Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Mizix]

<snipped / Discussion of basic details of setting up and running a private server is against site rules>

[Rogalicus]

Feel free to answer in PM since it looks like we can't discuss private servers anymore, not even on a factual and non-partisan basis.

Moderation Note: Yes, discussion of private servers is off the table at this point {MoanaLisa}

There are two parts of WoW: client side and server side. Client side doesn't need to be modified, it still works perfectly. Server side is an issue for Blizzard, because (warning, speculation ahead) code was written specifically for old server hardware, which is no longer available. Also, Blizzard claims that they no longer have old database snapshots, so they would need to recreate things like correct item stats and spells from scratch.

[Deleted]

<snipped due to discussion of private servers and how they function>

[Mizix]

Snip

I see, thanks for the explanation =)

[Ielenia]

Another bright mind Seriously I begin to understand why the game is what it is today.

Insults are the worst kind of argument padding there is, by the way.

I know that I don't develop the game! wow! thanks for making it clear.

Except that is not what I said. Looks like the point went flying miles above your head.

notice that when I pay I contribute in maintaining this thing. The more people like me - ditching this game - the harder its gonna get to maintain it. Thus I have an indirect impact on which way the game develops.

Not that much harder. While you got a point, it feels like you're grossly overestimating yourself. By the way, on the same token, here, we could technically "lay the blame" of WoW's shape on people like you (that leave the game), because with less people playing the game, Blizzard needs to make the game more accessible to draw in more players.

Seriously, it's not that hard. I'm gonna clarify with another simple example - you go to the store and you buy certain things. The shop owner has full independence in what he will offer you but if he sees you buying some products and some keep on rotting on the shelves - he will eventually focus on the ones I'm buying if he wants his business to succeed.

You understood?

There is a small fallacy here, in the form of you, again, grossly overestimating yourself. Because, still using your example, you belong in the apparently ever-diminishing group that prefers product B, while the the group that prefers product A seems to grow the more the other group shrinks.

Now tell the developers that made Wildstar that customers don't have an impact on how the game looks like. Specially to those people that were fired when the game started loosing subs.

There is a huge difference in '# of customers make an impact' and 'what I want'. Besides, I never really cared about Wildstar, but didn't the mass exodus from Wildstar happen because there were way too many bugs left unfixed in the game and a gross imbalance of classes?

I just clicked on WoW discount offer details and It said something that kinda says it all about why legacy realms matter:

"Play solo or enlist your friends to join forces with you as you negotiate the vast, battle-scarred landscape of a world at war. "

They are not even trying to hide the fact that multiplayer in WoW is optional. This is no longer an MMO. Period.

Because god forbid they add options to a game, right?

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Dude, you jumped in the middle of discussion. Some guy elecbubby or something like that said that I pay for the privilage to play and Blizzard does not owe me anything and basically I should be happy to be even playing etc. and that customers have no saying on how the game develops.

And I just made an example how customers have a huge impact on a developer of MMO. That is all. I do think that most of the people who left liked the old model (well, duh?) but they were replaced by new community, who seem to like being held by hand through the game.

Except you're making a small mistake here is that you're equating Blizzard not listening to you to Blizzard not listening to anyone. Yes, customers have impact on how a game develops, but one customer, by itself, has no impact at all. You cannot demand specific changes to match your specific vision of how WoW should be, because there will be always at least someone that wants a vision of WoW that completely opposes yours. And if you go with 'majority vs minority', well, the pro-legacy group kinda loses here, as they're the minority.

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People think its that easy for blizzard to actually shutdown a private server if the server decides to not comply with that lame cease and desist letter.
They are still on trial for about 5 years against the biggest bot providers and still not shut down.

Watch out, we got a master of the law, here.

In the end "He who must not be named" returns with even bigger numbers ( over 17k signups just for a stress test)

This just in: 17k active accounts is bigger than 130k active accounts!

and the added factor of showing to the whole public what kind of assholes they are.

FTFY. All what those-criminals-who-shall-not-be-named did was to show how childish they are, by basically throwing a temper tantrum and releasing their databases because Blizzard didn't immediately cave to their demands, which only hurts their chances of Blizzard actually creating legacy servers of their own, if they are a representative of the pro-legacy crowd.

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E) Legacy servers progress, but not with expansions. Instead they'll add new content that is fitting to its era (huge dungeons, fewer and simpler mechanics but more punishing etc). Which could mean adding stuff that they wanted to release but never had the time or resources to do it, like The Emerald Dream and Dragon Isles. These servers are released WHILE retail is running.

Nuh-uh. This one is not happening, definitely. Blizzard has already stated they have no plans on supporting two versions of the same game, concurrently, especially having to add new content to both games.

F) Legacy servers progress, but not with expansions. Instead they'll add new content that is fitting to its era (huge dungeons, fewer and simpler mechanics but more punishing etc). Which could mean adding stuff that they wanted to release but never had the time or resources to do it, like The Emerald Dream and Dragon Isles. These servers are released AFTER retail is finished and no longer receives any more content other then balancing updates.

Same as above, but for a different reason. I imagine Blizzard would tend to gain more moving on to develop a new game rather than re-start WoW.

Even if your anti-legacy, just pick an option that says ''after retail is done'' as I assume that there's nothing to worry if such is the case.

Nope, because, once WoW is over, I prefer they focus on developing a new game altogether, maybe even a new IP, than to re-launch a game over ten years old for a small bunch of people.

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But the players are the ones with modified clients, not the server operators.

Think of it this way, if you build a parking lot, and everyone who parks there has a stolen car, you still can't sue the owner of the parking lot.

Except said parking lot has a big sign basically saying 'park your stolen car here'.

[RickJamesLich]

Nope, because, once WoW is over, I prefer they focus on developing a new game altogether, maybe even a new IP, than to re-launch a game over ten years old for a small bunch of people.

The whole point of MMO's is that they aren't games you should be supposed to solo lol.

[Ielenia]

The whole point of MMO's is that they aren't games you should be supposed to solo lol.

Ignoring the fact that what you posted has nothing to do with what you quoted... you're wrong. A MMO does not mandate a total absence of solo content, especially during leveling. Endgame content? Well, that's all group play, isn't it?

[RickJamesLich]

Ignoring the fact that what you posted has nothing to do with what you quoted... you're wrong. A MMO does not mandate a total absence of solo content, especially during leveling. Endgame content? Well, that's all group play, isn't it?

Yeah this was meant to the "god forbid they add options".... that's a bad option lol. The whole point of an MMO is to interact with other players, making a massive portion of the game solo player pretty much kills player interaction and that's why people end up getting bored on retail. The few times you have to interact with people, you don't even have to speak with them lol.

[Ielenia]

Yeah this was meant to the "god forbid they add options".... that's a bad option lol. The whole point of an MMO is to interact with other players, making a massive portion of the game solo player pretty much kills player interaction and that's why people end up getting bored on retail. The few times you have to interact with people, you don't even have to speak with them lol.

I wouldn't really call the leveling portion a "massive portion of the game", at all.

[RickJamesLich]

I wouldn't really call the leveling portion a "massive portion of the game", at all.

That's unfortunate. That being said, as I mentioned, the vast majority of times you do group up with players, you don't need to communicate with them at all. To the point where you can go afk even, still beat the boss, and STILL get rewards. That's just a bad system to allow intact and one of the many reasons why people want vanilla back.

[Deleted]

I wouldn't really call the leveling portion a "massive portion of the game", at all.

In vanilla was a pretty important one tho (and much better than it is now). How you behaved, played and socialized leaded you one way or the another as you met people and more people.

[Tommi]

And there was me just thinking "MMO" ment "lots of players online at same time".

[Ielenia]

In vanilla was a pretty important one tho (and much better than it is now).

That is completely subjective.

How you behaved, played and socialized leaded you one way or the another as you met people and more people.

And... how is that any different from today? How you behave, play and socialize leads you to meet more and more people.

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That's unfortunate. That being said, as I mentioned, the vast majority of times you do group up with players, you don't need to communicate with them at all. To the point where you can go afk even, still beat the boss, and STILL get rewards. That's just a bad system to allow intact and one of the many reasons why people want vanilla back.

I imagine you are talking about LFR here? Because if you AFK during dungeon runs for too long you get booted from the group.

[Deleted]

Are you really asking how was it different when you had to plan CC, you had downtimes, and didn't run against a timer ? I mean, i thought it was already obvious that you had more free time to socialize back then than now, but i guess for some people the point flies over their heads.

And about the levelling experience, well, it's subjective sure, if you want it to be bland and rather nonexistant (ie: a short singleplayer game), i guess you are right.

[Queen of Hamsters]

That is completely subjective.


And... how is that any different from today? How you behave, play and socialize leads you to meet more and more people.

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I imagine you are talking about LFR here? Because if you AFK during dungeon runs for too long you get booted from the group.

Haven't you heard? People only made friends in Classic. Every meeting in Classic = you became best friends. There were never groups that formed, did a task and left each other without saying more than absolutely necessary in Classic.

[Deleted]

Haven't you heard? People only made friends in Classic. Every meeting in Classic = you became best friends. There were never groups that formed, did a task and left each other without saying more than absolutely necessary in Classic.

Do you realize that noone had said that, right ? That's only you the one who is being close minded enough to justify yourself when saying that people think that you can't do friends nowadays. What people are saying is that the gameplay favored socializing more than it does now, not that it's nonexistent in the current WoW iteration.

But trying to be funny while doing a complete strawman really makes your case.

[Queen of Hamsters]

And about the levelling experience, well, it's subjective sure, if you want it to be bland and rather nonexistant (ie: a short singleplayer game), i guess you are right.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Oh wait... you're serious...

Classic's leveling experience might have been drawn out due to shite tuning (grinding mobs to gain levels, SUCH depth and substance!) but aside from that it didn't really have anything of substance and sure as fuck not as much of an impact on endgame experience as later leveling periods have presented when Blizzard simply got better at creating content.

It's also hilarious how Legacy fanatics are capable of pretending that every meeting with other players in classic leveling content lead to a friendship. Every meeting with another player resulted in hours of friendly conversation. Every meeting with another player in Classic was ponies and lollipops and everlasting BFF's!

Come on... Aside from the cirklejerk of a certain server where people are united by the common goal of bitching about Retail, humans were humans back in 2004 as well and Classic WoW rage videos due to shitty player behaviour are numerous. Many of the people being the most romantic about Classic, never actually played it while it was current at that.

[Deleted]

¿? Do you realize that the leveling experience is not entirely tied to the content, but the context, enviroment and the gameplay, do you ?

Where do these kind of guys come from ?

And about every meeting leading to friendship. Sry buddy, but you are the only one who is saying that. Most reasonable people are saying that it lead to a higher chances to finding acquaintances in game, which is completely true. But please, continue with your simpletons rants. They are not amusing, but certainly they show how short-sighted you are withouth the need of a response.

[Queen of Hamsters]

¿? Do you realize that the leveling experience is not entirely tied to the content, but the context, enviroment and the gameplay, do you ?

Where do these kind of guys come from ?

And about every meeting leading to friendship. Sry buddy, but you are the only one who is saying that. Most reasonable people are saying that it lead to a higher chances to finding acquantances in game, which is completely true. But please, continue with your simpletons rants. They are not amusing, but certainly they show how short-sighted you are withouth the need of a response.

Classic leveling content was known to not have much depth in story, no continuity and leading to dead ends. If you are entertained by playing the same old content over and over, never learn in-game directions or your class then I can sure as hell see why Classic leveling would be all the rage forever more though.

There's just as much chance of meeting people and forming relationships in the game now as back then, there's literally NOTHING prohibiting it. The only thing stopping people from being social, is their own attitudes, and those attitudes were around in every single iteration of the game and always will be. But Legacy fanatics gon' keep pretending no matter how void of logic I guess.

Legion content has more people out in every relevant leveling zone than EVER before thanks to how the content is laid out, even making it difficult at times to farm mobs for skinning since so many other players are around. If they extend the system to Kalimdor and EK, it'll be tripled.

[Ielenia]

And about the levelling experience, well, it's subjective sure, if you want it to be bland and rather nonexistant (ie: a short singleplayer game), i guess you are right.

I find the "single-player" leveling experience much more rewarding because, that way, I can take my time to read the quest texts and understand what was going on, lore-wise, more than just "go kill 5 boars west of town". And on the other hand, I find the multiplayer leveling experience boring and unrewarding because, like I said, people just rush to do stuff, no time to read the quest texts, and not to mention the time it takes the find a group for said quests, AND the fact that nary a word is spoken in said groups other than orders of what to do (you heal us, go there, i'm pulling them here, etc).

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Do you realize that noone had said that, right ?

You do realize what he wrote was a joke, right?

Other than that, the argument from pro-legacy posters about how "WoW was more social back then" by mentioning grouping up for quests and the like, heavily implies that, in the vast majority of said groups, there was abundant banter about one's day, or the weather, or any other conversation topic, and not just silence and/or the leader giving orders what to do (go there, I'm pulling, heal us, etc)