Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Ielenia]

I just wonder how the Large Private Server That Will Stay Unnamed stayed up with no money whatsoever,

Emulation =/= the real thing.

A patchwork script made mostly of guesswork run through an emulator, with just a handful of people working as ""customer support"" is not the same thing as an official server running the real server code with an official metadata software, with fully-trained and paid in-game customer support, as well as phone and e-mail paid customer support, and fully trained and paid developers to work on bugs and restore data in case of accidents. Not to mention paid community managers for the forums.

[Vash The Stampede]

Why do we even have this discussion anymore? Blizzard will never create a Legacy server. At least not one that is reproduced accurately. Moderators will infract you for just mentioning private servers from this point forward. As far as I'm concerned this thread is just a place to let everyone blow off their steam until they get tired of talking about it.

All Blizzard has to say is that they're working on Legacy Realms and this thread will go smoothly. Otherwise all the Vanilla discussion isn't going to be found in this forum.

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I just wonder how the Large Private Server That Will Stay Unnamed stayed up with no money whatsoever, it's like they took the minimum donations that they didn't ask for or at all make an easy way of donating. I wonder how other, and other private servers afford the hosting costs of Vanilla servers.

Cause running a server is cheap. Once you have the machine built, it's just a matter of paying the electric and internet bill. As for people to moderate it, you'd be surprised how many people will offer their free time for free. Ever built a Minecraft server? Cause I have. Cheap junk computer running 24/7, with a DNS setup and Minecraft server. Get some friends as moderators and you'll have a thriving community. People have done it for other games like Doom, Quake, and etc. People used to run game servers all the time, with people to help moderate them for free. Except with those games it's legal.

[Deleted]

A patchwork script made mostly of guesswork run through an emulator

That's a poor use of phrasing, denying that the prominent private servers had near identical similarities minus extensive customer support, mechanical bugs regarding bosses, scripting errors and bugs- within reason- along the way is just...dumb. It wasn't guesswork. You are right though, running legacy officially would have cost, but not nearly as much as live does in terms of server costs, there's also the fact that, the developers already developed the code! That's where your point falls short, the code has already been developed, so you wouldn't need a development team, or all of the other production teams that go into making a game, which is the majority of the cost to ANY game, obviously.

Cause running a server is cheap. Once you have the machine built, it's just a matter of paying the electric and internet bill. As for people to moderate it, you'd be surprised how many people will offer their free time for free. Ever built a Minecraft server? Cause I have. Cheap junk computer running 24/7, with a DNS setup and Minecraft server. Get some friends as moderators and you'll have a thriving community. People have done it for other games like Doom, Quake, and etc. People used to run game servers all the time, with people to help moderate them for free. Except with those games it's legal.

Mhm, my point exactly. Initial costs outweigh maintenance, with no initial costs the incentive for Blizzard to go down that route drastically increases, now that we established it's not profitability that would hinder them, simply fracturing the live game's player base.

All Blizzard has to say is that they're working on Legacy Realms and this thread will go smoothly.

Oh, I don't care about legacy realms, I'm personally happy with the announcements that were recently made regarding upcoming private servers, I was just refuting points because it's late and I'm bored. People slander the possibility of Blizzard doing Legacy so senselessly, despite it being an inevitable source of profit they will likely make use of, because they are a business.

[Kyanion]

That's a poor use of phrasing, denying that the prominent private servers had near identical similarities minus extensive customer support, mechanical bugs regarding bosses, scripting errors and bugs- within reason- along the way is just...dumb. It wasn't guesswork.

Good luck having a discussion when you spout stuff like this.

[Zoneseek]

Emulation =/= the real thing.

A patchwork script made mostly of guesswork run through an emulator,

You're right that emulation is not the real thing. It starts out much worse, but over time can actually be better. At this point, almost 20 years after launch, emulated ultima online servers are better in many ways to the "real thing" mostly because they have had MORE dedicated people working on them than the retail servers themselves for basically a decade now. Really at this point you're paying to play the inferior product when looking at retail vs private uo servers.

Not saying wow servers are there yet, but I could see in the near future private vanilla wow servers being of higher quality than actual vanilla was way back when. Emulation eventually beats the real thing in many cases. Even something as simple as emulating nintendo games is a much better experience now than the actual systems ever were. Unlimited controller options, save/pause games whenever you want regardless of in-game support, etc. Emulated console games are a great example of emulation beating the original product. Eventually vanilla wow servers will be able to say the same thing.

[Deleted]

people who are against legacy are people who never played the game in its glory years

Having played since beta and vanilla is absolutely not "the glory years". That's TBC and WOTLK.

[Daffan]

Exactly. Prestige still exists in the game. Special mounts, unique titles, top gear and Mythic only phases. Something I will never see from now since I decided to step down from it all. To claim otherwise is just wrong.

I agree that retail is much harder and there is still prestige, especially due to Mythic raiding (Classic raiding was a joke almost in comparison). But if you don't raid Mythic, the entire game is sort of a joke. It's not really the prestige that people are really looking for in Classic/TBC etc.

The journey and progression is really horrible for the average player now. Your not playing WoW if you don't raid Mythic these days (Heroic raiding is borderline), your playing World of Welfare: Catchup Mechanics the game, even if you don't want too. The only way to get out of that rut is to raid mythic ASAP before they bring out better easily accessed gear to either make content trivialized or straight up obsolete, but with Titanforging and Warforging your already half way there without them even releasing a patch. (lol 870 ilvl before even doing anything hard no leg)

Its just an entirely different experience and feeling of reward, you get way more epics and other crap these days but it doesn't feel rewarding. Being a casual back then was horrible in raid participation (25/40 man requirements sucked, no flex, bad compositions, no crz, no premade for finding groups etc) but everything you did felt worth the time.

This also comes around to why people leave newer WoW faster, the game just simply runs out faster. You gear faster, the content expires way faster - people imo just feel its a waste of time even doing anything because next patch whatever they did was a waste of time. I like how blizz has to gate LFR just so people don't finish the content in 2 days.

Having played since beta and vanilla is absolutely not "the glory years". That's TBC and WOTLK.

TBC was a good good upgrade over Vanilla, kept most (90%) of the magic (lol Heroic MGT/Badges at the end tho) but fixed a lot of problems. 40 man size is garbage so 25 was way better, half specs in vanilla sucking is also garbage so all those fixes were also a blessing (ret, prot, ele, enh fixed etc)

[Deleted]

Good luck having a discussion when you spout stuff like this.

Point out what's incorrect with the statement, and I'll be happy to respond, make a good point and I'll be inclined to agree with you. I'm not being irrational, I'm just seeing nothing to refute my logic. When you can't, that's all that can be mustered? A joke, really. Bias is a thing, and has no place in arguments.

[MoanaLisa]

You are wrong, there. Private servers are effectively case studies which serve to give Blizzard an estimation of how many people would play the game if legacy was to be published legitimately by Blizzard. Not their intention, but can serve that purpose, indeed!

That's probably wrong. Trying to compare free versus paying pretty much negates any sort of valid estimate that you could do with respect to number of sign-ups and retention.

[papajohn4]

That's probably wrong. Trying to compare free versus paying pretty much negates any sort of valid estimate that you could do with respect to number of sign-ups and retention.

No, you are wrong.. Pserver players are players who played and PAYED wow for years, they are not the usual f2p hippies... Dont confuse them as such.

Besides, why they dont play 1 of the 100000000 f2p games that exist and are "official" and many of them are "AAA"?

Everyone i know on pserver would pay gladly for an official one.

If anything, the players in pservers are lower because many people dont want to waste time on something unofficial that may close the next month but would gladly pay for official.

If you are looking for hippies, you look at the wrong place.. Except if your argument makes you feel betterbor if you think that you will be salty towards people who love vanilla wow...

[Deleted]

Debatable. Usually Mythic final bosses recently have a special Mythic only phase that is never seen even on the PTR. As well as a majority of Mythic fights introducing new mechanics. Air of mystery right there. Also no people can't see everything. Casual players never got to see Ra-Den or Garrosh's special Mythic only phase. Same with Mar'gok and Archimonde. And according to a bit of datamining Gul'dan will have a Mythic only phase.

This. Thank you for this post. This tells everything about nowdays World of Warcraft. You treat it as somekind of an application, like somekind of sport I don't know how to call this exactly. You try to tell me not that seeing a different mechanic or getting a different title is the same as not seing a boss at all in vanilla?

You are both right and wrong at the same time. If we treat WoW like it's just a bunch of statistics and stuff like that - you are absolutely right. But if are looking at it as an MMORPG that it should be - you are wrong.

Endgame being reachable only for those who commited was created this way on purpose. It made the game whole and made total sense. You went to molten core and you felt like you were one of the heroes who actually made it - it was an epic feeling and well, it was deserved. This

You cannot compare this feeling or achivement to seeing different mechanics on mythic, or a slightly better looking mount. Killing Garrosh is killing garrosh - we all did it. That's what makes this game not so special anymore. Everyone can be an epic hero who saves the whole world by playing the game mostly solo a couple of hours a month even, with ocasionall LFD and LFR.

Summing it up - in vanilla few percent saw what like 95% people dreamed about seeing and did everything to get. Now 95% see everything, and the few percent see the same things but with few minor changes. Does not make it special at all.

Tell yourself whatever you want but having epic zones that were unreachable made me wanna play this game. Now it's just an optional thing that you dont really have to do to be part of everything.

[Dergiab]

I want a "challenge mode" added to the leveling experience which uses the affix system, makes mobs hit harder/spawn additional mobs etc etc. Even the Iron Man challenge which has killed many usually boils down to people dying to silly mistakes, NOT mobs being actually difficult to handle since they still have the Classic AI to them in 1-60 content...

This could be so easily somved if they'd just let us do ORANGE and RED difficulty quests. I tried attacking mobs that were 4-7 (don't know exact level, but they were orange and sometimes red in the number) and they actually felt like pre-cata mobs. But I don't want to grind mobs 1-100, ironic eh?

[Splenda]

Stop talking about private servers, there's been enough warnings.

[Xykotic]

Feel like alot of people are just picking at eachothers opinion, considering fun to be some entirely objective concept that applies to everyone.

We're not hiveminded, people. People like things without having all the details to explain why. Personally I really like Legion, and I also enjoy Vanilla, these are very different games now, and its fun to relive the game like it was, and do the simple raids. I certainly consider it a nostalgia thing, but so what?

I really hope Blizzard decides to do legacy. The simplicity and crudeness has a charm that Legion does not for me, even if Legion is mechanically a lot more interesting.

I think Runescape did this very well with their Old School Runescape version as an alternative to the main game. It started as like a 5 man small department running it, and is now pretty massive, even going as far as to add polled unique content to that version of the game.

[Deficineiron]

Oh, I don't care about legacy realms, I'm personally happy with the announcements that were recently made regarding upcoming private servers, I was just refuting points because it's late and I'm bored. People slander the possibility of Blizzard doing Legacy so senselessly, despite it being an inevitable source of profit they will likely make use of, because they are a business.

Would you think it more likely blizzard would go the Frankenstein server route (basically classic-themed map and linear quests in a modern engine, with modern tuning and leveling speed, QOL, etc.?

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That's probably wrong. Trying to compare free versus paying pretty much negates any sort of valid estimate that you could do with respect to number of sign-ups and retention.

there may be valid estimates based on region of the player. NA and western europe players who go through the trouble of finding a 1.12 client and play the buggy broken game, as it is known here, are not likely to balk at 15$/mo for the real deal. EEurope maybe different, and we already discussed the high % of china players they had, which has an entirely different implication.

Now if you are talking a ps with active pay-to-win mechanics (even more than blizzard now sells), and aggressive donation programs, etc., then yeah, they have a totally different crowd.

[Eleccybubb]

This. Thank you for this post. This tells everything about nowdays World of Warcraft. You treat it as somekind of an application, like somekind of sport I don't know how to call this exactly. You try to tell me not that seeing a different mechanic or getting a different title is the same as not seing a boss at all in vanilla?

You are both right and wrong at the same time. If we treat WoW like it's just a bunch of statistics and stuff like that - you are absolutely right. But if are looking at it as an MMORPG that it should be - you are wrong.

Endgame being reachable only for those who commited was created this way on purpose. It made the game whole and made total sense. You went to molten core and you felt like you were one of the heroes who actually made it - it was an epic feeling and well, it was deserved. This

You cannot compare this feeling or achivement to seeing different mechanics on mythic, or a slightly better looking mount. Killing Garrosh is killing garrosh - we all did it. That's what makes this game not so special anymore. Everyone can be an epic hero who saves the whole world by playing the game mostly solo a couple of hours a month even, with ocasionall LFD and LFR.

Summing it up - in vanilla few percent saw what like 95% people dreamed about seeing and did everything to get. Now 95% see everything, and the few percent see the same things but with few minor changes. Does not make it special at all.

Tell yourself whatever you want but having epic zones that were unreachable made me wanna play this game. Now it's just an optional thing that you dont really have to do to be part of everything.

And endgame for those who commit still exists. In the form of Mythic only bosses and phases for example. Just because you don't see it that way does not change the fact prestige still exists within the game. Also even the devs admitted 95% of people not seeing the content was a mistake. It's not statistics at all. You made a claim that endgame and prestige doesn't exist. The fact is it does in many forms.

[ShimmerSwirl]

I agree that retail is much harder and there is still prestige, especially due to Mythic raiding (Classic raiding was a joke almost in comparison). But if you don't raid Mythic, the entire game is sort of a joke. It's not really the prestige that people are really looking for in Classic/TBC etc.

The journey and progression is really horrible for the average player now. Your not playing WoW if you don't raid Mythic these days (Heroic raiding is borderline), your playing World of Welfare: Catchup Mechanics the game, even if you don't want too. The only way to get out of that rut is to raid mythic ASAP before they bring out better easily accessed gear to either make content trivialized or straight up obsolete, but with Titanforging and Warforging your already half way there without them even releasing a patch. (lol 870 ilvl before even doing anything hard no leg)

Its just an entirely different experience and feeling of reward, you get way more epics and other crap these days but it doesn't feel rewarding. Being a casual back then was horrible in raid participation (25/40 man requirements sucked, no flex, bad compositions, no crz, no premade for finding groups etc) but everything you did felt worth the time.

This also comes around to why people leave newer WoW faster, the game just simply runs out faster. You gear faster, the content expires way faster - people imo just feel its a waste of time even doing anything because next patch whatever they did was a waste of time. I like how blizz has to gate LFR just so people don't finish the content in 2 days.



TBC was a good good upgrade over Vanilla, kept most (90%) of the magic (lol Heroic MGT/Badges at the end tho) but fixed a lot of problems. 40 man size is garbage so 25 was way better, half specs in vanilla sucking is also garbage so all those fixes were also a blessing (ret, prot, ele, enh fixed etc)

A point that is lost often is that a big difference between old and new wow is that gear actually mattered in old wow. Aside from the tedious nature of all the catchup mechanics now, the worst part is that that gear really serves no purpose to the people getting it. With the raid centric models in Van/TBC, people sought after gear because it was essential to completing the endgame content in the game - raiding. Nowadays people seek after this gear, and then they just sit there and don't use it. The game is very gear-centric, yet gear is mostly pointless for all but the mythic raiders.

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No they're not. They're 99% the same with little bits been added and taken away over the years.

In Vanilla you
Leveled.
Dungeon.
Grinded
Raided/PVP

Today you
Level
Dungeon
Grind
Raid/PVP

All the time using the same mechanics from then as now. Vanilla and Legion are more alike than any part of WoW and Rift. And Rift was an unashamed wow clone. (Going so far as "We're not in Azeroth anymore.")

Ifyoureallythinkthatistrue,ihighlydoubtyoueverplayedonvanilla.

[voidillusion]

No they're not. They're 99% the same with little bits been added and taken away over the years.

In Vanilla you
Leveled.
Dungeon.
Grinded
Raided/PVP

Today you
Level
Dungeon
Grind
Raid/PVP

All the time using the same mechanics from then as now. Vanilla and Legion are more alike than any part of WoW and Rift. And Rift was an unashamed wow clone. (Going so far as "We're not in Azeroth anymore.")

In wow you
Leveled.
Dungeon.
Grinded
Raided/PVP

In Rift/Wildstar/SWTor you
Leveled.
Dungeon.
Grinded
Raided/PVP

Thus they are the same game right?

[Deficineiron]

In Vanilla you
Leveled.
Dungeon.
Grinded
Raided/PVP

Today you
Level
Dungeon
Grind
Raid/PVP

All the time using the same mechanics from then as now. Vanilla and Legion are more alike than any part of WoW and Rift. And Rift was an unashamed wow clone. (Going so far as "We're not in Azeroth anymore.")

Finally someone who gets it, and can state so in such an elegant proof!

It is obvious to all that alleged legacy-supporters cannot survive the piercing light of logic! With Spells & Philtres like the above, Kallisto shows his power as a mighty sorcerer of logic!

Beware, alleged supporters of legacy, lest the High Mage turn his roving eye upon you as well!

[Ielenia]

That's a poor use of phrasing, denying that the prominent private servers had near identical similarities minus extensive customer support, mechanical bugs regarding bosses, scripting errors and bugs- within reason- along the way is just...dumb. It wasn't guesswork.

Yes. Yes, it was. They admitted as much.

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You're right that emulation is not the real thing. It starts out much worse, but over time can actually be better.

You are speaking solely through a player's perspective, which is both useless and meaningless when we're talking about setting up servers.

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(lol Heroic MGT/Badges at the end tho)

I just wanted to point out that "Badges of Justice" existed since The Burning Crusade launch.

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No, you are wrong.. Pserver players are players who played and PAYED wow for years, they are not the usual f2p hippies... Dont confuse them as such.

You're wrong. Even if illegal server players once paid Blizzard at least one month of paid subscription service (which you can't prove all, or even the majority of, illegal server players did), assuming they're willing to pay a subscription today just because they once did so, nearly a decade ago, is quite disingenuous.