Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[PenguinChan]

Just take Nost code and recruit them as their Vanilla Dev Team?

Unless I'm mistaken, 'just take code' would never work. If the languages are completely different, wouldn't you have to manually go through and extract important parts? I'm sure there are code translators out there to make it transfer, but the head ache of having to take someone elses code and put it into a language Blizzard uses would seem folly.

Assuming the two languages are different, and I'm almost sure it is. Generally emulation is never the same code language or code USED as the official stuff. Plus the emulation isn't 1:1 at all to the way you'd normally do things for MMORPGs.

[Vyse]

Yeah, Blizzard definitely hires amateurs into their elite team of the highest paid game creators in the industry

Highest paid yes, elite team? LOL my ass

Also re read my editied post regarding "they`d have to pay them appropriately, righ?".

- - - Updated - - -

Nostralius doesn't have the code, they have the compiled front-end application and they reverse-engineered a database by painstakingly reproducing everything. While it is possible to de-compile some of the WoW client you can never restore it back to what its original code and code files were. Ever.

Maybe I am making it sound too easy, thats because I am at work and cant write an essay.

But some of you guys act like it cant be done, its so bad, ooommg, nonono, so definitely youre (some of you) making it sound too hard.

[Surfd]

Just take Nost code and recruit them as their Vanilla Dev Team?

Yes, of COURSE, why didnt anyone think of this.

We will just take this cobbled together pile of scripts, held together with spit, bubblegum and ductape, that is essentially one giant godaweful frankenstein like mess of a backend hacked together to get something to pretend that it is something vaguely like an offical WoW server, and we will just stuff it into a 10 year old server framework that wont even run on our modern hardware, and it will somehow just magically work out. I mean, it's not like half their data is completely made up or guessed at, most of their scripts are basically designed backwards, and about 75% of it (at a conservative estimate) wouldnt even know how to talk to the origional WoW server code to begin with.....

But some of you guys act like it cant be done, its so bad, ooommg, nonono, so definitely youre (some of you) making it sound too hard.

I have no idea what you do, but it is pretty obvious that you have quite literally NO CLUE AT ALL how difficult it would be to "re-build" vanilla wow.

Could it be done? Certainly. Could it be done as easily as you seem to think? Not a chance in hell. Nostralus is an emulator. It is simply pretending to be a vanilla server as best it can through what amounts to a metric boatload of hacks and reverse engineered scripts that essentially just do their best guess at taking some input, and producing output that the client can at least try to do something with. And that? ALL OF THAT? That is essentially GARBAGE to the acctual WoW server program. 100% none of it would be useful in any way shape or form. The programming languages would be completely different, the datasets would be completely incompatable, the scripts would be useless. And that doesnt even take into account that the original WoW server program has been iterated over literally hundreds of times between Vanilla and now, to account for changes in hardware, software, client cababilities (phazing, LFR, Bnet integration, etc). If they wanted to re-open a vanilla server in the modern day, they would pretty much have to re-build the entire server database from scratch, which is never going to happen.

[zorkuus]

But some of you guys act like it cant be done, its so bad, ooommg, nonono, so definitely youre (some of you) making it sound too hard.

"Anything" can be done. The question is, is it worth the effort?

[urasim]

Also 20k was a bit low on my end, because I was referring to the Nost "most online" playerbase.
If you take all accounts into consideration, of all people from those Vanilla realms, + the ones that want
to play Vanilla, but not on private servers, the number would be something like 200k, trust me.

No, I will not trust you. Why? Because you assume everyone who plays the Nost private server are willing to pay a subscription fee. This is crazy to assume.

They'd work for free? You talk to them and know they'd turn down a salary? Taking their code? Do you even know what you're talking about? You can't just take Nost code from them and start a server tomorrow...

[PenguinChan]

But some of you guys act like it cant be done, its so bad, ooommg, nonono, so definitely youre (some of you) making it sound too hard.

It's not hard, it just won't be worth the time and effort put into it. Game development on the grunt level generally is tedious and takes TIME. Again, it can be done EASILY but it takes quite some time. Lest you forget that most private servers take years to develop with their low developer count.

[pallyken]

Nostralius doesn't have the code, they have the compiled front-end application and they reverse-engineered a database by painstakingly reproducing everything. While it is possible to de-compile some of the WoW client you can never restore it back to what its original code and code files were. Ever.

I dont think people understood they werent playing vanilla wow. Nostalrius was a "close approximation" based on Nostalrius team's research.

[Deleted]

Just take Nost code and recruit them as their Vanilla Dev Team?

Also 20k was a bit low on my end, because I was referring to the Nost "most online" playerbase.
If you take all accounts into consideration, of all people from those Vanilla realms, + the ones that want
to play Vanilla, but not on private servers, the number would be something like 200k, trust me.

Even if some players only play this for 2 months, this is 30$ Blizzard did not have before.

And by recruiting the Nost / any other Dev Team, and taking their code, 80% of the work is already done.
And im sure even under Blizzards flag, the Dev team of Nostalrius would work for free.

most valuable choice would be this but blizzard is too "etroitesse" to even consider that...

[Vyse]

Yes, of COURSE, why didnt anyone think of this.

We will just take this cobbled together pile of scripts, held together with spit, bubblegum and ductape, that is essentially one giant godaweful frankenstein like mess of a backend hacked together to get something to pretend that it is something vaguely like an offical WoW server, and we will just stuff it into a 10 year old server framework that wont even run on our modern hardware, and it will somehow just magically work out. I mean, it's not like half their data is completely made up or guessed at, most of their scripts are basically designed backwards, and about 75% of it (at a conservative estimate) wouldnt even know how to talk to the origional WoW server code to begin with.....

Dont exaggerate.

[Foj]

The costs. Imagine the costs. 20k players paying $15 a month is about $300k a month, or $3.6 million a year. They wouldn't even break even, if estimates are conservative. They'd need far more than 20k and they'd be sinking a LOT of money into something they have no idea if it would pay off.

The burdened cost of one quality mid-level West Coast developer is about $35k/month. Ops fractionally less. They take months to hire and months to get up to speed.

The idea that you could just "pay the Nost guys to keep doing it" is laughable. People don't realize the vast gap between a service that's offered as a hobby for shits and giggles and a service that is an actual contracted service with actual 24x7 operations and SLAs and QA and infosec and customer service and release management and all that shit.

Among other things the instant something becomes a Blizzard service (or a Steam service or EA or whoever), it immediately gets painted with a LOIC target forever.

[urasim]

Maybe I am making it sound too easy, thats because I am at work and cant write an essay.

But some of you guys act like it cant be done, its so bad, ooommg, nonono, so definitely youre (some of you) making it sound too hard.

It can be done. It just takes time and money. Which Blizzard doesn't want to invest the time and money to do such a risky thing.

[Ielenia]

Ok so don't question me when I ask someone to prove that they claim to know that Blizzard "runs the numbers" everytime a post goes up. Blizzard stated in a post from 2010 that the reason they don't create a legacy server is because they " prefer to keep the game moving forward as they want the game to continuously evolve and progress." Not because "the numbers don't add up". http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/1...gional-realms/

Here you go:

We were at one time internally discussing the possibility fairly seriously, but the long term interest in continued play on them couldn't justify the extremely large amount of development and support resources it would take to implement and maintain them.

And a more recent answer:

We feel it is not feasible to support multiple versions of World of Warcraft concurrently, and instead believe that our resources would be better placed continuing to build upon the current live game.

What information they have tells them it's not a good idea to make 'classic realms'.

[PenguinChan]

I dont think people understood they werent playing vanilla wow. Nostalrius was a "close approximation" based on Nostalrius team's research.

You can get pretty damn close to emulating previous content because this has been done before Classic was history. People document these changes even on Wiki's for christs sake. And not for private server reasons, but for documentation reasons. MMO-Champion is also a great resource if you ever want to look at changes made (if they aren't on a Wiki).

But you are right, most people don't realize that 1.12.1 is a patch that was right at the end of Classic. Every private server (to my knowledge) never progress like it would on retail, so you get an extremely easy experience (not that it is hard anyways when relevant and geared).

[Foj]

Dont exaggerate.

You mean, don't exaggerate how easy it is?

[Darsithis]

Maybe I am making it sound too easy, thats because I am at work and cant write an essay.

But some of you guys act like it cant be done, its so bad, ooommg, nonono, so definitely youre (some of you) making it sound too hard.

I never said it can't be done. It can be. I've just said, as Blizzard has maintained, and, due to my now 17 years of experience as a developer, it would be very difficult and expensive to do. It's not worth it for the small return they might get from the maybe 200k players, MAYBE 200k. Longevity would be needed to recoup the massive investment to begin the servers, and I really doubt they'd see a high, long-term level of subscribers. Clearly, Blizzard feels the same as I do.

None of what I'm saying means I hate classic servers. I don't. I'm a big fan of being able to re-experience things, which is why I'm playing through Geneforge 1 - 5 again (as a rebel this time). Nostalgia.

[Deleted]

And im sure even under Blizzards flag, the Dev team of Nostalrius would work for free.

Oh really now? Are you one of the Nost devs, talking for them, or did you just pull that out of your hat?
I'm quite sure that's not the case. And that's also not how corporations recruit. They also seldomly recruit people who have committed copyright infringements against them - those things are kind of a red flag for HR.

And finally:
Even with volunteers and devs sinking in more more than full-time jobs for free, even with incredibly passionate playerbase - Nost was still not economically viable and was going to close due to hosting costs. It seems most players just want to freeload a bit, dabble for a moment and bail as soon as there's cost involved - this is what made Nost link their payments to the hosting company - and that's their death warrant.

This whole debacle proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that there is absolutely no valid business case for vanilla servers.
The market is just not there. The player interest is not there. No one at Blizzard would invest money in it - there's absolutely no ROI, even if there was no new development costs (which there are).

It really is a dead horse. Stop beating it.

[Felrane]

Oh really now? Are you one of the Nost devs, talking for them, or did you just pull that out of your hat?
I'm quite sure that's not the case. And that's also not how corporations recruit. They also seldomly recruit people who have committed copyright infringements against them - those things are kind of a red flag for HR.

And finally:
Even with volunteers and devs sinking in more more than full-time jobs for free, even with incredibly passionate playerbase - Nost was still not economically viable and was going to close due to hosting costs. It seems most players just want to freeload a bit, dabble for a moment and bail as soon as there's cost involved - this is what made Nost link their payments to the hosting company - and that's their death warrant.

This whole debacle proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that there is absolutely no valid business case for vanilla servers.
The market is just not there. The player interest is not there. No one at Blizzard would invest money in it - there's absolutely no ROI, even if there was no new development costs (which there are).

It really is a dead horse. Stop beating it.

They have said so on their forums they love classic wow and loved the work they were doing.

[Darsithis]

The burdened cost of one quality mid-level West Coast developer is about $35k/month. Ops fractionally less. They take months to hire and months to get up to speed.

The idea that you could just "pay the Nost guys to keep doing it" is laughable. People don't realize the vast gap between a service that's offered as a hobby for shits and giggles and a service that is an actual contracted service with actual 24x7 operations and SLAs and QA and infosec and customer service and release management and all that shit.

Among other things the instant something becomes a Blizzard service (or a Steam service or EA or whoever), it immediately gets painted with a LOIC target forever.

Exactly. I suspect more than 35k since they'd probably use internal team + some hires, so you're looking at people making $60k or $80k, plus team leads (which go around 100k - 120k here in Chicago, dunno about West Coast). The cost is staggering. No matter what, hiring or moving those people is an up-front cost for at least a few months while people get sorted out, designs and plans are written up, and the new hires are brought up-to-speed with programming practices, standards, and the code itself.

[Vyse]

You mean, don't exaggerate how easy it is?

Nope, exaggerating how inacurate the servers is, that everything (the majority) is made
up and that it looks as it has been created by monkeys.

If he would have played on Nost, I think he would not trash talk it that much.

[PenguinChan]

~ Snip ~

They admitted to working for free and would love to continue doing so (I believe) on the reddit AMA they did. The death of the game was coming April 10th anyways, this has been proven and linked before. Their current host required full payments of huge chunks, which was impossible for them to afford because it HAD to be one payment.

~ Snip ~

It makes me both happy and sad to see how expensive it is to create and develop games now, but it's fair that developers get their due.