Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Pann]

counter-thought: what would they do if marketing suggested a postulated 100m classic revenue project could be 125 or even 150m if they made some changes in accessibility and integrated game-store gold/instant 60 better?

Aside from an a/b NO, the above is the biggest risk to the project. Think new scholomance linear aoe-run fun-house, talking skull and 'gogogo', vs old scholomance, and apply it conceptually to the entire classic game.

You, of course, already know the answer. No business is going to turn down an extra $25-50 million.

I honestly don't think that AB interfere with the day to day running of WoW. (Good managers give their managers the tools to manage and you don't get into Kotick's position without being an extremely good manager.) In my opinion they recognise that they do not have the expertise in the MMO field and as a result let Blizzard get on with it.

I think that if the Blizzard top brass went into a board meeting with Kotick and team and said "We've conducted a feasibility study into the legacy market it will cost x million to roll out and we expect to make y million per year" as long as the numbers added up (read; profit is big enough) it would be signed off without AB being overly concerned over what mechanics go into the game.

[Ielenia]

Unless you are really naive, the reason is pretty obvious.

Unless you are really arrogant, the reason is not pretty obvious.

Umm..... who said legacy supporters think WoW's free trial mode is good? lol.

You're the one that keeps harping on how WoW's free trial mode is basically "the best thing since sliced bread".

That being said, the game gives you very little reason to actually interact with players throughout the vast majority of content, this isn't some groundbreaking thing and I'm not even sure what you are trying to argue here at this point.

How was that any different from vanilla? Care to explain? Because you could go from level one to max level without interacting with a single person.

You originally said you can only see the beginner zones..... Silithus isn't a beginner zone lol.

I said you could only see the beginner zones from the expansions, like the Wandering Isle, Gilneas, etc.

Simply looking at the massive amount of people that left during WoD it's a safe assumption to make that the state of the game being bad is why people are leaving in droves. Unless we resort to thinking nonsense like all wow players suddenly got kids or jobs of course. You really are good at ignoring the obvious here.

At least I'm not so blindly arrogant to state that everyone who left during WoD did so for a singular reason.

Well don't get mad when I can't deliver the evidence then - you requested it, remember?

Well, you're the one acting stupid, here, by challenging the forum rules and the Moderator's ruling on their own forums. If you don't like their rules, either suck it up, or go somewhere else. You have no say on what the rules here are and how they should be applied.

No clue where you are getting that I Said it was strictly due to bad decisions that made the game less fun, rather I said that was one of the big contributers.

You said:

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.

There. You never mention "it's one of the big contributors." You outright say they're the cause.

We've already been over why that's a really bad argument against legacy servers more than a handful of times by this point lol. Let me put it to you this way, how many posts have you made here? How many people have you convinced that this would be a good reason to not consider legacy servers? Easy enough.

Would you pay 15 dollars a month for a game you'd only have time to play once or twice a month?

Oh man you must not know much about wow then. How about you go look up how many people made it into Naxx for example, and then look up how many people actually cleared it. But yeah, there was nothing hardcore in the game. Come on man, you're just rambling at this point without trying to put up a coherent point.

It didn't have "hardcore mechanics". It had absurd requirements and attunements. WoW was never a "hardcore" game. You call Vanilla WoW "hardcore", but have you ever played any of the other MMOs that existed at the time?

How hard was it to get 40 players to raid? Um.... not really different from getting 25 people to raid. Just get people in your guild and then agree to a time to log in. Plus resist gear is only necessary for tanks in MC and BWL. You are essentially pretending that raiding was much more complex for people than it really was, really all you needed to do was a few dungeons to gear up and then raid weekly at a certain time. As for LFR..... does anyone out there actually find that enjoyable? It's been an exercise in masochism since it's creation.

How about the Onyxia cloak, then? And I'm not pretending raiding was more complex. You are. Raiding was pretty much basic, back then, compared to today. As for LFR, I hope you're not so arrogant to the point of thinking your opinion reflect everyone else's.

Through all of that jazz about stealing the game or blah blah blah, which is unfortunate, we are finally getting the most epic experience now finally though... or at least again.

I agree, Legion is so far quite the epic experience, and what is coming up is shaping up to be just as epic, if not moreso.

Yeah, you are just making bad claims - such as the one about people wanting to play legacy because it is free.

Again, I never claimed that. See what I mean about you distorting what other people post?

As for the evidence, again, we already know you will try to report my post if I do post it, so ignoring the hypocrisy of the matter, you also ignore the logic of the ease with which legacy servers can be implemented.

You have no evidence. You claim as a fact that legacy servers are cheaper, yet you don't have a single shred of evidence to back up such claims. You claim "it's not difficult", yet you don't have a shred of evidence of what it takes to set up real servers.

If I don't have to name it, then we know that this stuff can be done for less than $1,000 Again, you don't want the evidence posted, yet then ask for it as some sort of weird counter argument. Surely blizzard can afford $1,000 to turn a profit, can they not?

Bullshit. I want the evidence posted. But you don't need to name any illegal servers for that. And that 'thousand dollars' figure? You just pulled out of your ass.

Yes, blizzard misled people here into thinking they did not have the source code still, they do, rather they have to make modifications for it in order for it to work now.

Blizzard didn't "mislead" anyone. Players just misinterpreted what he said. Big difference. And you still don't get it: the code doesn't just require 'modifications' in order for it to work. The metadata is gone, which means: mobs' health, damage and damage resistances, players scaling health and damage, etc.

[Roadblock]

Do you think blizzard has the internal leeway to release a fairly authentic classic game?

Can't decide about this one...
I'm between "no"



and "hell no".

[Deficineiron]

You, of course, already know the answer. No business is going to turn down an extra $25-50 million.

I honestly don't think that AB interfere with the day to day running of WoW. (Good managers give their managers the tools to manage and you don't get into Kotick's position without being an extremely good manager.) In my opinion they recognise that they do not have the expertise in the MMO field and as a result let Blizzard get on with it.

I think that if the Blizzard top brass went into a board meeting with Kotick and team and said "We've conducted a feasibility study into the legacy market it will cost x million to roll out and we expect to make y million per year" as long as the numbers added up (read; profit is big enough) it would be signed off without AB being overly concerned over what mechanics go into the game.

I don't think ab interferes in daily running either (though they of course hold purse strings), but I do think they were responsible (directly via general guidance) for the severity of the tuning changes in 3.0.2 vs 2.4 and prior. pre-wotlk, blizz was moving gradually towards limited increases in accessibility of content (examples - a new 10 man raid, and the badge gear, which still took an awful long time to earn the badges for), and new content, including MGT, was darned tight on tuning (except for the tbc heroes here who apparently cleared all 15 heroics in a single lockout regularly).

I think it might have been as simple as 'we think all players should be able with modest effort see and most of them complete all of the content. can you try to make this happens and provide metrics to measure success?' the postulated scrutiny on this type of metric would explain the urgency for catch-up mechanisms and prior-raid-irrelevance that quickly became standard. blizzard itself sometimes brag posted participation.completion numbers for new content, which seems like an odd metric to brag to your playerbase about unles someone was being measured on this.

result - 3.0.2 tuning at all game levels (heroic instances, raids at easy difficulty, etc.).

but to the first line of your response - right. THis is to me the major concern with the frankenstein scenario.

it gets worse, of course, in this legacy speculation. Suppose key personnel bonuses (inc. morhaime) have a criterion included about revenue from legacy with various milestones - and the frankenstein scenario projected a better chance of hitting more milestones.....

[Deleted]

As a pro-Legacy person, I feel going through the expansions again goes against the point of Legacy.

However, releasing the next expansion as it's own server is more in line, and only depending on the success of the Classic server.

Thank you! My point exactly!

I would be happy either way. I think that I can say that all the legacy people just want their favorite game to comeback - the rest can be discussed as a next step.

[Dergiab]

there is potential synergy there, say very discounted xfer from classic to tbc server (even leaving a copy of char on classic server too), etc. a lot of ways to hook people in.

That works to, as long as they don't "upgrade" their legacy servers with the next expansions.

[Deleted]

that sounds resonable.

[RickJamesLich]

Unless you are really arrogant, the reason is not pretty obvious.

Blizzard has a steep sub loss and at the same time decides to stop reporting subscriptions. I think we can... most of us at least... read between the lines here.

You're the one that keeps harping on how WoW's free trial mode is basically "the best thing since sliced bread".

Nah, I don't think it's that great, but at the same time, if the whole "free thing" was a big motivator, it seems pretty clear we would see more people taking advantage of it.

How was that any different from vanilla? Care to explain? Because you could go from level one to max level without interacting with a single person.

In vanilla you had to group up to quest, as well as for dungeons, no hitting a button and going into a queue. Plus you had to do things like coordinate CC and come up with a game plan on certain bosses, etc. On retail you can level up without talking to anyone, not only that it's efficient and easy lol. Just one of the many examples though, nevermind the fact that you can do stuff like LFR, go afk, and actually get gear in the process.

I said you could only see the beginner zones from the expansions, like the Wandering Isle, Gilneas, etc.

So you then agree that you can see much more than just "beginner zones" in general though, correct?

At least I'm not so blindly arrogant to state that everyone who left during WoD did so for a singular reason.

Are there people that left WoD due to real life issues? Yes lol. Not disagreeing, I'm just saying that it's obvious that many more left due to the game being bad at that point.

Well, you're the one acting stupid, here, by challenging the forum rules and the Moderator's ruling on their own forums. If you don't like their rules, either suck it up, or go somewhere else. You have no say on what the rules here are and how they should be applied.

You're the one trying to bait me into violating the forum rules though by asking for proof on issues related to private servers, yet then mark my posts for moderation if I discuss the private servers lol. Come on man, surely you can see how hypocritical you've gotten at this point.

You said:

There. You never mention "it's one of the big contributors." You outright say they're the cause.

I didn't say that was the only reason, rather implied it was the main one.

Would you pay 15 dollars a month for a game you'd only have time to play once or twice a month?

Nah, but fortunately, there's a huge market of people out there that have free time more than once or twice a month. But for someone that has zero free time, of course not.

It didn't have "hardcore mechanics". It had absurd requirements and attunements. WoW was never a "hardcore" game. You call Vanilla WoW "hardcore", but have you ever played any of the other MMOs that existed at the time?

If there were no hardcore elements, how did so few guilds clear Naxx? Come on man, this is another stretch and you know it. It was definitely more friendly than other MMO's for casuals, but still, there was no shortage of hardcore stuff at the same time.

How about the Onyxia cloak, then? And I'm not pretending raiding was more complex. You are. Raiding was pretty much basic, back then, compared to today. As for LFR, I hope you're not so arrogant to the point of thinking your opinion reflect everyone else's.

By the time you get to BWL, Nef in particular, Onyxia is already on farm status. I'm merely saying that your excuse that "raiding was just attunements and getting resist gear" is a gross simplification.

I agree, Legion is so far quite the epic experience, and what is coming up is shaping up to be just as epic, if not moreso.

And if you want the most epic experience, you will advocate for legacy servers

Again, I never claimed that. See what I mean about you distorting what other people post?

You've already said that lame *some* won't want legacy servers because they can play private servers for free thing a bunch of times. It's already been debunked.

You have no evidence. You claim as a fact that legacy servers are cheaper, yet you don't have a single shred of evidence to back up such claims. You claim "it's not difficult", yet you don't have a shred of evidence of what it takes to set up real servers.

Much of the evidence suggests that it would be free. I'd gladly post it, but again, we already know you are trigger happy with trying to mark posts for moderation. On the flip side you have no evidence that it would be expensive, or that blizzard would lose money here. You can't get any cheaper than free.

Bullshit. I want the evidence posted. But you don't need to name any illegal servers for that. And that 'thousand dollars' figure? You just pulled out of your ass.

The teams behind private servers already have explained how it is not expensive and stated that they would gladly do it for free.

Blizzard didn't "mislead" anyone. Players just misinterpreted what he said. Big difference. And you still don't get it: the code doesn't just require 'modifications' in order for it to work. The metadata is gone, which means: mobs' health, damage and damage resistances, players scaling health and damage, etc.

They previously said they did not have the source code, turns out that they in fact did. And things like the mobs health is very easy to fix.

[Deleted]

this Ielenia guy just keeps on pretenting that blizzard stopped submitting subs reports because the game is better than ever

at the same time he will claim that legacy supporters are delusional.

[Deficineiron]

this Ielenia guy just keeps on pretenting that blizzard stopped submitting subs reports because the game is better than ever

at the same time he will claim that legacy supporters are delusional.

It has been established as objective fact that the game is better than ever (see the Jar-Jar Principle). Within this context, the desire for legacy servers from blizzard is indeed delusional, particularly since this would stop blizzard from re-investing the development cost instead into the main game (see '10Q meets MMO-C', scroll down to 'where does wow's revenue go?')

[Flarelaine]

Because it was 12 years ago. Thats why!

To be honest, that alone should not be a reason to let a good game go. I keep DosBox a for a reason. For several reasons, actually (like Master of Orion, King's Bounty and stuff). The original versions, obviously.

[Deficineiron]

To be honest, that alone should not be a reason to let a good game go. I keep DosBox a for a reason. For several reasons, actually (like Master of Orion, King's Bounty and stuff). The original versions, obviously.

I play games on MAME (old coin-ops) and dosbox too. I don't think anyone saying other old games or versions of games are not great or better than what came later. The issue is that with wow (and only wow, in all of video game history) the reason people want old versions is nostalgia because it was a vastly inferior game.

it would be helpful to the thread if we could just consider the above to be axiomatic.

[Ielenia]

this Ielenia guy just keeps on pretenting that blizzard stopped submitting subs reports because the game is better than ever

at the same time he will claim that legacy supporters are delusional.

Typical of the pro-legacy crowd. Grossly misrepresenting other people's arguments to try to ridicule them. I never claimed what you claim I did, Mr "I created this alt-account solely to post in this thread without people knowing who I am", and I dare you to prove your claims.

[Chrno]

Typical of the pro-legacy crowd. Grossly misrepresenting other people's arguments to try to ridicule them. I never claimed what you claim I did, Mr "I created this alt-account solely to post in this thread without people knowing who I am", and I dare you to prove your claims.

''The pro-legacy crowd - negative comment follows''
Try being a little less condescending. Not everyone that would like to see these type of servers is a complete nuttball.

Thanks,

[Deleted]

Typical of the pro-legacy crowd. Grossly misrepresenting other people's arguments to try to ridicule them. I never claimed what you claim I did, Mr "I created this alt-account solely to post in this thread without people knowing who I am", and I dare you to prove your claims.

Actually I created this account just to post here. I've never posted in any other thread before I stated posting here. I have no alternative accounts.

Anyways: you stated this: "Unless you are really arrogant, the reason is not pretty obvious.", implicting that stopping the annual sub rapports proves nothing. Well, it does. You would have to be blind not to see it. Past years they have made the raports public because they were good for makreting, now they are not. If they still decide not to show Legion statistics then it will confirm that Legion is the same embaresment as Draenor. Simple.

[Flarelaine]

I play games on MAME (old coin-ops) and dosbox too. I don't think anyone saying other old games or versions of games are not great or better than what came later. The issue is that with wow (and only wow, in all of video game history) the reason people want old versions is nostalgia because it was a vastly inferior game.

it would be helpful to the thread if we could just consider the above to be axiomatic.

It was vastly inferior in many ways. But nostalgia does not take that into account. I catch myself wishing for Vanilla in gloomy moments, although introspection will always tell me that I'm actually wishing for the times when I played with the guys I started the game with, along maybe with the wide-eyed wonderment discovering the game brought with it. Also memories like my first raid epic (still stashed in my bank!) or my first first kill (yes, intended double).

Having said that, if Blizzard were to roll out some form of Vanilla server, I'd sign up in an instant, because nostalgia.

[Ielenia]

Blizzard has a steep sub loss and at the same time decides to stop reporting subscriptions. I think we can... most of us at least... read between the lines here.

If you really want to be so arrogant to claim correlation implies causation here, without a single shred of evidence other than 'muh feels', go ahead, just don't claim it's a fact. It's not.

Nah, I don't think it's that great, but at the same time, if the whole "free thing" was a big motivator, it seems pretty clear we would see more people taking advantage of it.

You're grossly misrepresenting the argument, here.

In vanilla you had to group up to quest,

No, you didn't. You could go from level one to sixty without grouping even once.

as well as for dungeons, no hitting a button and going into a queue.

So you prefer having to spend a long time trying to find a tank, only to have your healer drop when you finally find a tank, so you had to go through recruitment all over again, hoping you find a replacement before someone else got bored and decided to leave?

On retail you can level up without talking to anyone,

Same as vanilla.

You're the one trying to bait me into violating the forum rules though by asking for proof on issues related to private servers, yet then mark my posts for moderation if I discuss the private servers lol. Come on man, surely you can see how hypocritical you've gotten at this point.

I never even tried to bait you into violating forum rules, I even warned you about the rules. Rules you so arrogantly defied, over and over, even despite being shown the moderator's ruling, by posting this:

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.

Nah, but fortunately, there's a huge market of people out there that have free time more than once or twice a month. But for someone that has zero free time, of course not.

Well, then, now you have to prove that said 'huge market' is comprised solely, or, at the very least, in its majority, of people that want to play Vanilla WoW over any other game there is.

If there were no hardcore elements, how did so few guilds clear Naxx? Come on man, this is another stretch and you know it. It was definitely more friendly than other MMO's for casuals, but still, there was no shortage of hardcore stuff at the same time.

Something Blizzard always strives to do with their games, is to make them as accessible to the public as possible.

By the time you get to BWL, Nef in particular, Onyxia is already on farm status. I'm merely saying that your excuse that "raiding was just attunements and getting resist gear" is a gross simplification.

You needed 315 skinning just to be able to skin Onyxia, and provided you had all the skinning boosts and enchants, you could get up to 4 scales per skinning (i.e. 1-4 scales). Assuming you got the maximum amount on every skinning, that means you'd need ten weeks to get enough scales for everyone. Ten weeks. That's three and a half months, just farming Onyxia over and over to get the cloaks for everyone.

And if you want the most epic experience, you will advocate for legacy servers

Nah. I'd rather advocate for real epic experiences, and support Legion. There is no sense of 'adventure' or 'wonder' or even 'epicness' in traveling down a path you've been before and is already well acquainted to.

You've already said that lame *some* won't want legacy servers because they can play private servers for free thing a bunch of times. It's already been debunked.

Grossly exaggerate and misrepresent other people's arguments isn't 'debunking' them.

Much of the evidence suggests that it would be free.

What evidence.

I'd gladly post it, but again, we already know you are trigger happy with trying to mark posts for moderation.

... What? More baseless accusations?

On the flip side you have no evidence that it would be expensive, or that blizzard would lose money here.

If it was "cheap and easy", and if it was "profitable", answer me this: why haven't Blizzard implemented legacy servers yet?

The teams behind private servers already have explained how it is not expensive and stated that they would gladly do it for free.

Wow, one more to the list of people who have no idea about the differences between emulation and the real deal.

They previously said they did not have the source code,

When?

And things like the mobs health is very easy to fix.

How?

Come on, stop making baseless claims and start showing the evidence. And stop hiding behind this lame, false excuse that I'm "baiting you" into breaking the forum rules when I was the one warning you that you were breaking them.

[Chaelexi]

thats why it should be progressive. Vanilla content alone would last for at least a year. When people get bored - release TBC and so on.

Also bugfixes, balancing issues - whole support.

SO how much are people paying for these fixes, balances and support because that stuff is not free. And Vanilla content would be cleared as fast it could be due to guilds clearing it as new content and a top end guild would put together a team for this and do proper farming and alt leveling teams to be able to split run content. They do it with current wow, there is nothing stopping someone from doing it with vanilla. The biggest block in Vanilla was figuring out strats to complete certain content and the lack of testing completed leaving cockblock fights due to bad tuning(C'Thun, Rag, Ony all being examples) but now that the tuning is fixed and the strats are ironclad there is not much else to do but get the gear and do the fight, and since the previous raid tier was more than enough to kill bosses, look guilds cleared BWL and MC in full blues to prove that it is possible.

[Ielenia]

Actually I created this account just to post here. I've never posted in any other thread before I stated posting here. I have no alternative accounts.

If you say so. Doesn't mean I believe you, though.

Anyways: you stated this: "Unless you are really arrogant, the reason is not pretty obvious.", implicting that stopping the annual sub rapports proves nothing. Well, it does. You would have to be blind not to see it. Past years they have made the raports public because they were good for makreting, now they are not.

Even at 3 million subscribers it's still good for marketing because it's still leagues above other MMOs around. Final Fantasy has, I think around 400-500 thousand players? I could be wrong, but I don't think they even broke a million active players yet. With the introduction of micro-transactions, the subscriber count no longer was the best measure for profitability.

If they still decide not to show Legion statistics then it will confirm that Legion is the same embaresment as Draenor. Simple.

I love the self-delusion and arrogance here. "If Blizzard doesn't release subscriber count for Legion, it means Legion is just as bad an expansion as WoD was." Seriously, get some help.

- - - Updated - - -

''The pro-legacy crowd - negative comment follows''
Try being a little less condescending. Not everyone that would like to see these type of servers is a complete nuttball.

Thanks,

Fair enough, and for that, I apologize. However, you have to admit that a great majority of the outspoken pro-Legacy crowd (in this thread, at least) do behave in a not-so-stellar manner, using false information and misrepresentation of other people's arguments.

[Ethris]

You guys are literally blinded by nostalgia, and only idealize classic WoW because you don't have it anymore.

I guarantee you that if it came back, you'd all divide into different camps of opinion about it, and you'd just find something new to complain about.

Classic is gone, it's fucking over, and it's never coming back. Stop dwelling on an incarnation of a video game from ten years ago, and grow up.