Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Deficineiron]

You have something there but not in the way that you think I believe.


Translating:
- Your constraint in proper resource allocation would be development talent (the most costly resource)
- Not when expanding to untapped markets with an existing product (China, Korea etc) because the development has already happened and been paid for, they're not developing for China they're just marketing to a new audience.

Now interestingly that's the one thing expanding to new markets geographically and providing versions of your game that are no longer available have in common.

They are both in essence re-selling an already developed product (the bulk of it anyway) to a new customer.
In the first case the Asian audience in second case the Legacy WoW lovers that have fallen off the retail bus for one reason or another (some percentage of 100mil people)

Now.. do I think that this reason alone is sufficient for Blizzard to re-release Legacy "as it was then"?
No.
Because that's not the only consideration.

Blizzard in the Activision era has purposely moved away from Classic monetization and is all about ARPU and milking as much as possible from its audience with value added services, microtransactions etc even at the cost of shrinking that base.
This is part of the reason a lot of people fell off the bus in the first place.
Their game design has also changed drastically to conform to that business plan.

The course correction and the implied admittance that this might not be in the best interest to gamers, would just be too severe.


The best case scenario would be for them to give a limited license to their IP to a 3rd party (like EQ and Project 1999 or the9 / netease themselves) so they can "wash their hands" and keep going their way.
The same way "whatever China rakes in" was a bonus since it was a time delayed release of content already developed, Legacy proceeds would similarly be a bonus for content that has already been developed and paid for itself ten times over.

agreed. the counter-issue is there would be dev-time involved in rebuilding metadata, though obviously much less particularly in the area of art assets (practically nil there). Also there is no precedent for ATVI leasing its games in its own markets (na/eu), though as you note that would solve a lot of this.

the game divergence to a per-user revenue enhancement effort (and designed around same) is not surprising given public statements by kotick and others on how they look at this, even as far back as 2008. This is my key concern, btw. It may be everyone, at the personal level, in the decision loop thinks classic servers would be really neat and they just don't happen for corporate/culture reasons - it would be the most inaccessible atvi game since pitfall (3 alligator screens).

also, kotick's comments about when he first heard of wow, etc., implied to me he didn't 'get' what hooked mmo players into continuing to maintain active subs. I may well be wrong here since his comments are a small data set but I think he saw a game intentionally self-limiting its market, rather than a game with an almost optimal balance between player engagement/tuning/pacing and accessibility. Would he and his mgmt team green-light a real classic server project, rather than a watered-down theme-park type version targeted more at their current playerbase's tuning expectations?

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I think they were worth less, at one point several years ago they were worth a nickle on the dollar, yet counted as subs to inflate popularity. Multi-Million subs is apparently an inside joke, one Blizzard no longer advertises.

my efforts were mainly informed by the 10q's from 2009 (specifically last the9 full qtr, last the9 partial quarter, the quarter with 2.6months of no china and 0.4 netease, then the first full netease qtr). there was a definite change in revenue (which was essentially sustained subsequently) which seemed primarily attributable to this change. while per-sub royalty value could very well be 1/20th, netease is/was also paying a separate royalty apart from their sub activity royalties and that may have dragged the overall value up a good bit.

it has been years since I looked but the revenue drop off the9 (granting some drop in western subs too and the box sale spike, though deferred revenue can sort a lot of that out), then the even large spike up when netease came online, implied a much higher NET per-sub revenue level than 1/20th.

parsing netease's filings is difficult as the cc's are only partially in english and typically very few folks on call anyway and they do seem to be under some restraint in discussing wow number specifics.

[Lelkowski]

Oh i hope they will make vanilla servers, i jest cant wait for: "oh mah gawd, retri is SO useless, blizz what were u thinking??!". Oh and dont forget that play time from tokens shouldnt be included om legacy servers, thats feature of disgusting WoD, IT shouldnt defile such fine product as Vanilla(population of whiners decreases by 30%), and of course u should pay for playing legacy servers SO population of Nostalrius PPL decreases by 50%. Pls dont get me wrong, vanilla was good, but then we could explore this world, it was new, good times may return, but for how long? Play Vanilla for 15 years? We should reset on Cataclysm? Or let it go to Legion and reset it again and again. How many will stay? U see only good sides, u forgot about bad sides

[Saucerian]

Oh and dont forget that play time from tokens shouldnt be included om legacy servers, thats feature of disgusting WoD, IT shouldnt defile such fine product as Vanilla

Besides a stock UI that included features from all the mods that Blizzard designed the game assuming everyone already had, I think the Token would have to be another necessary deviation from Classic. Gold was actually a bottleneck in Classic and the go-go types will once again look to buy it from somewhere, if not Blizzard then illegitimate third parties.

[tikcol]

They should just give us that classic experience already and be done with it.

[Shridevi]

They should just give us that classic experience already and be done with it.

Already saving my days off from work for a future launch. Whether Nost 2.0 or legacy, I will continue playing one of the best games ever made.

[stomination]

They should just give us that classic experience already and be done with it.

They cant recreate something that experience has already killed. If you want a classis experience they would have to create a whole different game.

[Unholyground]

Already saving my days off from work for a future launch. Whether Nost 2.0 or legacy, I will continue playing one of the best games ever made.

I have a feeling it may be a revamped vanilla with dungeon finders and what not.

[slaise1]

I have a feeling it may be a revamped vanilla with dungeon finders and what not.

People like that should stick to retail.

[Deleted]

I have a feeling it may be a revamped vanilla with dungeon finders and what not.

plz no.
The only thing vanilla needs is a quest helper.

[tikcol]

They cant recreate something that experience has already killed. If you want a classis experience they would have to create a whole different game.

That is just you playing around with words, nothing else

[Charge me Doctor]

plz no.
The only thing vanilla needs is a quest helper.

the one with dots on a map or the one with GPS arrow? See? Even quest helper is questionable

[orderschvank]

I dont need anything to be changed in vanilla, but if blizz was going to change one thing, aside from the obvious fixes they would implement. I want aoe looting haha

[thewallofsleep]

So after giving this some more thought (I can be a little obsessive) I have come up with the following implementation strategy for rebooting WoW and how the gating system can work. I am open to feedback.

1.) Create a server cluster that spans every xpack. For example Doomhammer-Vanilla, Doomhammer-TBC, Doomhammer-WotLK, etc. Connect these servers into a local group.

2.) Patch each server to the last available patch for that xpack. For example, Vanilla realm will release with patch 1.12.2, TBC 2.4.3, etc.

3.) All new players must start on their respective Vanilla server and must progress stepwise through UBRS/MC/BWL/AQ/Naxx to attune to a server hop. Want an alt? Be prepared to work for it.

4.) Once the last boss is killed (only one difficulty), the character unlocks the ability to transfer to the TBC server. Realm hops can be announced in major cities (like the Onyxia kill for example). This is a major achievement and should come with a cool cinematic.

5.) All toons rolled must stay on their server group, cannot be moved, cannot name change. However, people can chat between servers within their own group.

6.) LFR/LFD will never be implemented. Patches will be tweaked so attunements are never removed.

7.) Since everyone will be geared well for each new xpack hop, gear resets can be eliminated. Naxx gear can be worn up until TBC heroic 5-man or Kara gear and trash can be made harder. You want a leveling buff? You have amazing gear. There's your buff.

This is IMO the best way to implement a WoW reboot in a way that will satisfy progression raiders (aka the subs lost when tourist mode was introduced).

Obviously there will be struggles/bottlenecks. Entire guilds will need to hop at the same time in order to avoid orphaning raiders who aren't attuned. It won't simply be 'OK 40 of us killed Kel'Thuzad, BYE!' It would need to be run for a few weeks, but this is no different than what progression guilds did back in Vanilla/TBC.

This will take some dev work and tweaking for sure, but 90% of the work is already done. This will in effect create a 'gauntlet mode' for raiders who want to experience all content from scratch.

I appreciate the thought you put into this. However, this assumes that everyone playing Legacy is a raider. People who don't raid and want to move to the next expansion should not have to down bosses in order to progress their character.

[Deficineiron]

I have a feeling it may be a revamped vanilla with dungeon finders and what not.

the major issue with random grouping is you HAVE to downtune any group content for the least common denominator player. I agree, this is one of the issues that would be the 'frankenstein' scenario - classic wow, Activision-Blizzard-style.

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plz no.
The only thing vanilla needs is a quest helper.

how about the 2.3 sparkles?

your idea and the sparkles would be another frankenstein component. Lets not forget achievements too.

[Deleted]

the one with dots on a map or the one with GPS arrow? See? Even quest helper is questionable

Anything is a better option than alt tabing every minute to check thottbot.com.
Those were the dark ages xD

how about the 2.3 sparkles?

your idea and the sparkles would be another frankenstein component. Lets not forget achievements too.

Sparkles? I never played Vanilla, only TBC.

[Molis]

plz no.
The only thing vanilla needs is a quest helper.

No

I want aoe looting haha

No

Here is the problem not even the Legacy fanatics want the game as it was 12 years ago.
Like @Deficineiron said you want some sort of Frankenstein WoW, or as someone smart said VanillaLite.

You will sit in IronForge looking for a UBRS group to get your set piece for 4 hours and you will like it.

[Unholyground]

plz no.
The only thing vanilla needs is a quest helper.

I was playing on <snip>and used a quest helper, it was nice. Honestly a proper que system for dungeons that you can use while in the world would be a nice feature even in vanilla. They don't have to make it cross server, just a simple que system with a search feature so you can quickly find groups and set your role so people don't have to whisper back and forth for ever lol.

[Mizix]

I appreciate the thought you put into this. However, this assumes that everyone playing Legacy is a raider. People who don't raid and want to move to the next expansion should not have to down bosses in order to progress their character.

Don't you want the vanilla experience? Well, it was raid or die!

[Shridevi]

You will sit in IronForge looking for a UBRS group to get your set piece for 4 hours and you will like it.

You will get the Searing Gorge key to improve your odds of being invited, join a group, try to persuade the leader into not inviting anyone from your class, wait for someone with the UBRS key, fly to Loch Modan and ride on standard mounts to Blackrock Mountain without group members getting ganked, waste 2-2.5 hours with a group that disbands or on a run where your chest/loot doesn't drop, then repeat the last 4 hours a second time, then repeat the two runs every day. Now we're talking!

[Deleted]

I was playing on <snip> and used a quest helper, it was nice. Honestly a proper que system for dungeons that you can use while in the world would be a nice feature even in vanilla. They don't have to make it cross server, just a simple que system with a search feature so you can quickly find groups and set your role so people don't have to whisper back and forth for ever lol.

But one of my dearest memories was walking from STV to Westfall as a Horde lvl 20 to do Deadmines.
Walking to dungeons and using the meeting stone was so cool.