Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Vineri]

As Moana says though, Blizzard (as any company will do) will evaluate and eventually approve or reject ideas

Neither option was presented, however. Blizzard is .. dragging their feet.

[Shammyrock]

Based on what timetable?

[Deficineiron]

I am anti-legacy server too but not for same reasons because i believe Blizzard 2016 will shoehorn microtransactions and other garbage like "Pristine servers" they were talking before.

And like i said before Blizzard releasing legacy servers would be them admitting it, this is also the main reason they were hidding real sub numbers in past 2-3 expansions and lately decided NOT TO REPORT ACTUAL SUB NUMBERS ANYMORE.

Profit standpoint argument is both stupid and easily debunked, Nost team/staff had 20 people and majority of them were GMs/Community managers, 2 devs and 1 admin. Cost for running the server is laughable and even if Blizzard would charge 5$ for playing on legacy each month it would give them way more profit than it would cost them keeping the servers up each month.

This argument does seem to amount to damning blizzard by faint praise.

I do think frankenstein servers would be a possibility too.

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Pristine servers would see less game play than actually releasing vanilla with all the warts. Problem is blizzard would somehow find a way to fuck up classic servers. They'll add QOL shit to the point nobody cares. So I doubt we'll see either at this point. Might as well keep doing what they are doing now and maybe if they bail with enough buckets they can keep the ship afloat a few more years?

Right, the Frankenstein scenario. all the qol of modern wow with zones and questlines reminiscent of classic, though with linear structure and modern tuning (read, faceroll). multiple raid & instance difficulties.

[SirBeef]

If they announce those rejections, it's much better than tucking them under the rug.

It's much like the official forums. The all get read, an information is brought to the developers at daily meetings. Just becasue it is not commented on does not mean action is not being taken. Whether that is to do something about it or to reject it. I don't think they are under any obligation to announce things they reject, just things they plan to implement. The last word was they have no announcements for Blizzcon. Seems to me like they have not come to a conclusion on what to do. I would rather they be silent instead of say we don't know yet.

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Neither option was presented, however. Blizzard is .. dragging their feet.

They have better things to worry about than legacy servers IMO.

[Deficineiron]

It's much like the official forums. The all get read, an information is brought to the developers at daily meetings. Just becasue it is not commented on does not mean action is not being taken. Whether that is to do something about it or to reject it. I don't think they are under any obligation to announce things they reject, just things they plan to implement. The last word was they have no announcements for Blizzcon. Seems to me like they have not come to a conclusion on what to do. I would rather they be silent instead of say we don't know yet.

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They have better things to worry about than legacy servers IMO.

the last official comment i read was they are still looking at it seriously. this might mean they really are looking at it seriously, or they are seriously looking at how to avoid saying they aren't.

[Deleted]

#Make wow great again !

[Roadblock]

PC Gamer: What we want from World of Warcraft in 2017

[MoanaLisa]

If they announce those rejections, it's much better than tucking them under the rug.

I agree. Blizzard rarely refuses to say "No" to something they aren't interested in doing. It's a problem with them.

[donjn]

Anyone ever think Blizzard is hesitant on releasing legacy servers because they are afraid it will make them look bad because of how popular it would be? Investors would be like "what have you been doing all this time", and all the hard work on all of these expansions will look bad...

In other words if legacy servers were introduced and they became wildly popular, like lets say about half of the sub numbers as legion has, that would be embarrassing, no?

[voidillusion]

Anyone ever think Blizzard is hesitant on releasing legacy servers because they are afraid it will make them look bad because of how popular it would be? Investors would be like "what have you been doing all this time", and all the hard work on all of these expansions will look bad...

In other words if legacy servers were introduced and they became wildly popular, like lets say about half of the sub numbers as legion has, that would be embarrassing, no?

Yes, that's my conspiracy theory, and it has already been discussed before I still think it's a good one!

[Deficineiron]

Anyone ever think Blizzard is hesitant on releasing legacy servers because they are afraid it will make them look bad because of how popular it would be? Investors would be like "what have you been doing all this time", and all the hard work on all of these expansions will look bad...

In other words if legacy servers were introduced and they became wildly popular, like lets say about half of the sub numbers as legion has, that would be embarrassing, no?

that stuff would be great. blizzard can selectively disclose whatever it needs to in order to spin a positive.

corporations are full of ego's but the ego element is likely internal to the company. the shepherds are worried about shepherd politic stuff, not what the sheep think.

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PC Gamer: What we want from World of Warcraft in 2017

He does explicitly call on blizz to make legacy servers, though he does used to banned word in his article .

I think he should be equally concerned that blizzard takes the middle road and releases frankenstein servers.

I posted my frankenstein thoughts there. I think people wanting classic servers should be more concerned about this than the current 'seriously discussing' answer.

[MoanaLisa]

Anyone ever think Blizzard is hesitant on releasing legacy servers because they are afraid it will make them look bad because of how popular it would be? Investors would be like "what have you been doing all this time", and all the hard work on all of these expansions will look bad...

In other words if legacy servers were introduced and they became wildly popular, like lets say about half of the sub numbers as legion has, that would be embarrassing, no?

No. They are hesitant because it's a lot of work with no obvious return and despite what people have said here I think once something like that is unveiled and it's understood that there is a monthly subscription to it or that you would have to keep one up with the regular game they don't believe that it would add all that much to their revenue. It will also detract from the main game and right now they seem very determined to keep that on track. So, do it with the team they have, it takes away from the main game; hire a full team to do it and costs and sustaining become an issue. It's not like free vanilla servers are all suddenly going to say "Great!" and fold up if Blizzard does this.

[donjn]

No. They are hesitant because it's a lot of work with no obvious return and despite what people have said here I think once something like that is unveiled and it's understood that there is a monthly subscription to it or that you would have to keep one up with the regular game they don't believe that it would add all that much to their revenue. It will also detract from the main game and right now they seem very determined to keep that on track. So, do it with the team they have, it takes away from the main game; hire a full team to do it and costs and sustaining become an issue. It's not like free vanilla servers are all suddenly going to say "Great!" and fold up if Blizzard does this.

With all do respect how can you be so sure I am wrong? Isn't what you wrote an opinion?

[Deficineiron]

No. They are hesitant because it's a lot of work with no obvious return and despite what people have said here I think once something like that is unveiled and it's understood that there is a monthly subscription to it or that you would have to keep one up with the regular game they don't believe that it would add all that much to their revenue. It will also detract from the main game and right now they seem very determined to keep that on track. So, do it with the team they have, it takes away from the main game; hire a full team to do it and costs and sustaining become an issue. It's not like free vanilla servers are all suddenly going to say "Great!" and fold up if Blizzard does this.

Given the guessable size of wow former and current playerbase, I expect there may be a question of not being enough revenue vs. a hard minimum, rather than a question of losing money on the endeavor overall. If they don't expect to see x$/yr over y years from the project, they may feel the resources are better used elsewhere for a better ROI.

That isn't to say that one should simply assume corporations don't have human egos involved in decisions. Corporate officers have and need egos the size of skyscrapers. Just from here in our information vacuum we are unable to evaluate this aside from asking if it exists. There could very well be key egos on either or both sides of this influencing the shape of the eventual outcome.

And IF blizzard releases authentic classic servers (big if, meaning also not frankensteins), then yes I think it would gut the non-china/rus/eeurope population of private classic servers. (chinese players can be assumed to be a meaningful portion of the population of any such hypothetical server). W. European/NAmerican players who are going through the trouble of playing the 1.12 version of game aren't goig to think twice about spending 180/yr to play on a blizz server.

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snip

also I will go one further thought.

China - given the substantial proportion of [unword] users from china (and some more using proxies), consider that any blizz legacy effort would surely be licensed to netease as well. the mmo market in china is many multiples larger than the western world's market. I confidently suggest china classic wow (/no frankenstein) would sustain easily over a million subs (blizzard's word usage rules here), and would have a multi-million initial usage spike. The market is vast, there are tens and tens of millions of former wow players, the game is time-intense, and netease's current geographic coverage is greater than the9's when they had classic/bc.

[Relapses]

China - given the substantial proportion of [unword] users from china (and some more using proxies), consider that any blizz legacy effort would surely be licensed to netease as well. the mmo market in china is many multiples larger than the western world's market. I confidently suggest china classic wow (/no frankenstein) would sustain easily over a million subs (blizzard's word usage rules here), and would have a multi-million initial usage spike. The market is vast, there are tens and tens of millions of former wow players, the game is time-intense, and netease's current geographic coverage is greater than the9's when they had classic/bc.

Ah, the good ol "untapped demographic" argument. It's been at least one pages since this has been debunked. There is zero substantive proof Legacy has long term stability other than your awful attempts at making the situation seem much more grandiose than it is in reality. I suppose this is where you point to emulated server stress tests (which we can't even talk about) and say, "LOOK AT ALL THE PEOPLE" while simultaneously ignoring the obvious fact that you're stuffing ALL of the people who are interested in Legacy onto a single server where retail has everybody spread out over 400 of them... but sure. Go ahead and keep believing this fairy tale. If it were really that set in stone, Blizzard would already have made them.

[Roadblock]

Ah, the good ol "untapped demographic" argument. It's been at least one pages since this has been debunked. There is zero substantive proof Legacy has long term stability other than your awful attempts at making the situation seem much more grandiose than it is in reality.

Nah.. he only needs to point to the Lineage 1 (1998 game) on for the pull games from an even earlier era can have in the Asian market.

I mean LOOK AT ALL THE PEOPLE that still play an mmorpg from 1998.

[Relapses]

Lineage isn't WoW nor is that image proof of anything other than there are still people playing an old game. (It's hard to take an infographic seriously when it lists both DOTA2 and LoL as MMOs.) You cannot make the leap in logic that simply because one game is moderately successful that all games in that genre would find equal success.

[Eleccybubb]

Lineage isn't WoW nor is that image proof of anything other than there are still people playing an old game. (It's hard to take an infographic seriously when it lists LoL as a MMO, too.) You cannot make the leap in logic that simply because one game is moderately successful that all games in that genre would find equal success.

This. Trying to compare the Asian MMO market to WoW is stupid. That market has a way different attitude to playstyle in the sense of super grindy games.

[Pann]

This. Trying to compare the Asian MMO market to WoW is stupid. That market has a way different attitude to playstyle in the sense of super grindy games.

Why? Deficineiron was specifically talking about WoW China. I would have thought that the Asian, in particular the Chinese, MMO market's attitude towards a product would be quite important when trying to determine how that product might perform in China.

[Deleted]

lul comparing lineage to wow

i know this thread is 1873 pages old, but no need to start shitposting guys