Ex-World of Warcraft dev Mark Kern explains why Blizzard open vanilla servers

[Maelmorda]

And yet when we were playing Vanilla all those years ago we were begging for QoL changes, such as dual-spec, better flight pathing, baby-sitting your character while you are on shitty flight paths did not immerse shit. Calling yourself a "purist" because you want to get a badge of honor for 'surviving' a run in with vanilla, seems a little much. The game play back then was slower, simpler, if they copy and paste.. It will have a decent enough shelf life, but I imagine there will be population issues if it's too pure.

Even drug lords know you gotta cut the product, going completely pure won't help keep the vanilla servers with a healthy population in the end. This isn't me endorsing LFG either, SOME QoL changes make sense, the ones that don't harm the social aspects of the game. Hell, I wish proving grounds existed in Vanilla, would have saved me from doing dungeons with a bunch of duds. Nothing is worse than running a 40 man raid with only about 20 people who aren't jackoffs.

Kind of excited to kill C'thun and do Naxx 40, missed out on that the first time around.

[Deleted]

But they aren't. You have the option to play the live game. MMO's were built in such a way that you had to rely on others to progress and succeed. They encouraged interaction and building friendships with people especially the older games where the populations were much smaller. Different people enjoy different things. You have such a hate-boner for legacy it's ridiculous. It's like Mark Kern and the Nost team killed your family.

You still need to interact to do 5 mans and raids. The only thing that's better is that for 5 mans you don't have to spam trade chat for 30 minutes for the tank to drop out. You can still talk in the dungeon. You can still add people to your friend list. Same with raids and Group finder. If you are not social it's not the games fault.

I just don't see how people think forcing someone to be social is good.

It's like herding a bunch of introverts to a party and only letting them go home if they dance with 4 people and get 3 others' numbers.

[Revamp Man]

only about 2 more years of this left....blizz just needs to release classic now and save us the whine

this "dev" is a terrible person and is merely commenting for the attention

"i stopped playing wow 7 years ago but im gonna comment on current wow" fuck right off

will i play classic in downtime?? yeah probably but i know its a grindy fucking chore dont try to paint it as this super awesome gift from the gods thats gonna bring people back

[Dentelan]

Ah, I just noticed you're russian.

Jokes aside. Okay. Good for you.

Retail still has "pieces of shits" They are the ones in 910 gear. Barely clearing normal. Like me. But we can still do normal. And every other content available. We might even join a guild and try heroic.

In Classic we could level to 60 and that's it.

So what that im russian?
Yes, and thats most beautifull part of vanilla, if you have not enough time/skill/luck/reputation, you will end as a guy with green items in Orgrimmar. Just like in real life, if you have no job or your own bussines, you will end asking money on the streets. And that is also one of the factors why vanilla have this sence of living community. Imho it is great.

[Perkunas]

You still need to interact to do 5 mans and raids. The only thing that's better is that for 5 mans you don't have to spam trade chat for 30 minutes for the tank to drop out. You can still talk in the dungeon. You can still add people to your friend list. Same with raids and Group finder. If you are not social it's not the games fault.

I just don't see how people think forcing someone to be social is good.

It's like herding a bunch of introverts to a party and only letting them go home if they dance with 4 people and get 3 others' numbers.

I think the issue is you can clear all the content in the game without talking to a single person in live and for some of us that's a bridge too far. I'm not asking them to change modern WoW I simply long for the old way. Which again, you don't have to take part in. They aren't shutting down modern WoW.

[Surfd]

You mean it is even worse for Dentelan and you can PuG all in classic? Don´t know what was killed in pugs on my realm. I was fine running with my guild.

I wouldn't say all, as nobody in their right mind is going to try to pug naxx, or most of the AQ bosses past the first few, but everything under AQ could be pugged once the gear curve caught up, especially with the gear and mini sets from the smaller raids like ZG / AQ 20.

[Deleted]

Cannot wait!

[Deleted]

So what that im russian?

I joke.

Just like in real life, if you have no job or your own bussines, you will end asking money on the streets. And that is also one of the factors why vanilla have this sence of living community. Imho it is great.

Good thing this is a video game that people play to escape the realities of real life.

- - - Updated - - -

I think the issue is you can clear all the content in the game without talking to a single person in live and for some of us that's a bridge too far. I'm not asking them to change modern WoW I simply long for the old way. Which again, you don't have to take part in. They aren't shutting down modern WoW.

I know it will not take over BfA.

I just don't understand why it hurts people that others can see "their" raids.

[Deleted]

And yet when we were playing Vanilla all those years ago we were begging for QoL changes, such as dual-spec, better flight pathing, baby-sitting your character while you are on shitty flight paths did not immerse shit.

"We" is only the small number of the loudest complainers who share their thoughts online.

There is no basis for suggesting that the "we" who complained long enough to get WoW to turn into what it is now have any relation with the "we" who have for years advocated a return to the Classic style game. They could very well be completely different groups of people.

It's great that there will be more choice in how to play World of Warcraft. Blizzard will never satisfy everyone, but hopefully the additional choice will give more people a chance to enjoy WoW than its latest version current has managed.

[Slashnox]

This guy is no doubt a big part of why we're getting Classic WoW, huge props to him. And I really believe if Blizzard somehow manages to completely fuck up with Classic WoW making it Classic WoW 2.0 instead of what we wanted, the community and Mark will let them know.

[Perkunas]

I just don't understand why it hurts people that others can see "their" raids.

I think it boils down to sense of entitlement I feel like the stuff is there if you want to dedicate the time and effort for it. If you don't there are other things to do. The good thing is you'll basically exile most of us old-schoolers to this legacy realm and we wont be pissing and moaning about Live being X or not being Y enough. You should be thrilled.

[Aaronioslo]

This guy is no doubt a big part of why we're getting Classic WoW, huge props to him. And I really believe if Blizzard somehow manages to completely fuck up with Classic WoW making it Classic WoW 2.0 instead of what we wanted, the community and Mark will let them know.

someone who stopped working for blizz years ago and had been salty ever since helped make classic happen, get a grip of reality

[Trollhammer]

Lol, I remember when this was released last year..

Does anyone really take Mark Kern seriously?

[Deleted]

I think it boils down to sense of entitlement I feel like the stuff is there if you want to dedicate the time and effort for it. If you don't there are other things to do. The good thing is you'll basically exile most of us old-schoolers to this legacy realm and we wont be pissing and moaning about Live being X or not being Y enough. You should be thrilled.

Oh I am. But Classic won't be long lived. Or no that's not true. Some ten thousands will certainly stick to it. But the majority will come back to BfA.

And okay. Entitlement. Sure. I can see that. But they have their titles and mounts and Mythic sets. But that's not enough for them. They want to kick every scrub out of their game. And that is what Classic will become. The playground of the few elitist jerks.

[Perkunas]

Oh I am. But Classic won't be long lived. Or no that's not true. Some ten thousands will certainly stick to it. But the majority will come back to BfA.

And okay. Entitlement. Sure. I can see that. But they have their titles and mounts and Mythic sets. But that's not enough for them. They want to kick every scrub out of their game. And that is what Classic will become. The playground of the few elitist jerks.

Well I meant more modern day. People feel like they are entitled to content and I personally prefer the content to be there but you have to dedicate time and effort in order to achieve anything. I cleared Sunwell not because I was entitled to see the full raid. I cleared it because of the massive amount of time and effort I put in during BC.

Still, I think we're at a point where there's room for both games because they are so drastically different. Though I think you're underestimating the population. I'd wager it'd be similar to older MMO's like 75k-100k active subs. I mean if my old MMO Earth and Beyond could maintain over 50k subs being a terribly shitty game worse than Vanilla WoW I'm sure as shit Vanilla can attract more than that to stay.

[Armourboy]

Lol, I remember when this was released last year..

Does anyone really take Mark Kern seriously?

He's just a guy with a bit more voice and insight into how things ran then. He may be the biggest dickwad imaginable, but that doesn't mean he is necessarily wrong on this deal. He does have a point, if it was only going to take 450k subs or so to make Blizzard a healthy profit, what is it really going to take to make this profitable? Probably not a whole lot, frankly will probably make the cost back in the first week pretty easily.

Also originally MMO's, including WoW, didn't exactly force you to play with others ( although SWG would have been real hard without others ) but they did do things that encouraged you to interact with one another in small ways. I mean think about it, these things were originally built for nerds on a pretty grand scale, and social interaction wasn't exactly top notch for alot of them ( me included). So you encourage communities, you have quests where you need help, you make professions so that you encourage people to meet up, and obviously you build content that requires larger groups of people to participate. It wasn't that way just because, it was that because it was designed that way.

I still play live, and yes you can still find good groups of people to do things with, but lets be honest it mostly just to raid these days. With the way the game is setup now if it wasn't for raiding itself you could literally never talk to a soul and do everything.

[Deleted]

Well I meant more modern day. People feel like they are entitled to content and I personally prefer the content to be there but you have to dedicate time and effort in order to achieve anything. I cleared Sunwell not because I was entitled to see the full raid. I cleared it because of the massive amount of time and effort I put in during BC.

Still, I think we're at a point where there's room for both games because they are so drastically different. Though I think you're underestimating the population. I'd wager it'd be similar to older MMO's like 75k-100k active subs. I mean if my old MMO Earth and Beyond could maintain over 50k subs being a terribly shitty game worse than Vanilla WoW I'm sure as shit Vanilla can attract more than that to stay.

I'll allow 100K, but not a soul more.

Clearing raids definitely should be a time investment. But it shouldn't be made exclusive to the top 500 guilds. Everyone should have a chance at it.

As for Earth and Beyond, no idea what that is, but a little googling later I see it has no sequel or continuation, right?
Classic WoW has a, (in my mind) far superior version running at the same time. No doubt Classic wil havea sizeable playerbase, but it will not keep anyone other than the most dedicated fanbase.

[Surfd]

Also originally MMO's, including WoW, didn't exactly force you to play with others ( although SWG would have been real hard without others ) but they did do things that encouraged you to interact with one another in small ways. I mean think about it, these things were originally built for nerds on a pretty grand scale, and social interaction wasn't exactly top notch for alot of them ( me included). So you encourage communities, you have quests where you need help, you make professions so that you encourage people to meet up, and obviously you build content that requires larger groups of people to participate. It wasn't that way just because, it was that because it was designed that way.

Umm, the beginning of this paragraph and the end of it don't seem to agree with eachother. Vanilla WoW very much forced you to play with others. As your paragraph pointed out at the end, it was designed to do so. Could you level to 60 solo? Sure. But you weren't going to do much beyond that without being forced to play with other people. Nearly every zone designed for play above level 30 had a good 1/5th of the content gated behind "elite" sections of the zone, which pretty much required you to find a group of 2 or 3 other people to tackle, and usually contained most of the best rewards in the zone both experience wise, and quest reward wise.

Pretty much ALL content in the end game that didn't involve solo farming for tradeskill materials or solo ganking lowbies in world PvP directly revolved around either pushing you into dungeons, or getting attuned for raids, which required pushing you into dungeons, which required groups. And since all of the "endgame" dungeons at launch were basically 10 to 15 man raids, you were pretty much forced to play with other people if you wanted to do anything other than farm materials from gathering skills. I mean, hell, at least half the major quest chains in any zone designed for players level 55 or above usually required you to go into a dungeon at least twice before you got to the end of the chain.

[Wildmoon]

Lol, I remember when this was released last year..

Does anyone really take Mark Kern seriously?

Literally the cringiest video on Youtube. lul

[Deleted]

I really don't get why people are against Classic. Doesn't effect the main game and will just give blizzard more income in the future. Just let the veterans, the curious and the nostalgic have their game. I likely won't play it but no skin off my back. We have modern wow with all its qol