convince my friends to make accounts on Nostalrius for shits and giggles. If I were to tell them it's 15/m to play an old game, they wouldn't have even bothered.

[Deleted]

Yeah but you are not saying a big difference between both games, they are different games. Un is bassed on the sub model and the other is bassed half in subs, selling new exp and different stuff extra (coins, pets, etc...).

Also, one important thing. Legion is in constant evolving, so that mean they have to work in more content, add new stuff, etc...but, if u put Vanilla, iven if u launched like back in the day with the patch and content system, u don't have to do new content, u don't have to work on put new things in cash or whatever...etc.

So that means that in Vanilla you have a sure expense, but with new content u have to put more money to make new things, etc...

But, again, i don't think for Blizzard this is a money problem or ROI problem.

And even reading what ROI is:

"Return on investment (ROI) is the benefit to an investor resulting from an investment of some resource. A high ROI means the investment gains compare favorably to investment cost. As a performance measure, ROI is used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments.[1] In purely economic terms, it is one way of considering profits in relation to capital invested"

U can interpret both games in this. I think. People can disagree of course.

And one thing that u say:

Vanilla has very low potential for growth. It will retain a niche core of enthusiasts. That number will only see an eventual decline, unlike Legion which is tailored for both returning AND new players. Even if Legion declines, it has far more potential to reach out to new players due to artificial catchup mechanics like level boosts

At this moment, after 12 years, i doubt that WoW can atract NEW PLAYERS that NEVER PLAY WOW. Yes, Legion maybe is catching old players back to the game, but how much people really? The only way Legion is on far more atracting is cause is new content and is a new game, that's really the only reason. It's not gonna ad new players cause after 12 years, who doesn't play wow already is not gonna play now cause the Legion, what btw is kind of a "reboot" of TBC and is kind of nostalgic with Illidan.

[Thimagryn]

Also, one important thing. Legion is in constant evolving, so that mean they have to work in more content, add new stuff, etc...but, if u put Vanilla, iven if u launched like back in the day with the patch and content system, u don't have to do new content, u don't have to work on put new things in cash or whatever...etc.

So that means that in Vanilla you have a sure expense, but with new content u have to put more money to make new things, etc...

Development of content is not as costly as you think. The development team itself is maybe a team of 100 or so people, and that covers the full 2-year duration of content any given expansion has.

The staffing for WoW however grows exponentially when you consider all the support staff that needs to be hired simply to upkeep the game. Customer support specific to Vanilla would be required for each region. Suddenly we're looking at hundreds of new hires. This isn't as simple as Nostalrius where the expectations out of an indy group allows for quality control flexibility - if it's an Official Blizzard Vanilla server, people will have expectations for the highest quality of service to justify a paid subscription.

At this moment, after 12 years, i doubt that WoW can atract NEW PLAYERS that NEVER PLAY WOW. Yes, Legion maybe is catching old players back to the game, but how much people really?

You'd be surprised. While the majority of WoW players may be those who have played it in the past, there are always groups of people who are seeing each current expansion as their first time playing WoW. WoD was the first MMO for a lot of people, and soon Legion will be for another new generation. It's not as black and white as you think it is. Even the Warcraft movie is a huge marketing push to bring new players to the game. I think it's pretty naive to think that WoW only has 12m players since Wrath and every new expansion is just trying to regain everyone who used to play.

[SirBeef]

At this moment, after 12 years, i doubt that WoW can atract NEW PLAYERS that NEVER PLAY WOW. Yes, Legion maybe is catching old players back to the game, but how much people really? The only way Legion is on far more atracting is cause is new content and is a new game, that's really the only reason. It's not gonna ad new players cause after 12 years, who doesn't play wow already is not gonna play now cause the Legion, what btw is kind of a "reboot" of TBC and is kind of nostalgic with Illidan.

I know quite a few people that have tried WoW with Legion that have never played before. They were hooked on some of the cross promotional items from otbe Blizzard games. I think it is extremely naive to think no new gamer or anyone who has not played WoW yet will never try it. I grew my business in what was technically called a saturated, non growth market and helped grow the industry in my area. It js completely possible for Blizzard to attract new players. It is easy more difficult today than it was 12 years ago.

[Chaelexi]

Yeah but you are not saying a big difference between both games, they are different games. Un is bassed on the sub model and the other is bassed half in subs, selling new exp and different stuff extra (coins, pets, etc...).

Also, one important thing. Legion is in constant evolving, so that mean they have to work in more content, add new stuff, etc...but, if u put Vanilla, iven if u launched like back in the day with the patch and content system, u don't have to do new content, u don't have to work on put new things in cash or whatever...etc.

So that means that in Vanilla you have a sure expense, but with new content u have to put more money to make new things, etc...

But, again, i don't think for Blizzard this is a money problem or ROI problem.

And even reading what ROI is:

"Return on investment (ROI) is the benefit to an investor resulting from an investment of some resource. A high ROI means the investment gains compare favorably to investment cost. As a performance measure, ROI is used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments.[1] In purely economic terms, it is one way of considering profits in relation to capital invested"

U can interpret both games in this. I think. People can disagree of course.

And one thing that u say:



At this moment, after 12 years, i doubt that WoW can atract NEW PLAYERS that NEVER PLAY WOW. Yes, Legion maybe is catching old players back to the game, but how much people really? The only way Legion is on far more atracting is cause is new content and is a new game, that's really the only reason. It's not gonna ad new players cause after 12 years, who doesn't play wow already is not gonna play now cause the Legion, what btw is kind of a "reboot" of TBC and is kind of nostalgic with Illidan.

WoW is pulling new people through people hitting the age where they start playing game. Prime example is my friends 2 kids who now both play as they are 13 and 15 years old and started playing last year. This is the market they are targeting. Think Facebook streaming, Pokemon pet battles, Achievements, mini games like garrison/class hall, smartphone access,etc. All of these things target the next gen of gamers. No they are not going to get many of the older gamer gen to join but the new gen is where it is at.

Everything in business is ROI, how much money can we make off selling ________. In this case it is if we invest in making the game like it was 14 years ago but updated to run on new hardware, in our current servers and work with Bnet auth. Will we make money off of it and is it as much or more than if we invested those same resources into making new content in WoW(retaining subs) or making a new game that we can sell. If so then Vanilla will happen if not, I do not see it happening. And this is the biggest reason why if Vanilla/Legacy servers happen there will be a separate monthly charge and likely an initial buy in cost to get it(possibly hidden in a collectors/founders edition of an xpac)

- - - Updated - - -

And you are saying that in 4 months, u can clear all vanilla (i suposse PVE content)? So...u hace to equip first between Scholo and UBRS, the attunement for Onyxia, equip in Onyxia, go to Molten Core, clear molten core, equip in Molten Core, go to Blackwing Lair, clear it, equip yourself, now Zulgurub, run it and equip, then AQ20, run it and equip, then AQ40, run it and equip, then Naxx till the end...including farming mats, reputations, items especify for the raids (water elemental shit in MC for example), professions, materials...in 4 months?

Dude. DUDE. Ok maybe playing 12 hours a day, 7 days a week...MAYBE...ok...but dude, seriously.

No you do this like any major guild does now, You level to 60(I could do it in 5-7 days played back in the day, probably quicker with AQ opening quests) the first group that gets to starts power leveling the people who are behind through BRD trash farms(can get from 40-60 in 5 hours). Then you start farming gear, Strat, Scholo, BRS, DM and the first couple bosses in ZG(do able in blues). Done in a couple days and do what you can of ZG. Switch to power level alt through BRD entrance farming(get a 60 in 2 days played, did it lots in Vanilla) while you wait for ZG to reset. Abuse the quests for opening AQ for XP on alts as well. After 3 ZG lockouts you should be able to Clear most of MC and Ony, and start gearing alts through your ZG lockouts. After 2 weeks you can now run 2 MC and Ony by funneling gear to mains and having alts fill the other spots. During this time you will level another alt and start the process again. After 3 weeks you should have 32 alts each and running 3 MC's a week getting people geared. Now here comes the first exploit to take advantage of. In BWL you could have your raid hearth out right before you killed razergore leaving a tank, a couple healer alts and a few dps alts and you would not get saved to the instance so you could run it as many times as you have alts for in a week ans start farming green dragons world bosses(NR gear) and Kazzak(BIS rogue gloves). Right now that is likely around 5 or 6 times. You start working on clearing, since you know the strats and are all good players, it should not take more than a week to full clear. Now 2 months in you hope that your server has AQ opening. You dive into AQ, get your clear in a couple weeks as you already have NR from Green dragons for Huhu. While in AQ you also start Naxx for the easy bosses and trash farm. SO maybe 5 months at most if you are unlucky.

[Deleted]

Development of content is not as costly as you think. The development team itself is maybe a team of 100 or so people, and that covers the full 2-year duration of content any given expansion has.

The staffing for WoW however grows exponentially when you consider all the support staff that needs to be hired simply to upkeep the game. Customer support specific to Vanilla would be required for each region. Suddenly we're looking at hundreds of new hires. This isn't as simple as Nostalrius where the expectations out of an indy group allows for quality control flexibility - if it's an Official Blizzard Vanilla server, people will have expectations for the highest quality of service to justify a paid subscription.



You'd be surprised. While the majority of WoW players may be those who have played it in the past, there are always groups of people who are seeing each current expansion as their first time playing WoW. WoD was the first MMO for a lot of people, and soon Legion will be for another new generation. It's not as black and white as you think it is. Even the Warcraft movie is a huge marketing push to bring new players to the game. I think it's pretty naive to think that WoW only has 12m players since Wrath and every new expansion is just trying to regain everyone who used to play.

1º - The development team is X, whatever. That development team is out from Vanilla cause the content is already done, in case u can have 10/15 people for fixing X new bug or whatever, etc...

The staff is growing, that for sure, but even if u say that Vanilla can't have the same numbers of players than the retail version, u don't need the same number of people taking care of Vanilla system. Maybe 1/3 of the retail staff can be ok for running vanilla. Also, like back in the day, the game was ONLY IN ENGLISH. First time in Europe that have a new language was Germany in...i think December 05 /Janurary 06. Damn in from Spain and we have Vanilla in spanish in July 06. So that means that if they launch the game only in english, is not gonna be a problem, cause the majority of people returning to Vanilla are costume to play in english, so that means that the staff and costumer server they only need to really speak english.

2º - I did not say that they cannot bring new people, that for sure they can, but i'm saying that the majority of people of today's wow is the players that starting late lich, first Cata. The game changed to that kind of people, and that people already play wow.

I know quite a few people that have tried WoW with Legion that have never played before. They were hooked on some of the cross promotional items from otbe Blizzard games. I think it is extremely naive to think no new gamer or anyone who has not played WoW yet will never try it. I grew my business in what was technically called a saturated, non growth market and helped grow the industry in my area. It js completely possible for Blizzard to attract new players. It is easy more difficult today than it was 12 years ago.

Obviusly is possible, but i'm sure than 92/98% of people playing Legion, already plays WoW in the pass, and deniying that it's kinda weird. And wen WoW launched, the expectations was like 400k players in one year. So...

WoW is pulling new people through people hitting the age where they start playing game. Prime example is my friends 2 kids who now both play as they are 13 and 15 years old and started playing last year. This is the market they are targeting. Think Facebook streaming, Pokemon pet battles, Achievements, mini games like garrison/class hall, smartphone access,etc. All of these things target the next gen of gamers. No they are not going to get many of the older gamer gen to join but the new gen is where it is at.

Everything in business is ROI, how much money can we make off selling ________. In this case it is if we invest in making the game like it was 14 years ago but updated to run on new hardware, in our current servers and work with Bnet auth. Will we make money off of it and is it as much or more than if we invested those same resources into making new content in WoW(retaining subs) or making a new game that we can sell. If so then Vanilla will happen if not, I do not see it happening. And this is the biggest reason why if Vanilla/Legacy servers happen there will be a separate monthly charge and likely an initial buy in cost to get it(possibly hidden in a collectors/founders edition of an xpac)

So that's it, the game changed for the new model in 2010/2011, and i'm fine with that. That's a problem, cause u are turning the back to the gamers that put you where you are at the moment, and with the new model, they are loosing players, that's a fact.

And one thing that i say like 2 weeks ago or so, that Blizzard can offer the game only in Battlenet (no phisical copy), so they have less expenses, and charge like 15/20/25 dollars to it, and put a subscription. Yes, maybe they are not gonna have 6/8/10 millions people playing it, but to win money every year, only having like 1 or 2 million people, they can double for sure the money they can expend in the game.

No you do this like any major guild does now, You level to 60(I could do it in 5-7 days played back in the day, probably quicker with AQ opening quests) the first group that gets to starts power leveling the people who are behind through BRD trash farms(can get from 40-60 in 5 hours). Then you start farming gear, Strat, Scholo, BRS, DM and the first couple bosses in ZG(do able in blues). Done in a couple days and do what you can of ZG. Switch to power level alt through BRD entrance farming(get a 60 in 2 days played, did it lots in Vanilla) while you wait for ZG to reset. Abuse the quests for opening AQ for XP on alts as well. After 3 ZG lockouts you should be able to Clear most of MC and Ony, and start gearing alts through your ZG lockouts. After 2 weeks you can now run 2 MC and Ony by funneling gear to mains and having alts fill the other spots. During this time you will level another alt and start the process again. After 3 weeks you should have 32 alts each and running 3 MC's a week getting people geared. Now here comes the first exploit to take advantage of. In BWL you could have your raid hearth out right before you killed razergore leaving a tank, a couple healer alts and a few dps alts and you would not get saved to the instance so you could run it as many times as you have alts for in a week ans start farming green dragons world bosses(NR gear) and Kazzak(BIS rogue gloves). Right now that is likely around 5 or 6 times. You start working on clearing, since you know the strats and are all good players, it should not take more than a week to full clear. Now 2 months in you hope that your server has AQ opening. You dive into AQ, get your clear in a couple weeks as you already have NR from Green dragons for Huhu. While in AQ you also start Naxx for the easy bosses and trash farm. SO maybe 5 months at most if you are unlucky.

Dude, seriously, if u can do all of that in 4 or 5 months in Vanilla, u are a fucking master. Seriously. I wan't you on my guild RIGHT NOW.
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Also for me, at this point, i'm damn sure that Blizzard is not gonna offer legacy servers ever, at least for World of Warcraft. But damn, at least let me have the opportunity to dream about it...don't kill my dreams and hopes.

[Thimagryn]

1º - The development team is X, whatever. That development team is out from Vanilla cause the content is already done, in case u can have 10/15 people for fixing X new bug or whatever, etc...

You misunderstand me.

The current development team for WoW (Legion) is probably around 100 or so people. Core artists, designers, programmers, etc. This size of a team can create content that keeps a game fresh for years. It's not a lot of people.

But the team that it takes to MAINTAIN WoW (Legion) is HUNDREDS of people. Blizzard has their own offices in Paris, China and other parts of the world dedicated to customer support in various languages. If Vanilla is to be implemented, they need to hire NEW people to address that type of customer support. Vanilla is a completely different game, so you can't just use a Legion GM/CM to address any of the issues in Vanilla.

It's like if we were talking about Starcraft and Heroes of the Storm. They may be the same engine, but they require completely different teams to take care of.

Also, like back in the day, the game was ONLY IN ENGLISH. First time in Europe that have a new language was Germany in...i think December 05 /Janurary 06. Damn in from Spain and we have Vanilla in spanish in July 06. So that means that if they launch the game only in english, is not gonna be a problem, cause the majority of people returning to Vanilla are costume to play in english, so that means that the staff and costumer server they only need to really speak english.

That's a fantasy and you know it. You can't expect half-assed features like that to fly in today's market, especially from paying customers.

Look at it this way - Majority of players are now in China. Would you play Vanilla WoW if your customer support was suddenly in Chinese? That's how a Chinese player would feel about having their customer support in English.

[Deleted]

You misunderstand me.

The current development team for WoW (Legion) is probably around 100 or so people. Core artists, designers, programmers, etc. This size of a team can create content that keeps a game fresh for years. It's not a lot of people.

But the team that it takes to MAINTAIN WoW (Legion) is HUNDREDS of people. Blizzard has their own offices in Paris, China and other parts of the world dedicated to customer support in various languages. If Vanilla is to be implemented, they need to hire NEW people to address that type of customer support. Vanilla is a completely different game, so you can't just use a Legion GM/CM to address any of the issues in Vanilla.

It's like if we were talking about Starcraft and Heroes of the Storm. They may be the same engine, but they require completely different teams to take care of.



That's a fantasy and you know it. You can't expect half-assed features like that to fly in today's market, especially from paying customers.

Look at it this way - Majority of players are now in China. Would you play Vanilla WoW if your customer support was suddenly in Chinese? That's how a Chinese player would feel about having their customer support in English.

1º Maybe if say that wrong, sorry cause sometimes i don't know how express myself in english. My point was that yes, maybe they are hundreds of people on maintain team right now for retail wow. Also that's cause the game is in...at least 10 languages (at least) so they need all that people. Also cause they expect to have probably between 6/12 million people playing through all the expansion. That means more problems to fix, etc...

Obviously, Vanilla will have a totally different staff working on it and maintain it. But if they expect let's say...1/4 million people playing, that means that with 1/3 of the people of retail (let's say a random number, 1500 people on maintainance in reatil wow, that means 500 on Vanilla), so the cost is less expensive.

Plus, just think in Vanilla as a "new game". Since 2010, Blizzard have people working and maintenance new games like Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, Hearthstone...in i don't see people saying "oohhh, this games are taking money and people for my WoW game, duh". So what if Blizzard hire X new people to do Vanilla if they can make money with Vanilla?

2º Dude, i'm from Spain, and TODAY, fuck TODAY, there are a lot of videogames that doesn't came in my language, even for south america also. Happens the same in Germany, Italy or France, is not that weird. And people pay for that, all the time. Plus at the moment, the videogame industry are in his high (counting all tipes of games) and we don't have the piracy problem like we have un 2002/2010. Maybe is a fantasy, who knows, but i play different MMO's and majority of them are just in english, except WoW and...except WoW.

And yes, China is the biggest market for WoW right now, maybe they can launch a Vanillla for them in Chinese, or not launching Vanilla in China or damn, they can play in english, like they do in different private servers. English is the most spoken language in the world, at that point, in every school childrens study english as his second language (after is mother language), so is not a big deal.

Maybe i'm dreaming too much about it, but i really like to discuss this things with the community, make's me feel...in touch, you know, with the poeple that share's interest in games with me ^^

[Chaelexi]

So that's it, the game changed for the new model in 2010/2011, and i'm fine with that. That's a problem, cause u are turning the back to the gamers that put you where you are at the moment, and with the new model, they are loosing players, that's a fact.

And one thing that i say like 2 weeks ago or so, that Blizzard can offer the game only in Battlenet (no phisical copy), so they have less expenses, and charge like 15/20/25 dollars to it, and put a subscription. Yes, maybe they are not gonna have 6/8/10 millions people playing it, but to win money every year, only having like 1 or 2 million people, they can double for sure the money they can expend in the game.

Cut your Vanilla player base down by a lot. You may see 2 million at launch but that will level off quicker than you think to 100-200k(likely less) and probably close to 10,000 real dedicated players, split between servers. This is the biggest issue.

Dude, seriously, if u can do all of that in 4 or 5 months in Vanilla, u are a fucking master. Seriously. I wan't you on my guild RIGHT NOW.
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Also for me, at this point, i'm damn sure that Blizzard is not gonna offer legacy servers ever, at least for World of Warcraft. But damn, at least let me have the opportunity to dream about it...don't kill my dreams and hopes.

In Vanilla I was in Deus Vox on Laughing Skull, yes the real DV. At one point we were running BWL 3 times a night, 4-5 nights a week. The thing about Vanilla is that exploits we kept quite because the people that knew about them were not posting them on youtube the second they were found. They were on private forums that no one knew about.

[Thimagryn]

Maybe i'm dreaming too much about it, but i really like to discuss this things with the community, make's me feel...in touch, you know, with the poeple that share's interest in games with me ^^

I feel your sentiment, but I do think you're a bit inexperienced in how the industry actually works. There's a lot of backwards business stuff that won't make sense to players. I mean can you believe that a company will cancel a completely finished game because they don't want to pay more money for marketting? Blizzard has done this multiple times! Just look at Warcraft Adventures.

The reality is marketting budgets can often exceed that of development. Games get approved and cancelled based on their marketability. That's simply how it works, and I can tell you this from experience. It all boils down to a corporate decision saying Yes or No to making Vanilla WoW, not the developers. When it comes down to business, Vanilla WoW is very difficult to market, and that's the core reason why we're not likely to see it any time soon. Blizzard has to find a way to monetize before Vanilla will work.