A second subscription?

[ReleaseDay]

Probably not even at gunpoint.

[isuridedes]

Lies. You post about things you don't know about. Blizz admitted after thier meeting with Nost that they had the source code.

... at no point did I say they lacked source code. I said that the legacy code won't work on CURRENT servers, which is something Blizzard has confirmed. So I'll say it again. For legacy servers to be a thing one of two investments has to be made:

(a) Blizzard takes the legacy code and updates it JUST ENOUGH to work with the current database architecture / server hardware.

(b) Blizzard invests in server hardware / architecture that natively supports the legacy code.

If they chose (b) you can bank on half-day maintenance like they used to have. Part of the perk of the updated code they use today (and updated hardware) is that most maintenance schedules are much much faster.

[jackofwind]

Mate, you are gonna crawl back faster to the retail servers or even quit then you ever imagine.
Ever watched an old tv series of your kids day? Or played an old game that you used to love?

I hope you did, because then you know how shit it is to play or watch it again.
Nostalgia plays a BIG role. Yes it was fun back in those days, but you are spoiled. You are used to much more. You are NOT gonna like legacy servers, trust me on this.

None of which you can back up, because subjective is subjective. There are people out there who would quit day 1 and there are people out there who would choose to play on vanilla servers until the day they die.

PS: Plenty of people love to watch old TV shows (a), old movies (b), and play old games (c). That example falls apart faster than you can say "Star Trek" (a), "Star Wars" (b), or "The Legend of Zelda" (c).

[Shadochi]

<post edited due to content about illegal servers>

Now, as the poll of this thread shows, a greater amount of people wouldn't pay for something that they know would end after a certain patch releases. Meaning that a great amount of private server players are playing there because it's free. In a lot of countries, including mine, the 13 euros a month for a game (or any reoccurring payment for a game) is a lot for most people, so they turn to private servers. The only reason why my friend switched to retail is because I gifted him for his bday WoW+6 months which I got with tokens, and by month 2 he is already making enough gold to cover his sub on his own, but the initial cost of getting into wow is a lot for most gamers.

So all-in-all, I think blizzard is so far making a good decision by not releasing legacy. Even if they do have the source code, it'll take a lot of resources to configure it to work on their modern server machines and databases etc. Also from blizzard people would be expecting a far greater standard than private servers, even tho Vanilla back in the days wasn't even up to that standard(there would be no balancing and hotfixes). And the payoff might seem like it was worth it in the first week, but I guarantee that after the initial month or two over 70% of the population (which would be a lot smaller than retail to start with) would fall off.

- - - Updated - - -

... at no point did I say they lacked source code. I said that the legacy code won't work on CURRENT servers, which is something Blizzard has confirmed. So I'll say it again. For legacy servers to be a thing one of two investments has to be made:

(a) Blizzard takes the legacy code and updates it JUST ENOUGH to work with the current database architecture / server hardware.

(b) Blizzard invests in server hardware / architecture that natively supports the legacy code.

If they chose (b) you can bank on half-day maintenance like they used to have. Part of the perk of the updated code they use today (and updated hardware) is that most maintenance schedules are much much faster.

But the only way to have Legacy servers is if they replicate everything, including the server maintenance and downtimes.

[Zaeyla]

Without a doubt I would resub to WoW for the first time since early 2011 if I could play on official legacy servers, I'd pay up to 15$ a month easily and properly a first time box sale or fee of some sort roughly 30-40$ for a legacy wow package of some sort if I had to.

[jackofwind]

[Snippity snip-snap]

That was a mighty wall of text to prove a meaningless point considering that Nost is dead and irrelevant.

Sure, they massively over-inflated their popularity, but you only need 2,500 players for a server to give the Vanilla experience anyways. If anything their 800k account nonsense was actually advertising less of a Vanilla experience.

[GutsAP]

No, and the number of people who actually would vs those who say they would is probably 25%.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I won't play it regularly for free. I sure as hell wouldn't pay for it.

The Legacy hype only ever took off due to WoD being what it was. It was actually detrimental to the actual Legacy players whom don't use the private servers as a "fuck you!" to Blizzard.

[deniter]

Of course, i'd even prefer it that way. I don't want to pay for something i have no use.

I guess anything between 5€ - 20€ per month would be a reasonable fee.

[MoanaLisa]

I would certainly keep a character or two on a legacy server but I wouldn't pay extra for it. Poll is new but the results are interesting with 75% against the idea.

MODERATION NOTE: I want to be clear. Posts about illegal private servers will be infracted. Stick to the topic and keep other private servers out of it or the thread will be closed.

[Kazgrel]

Oh hey, it's one of these threads again.

Having actually tried one of the more popular private servers with a friend a year or so ago and realizing how much QoL stuff I had grown to take for granted, no, I would not pay to play a version of classic WoW. I wouldn't be opposed to being paid to play it, though, because that's about what it would take to get me to do so again.

[Shadochi]

<post edited due to content about illegal servers>

Now let's say that in the first month the hypothetical payed Legacy server had 200k people/characters (wouldn't have that much but lets be optimistic). In the following month or two a lot of people would fall off (as shown in my math above) early on because they don't enjoy the repetitive (objectively the questing is a lot more repetitive compared to now) leaving a bunch of half full servers. This would lead people to either re-level on another realm, play their luck with character transfers because back then you couldn't choose the realm, or quit since they can't group up with other realms. And while there still might be people playing, it probably wouldn't be enough to pay the Legacy devs, server upkeep and initial cost, marketing and other stuff that goes with a game release.

[Echoherb]

No I would not pay money to play a worse version of the game I'm already playing.

[yetgdhfgh]

Even the mere mention of Legacy servers brings out the worst of people here on MMO champ!

Ive started legacy server threads here and even Trump thread wasn't as nearly as toxic!

[xero5141]

It's been brought up but I don't think it is an issue with money or cost. Else Blizz could've released and even charged like 50 bucks for it and people'd pay and they'd make gillions. I'd say it's an ideological matter rather than monetary.

It's really exceedingly simple. If they wanted WoW to be vanilla WoW, it would be. They didn't upgrade the game to turn around and support the decade old version.

[zlygork]

I wouldn't pay a single dollar for vanilla realms

[Kithelle]

It's been brought up but I don't think it is an issue with money or cost. Else Blizz could've released and even charged like 50 bucks for it and people'd pay and they'd make gillions. I'd say it's an ideological matter rather than monetary.

Ahh yes...more vanilla zealots making up numbers...it never gets old lol

[jackofwind]

<post edited due to content about illegal servers>

Now let's say that in the first month the hypothetical payed Legacy server had 200k people/characters (wouldn't have that much but lets be optimistic). In the following month or two a lot of people would fall off (as shown in my math above) early on because they don't enjoy the repetitive (objectively the questing is a lot more repetitive compared to now) leaving a bunch of half full servers. This would lead people to either re-level on another realm, play their luck with character transfers because back then you couldn't choose the realm, or quit since they can't group up with other realms. And while there still might be people playing, it probably wouldn't be enough to pay the Legacy devs, server upkeep and initial cost, marketing and other stuff that goes with a game release.

Why are you assuming that there would be multiple Legacy servers for people to go to? I think a more realistic view is that Blizzard would simply use their server merging technology if population was an issue. We're not talking about pure 'Vanilla' servers after all, but Legacy servers.

I think a lot of your assumptions are pretty flawed with regards to how Blizzard would likely implement these servers. Legacy servers are differentiated from Classic servers by Blizzard for a reason.

[Noxina]

For everyone saying Vanilla was good, I honestly hope you don't complain about farming, RNG etc in Legion. Because all that shit was so much worse in Vanilla.

- Want a Legendary? Good luck getting the items needed, I remember one in my guild that had one of the bindings all through Vanilla, and never saw the second drop.
- Want 100% ground mount? Have fun farming 1000g, mostly from killing mobs because there wasn't really any reliable gold farms. A TON of people didn't get it before TBC was out, and you actually started to get some gold from questing.
- You enjoy PvP? Well good luck getting gear, everytime you rank up you need to have enough gold ready so you can buy the new pieces, same with reputation gear from AB/WSG/AV. Everything cost gold, which was something you never saw as a PvPer. Oh and don't join groups/raids, just incase somene kills an dishonorable target, sucks to lose a day of AV farming because some idiot decided to kill all NPCs in Tarren Mill.
- Raiding? Well, auto attacking a boss for 5 minutes is fun enough I guess. Then there are what, 4 items that needs to be spread out over 40 man. Oh and 4 of those are hunter items.

Literally everything was shit about Vanilla. I've tested private servers, and unless it was a server with 10x EXP or something, I would quit before lvl 10. The game is SO much better now.

[clevin]

First off, no, I'd not pay. Well I'd signup for a month if the client was free and perhaps pay a few dollars just to see what it was like but...


1) I played Classic, TBC etc. I remember them fondly, but I can't recapture the feeling of seeing things for the first time.
2) I'd eventually get bored.
3) I'd want to know, before investing more than fuck-around-time, what the plan was for progressing. That is, when classic had been out for a while, were they going to launch TBC servers? LK? Or would a Classic server always bee a classic server?

I think a lot of people might do what I suggest - play for a month or two either because they never played Classic/TBC or to check out things for nostalgia's sake. However (and this is why I don't see them ever doing it), I think that after 6-12 months a lot of those people would have left and we'd have a relative few hardcore classic fans. They'd have to still dedicated staff etc to those people, they'd have to deal with things like bugs etc. all for what I bet would be far less than 250k players. In 2 years, I think the servers would be ghost towns, with under 100k. That would be great for a private server but for Blizzard, even at $15/month, that's only $1.5m/month. It's just trivial to them.