Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Deleted]

Why shouldn't they ask for a subscription fee?
I would pay it, even if it isn't new content, they still need to keep the servers up and maintain them, provide support.
For me I'd gladly pay a monthly fee, altough I would be willing to pay less than a Legion subscription fee.
If Legion is 12,55euros per month, I'd pay around 5euro's per month to play Legacy.
They could even make a discount if you play both.
I always gladly pay for good service provided.

Ok sure, there is a point in having some sub fee, since if you make legacy servers you probably can't really have micro transactions in there, and a lot of the "no sub mmos" certainly make a sustainable business model with those.
But honestly I wouldn't trust Blizzard not to have micro transactions in legacy, and clearly paying a subscription doesn't save one from that.

I mean, I could have also proposed a lower subscription fee, but how low? Just so they can cover the maintenance costs? Scrape a little profit? As high as the people are willing to pay? And it seems Blizzard has had a sweet spot of 15$/month for a good while now, so why change it?

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There is no universe in where a game design that is 9 years older than current is better.

Sorry you think otherwise.

I have a little experiment you can do. Go into any gaming forum and say that Fallout 3 is objectively better than Fallout 2.

[Deleted]

The entire impetus of this discussion implies that Runescape and WoW are the same thing. Runescape has always been a browser-based FREE-TO-PLAY game while WoW has always had a subscription model. The idea might be similar but the driving forces behind the two games are entirely different. Further than that, none of the claims you are saying are incorrect can be definitively proven correct either. It's just varying degrees of "maybe" and whichever side you fall on depends heavily on your personal slant in this debate.

Personally, I just see Legacy further fragmenting an already incredibly fragmented playerbase and causing the game to become predatory upon itself, potentially destroying the retail experience so a few of the vocal minority around here can give each other virtual rimjobs in Molten Core for the rest of their lives.

WoW is F2P too though.... until level 20. RS's membership/f2p split is similar. The F2P content is negligible in comparison to the paid content and serves as a hook to get people to pay. On top of that you couldn't play OSRS when it came out unless you were a subscriber to the main game. It was not free content.

As an aside, RS has had a client since forever at this point and can't actually be played in-browser anymore.

[Deleted]

He wasn't claiming that Nost-lovers want Blizzard to offer a Nost-clone server for free. He was countering the point that if Nost could do it for free, why can't Blizzard do it all.

I know. In fact I think you know that I know. I just think it was poorly worded, or some kind of a bait. I don't feel like I dwelt on it for too long, my post wasn't about grasping into it. And I thought I made it fairly clear that I got the message.

This is more about how it shouldn't cost an unreasonable amount of money.

[Shammyrock]

Gonna just reply to this one, the rest of your points seem irrelevant to me/I can't answer them. Although that title sure is a clickbait, I don't think most people think Blizzard should do it for free, I've seen a lot of pro-legacy people proclaim how they'd pay for it. This is more about how it shouldn't cost an unreasonable amount of money.

So the points here are; Battle.net, customer support, bug fixes and maintenance.

I tried to search for a source on this for a while but I couldn't find it, so I might be wrong here, I read somewhere (here I'd imagine.) that the Nost crew pretty much would have been able to do the B.net integration for Blizzard, or at the very least help them do it. Now, I get that there are probably a bunch of legal problems with Blizzard just taking help like that for free, so even if they'd work with the Nost crew it would still, no doubt, cost money for Blizzard. The point here is that I can't imagine the costs being skyhigh. This whole argument, of course, relies on the fact that I just remember reading this somewhere and can't find a source for you. (And that I think that the post I read it from didn't have a source either.) So don't really blame you for skipping this one.

Bug Fixes are very similar with the last point, in that the Nost crew is/was willing and able to help. There are even less questions here, as Nostalrious was reasonably bug free as it was. Of course it still had some bugs, and I realize Blizzard standards are certainly high, so they'd probably want to hone it a bunch more. So yea, this one costs money as well, and does add to maintenance as new bugs are found and need fixing.

Customer support and maintenance, these are the running costs. I'm certain Blizzard already knows reasonably well how much these would be, given their experience on the subject, so when they are calculating whether legacy is worth it or not, I'm sure they aren't spending a lot of time calculating these figures. Personally I've no idea. All I know is that there are plenty of buy to play games that seem to able to pay through these with no problems, therefore I can't imagine them being that expensive.

So since I pretty much ended up agreeing and expanding your argument, apart from that awful title that nobody credible ever claims anyway, I'll go to my point.

Blizzard probably shouldn't ask for sub fee from legacy servers. There is no new content to produce where they could justify it anyway, and plenty of games with no subscription model can handle the server and customer support costs.
Having no subscription and a higher base cost eliminates another issue that is often addressed. The, people are going to quit in a few months anyway, one.

Or they could tie it with the regular WoW subscription instead. Although knowing Blizzard they'd definitely just do both.




*subjectively.

I can't imagine a scenario where Blizzard would let them near battle.net.

In any case Blizzard wont use a 3rd party application, they'd roll back their own.

[Deleted]

Thats great, I would not pay a single euro a month for a game that has no updates, no new content or any bug fixes.
I don't think many people would.

I would pay it because it gives more security. I rather pay for a server hosted by Blizzard that lets me keep my characters 'forever' rather than playing on a free server that can be shutdown due to legal complications.
After all they still provide a service, they are hosting it on their servers, provide stability, provide customer support, fix bugs if any are present.
I can't imagine Blizzard will be a able to do this for free without making a loss from it?

[Deleted]

I would pay it because it gives more security. I rather pay for a server hosted by Blizzard that lets me keep my characters 'forever' rather than playing on a free server that can be shutdown due to legal complications.
After all they still provide a service, they are hosting it on their servers, provide stability, provide customer support, fix bugs if any are present.
I can't imagine Blizzard will be a able to do this for free without making a loss from it?

There will be no bug fixes. people want legacy in all its glory which means the bugs we had to live with back then as well.
What people seem to want is the exact game we had back then.

So what you will get is some support for when you get stuck and thats it.

[Gilthresa]

I would pay it because it gives more security. I rather pay for a server hosted by Blizzard that lets me keep my characters 'forever' rather than playing on a free server that can be shutdown due to legal complications.
After all they still provide a service, they are hosting it on their servers, provide stability, provide customer support, fix bugs if any are present.
I can't imagine Blizzard will be a able to do this for free without making a loss from it?

The way that OSRS do it is that if you have an active subscription on RS3 you automatically get access to OSRS and vice versa. So they could easily just make people buy legion/sub to get access to the legacy servers.

[Deleted]

How much should legacy cost is pretty interesting topic, and i think there is many ways to do it.
My personal choice would be to include it in the 15 a month. Mostly because that 15 a month would keep me subscribed even when it normally wouldnt. I had more than 12 months off from Wod. During that i was playing on vanilla private.
Official legacy would definetly have kept me subbed. Obviously this dosent mean everyone thinks like me.
If there was legacy realms that cost say 5 dollars a month, i would gladly pay it. But thats a lot less than the 15

[Deleted]

There is no universe in where a game design that is 9 years older than current is better.

lol nope

I can think of 50 games right now that had better game design than anything that came out this year...

[Dergiab]

I have a little experiment you can do. Go into any gaming forum and say that Fallout 3 is objectively better than Fallout 2.

For best effect, do it on the No Mutants Allowed forum.

[Shammyrock]

If legacy is included in the subscription I want an opt out and lesser sub fee. I might play a Blizz legacy server for a bit but I don't want to be railroaded into paying for it

[Deleted]

If legacy is included in the subscription I want an opt out and lesser sub fee. I might play a Blizz legacy server for a bit but I don't want to be railroaded into paying for it

How different is this from wanting not to pay for any other aspect of your subscription? Say I never pet battle, should I now pay 14.80 instead of 15? What about if I never PvP either, or raid?

The sub is the whole deal and always has been, regardless of what's included. It's not modular.

[Ielenia]

You genuinely can't subscribe to Nostalrius, it was a non profit organisation. This has been known from the beginning.

Unproven "non-profit" claims aside, English is not my first language. In the language where I live, a subscription doesn't necessarily imply a paid service. If it does in English, my bad.

[Soikona]

How different is this from wanting not to pay for any other aspect of your subscription? Say I never pet battle, should I now pay 14.80 instead of 15? What about if I never PvP either, or raid?

The sub is the whole deal and always has been, regardless of what's included. It's not modular.

Stupidest argument I have ever heard. You don't pay for features you pleb. You pay for access to servers.

[Deleted]

Stupidest argument I have ever heard. You don't pay for features you pleb. You pay for access to servers.

You don't pay for any single part; you pay for a subscription to World of Warcraft.

What portion of that goes to development of features, to server costs, to whatever, is up to Blizzard. That was literally my point. You don't pick what parts you pay or don't pay, you just pay the $15 and Blizzard decides what happens with it.

[Xandrigity]

Classic servers if they ever happened would have to be a stand alone entity. They are basically recreating a whole separate game. Your kidding yourself if you think you won't pay 1- for them stand alone game and 2- a completely separate sub fee for access to the servers.

[ManiaCCC]

Stupidest argument I have ever heard. You don't pay for features you pleb. You pay for access to servers.

You pay for service.. this service at this point include PvE, PvP and RP servers (does these still exist?). If they will add another type of server - Legacy, it is just service bundle you are paying for. In this case, it is not different at all.

You could argue that Legacy servers need additional team, cost etc... However, as long as monthly sub wont rise because of legacy servers, legacy servers are basically FREE for every wow subscriber.

In anyway, asking for lower monthly sub has no logic behind it.

[Shammyrock]

You don't pay for any single part; you pay for a subscription to World of Warcraft.

Yup, retail WoW to be specific. Legacy would be an entirely separate product.

[Teroseth]

Regards the cost to the consumer, I think (if Blizz did get around to doing it) that the best course of action would be to have two payment options available. First, include access as part of the current sub. As long as you have a sub (cards/tokens inc.), you have access to both vanilla content and current content. Second route would be a one off payment, say of £20-£30, and you have access to vanilla only but it's permanent and you can play as much as you like, no other sub required.

Now, there is an argument of 'but I already bought the game' to be made, and that's fair enough, but then in my eyes, a legacy server delivered in this manner would be akin to re-buying any other title. In fact, even more so, because the developer would be effectively re-releasing an out-of-print (so to speak) copy of their game.

[Shammyrock]

In anyway, asking for lower monthly sub has no logic behind it.

Pretty basic logic to be honest. If they're now asking for the sub for 2 different products, the sub for the product I actually want is now valued less.

Not that legacy would ever be baked into the normal wow sub , it would be an entirely different project and would need to stand on its own fee.