If they announce legacy servers at Blizzcon, would you play them?

[Eleccybubb]

Which is also Blizzard's biggest concern for why not to add them.

The whole point is to get those who are interested. Not force interest.

Why would someone who has vehemently stated no be the target audience?

And their concern is probably long term dropoff. Because it will happen no matter what. There will be an initial flood just like expansion launches then it drops off after a while.

[jackofwind]

I didn't point out particular flaws? So what's this, then?

And you even quoted my entire post my quote above belongs to in this post of yours, so now I have to ask: selective reading, short memory, or just blatant dishonesty?


I think such the answer to such a question is blatantly obvious to anyone with more than two cells to rub together: the rewards (or potential rewards) need to be proportionate to the investment. That is especially true to businesses. They're not going to invest millions into something that market analysis say it's unlikely to return barely triple digits rewards. Companies invest their money expecting to gain considerably more than what they invested. Blizzard wouldn't have made Diablo 3, for example, if they invested (random figures here) 10 million dollars, while expecting a return of only 10.5 million dollars.

Yes, I saw your comment about new class mechanics making re-tuning raids hard. You phrased it as a reason for the content to not already have been implemented, and it's my opinion that Blizzard would have many reasons for not implementing Legacy content that may or may not have anything to do with the difficulty of re-tuning. "It would be too hard" is valid, sure, but it can also be disagreed with as out of hand as your argument that"it's obviously too much work because Blizzard hasn't already done it."

You're writing an awful lot and you're seeming to get angrier and angrier. No one is here to fight with you, you can lower your hackles.

To summarize: You think any implementation of Legacy content is a waste of resources. That's perfectly fine. It's also not a position that merits any discussion, because it holds no room for leeway. I wonder what your position will be if Blizzard does implement Legacy content - will it change to being obvious that it's not a waste of resources simply because Blizzard chose to do it?

[Rogalicus]

Runescape did legacy servers and now they have more players than retail.

Everquest and Everquest 2 did that too, now TLP are most populated servers of these games. Considering they are open only for active subscribers, it's a pretty decent success.

[Thimagryn]

The whole point is to get those who are interested. Not force interest.

Why would someone who has vehemently stated no be the target audience?

Because we who are voting in the poll are World of Warcraft enthusiasts, which the Legacy servers ultimately target. Who else do you think this would target, casual players who only have a waning interest in playing WoW as it was in 2004 before they even started? They may be a large component to having Legacy servers, but by no means are that casual audience asking for Legacy servers to 'make WoW relevant' again. They'd be as interested as SC2 players would be in SC:R remaster; they're an audience but not the target. The target is still the veterans of the game who know and love the classic gameplay, with a secondary response to open it up to new players.

And their concern is probably long term dropoff. Because it will happen no matter what. There will be an initial flood just like expansion launches then it drops off after a while.

Which is part of the problem I posted above. With Legacy servers being such an optional feature, Blizzard is holding off on ever doing it because of the resources involved in a project that, for all intents and purposes, is 'designed to fail'. If it were a simple conversion of assets project without major maintenance, then it'd be a low risk venture for their Classic Games team We should know by now that's not the case, otherwise we would have had this a long time ago, considering the volume of vocal (and active) support this gets over a project like SC:R.

How many current WoW players are interested in making a permanent jump to Classic? How many of them are in guilds that need them for Raiding in WoW Main? Too many risks are involved in being a side option to playing actual WoW. The inevitable community division affects Blizzard's current content for WoW and how that all gets received. Ideally, Legacy would be available for players when WoW main is in its downtime; but there's no guarantee that they'd get the players back for a new expansion or new content once players make a solid decision to commit to Legacy. This will disrupt a lot of guilds who may already be struggling to get the numbers to stay playing the game. This has happened numerous times to my guild back in Cata to Warlords, with so many other MMO's coming out and people making decisions which and where to commit their time to.

This type of choice is a double edged sword.

[jackofwind]

Blizzard wouldn't have made Diablo 3, for example, if they invested (random figures here) 10 million dollars, while expecting a return of only 10.5 million dollars.

I honestly wonder how profit-driven Blizzard was when they remastered SC1, and are in their current Diablo remaster projects. Obviously they were, but there seems to be a certain amount of altruism there too.

Many companies do things for their clientbases with the fiscal goal of just breaking even.

[MoanaLisa]

At this point we pretty know that there's people who like Legacy servers and people who don't.

We also know that there are a lot of people who don't care either way. And the size of that group is sort of critical to Blizzard's decision. It's nice to pretend that it's a black-and-white topic with no middle ground--for or against--but if most people don't really care, and won't pay extra for it, that's significant.

[Deleted]

Everquest and Everquest 2 did that too, now TLP are most populated servers of these games. Considering they are open only for active subscribers, it's a pretty decent success.

Yes but the anti-legacy crowd don't want to discuss this facts because...you know, it doesn't fit their agenda.
Haven't done my research for Everquest but sure as hell Runescape legacy servers are a huge success with more population than retail.

Those "Rose tinted glasses bots" could at least come up with something cooler to say. That argument is so unoriginal.
It's basically saying humans have no idea what they like and our brains are totally messed up. We are no better than apes it seems.

[Dangg]

I personally would never play on a legacy server and think they are quite pointless, but I don't understand the position that some people are really strongly against it.

I assume those anti-legacy people just try to explain why Blizz won't introduce those servers from a financial standpoint and don't have a personal grudge against the concept in general?

[jackofwind]

We also know that there are a lot of people who don't care either way. And the size of that group is sort of critical to Blizzard's decision. It's nice to pretend that it's a black-and-white topic with no middle ground--for or against--but if most people don't really care, and won't pay extra for it, that's significant.

I wasn't implying that it's a black and white issue, I was addressing the polarised opinions about Legacy on this forum and insinuating that people just posting "I hate this idea" or "I love this idea" is fairly pointless on these boards at this point.

For obvious reasons, the people who are indifferent towards Legacy play a large part in Blizzard considering whether they would implement them. I don't think any pro-Legacy person who is being remotely sincere can believe they're not part of a niche group (I think the 40% shown on this board isn't representative). Likewise I don't think any anti-Legacy person who uses Blizzard's financials as their reason for Legacy not being implemented are being sincere in pretending to care about Blizzard's profit margins.

[Ielenia]

Yes, I saw your comment about new class mechanics making re-tuning raids hard. You phrased it as a reason for the content to not already have been implemented

I phrased it as a reason, not the sole reason. I never, at any point, stated that what I said is the one and only reason.

To summarize: You think any implementation of Legacy content is a waste of resources.

That's a wrong and dishonest summary of my position. You talk about "discussing in a civil manner", but your actions don't reflect your words, considering that, for the second time in such a short time you misrepresent my position, despite having just been shown that you're making a strawman of my arguments.

[Deleted]

Yes, the quote"anti-legacy" crowd does not care much for facts that involve a completely different game with completely different circumstances made by a completely different company.

Well, different game but still the same circumstances.
I bet a lot of people said to the Runescape crowd it was all rose-tinted glasses and nostalgia and guess what, it wasn't.
The same thing could be happening here.
It's a piece of history proving the "rose-tinted glasses" crowd wrong.

Also stop with the victim complex, no one gives two shits about what expansion you like the best.

That comment came out of nowhere. No comments except "u mad bro?"

[Ielenia]

I honestly wonder how profit-driven Blizzard was when they remastered SC1, and are in their current Diablo remaster projects. Obviously they were, but there seems to be a certain amount of altruism there too.

Many companies do things for their clientbases with the fiscal goal of just breaking even.

StarCraft 1 Remastered needs to be bought:

Only the original version is free to play. And I'm certain the original Diablo games will follow the same route.

[jackofwind]

StarCraft 1 Remastered needs to be bought:

Only the original version is free to play. And I'm certain the original Diablo games will follow the same route.

Valid point. Would an additional sub fee for Legacy servers not roughly equate to the same thing?

[Kaeth]

The point of it was: EVERYTHING you did felt rewarding. Completing a challanging/group/instance oriented quest chain? Yeah, get the blue/epic reward you'll probnably NEVER unequip. Make 4 levels and you get "THIS SHINY NEW ABILITY", your class master told you so. Going to the capital city and finally learning that spell felt good. Every level you could spend a talent point and become stronger on paper, which went up until level 60, which was HARD to achieve, yet MORE satisfying. Having a rare recipe drop? NICE, you can sell thsoe enchants 'cause the amount of players on your server having that is small.

This doesn't match up with my Vanilla experience at all. I enjoyed the community aspects of the game far more back in the Vanilla and TBC days, but the quests, dungeons, reward structure, class mechanics, and talents are not something I'd ever want to go back to.

As always, Vanilla impressions boil down to personal feelings. Almost nothing that you claimed is objectively true, it's all just how you felt about (or remember feeling about) your experience 12 or 13 years ago.

But if there's enough interest in legacy servers for Blizzard to make money on them, and it doesn't negatively effect the current state of the game, more power to you!

[jackofwind]

I phrased it as a reason, not the sole reason. I never, at any point, stated that what I said is the one and only reason.


That's a wrong and dishonest summary of my position. You talk about "discussing in a civil manner", but your actions don't reflect your words, considering that, for the second time in such a short time you misrepresent my position, despite having just been shown that you're making a strawman of my arguments.

I asked you to elaborate on your position but you haven't done so. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, I'm stating back what I understand your argument to be. So far you haven't given me anything else to base my understanding on. If you'd like me to not fill in the blanks then please fill them in for me and give me the rest of your reasons, because I don't think its unreasonable for me to expect that you'd given me the extent of them.

And yes, I talk about "discussing in a civil manner" because your tone has been caustic and antagonistic from the outset, as you well know.

[Ielenia]

Valid point. Would an additional sub fee for Legacy servers not roughly equate to the same thing?

Having a sub fee of its own, separate from the retail game, may be the best option (perhaps with a small discount if you have both). But it likely doesn't come with a fair share of problems of its own. I mean, Blizzard likes to do cross-promotions (remember the 'sign up for a year of WoW, gain Diablo 3 for free' promotion? And how if you played an X amount of times on Heroes of the Storm you'd gain a new skin for D.Va on Overwatch, a new mount for WoW, etc?) So I'm afraid Blizzard might do similar things with Legacy and Retail, perhaps stuff like "Reach level 60 in Legacy WoW and unlock HD versions of vanilla armor sets in Retail WoW for the class you picked in Legacy", or "Beat Onyxia on Legacy WoW to unlock an exclusive Onyxia mount in Retail WoW".... stuff like that, locking some really interesting cosmetics, possibly things people have been asking for ages, behind cross-promotions like that.

On top of that, there is still this one glaring problem: you are splitting your playerbase. Irreversibly.

[Detheavn]

Valid point. Would an additional sub fee for Legacy servers not roughly equate to the same thing?

Nah. Starcraft 1 & 2 servers are being maintained by Blizzard from a buy to play perspective. Aside from regular maintenance the amount of actual updates due to content they receive is minimal to none.

Legacy servers have the same issue. They have already reached their peak, not needing any actual development updates and would require little in terms of maintenance except for the weekly ones. We are already paying for access to functioning server, I don't see how this is any different.

Next to that people which own a live sub also own the licenses to vanilla/older expansions, so since we technically own these licences, we would not need to buy another copy.

But yeah, that's just my point of view, I'm pretty sure there's people out there who see it differently... like shareholders.

[Ielenia]

I asked you to elaborate on your position but you haven't done so.

What else is there to elaborate? How simpler can I explain things other than writing "too much work for little to no reward"? I explained it plain and clearly, I even gave an example of how your idea of tuning old content raids would affect balancing classes. It feels to me you're making an effort not to understand what I'm writing, here.

[Deleted]

On top of that, there is still this one glaring problem: you are splitting your playerbase. Irreversibly.

The main reason why i don't see Legacy possible. Splitting the playerbase.
I actually think thats the only reason why they don't do it.

[jackofwind]

Having a sub fee of its own, separate from the retail game, may be the best option (perhaps with a small discount if you have both). But it likely doesn't come with a fair share of problems of its own. I mean, Blizzard likes to do cross-promotions (remember the 'sign up for a year of WoW, gain Diablo 3 for free' promotion? And how if you played an X amount of times on Heroes of the Storm you'd gain a new skin for D.Va on Overwatch, a new mount for WoW, etc?) So I'm afraid Blizzard might do similar things with Legacy and Retail, perhaps stuff like "Reach level 60 in Legacy WoW and unlock HD versions of vanilla armor sets in Retail WoW for the class you picked in Legacy", or "Beat Onyxia on Legacy WoW to unlock an exclusive Onyxia mount in Retail WoW".... stuff like that, locking some really interesting cosmetics, possibly things people have been asking for ages, behind cross-promotions like that.

On top of that, there is still this one glaring problem: you are splitting your playerbase. Irreversibly.

Well, for me at least, crossover stuff between Legacy and Live WoW would be a horrible mistake and a perversion of the idea of a Legacy server. And yes, you are splitting your playerbase - by how much it's hard to know, with a potential influx of other players and knowing Legacy would be a niche. It would have to be treated like a different game to make it successful and not just a division of WoW.

That's why I think it might be an interesting solution to try to implement Legacy features into retail WoW, to let the people who are interested play them without impacting the playerbase at all.