Legacy Realms - What's your verdict

[britishbubba]

Alright. Look at is like this: If 37% of all players who had previously and currently played would like a legacy server, that is millions of players. Now that I think ot if, Blizz is shooting themselves in the foot for not doing this sooner.

Except as a buissness they have to think of things like how many of those people will actually come back and play those servers like they said they would? How many of those people would actually play/pay for more than 1 month? things like that. Imo it's likely not remotly worth the monetary risk to them to go back, reprogram older versions of the game (even if they have the old patches, they are unrefined and would need to be polished up a bit), run extra servers JUST for legacy reasons, likely hire some extra support staff to handle the support needs of those that play on the servers. So on and so on.

If it were my company, I wouldn't do it either.

[prwraith]

i voted wotlk tbh been playing since beta and wotlk got me and the largest amount of my friends playing at once.

[Granyala]

People would lose interest shortly after they discovered there were no new patches (ever,) classes were completely out of balance, and the servers had absolutely no contemporary upkeep.

As soon as the harshness of reality rips those rose tinted glasses off, those realms would be dead.

[ComputerNerd]

but with all the changes to classes simple scaling down in ilvl will never feel the same. alot of 60 twink guilds clear bwl with not even 20 lvl 60ish because a lvl 60 in vanilla has less power then a lvl 50 in MoP.

Because the fights have not been updated to take into account the new scaling or class mechanics.
Only new content to an expansion ever seems to balanced.

Given the possibility of that feature, then it would be a very good opportunity to go back and really make that something special.

Difficulty can come from other means than horrible grinds.

Alright. Look at is like this: If 37% of all players who had previously and currently played would like a legacy server, that is millions of players. Now that I think ot if, Blizz is shooting themselves in the foot for not doing this sooner.

That is the problem with this or any other poll, the numbers are utterly meaningless.
Nobody is forced to be truthful, and nobody is forced to give a vote.

The community and accessibility has changed drastically.
You will never re-create what those games had, because there are simply other choices.

[Sturmbringe]

Except as a buissness they have to think of things like how many of those people will actually come back and play those servers like they said they would? How many of those people would actually play/pay for more than 1 month? things like that. Imo it's likely not remotly worth the monetary risk to them to go back, reprogram older versions of the game (even if they have the old patches, they are unrefined and would need to be polished up a bit), run extra servers JUST for legacy reasons, likely hire some extra support staff to handle the support needs of those that play on the servers. So on and so on.

If it were my company, I wouldn't do it either.

Oh, I am pretty sure they will do it eventually. Blizzard is not a charity, and there's money to be had by luring all those hundreds of thousands people who play on private servers back to the fold.

The thing is that still WoW has got around 7.5 mil active subs and Blizzard disdain dealing with Legacy servers b/c the money to be had compared to what they are getting from Panda & Pokemon Craft seem peanuts to them.

They will maybe start thinking of this more seriously after their WoW subscription base falls below, say, 5 million which will probably happen within the next two years.

---------- Post added 2013-05-17 at 08:58 PM ----------

Alright. Look at is like this: If 37% of all players who had previously and currently played would like a legacy server, that is millions of players. Now that I think ot if, Blizz is shooting themselves in the foot for not doing this sooner.

Don't forget that the number of players who would love Legacy servers is much higher than this, as MMO CHAMP is a WoW (not a Warcraft III or a WoW Vanilla) fan site. The people genuinely interested in voting for Legacy servers won't even see this poll as they are playing on private Vanilla, TBC and WOTLK servers as we speak.

[Drilnos]

I wouldn't play on a legacy server (ech, no), but I'd support them. But only if they made them a real authentic experience. That means unstable servers, login queues, bugs, imbalance. The works. Give the people exactly what they asked for, says I.

[Balazaar]

The only way you'll see legacy servers is if WoW is about to die as a game. Then they may do it to squeeze a bit more life from the game before it goes under.

[KCguy]

Judging by this poll, it seems like the majority don't care. And with good reason. That is the past, I had some amazing times during BC. I barely even knew what an MMO was at the time, so it was new, exciting and different. But, those days are long gone. Going to an 'BC only" realm doesn't interest me. If I want to go back to that, I can just explore Outlands again, stop at level 70 and sit there doing Outlands stuff.

[Seani]

I think either vanilla or BC would be fun.

[Volpit]

It's funny how people on the Internet somehow can determine what other people like and will do.

"Nostalgic monkies would play for ten mins then go back to current"

"Rose colored lenses"

I quit current wow because it is absolutely awful.

I play on a private vanilla server 1x rates and been there for a month and would never resub to current wow. The game sucks. Vanilla and BC were the only decent releases of WoW.

This is just my opinion I completely love reading these "know it all" nerds who apparently decide what people like.

I voted unsubbed and would sub for a vanilla realm.

[Nobleshield]

Voted Wrath, but since it would be 3.x era Wrath with badges from heroics, I probably wouldn't like it. Now if they had some way to have it where you just got the original badges from heroics (i.e. you had to do Naxx -> Ulduar -> ToC -> ICC) then I'd love it to death.

[Underwolf]

You're not gonna get much exploration or see anything new by going back. LFR for old raids is a good idea tho.

That always has been true even back in Vanilla times. Once you traveled to BRD for the first time, you have seen it. You are not seeing a new road or place in the future travels. Travelling, exploration, world interaction, social interaction, comradery, fishing, cooking, crafting, questing, fighting etc are not valuable for just their own sake. They all are parts of a big puzzle that ends up being a huge living world.

When you start performing some of these activities through clicking on menu options, you are removing pieces of that puzzle. You do not have the full picture anymore.

[Ceece]

I prefer to move along with a game.

[Shampro]

Would never bother to play on a legacy realm. Why? when I did all that when it as current I was a noob it was exiteing, going backwards is fucking dull period. Im not a nostalgia freak and know how to move forward, I had lots of fun in TBC and Wrath but no. Going back would be awful for me, it wont be the same, not to mention no new content would be added. So yeah, I would rather quit than play any of those servers , or Private servers for that matter (lol people actually play those?). Subbed and will not use legacy.

[Zaqwert]

People forget that blizzard would never bother to balance any legacy realm, you would have classes that are either useless or outrageously overpowered...

Also many specs or classes have CRUCIAL spells that they get only at very high levels, not to mention having access to talent points - another major issue that blizz would never waste resources to fix.


In short, you will NEVER get legacy realms - blizzard is fully focused on both progress in WoW and making content the highest % of players would use.
As you can see in many of these polls, a very tiny % is actually interested - and it is unknown how many would actually play after they see how HORRIBLY BAD their class/spec is missing spells/talents and being an underdog...

You seem to be misunderstanding. There would be no missing talents. The game would be exactly as it was at that time. So like there wouldn't be Death Knights in Vanilla and BC you see.

The talent trees would be as they were back then.

These wouldn't be hybrids, a mix of new features and old content. The realms would be EXACTLY as they were as if you went back in a time machine to the appropriate year and logged on.

[Thunderball]

I would play BC or Vanilla realm, but honestly it doesnt have a point because the number of people who support it would be to low to fill even one server. No point in playing it single player style and in the end the people playing made it so much better than WoW is today, and they are not gonna come back.

[Deleted]

Wouldn't switch. Even if I dislike a lot of Blizzards decisions over the years, they have made a lot of good ones too. In overall I would say the game has become a lot better, even if I miss some old aspects (especially old AV...). And man, if the Vanilla servers wouldn't be any more stable than what they were back then, they would have loads of issues with it.

I believe I recall a friend of mine successfully temporarily bringing down all of Eastern Kingdoms on our old server when he was bugging himself into ZG shortly after its release. Something that wasn't entirely uncommon, when you used the zeppelin/ship from one continent to the other you would sometimes be met with the message "world server down".

---------- Post added 2013-05-18 at 01:39 AM ----------

I would play BC or Vanilla realm, but honestly it doesnt have a point because the number of people who support it would be to low to fill even one server. No point in playing it single player style and in the end the people playing made it so much better than WoW is today, and they are not gonna come back.

Not necessarily true, there are private servers with old Vanilla/BC that has thousands of active players on them. Granted thousands is nothing compared to millions which the official servers have, but they do fill up more than one server. Of course people would get bored over time with no new content added.

[Auxora]

The reason it hasn't happened yet is the reason it probably won't ever happen. The issue is a simple technical one which is that it would really complicate maintenance/patching/updates. Before you say, "but it wouldn't ever need to get updated...", there are always updates. What if an exploit is found on a BC 2.0 Legacy server, are they not supposed to patch it? They are basically obligated to, which means allocating developers to create a patch, test realms to test them, yada yada. Every blue post for current version servers would need to include an asterisk that this doesn't apply to Legacy servers. When users call into Blizzard support, support would have to ask each one which type of server they are running on, etc.

Legacy servers just open up a larger can of worms than at first it would seem. Private servers don't have to worry about support and those kinds of things in the same way, so they are a lot easier for them to do. Plus, people have been asking for them for at least 4 years now and they haven't happened yet. So I wouldn't hold my breath. The GC answer I am sure would be the above and just that they would rather focus their programming resources on new content that the majority would prefer. Plus part of the appeal of Vanilla and BC was that the community was far better back then, and Legacy servers aren't going to magically bring those players or the old wow community back.

[Deleted]

Would love a Vanilla legacy realm so people could see how bad it was.

[logintime]

Would love a Vanilla legacy realm so people could see how bad it was.

I currently play on a vanilla server, and I can honestly say that it is much more enjoyable than WoW was when I left it at the end of Cataclysm. Flaws and all, Vanilla has a charm the current game just doesn't possess.