Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[RickJamesLich]

WoD's failure was the severe lack of endgame content, both PvE and PvP. You had nothing to do but manage your garrison and sometimes raid as endgame for PvE.

WoD's failures go beyond just that stuff though. It's a culmination of lots of bad decisions over the years+ WoD that got them to change their mind on releasing subscriber numbers.

Funny. Legion isn't out for six months, and they already launched upgrades, by releasing Karazhan, and will soon release more upgrades, in the form of the Nighthold. Whereas, again, the trial account will remain the same unless you start paying.

Yeah but how long was the content drought before Legion? 15 months again? We know how this game goes. WoW does give some content, then goes 4 or 5 months with nothing, then new content, and then you have to wait 15 months before you get new content again. It would be all fine and well if said content had a shelf life longer than a few months but at this point I don't know if we are ever going to go back to that type of system again.

Oh, this is rich. What is it that it retain that people want? Not being able to go above level 20? not being able to form parties? Not being able to join guilds? Not being able to level professions past 100?

PvP, questing, dungeons, and exploring the world. Like I said, the social experience for the trial account has almost no differences to actually paying for your account lol.

Because no one wants to have their characters stuck at level 20 forever, unable to progress and even come close to endgame content.

A few things to clear up, the free trial players do see new content, MoP and Cata zones for example, they get to try all the classes, make up new toons, etc. Like I said, it's not a good experience, but it does pretty much offer the jist of the game more or less.

Yes, "tens of millions have left WoW", but "tens of millions" did not leave WoW for the same reason. I imagine that the portion of those people who left who chose "because WoW is no longer like vanilla" or "because the game sucks now" as a reason to leave are but a small fraction of those. And I imagine a good portion of that small percentage has just moved on. Face it: you're talking about about a small percentage of a small percentage of players that left.

Nice to see you're guessing that most didn't leave because they were unhappy with the game lol, so I guess everyone in WoD just decided to have kids, get a job, etc. but nothing like this happened in Wotlk, or it happened with less frequency? WoD was set to lose half of it's player base and it's safe to assume a lot more left after they stopped releasing the numbers. Did some people have real life issues come up? Sure. Did a lot leave because it stunk? Of course.

You obviously don't:

This thread is about one server in particular, Nost, and the Nost team's efforts for legacy servers. This is like implementing a rule that says you can't talk about off topic discussions on the off topic forum. Now you're just getting into some weird territory where you want to turn the server into Voldemort or something lol. "He who must not be named". Everyone is on the same page here.

Different times. WoW didn't have even half the number of competitors it has today. Nowadays we have a new MMO or a new game being launched almost every week.

There's always new games coming out and the same was true when WoW was in it's infancy. Now doubt the market has changed somewhat but the fact still remains that WoW has lost a lot of it's dominance over the years.

I really don't see the connection you're trying to make, here. You're not making sense.

I'm not making sense because I used your own logic lol. If players naturally were going to Nostalrius because it was free, then it would make sense that players would be going to free Legion servers in droves as well, since they don't like spending money. Are you aware of any massively popular Legion private servers?

And there is nothing that would support it, either, other than your opinion. You have given us nothing to back up your claims other than your opinions.

Yeah if you ignore the subscriber rate when Vanilla was out, the millions of players who have now left, as well as the success of Nostalrius as well, I can see how you can get to that conclusion. The problem my friend is that all of that stuff suggests legacy servers would do well. There's no arguments outside of speculation that the opposite is true.

Wow. That is honestly all you got with 'people change over time'? How about having a family? A wife/husband and kids, plus their daily activities, leaving them little time to play an online game, much less one so demanding as vanilla WoW? Or how about simply have moved on from MMOs and prefer to play FPS or video-games, instead? Or how about someone who now has to work two jobs, leaving him with no time to play online games that demand heavy time investments to even begin to be 'fun'?

It's interesting that you think people that get married or that have families or jobs just stop playing video games or engaging in leisurely activities. What you suggests though is in no shape or form true though. Do you think all of us on mmo-champ are unemployed?

Someone who willingly broke the rules, to be exact. There's no 'good word', there.

Broke the rules to promote Blizzard's core principles. The good word definitely exists as well!

PROVE IT. Show us your math that proves that legacy servers are not only profitable, but cheaper than retail.

You're asking to show math on something that hasn't happened yet lol. Surely you can understand why this is a silly thing to ask.

No. The reason they became a juggernaut was, as follows: Rock'n'Roll Racing, Warcraft 1, 2 and 3, Diablo 1 and 2, Blackthorne, The Lost Vikings, and Starcraft. 'Vanilla WoW' was built upon the foundation laid by the previous Warcraft games.

There's plenty of successful games from blizzard, pretending that Starcraft for example, while popular, was on the same scale as WoW is completely silly. Great game, no disagreements there, as successful as WoW? Not even close.

PROVE IT. I'm tired of people like you making dumb, unfounded assertions and stating them as fact without having a single shred of evidence to back it up.

You ask for proof yet provide none yourself. As I've said frequently, this is all speculation, from educated guesses of course. You can use information from the past to make predictions on the future, you know?

What lies? Come on, show me some of those lies. Back up your claims.

Saying they didn't have the source code for Vanilla ring a bell?

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no. its not. its a selfish tantrum.

If you gave it a try for a month, back when it was up, you'd be agreeing with me.

[Traveler Voltin]

If you gave it a try for a month, back when it was up, you'd be agreeing with me.

no. i would not.

[Ielenia]

WoD's failures go beyond just that stuff though. It's a culmination of lots of bad decisions over the years+ WoD that got them to change their mind on releasing subscriber numbers.

The #1 complaint from players during WoD was that there was nothing to do at endgame other than hang around in their garrisons and raid/BG/Arena. As for you... you now have the ability to read the minds of Executives from Blizzard to state that as fact?

Yeah but how long was the content drought before Legion? 15 months again? We know how this game goes. WoW does give some content, then goes 4 or 5 months with nothing, then new content, and then you have to wait 15 months before you get new content again. It would be all fine and well if said content had a shelf life longer than a few months but at this point I don't know if we are ever going to go back to that type of system again.

Say what you want about retail's content droughts, but at least those eventually come to an end. Vanilla wouldn't have that. It would be the same thing over and over and over... Yeah, it takes longer to progress further and further than it does on retail, but that is not necessarily a good thing.

PvP, questing, dungeons, and exploring the world. Like I said, the social experience for the trial account has almost no differences to actually paying for your account lol.

Looks like you're not only willfully ignoring everything that doesn't fit your views, but also acting as if said things don't exist at all. How can you have a "social experience" if you cannot communicate with the vast majority of the playerbase? Explore the world? Yeah, right, good luck "exploring" Eastern Plaguelands as a level 20.

A few things to clear up, the free trial players do see new content, MoP and Cata zones for example, they get to try all the classes, make up new toons, etc. Like I said, it's not a good experience, but it does pretty much offer the jist of the game more or less.

No, they don't. Other than the starting zones for the races, you don't get to see the non-vanilla zones at all.

Nice to see you're guessing that most didn't leave because they were unhappy with the game lol, so I guess everyone in WoD just decided to have kids, get a job, etc. but nothing like this happened in Wotlk, or it happened with less frequency? WoD was set to lose half of it's player base and it's safe to assume a lot more left after they stopped releasing the numbers. Did some people have real life issues come up? Sure. Did a lot leave because it stunk? Of course.

Wow, you truly have some trouble understanding what people write. Either that, or you're willfully misrepresenting what other people post. So, let me break this down for you:

"I'm guessing that most didn't leave because they were unhappy with the game" somehow, to you, logically infers that "everyone in WoD just decided to have kids, get a job, etc." Ok, you are wrong. I was speaking with the subscriber count of all expansions, including the vanilla game. Yes, there are people who left the game during Vanilla. People left the game all the time, I'm betting even since the first week.

Then we have "but nothing like this happened in WotLK, or it happened with less frequency?" How do you know? All we have, that Blizzard released to us, is the average subscription numbers. On such a graph, for example, if we see a flat line between two points, it does not mean that the game didn't lose or didn't gain any new subscription. It just mean that their average was zero. It could mean that they gained one subscription while at the same time losing one subscription. It could also mean that they gained nine hundred thousand subscriptions while at the same time losing nine hundred subscriptions at the same rate. Their average remains zero, on both examples.

This thread is about one server in particular, <the criminals>, and the <the criminals> team's efforts for legacy servers. This is like implementing a rule that says you can't talk about off topic discussions on the off topic forum. Now you're just getting into some weird territory where you want to turn the server into Voldemort or something lol. "He who must not be named". Everyone is on the same page here.

... Really? Are you really challenging the moderators' rule on this? Are you really claiming that you are more important than them and dictate what can and what cannot be discussed on their forum?

There's always new games coming out and the same was true when WoW was in it's infancy.

... And now you're implying that, back in 2004, the gaming industry was releasing games at the same rate as they are, today? And even not counting independent developers that have began late thanks to Kickstarter (launched 2009) and Steam Greenlight (launched 2012) and Patreon (launched 2013)?

I'm not making sense because I used your own logic lol. If players naturally were going to <the criminals> because it was free,

I never claimed that. Next?

Yeah if you ignore the subscriber rate when Vanilla was out, the millions of players who have now left,

The game was in its infancy. It was a new thing. A new game. Plus it was much less hardcore than many of its competitors at the time. You accuse me of ignoring things, but you are ignoring everything that made WoW Vanilla as successful as it was, back then.

It's interesting that you think people that get married or that have families or jobs just stop playing video games or engaging in leisurely activities.

You really think it's impossible for people who how have a family, a child to raise and educate, to focus more on their family than on MMO games, especially one that demands such high amounts of time investment?

What you suggests though is in no shape or form true though. Do you think all of us on mmo-champ are unemployed?

I just love the false dichotomy here.

Broke the rules to promote Blizzard's core principles. The good word definitely exists as well!

Blizzard's "core principles" is not "stealing other companies' IPs for their own gain, and break other people's forum rules to promote themselves."

You're asking to show math on something that hasn't happened yet lol. Surely you can understand why this is a silly thing to ask.

And yet, despite admitting you have no evidence, you still state that as fact? Can't you be more dishonest?

There's plenty of successful games from blizzard, pretending that Starcraft for example, while popular, was on the same scale as WoW is completely silly. Great game, no disagreements there, as successful as WoW? Not even close.

Hah. Starcraft, not as successful as WoW. Yeah, Starcraft totally wasn't one of the most played games in LAN houses and online play for years and years, no.

You ask for proof yet provide none yourself.

Because I'm not stating things as fact, like you are. You stated it as fact, in plain English:

We know it's not difficult

As I've said frequently, this is all speculation, from educated guesses of course.

You only say "it's speculation" when you're responding to someone else's claim. Your claims? You always state them as facts.

Saying they didn't have the source code for Vanilla ring a bell?

When have they said that? As far as I can tell, no one could ever find a quote from them saying such, and the closest we find is them saying they don't have the 'metadata' or something.

[Deleted]

When have they said that? As far as I can tell, no one could ever find a quote from them saying such, and the closest we find is them saying they don't have the 'metadata' or something.

Its kind of in the midle
"The original game code does not exist in that form anymore. All the old data has been replaced, with the newer data which was not saved (archived) for later reuse. It was over-written and destroyed. “There is no switch to flip on the realms to roll back years of patches and changes…” (see extended Blizzard quote below). In keeping with the sentiment expressed in #2, above, it’s gone – never to return. Even if it were “recoverable” by other means it would still require lengthy and expensive rewrite, a task Blizzard has denied interest in. Which leads to…"

https://www.change.org/p/blizzard-en...ver/c/16512891
There is also other thoughts from blizzard. Cant remember what year it is. But i think its around 2010-2011.
The whole text is somewhere here in mmo-champ as well.

[Ielenia]

Its kind of in the midle
"The original game code does not exist in that form anymore. All the old data has been replaced, with the newer data which was not saved (archived) for later reuse. It was over-written and destroyed. “There is no switch to flip on the realms to roll back years of patches and changes…” (see extended Blizzard quote below). In keeping with the sentiment expressed in #2, above, it’s gone – never to return. Even if it were “recoverable” by other means it would still require lengthy and expensive rewrite, a task Blizzard has denied interest in. Which leads to…"

https://www.change.org/p/blizzard-en...ver/c/16512891
There is also other thoughts from blizzard. Cant remember what year it is. But i think its around 2010-2011.
The whole text is somewhere here in mmo-champ as well.

If that is the original quote that sprung this "Blizzard doesn't have the code" thing, it seems it was a misinterpretation, then, as the code existed, just not in a readily usable form. It also seems to support Blizzard's recent claims that what they are missing is the metadata (mob average health, rate of XP, etc, I imagine), not the code itself.

[Mahourai]

That isn't a quote from Blizzard. The bolded is just an interpretation of the quoted material.

They do have the game code, but as they stated, they can't just turn a Vanilla realm online by hitting "revert to 1.12". They would have to, for example, integrate Battle.net support and modern GM functionality. Not everything that they need to activate the servers as they used to exist remains either, as there were gaps in what they version controlled. For example, when Wrath Naxx was remade, many spellids and entities from the Vanilla Naxx were simply reused with their values altered, as the original Naxx no longer needed to exist. They did not version control the original data. Similarly, many of the tools needed to build the server client were not version controlled when they were updated, because the hardware they had previously run on and the software versions they were designed for were being obsoleted. These tools would have to be rebuilt.

If that is the original quote that sprung this "Blizzard doesn't have the code" thing, it seems it was a misinterpretation, then, as the code existed, just not in a readily usable form. It also seems to support Blizzard's recent claims that what they are missing is the metadata (mob average health, rate of XP, etc, I imagine), not the code itself.

This is correct.

[Relapses]

If that is the original quote that sprung this "Blizzard doesn't have the code" thing, it seems it was a misinterpretation, then, as the code existed, just not in a readily usable form. It also seems to support Blizzard's recent claims that what they are missing is the metadata (mob average health, rate of XP, etc, I imagine), not the code itself.

Chilton discussed this topic back in June, here.

[MoanaLisa]

Gloat? What? I've played the whole legacy thing right down the middle so far. I hadn't checked out the particular server before now, I didn't refer to a server by name, as is the rule on page 1, made my post as general and unoffensive as possible (talking about server tech/capacity) and I'm posting in the thread dedicated to the topic.

The thread is not in any way about private servers, named or otherwise. That is not the topic any longer as per having the thread renamed and a plethora of warnings about what is and isn't off-limits. Please confine your remarks to discussion of legacy servers and Blizzard's role in providing them.

[RickJamesLich]

Going in the vein of what MoanaLisa mentioned, I think legacy servers are very cool and hope blizzard releases one. They get even *more* traffic than this picture, which I took back on the PTR way way back in the day:

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If that is the original quote that sprung this "Blizzard doesn't have the code" thing, it seems it was a misinterpretation, then, as the code existed, just not in a readily usable form. It also seems to support Blizzard's recent claims that what they are missing is the metadata (mob average health, rate of XP, etc, I imagine), not the code itself.

So you agree then that blizzard was dishonest?

[Relapses]

In the vein of your screenshot, here's one of a room full of people who believe that's actually from the PTR back in the day.

[Deficineiron]

Vanilla is objectively inferior to current WoW in literally every way, from class balance to encounter design.

The only thing it doesn't have is that sense of discovery that something that wasn't datamining for months has.

Sent from my SM-G935P using Tapatalk

I agree fully. I have the same discussion with my star wars fan friends when I tell them that objectively Phantom Menace was better than the original Star Wars in every way. They don't get it either. Maybe we should form a secret society to correct erroneous nostalgic beliefs in wow and star wars?

[RickJamesLich]

The #1 complaint from players during WoD was that there was nothing to do at endgame other than hang around in their garrisons and raid/BG/Arena. As for you... you now have the ability to read the minds of Executives from Blizzard to state that as fact?

Nah, you just have to ask people who played the game and they will tell you the myriad of reasons it was bad. No need to attend executive board meetings here lol.

Say what you want about retail's content droughts, but at least those eventually come to an end. Vanilla wouldn't have that. It would be the same thing over and over and over... Yeah, it takes longer to progress further and further than it does on retail, but that is not necessarily a good thing.

The droughts have been a horrible thing and we've seen them last *forever* for about 4 expansions now. The drought thing isn't going to change either. We've heard every single time that they would make it better, it's understandable to be fair, but with drought before WoD was pretty inexcusable considering they left a lot of content out of the game.

Looks like you're not only willfully ignoring everything that doesn't fit your views, but also acting as if said things don't exist at all. How can you have a "social experience" if you cannot communicate with the vast majority of the playerbase? Explore the world? Yeah, right, good luck "exploring" Eastern Plaguelands as a level 20.

Like I said, this stuff shouldn't be a bad thing, not communicating with players, since it happens so little even if you pay for the game. Something like not being able to whisper people shouldn't really be a deal breaker - you only have to really do that at max level, and only a fraction of your time.

No, they don't. Other than the starting zones for the races, you don't get to see the non-vanilla zones at all.

Incorrect - you can still go to many zones. As long as you don't stray from the road you'll have nothing to worry about and can even hit up places like Silithus or EPL.

Wow, you truly have some trouble understanding what people write. Either that, or you're willfully misrepresenting what other people post. So, let me break this down for you:

"I'm guessing that most didn't leave because they were unhappy with the game" somehow, to you, logically infers that "everyone in WoD just decided to have kids, get a job, etc." Ok, you are wrong. I was speaking with the subscriber count of all expansions, including the vanilla game. Yes, there are people who left the game during Vanilla. People left the game all the time, I'm betting even since the first week.

Then we have "but nothing like this happened in WotLK, or it happened with less frequency?" How do you know? All we have, that Blizzard released to us, is the average subscription numbers. On such a graph, for example, if we see a flat line between two points, it does not mean that the game didn't lose or didn't gain any new subscription. It just mean that their average was zero. It could mean that they gained one subscription while at the same time losing one subscription. It could also mean that they gained nine hundred thousand subscriptions while at the same time losing nine hundred subscriptions at the same rate. Their average remains zero, on both examples.

All you have to do is see pie charts. Sure some people left in Vanilla but *more* people came in to fill the void. With WoD, people left also, but nobody came in to fill that void. Your logic of jumping to weird conclusions like "more people had to quit due to real life issues" is the worst kind of stretch here lol.

... Really? Are you really challenging the moderators' rule on this? Are you really claiming that you are more important than them and dictate what can and what cannot be discussed on their forum?

I guess you must've never read the original title of this thread.

... And now you're implying that, back in 2004, the gaming industry was releasing games at the same rate as they are, today? And even not counting independent developers that have began late thanks to Kickstarter (launched 2009) and Steam Greenlight (launched 2012) and Patreon (launched 2013)?

Like I said, new games come out all of the time. Blizzard's juggernaut has tanked not because of the competition, but because of bad changes implemented in the game. You yourself even mentioned it in your first point of response to my previous post. We can blame new games all we want but it's ignoring all of the problems that WoW has developed over the years.

I never claimed that. Next?

So you are now disagreeing with your previous point that some people were simply playing Nostalrius because it was free? This is rich.

The game was in its infancy. It was a new thing. A new game. Plus it was much less hardcore than many of its competitors at the time. You accuse me of ignoring things, but you are ignoring everything that made WoW Vanilla as successful as it was, back then.

WoW was successful for a variety of reasons, it was accessible for new players as well as hardcore, combat mechanics, battle grounds, improved dungeons compared to other MMO's at the time, plus it was the next step in the warcraft franchise. There's tons of reasons why it was successful, but if it was a bad game, surely the subscriber rate would've dipped down after a year or two, would it not?

You really think it's impossible for people who how have a family, a child to raise and educate, to focus more on their family than on MMO games, especially one that demands such high amounts of time investment?

You can raid log on vanilla in the same way that you can do it on retail. It's only a huge time investment if you let it be, again your assertion that once you have a job or a family, you don't have enough time for video games is flat out wrong.

I just love the false dichotomy here.

I'm just going off of what you post man lol. Don't shoot the messenger.

Blizzard's "core principles" is not "stealing other companies' IPs for their own gain, and break other people's forum rules to promote themselves."

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html

"Dedicated to creating the most epic entertainment experiences...ever."

We are seeing now the players help blizzard achieve that, at long last.

And yet, despite admitting you have no evidence, you still state that as fact? Can't you be more dishonest?

You are asking for evidence yet have none yourself lol. I've repeatedly said my statements are just based off of what has happened with wow previously as well as the great success of said servers previously. Of course, since I cannot name said servers I guess I can't provide links here, right? You essentially are trying to ask for me for evidence, but then will try to report my post if I do provide evidence lol. But again, everything suggests that legacy servers would be successful, not one shred of evidence states otherwise.

Hah. Starcraft, not as successful as WoW. Yeah, Starcraft totally wasn't one of the most played games in LAN houses and online play for years and years, no.

Like I said, there's different levels of success, claiming Starcraft was anywhere close to the success of WoW is just more dishonesty from you.

Because I'm not stating things as fact, like you are. You stated it as fact, in plain English:


You only say "it's speculation" when you're responding to someone else's claim. Your claims? You always state them as facts.

If you can't understand that I'm speculating, after I've said so, and you need some sort of speculation warning ahead of time, I guess that is your problem lol. I'll tell you what, if you put a "speculation disclaimer" in your posts, I will do the same. Deal?

When have they said that? As far as I can tell, no one could ever find a quote from them saying such, and the closest we find is them saying they don't have the 'metadata' or something.

You got debunked here too.

[wunksta]

So you agree then that blizzard was dishonest?

How were they being dishonest? They only said that they don't have a way to flip on a switch and roll all existing servers back to Vanilla.

I think you are really grasping at straws here.

[Traveler Voltin]

How is having the source code = to having all of the classic code?

[Kyanion]

How were they being dishonest? They only said that they don't have a way to flip on a switch and roll all existing servers back to Vanilla.

I think you are really grasping at straws here.

Hey don't worry, in his mind the free to level 20 experience in retail is the same as if you were 110.

[Deleted]

Well you kind of didn't since Blizzard have chosen not to do official Legacy servers yet. Which was what this was all originally about.

To be honest - I had hope that Blizzard would eventually introduce the realms, along with the support and things like an option to keep the graphical changes (new models etc.) - I was willing to pay them for it, full sub. But nah, as you said - they decided that my voice is not valuable, and that I would not be missed :P. My main concern with vanilla realms not maintained by blizzard was the lack of options like turning on new models etc. - because like I said before, I miss the old system but not the old graphics. Now that I know I can just use mods that implement this to vanilla - it's not a problem anymore. Can't wait to play!

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When you got what you want why are you still HERE?

Why not? I enjoy the disscussion

[Relapses]

Why not? I enjoy the disscussion

There's not much discussion to be had when you guys happily post about how you're now free-loading Vanilla then claim that the people arguing against Legacy are "in the wrong" because we have the audacity to appreciate Blizzard enough to pay for the game. I understand feeling like your "voice isn't being heard" but at the end of the day, who do you think Blizzard is more likely to cater towards: The disgruntled few playing on private realms or the currently paying customer base?

...but of course, there's always the argument that people currently free-loading would gladly shower Blizzard in cash like an Arabian prince at a strip club, but it's not like Blizzard announcing official Legacy will suddenly halt the existence of private realms. If you can get something "close enough" for free and -- as you're freely admitting here -- are satisfied with the product, how much incentive is there for Blizzard to even follow through with their own Legacy servers?

[Deleted]

There's not much discussion to be had when you guys happily post about how you're now free-loading Vanilla then claim that the people arguing against Legacy are "in the wrong" because we have the audacity to appreciate Blizzard enough to pay for the game. I understand feeling like your "voice isn't being heard" but at the end of the day, who do you think Blizzard is more likely to cater towards: The disgruntled few playing on private realms or the currently paying customer base?

...but of course, there's always the argument that people currently free-loading would gladly shower Blizzard in cash like an Arabian prince at a strip club, but it's not like Blizzard announcing official Legacy will suddenly halt the existence of private realms. If you can get something "close enough" for free and -- as you're freely admitting here -- are satisfied with the product, how much incentive is there for Blizzard to even follow through with their own Legacy servers?

I've been a loyal customer of blizzard for FAR MORE more than 12 years. I have original Diablo and Diablo Hellfire on PC, Diablo 2, Diablo 3 with RoS, Wacraft 3 and Frozen Throne, Starcraft and Brood War. I even have the W2 battlenet edition which I bought just to have it. I've been playing vanilla, TBC, Wotlk regularly - then I played few months of Cata, Pandaria, Wod for half a year and now Legion for almost 3 months.

I've spent a lot of money on Blizzard throughout my whole life. During the past few years, I have asked for legacy realms and still played this game(!). I'm just tired man! money for a sub is not a problem for me - I have a good salary. Hell, I'm going to donate the amount of money for sub to the other party.

But - should Blizzard introduce such realms - I would roll on them in a minute. Why? Because third party realms can always dissapear. Which, in case of vanilla, could be very punishing. Hardware, support, possible progression - those are the things that a third party can never introduce. But if I want vanilla - I have no choice man.

[Kyanion]

I've been a loyal customer of blizzard for FAR MORE more than 12 years. I have original Diablo and Diablo Hellfire on PC, Diablo 2, Diablo 3 with RoS, Wacraft 3 and Frozen Throne, Starcraft and Brood War. I even have the W2 battlenet edition which I bought just to have it. I've been playing vanilla, TBC, Wotlk regularly - then I played few months of Cata, Pandaria, Wod for half a year and now Legion for almost 3 months.

I've spent a lot of money on Blizzard throughout my whole life. During the past few years, I have asked for legacy realms and still played this game(!). I'm just tired man! money for a sub is not a problem for me - I have a good salary.

Cool story, I've also been a loyal customer for more than 12 years. I've spent a lot of money on Blizzard throughout my whole life. I don't want Legacy realms so does my desire to not have them cancel our your desire for them? Sweet.

[Relapses]

But - should Blizzard introduce such realms - I would roll on them in a minute. Why? Because third party realms can always dissapear. Which, in case of vanilla, could be very punishing. Hardware, support, possible progression - those are the things that a third party can never introduce. But if I want vanilla - I have no choice man.

Your "choice" isn't a reflection of just you, though. There are so many more factors to consider: Blizzard's development costs; maintenance costs; the potential fragmentation of the retail playerbase; the need to curate and uphold decades-old source code and protect against security flaws... and that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's not about what you as a singular player want. It's about what the majority of players want. And try as you guys might, the inherent issue with the whole Legacy movement is that your voice represents a very small portion of the game's playerbase. You guys are extremely vocal, I'll give you that. But the number of paying retail players outnumber you ten to one (perhaps more, especially at the beginning of an expansion).

All that said, I admit there are compelling arguments to be made that there exists a need for a Vanilla experience in retail WoW. The developers themselves have expressed a desire to make this a reality. If it were as easy as a flip of a switch, I'm sure we'd already have them. But there's a lot more to consider here than the "me first" mentality of the Legacy movement. Blizzard has communicated they are focusing efforts right now on making the retail game as appealing as they can. Perhaps they will never encapsulate or appease players who desire a true Legacy experience, and that's fine. For those players, there's emulation in the meantime.

Moving onto what Blizzard themselves will do about Legacy, I think that timing is the most important factor. Short term, I don't see them announcing anything, especially since Legion has so far seemed to be more successful than its predecessor and the cyclical expansion business model is not showing any signs of becoming obsolete. However, later on down the road -- perhaps two or three expansions from now -- Blizzard may look into Legacy as a way to keep the brand relevant while moving onto more lucrative projects. (WoW 2? Who knows.)