Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[iindigo]

That's just not true. Many players have played it previously (myself included) and wish to enjoy the older game again.

Most reasonable people accept that Retail WoW has change TOO SIGNIFICANTLY for any meaningful changes to occur to provide the gameplay experience pro-legacy players want. This is not to say the changes in Retail WoW are all bad. Some have been very good while others not so much.

You personal opinion is noted, though evidence of the community playing Nost. indicates that the 'fun experience' you claim to last a short time is an argument proved wrong. Nost. had numerous issues and bugs, and yet was embraced and loved by a significant group of players.

What I believe a large portion of anti-legacy views miss is that the gameplay of Retail WoW is significantly more engaging and immersive than Retail WoW. Some players actively choose NOT to play on Vanilla servers because of the fear of addiction. They hold no such fear of Retail WoW.

Yep. Contrary to popular opinion, taste in WoW expansions is subjective even if the latest game is objectively better in many ways.

Pro-legacy folks most often aren't blind to the problems that older expansions have and are quite conscious of how they've been fixed on retail. However, they've weighed the benefits of these fixes against the subjective losses brought by recent expansions and have found the tradeoff to not be worth it. They're willing to live with the various idiosyncrasies and issues of older expansions if it means being able to play the way they like.

I don't know why this is so hard for some to swallow.

[Smauldy]

You can load up a game of Super Mario Bros from 1986 on the NES and it works fine. You however, cannot load up a game of Vanilla era WoW. You can play WoD, or nothing. According to sub numbers, a lot of people have chosen nothing.

[Eapoe]

there's absolutely no scenario where they bring in the nost team and mark kern to talk about pristine servers. They have nothing to do with what nost or kern are trying to accomplish. They can create it all by themselves, they don't need any help from nost or kern to delete features and change settings from their live game.

True, but as some tried pointing out it can also be an attempt to get these people on board with pristine or reach some kind of amenable agreement to end the topic. In a very real sense, cut off the head of the snake (Nost and Kern) and the body dies. Might be just inviting them to talk about Legacy.
As people have posted that are pro Legacy, there is potential in it and 200k+ isn't a number to scoff at (minority or not in a playerbase), so it's also just as likely they would talk to them about ways to get Legacy off the ground. I've stated before, I highly doubt Blizzard would hire any of these people just due to the history. Kern is a man who left on his own from the company and showed he's not good in an absolute leader role, but as a team lead with various teams that keep him in check it could also be possible, but at the same time he's come off as confrontational and not the most level headed for a PR position (most notably the Panser issues). As far as Nost, they've shown they can make something successful in a part time capacity that appeals to previous fans. They could have some input for Blizzard as far as making "pristine" a more appealing attraction, especially from the post Blizz had about it they weren't even too sure exactly what all they would cut. Not to mention the legal issues they've had in the past, it can present an open door policy: "rip us off and come get hired!"
That's not saying it can't happen, just not likely given history between all parties involved.

[Deleted]

You seriously need to educate yourself about Blizzard's ownership structure. They've always been owned by a huge corporations. The last time they were indipendent was in 1994. All the "glory days" were under Vivendi megacorp.

You're uneducated, toxic, delusional and spouting pretentious crap. Stop it.

They obviously had more freedom in those days whoever their masters were.

[Vash The Stampede]

Correct me if im wrong please, but hasnt Blizzard stated in the past that the most given answer upon cancelling a subscription was that the game or their class has changed in a way they dont like? remembering around 70%, but i could be completly wrong. (the box you can fill in after you cancel your subscription)

Depends on the class, spec, and expansion.

Back in Vanilla I quit because Ret was a joke. Came back for Crusader Strike, and then Ret was a joke in TBC. Quit in WOTLK cause Ret wasn't competitive in late expansion PvP, and I killed the King. Which was a great idea cause 1 year of no content was pretty stupid. Came back to Cata and quit in late MoP because I knew WoD was going to be bad. I came back last year for 3 months just to experience the bad that was WoD. Ret was also terrible in MoP and WoD, and didn't even try hard to PvP. Would have been a waste of effort since nobody takes a Ret to RBGs.

Up until MoP, I quit because of a spec I played that sucked. I quit WoD because the expansion was so casual that I felt like I was playing Hello Kitty Island adventures. On top that Ret was also a bad spec. That's right, a double negative.

Even though Ret was a horribly broken nightmare in Vanilla, at least the rest of the game was good. WoD Ret isn't horribly broken, but enough that as a hardcore player I can't min/max it like other classes with specs can. And WoD is just terrible. An entire expansions worth of content I just steam rolled through in less than 3 months. Most of the time spent was getting the ring, and upgrading the ring. I pugged Heroics, and fully geared my Ret with 4 set and all Heroic gear. Even got the class trinket. For whatever reason, my guild didn't kick me and they're an active Mythic guild. Didn't ever talk to them, cause I didn't need to.

I have zero interest in Mythic raids, even as a hardcore player. What incentive I have to do them? Gear? The gear I can't use in PvP cause it gets auto nerfed? Gear I vendor in the next patch or expansion? An achievement nobody cares about? I would argue that Heroics are pointless, if it wasn't for how quickly one can clear normal raids. Since I was still upgrading my ring, I might as well do Heroics.

Also, PvP was good as a Paladin back in Vanilla, if you knew what you're doing. Today, WoW punishes creative players.

[Deleted]

that was my take on the kern meeting too. if only a small fraction of the red5 stories are true (and the music video work and bus DO exist), the guy is the last person you would want involved in a project. They just want to get him quiet or co-opted.

This is a guy that helped create one of the most successful video games of all the time.

Virtually every successful business person has at least one failed venture, it is fucking stupid to smear the guy on that basis.

[Deleted]

They obviously had more freedom in those days whoever their masters were.

Obviously we have absolutely no way of knowing this.
But you are of course free to believe in that, if you so wish.
The only fact we know is they haven't been independent since -94.

- - - Updated - - -

Virtually every successful business person has at least one failed venture, it is fucking stupid to smear the guy on that basis.

"You're only as good as your last game"-seems to be the culture at Blizzard according to that Overwatch interview with Tigole.
So measured with Blizzard culture, the guy is absolute failure.

[AeneasBK]

Yes and a lot of what we know about Kern at Red5 is based on "pissed off anonymous ex-employees testimony"; but somehow that's utterly credible...

Don't get me wrong, not trying to pretend he's absolved in any way. Just seems weird most of the criticism has come from that one article based off a reddit rant.

[Deleted]

To think an official Blizzard server won't have higher Quality Assurance than a free server and more complaints and demands is silly. Blizzard would be required to maintain the server, to police it and provide quality assurance as well as customer support, legally required, unlike Nost.

That's doesn't even account for the people who will demand class balance and features from live be implemented, i've already seen people pushing for Legacy servers saying if blizzard does it they need to add HD models and what not.

No. PTR's have no support. The alpha has no support.

[Deleted]

I wrote an open letter to Mr. Morhaime and Mr. Kern myself:

https://rymsblog.wordpress.com/2016/...m-and-mr-kern/

For some reason, every wannabe seems to be interested to write letters to Mr. Morhaime. No matter if he actually knows the guy, or even not. As i am a wannabe myself, i also would like to write a letter to Mike Morhaime, but due to respect i will not call him by his first name, but act as if i didnt really know him at all (which i really dont) and call him Mr. Morhaime.


Dear Mr. Morhaime,

recently, a group of players that run a pirated version of World of Warcraft obviously catched your attention. Obviously, you are going to listen to these people, that built a realm for nostalgic players who want to play classic WoW. Obviously, you want to build classic or pristine realms yourself and catch the hyped players with either hiring the nostalrius admins or buying their voice for PR.

The truth is, that most of your players actually do not hate what WoW developed into. The truth is, that people are fine with a focus on a broad audience for World of Warcraft. You will never hear any single complaint from those who play the game just for having fun.

The classic nostalgists actually are a small minority and not “the community”. Yes, they managed to hype the forums, but actually all they want is to deevolute the game. To turn back time just to return to the very first time when they played world of warcraft. When you actually take a closer look onto the audience of Nostalrius, most of that people played the free version just for the fact it was free, not for the fact it was a classic version of WoW.

To turn back time, to question everything you developed in the last years, isnt the right solution to the problem to integrate those players. The right solution would be to turn WoW into a free to play game with microtransactions, as people are mainly blocked by the monthly sub. If you take a look on how subs develop in World of Warcraft, most people return to an expac, play for one or two months, and will quit again. You actually only gain the money for the expac, and two months of playtime.

With a free to play model, you would adress way more players, as free to play is way more fair. Also, you could sell expacs for way more money if you removed the subs or added a plan for free to play. Also, you would adress anyone who played on a free legacy realm. Additionally, the higher costs would give you more money when players already quit in the first month.

I dont think you should adress the classic nostalgists, as they just want to remove everything blizzard added to the game. You should continue to design games for as many players as possible, and not focus on a small minority, as you tend to do in World of Warcraft (as example, your devs favor organized gameplay, while there are millions playing matchmade content). Your game will be way more successfull, if you focus on those million of players, who are happy about what WoW evolved to.

Pristine realms will only catch the attention of the classic players for a very short time, and only then if they really are classic realms. You will not gain the attention of them, if its just a free-of-convenience version of the actual content, instead those people will just go to whine even more about the fact you dont cater to their special interest needs. If you open this pandoras box, you will be doomed to listen to the small destructive minority that likes an old incarnation of the game over your actual development, while innovation should be a way more interesting part of your development process.

Thanks for reading, Mr. Morhaime. Or even not.

[AeneasBK]

So is that just a badly written plea for "Mr. Morhaime" to make WoW F2P.

Okay then, I guess.

[SoLoR1]

I wrote an open letter to Mr. Morhaime and Mr. Kern myself:

https://rymsblog.wordpress.com/2016/...m-and-mr-kern/

One MAJOR issues, most people actually dont like what WoW developed in to and specially dont like WoD... half of player base quit in first 6 months of WoD and most of other half is bitching on forums...

See this is big different, vanilla community wants legacy servers and are prepared to pay SUBSCRIPTION to retail for it, this letter only wants to make WoW F2P, so yeh "i want more free stuff".

But you got at least one thing correct, you are wannabe

[Eggroll]

Yep. Contrary to popular opinion, taste in WoW expansions is subjective even if the latest game is objectively better in many ways.

Pro-legacy folks most often aren't blind to the problems that older expansions have and are quite conscious of how they've been fixed on retail. However, they've weighed the benefits of these fixes against the subjective losses brought by recent expansions and have found the tradeoff to not be worth it. They're willing to live with the various idiosyncrasies and issues of older expansions if it means being able to play the way they like.
I don't know why this is so hard for some to swallow.

That's a good way to look at it. Thanks!

[Deleted]

One MAJOR issues, most people actually dont like what WoW developed in to

How do you know? Did you ask "most players"?

and specially dont like WoD... half of player base quit in first 6 months of WoD and most of other half is bitching on forums...

How are you able to link that to the idea its about conveniences and accessability and not the fact that blizzard did not really add much diversive content to WoD?

See this is big different, vanilla community wants legacy servers and are prepared to pay SUBSCRIPTION to retail for it, this letter only wants to make WoW F2P, so yeh "i want more free stuff".

Actually, all the Nostalrius players played it for free.

But you got at least one thing correct, you are wannabe

Thank you.

[Deleted]

Yep. Contrary to popular opinion, taste in WoW expansions is subjective even if the latest game is objectively better in many ways.

Pro-legacy folks most often aren't blind to the problems that older expansions have and are quite conscious of how they've been fixed on retail. However, they've weighed the benefits of these fixes against the subjective losses brought by recent expansions and have found the tradeoff to not be worth it. They're willing to live with the various idiosyncrasies and issues of older expansions if it means being able to play the way they like.

I don't know why this is so hard for some to swallow.

Exactly. This post of yours is where this thread should end.

[Deleted]

So is that just a badly written plea for "Mr. Morhaime" to make WoW F2P.

Okay then, I guess.

I am no native english speaker. So sorry if you think it is "written badly".

[Uurdz]

Obviously we have absolutely no way of knowing this.
But you are of course free to believe in that, if you so wish.
The only fact we know is they haven't been independent since -94.

- - - Updated - - -

"You're only as good as your last game"-seems to be the culture at Blizzard according to that Overwatch interview with Tigole.
So measured with Blizzard culture, the guy is absolute failure.

World of Warcraft was a gamble the first time, lucrative, but a gamble. Activision Blizzard would take a gamble with legacy.

I would actually accept this in a wider business context. You can have the greatest success of all time, but if your next venture fails then you've lost your midas touch.

[Huehuecoyotl]

I wrote an open letter to Mr. Morhaime and Mr. Kern myself:

https://rymsblog.wordpress.com/2016/...m-and-mr-kern/

So, half "I understand what all WoW players want, via some kind of psychic ability" and half "If only you knew as much as me about running a huge game, you would do it SO much better".

Yup, I can see that going down really well. You should totally send this.

[Deleted]

I am no native english speaker. So sorry if you think it is "written badly".

It was. Apology accepted.

[Deleted]

So, half "I understand what all WoW players want, via some kind of psychic ability" and half "If only you knew as much as me about running a huge game, you would do it SO much better".

Yup, I can see that going down really well. You should totally send this.

I think turning WoW f2p would adress way more players than adding pristine realms. But hey, thats just my opinion, as my whole post is just my opinion. For that reason its a blog post on my blog page.

Actually, if you talk about game design, every idea is just an opinion.