Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Deleted]

So youre telling me, all those vanilla fans, who somehow found their way onto a private server dont browse this website, reddit, the official wow forums, or use youtube?

Come on now

Dude not everybody cares about forums

[A dot Ham]

This garbage is shit posting:



That isn't a counter argument mate.

Its an accurate depiction of the message being left by proponents. "The game is shit, let us go back to when it was good."

Its an analogy, it helps people get perspective.

Glad to see you're taking such an interest in my posts though.

If you don't appreciate because it hits too close to home, then perhaps ya'll should change your tactics.

[Deleted]

Fair enough, I might have to concede that this goes into technical areas I'm just too ignorant to comment on. But considering the experiences I had on the emulators I was using/am using, I think Blizzard could certainly "get away with it" in as much as unless someone pointed out via datamining or w/e that it was an emulator, most (read: nearly ALL) people wouldn't notice. Hence all of the Nost players who didn't even realise they were playing on an emulator.

One could argue that "isn't professional enough" for Blizzard. But I don't know that many of the "players" care or even agree on what "proessional" means (See: division over community manager responses to derp headed kiddies in the community )

Thank you for making an account to respond tho Well you made it in 2012, but still

Most emulators are a lot less efficient than their original counterpart, but are running on a much more powerfull hardware.
Like console emulators on pcs, or n64 ones on smartphones.

The second thing is the effort to bring that software into your house.
You would have to check every line of code for backdoors and bugs and make adjustments to your environment.
(Using different application servers or databases as backend can make huge differences in the implementation).
Adding compatibility with battle.net 2.0 is the next step, so people can actually log in and use authenticators and stuff like that.

And who knows what the code itself actually looks like.
Its already hard to get your developers in big companies to follow coding guidelines and best practices.
Somehow I doubt that the codebase for a "fun"-project is in that great a shape.

All that effort, and you still would end up with an emulator. At this point you might probably just as well do it yourself :P

ps: I think I created that account for some give-away of some sort. Cant really remember

[Thanatoss]

Do expect to get shouted down with nonsensical 3liners copy-pasted ad-nauseum by the same 5 posters.

What do you expect after 700 pages of the same things being said on both sides

[Deleted]

Iirc, around 30 level you hit the wall of "where the fuck do i level now?" and "fuck these neutral locations with fucking red leveled players crapping all over me"

Having to make decisions and having to face other players in a game where world PvP is meant to be a significant feature? How horrible.

[trh35hu35y]

Dude not everybody cares about forums

But you care about your server, and Vanilla

And that fact of the matter is, that petition was exposed to hundreds of thousands of people. People who played wow, still play wow or never played WoW. And it still hasnt reached over 100k

Really shows just how right Blizzard was.
You think you do, but its just you

[Wilfred]

I don`t give a f**k about it...

[Deleted]

But you care about your server, and Vanilla

And that fact of the matter is, that petition was exposed to hundreds of thousands of people. People who played wow, still play wow or never played WoW. And it still hasnt reached over 100k

Really shows just how right Blizzard was.

You think you do, but its just you

Not even going to continue this discussion

[Darkeon]

But you care about your server, and Vanilla

And that fact of the matter is, that petition was exposed to hundreds of thousands of people. People who played wow, still play wow or never played WoW. And it still hasnt reached over 100k

Really shows just how right Blizzard was.
You think you do, but its just you

If you were to post a poll here to see how many people wish to keep WoW's servers up, you wouldn't get a full subscribers vote. Deal with it. Not everyone follows the game's news and fansites - most actually just play the game and couldn't care less about the rest.

If that's your argument as to why Vanilla Servers are not necessary... hell, did your argument fell flat in the water, right off the bat, buddy.

[Deleted]

I didn't play on Nost because I didn't even know about it until I saw this thread listed on the top of the site a few days ago while peeking in to see new Hearthstone cards. That said, I'm using another, similar service now.

I would absolutely love it for Blizzard to sue me for using a client that I paid full price for while maintaining two active accounts on their live game (One for me, one for my wife) in spite of how awful it is. Having them pay my legal fees in the end would be satisfying as hell. The reason people are so flippant in this thread about "theft" is the same reason Blizz won't just drag a net and sue any p server players they can identify - Many of these players have done nothing illegal at all, and have only performed actions against the TOS. Now if they want to start banning? Fine. Save me some money. I literally only log into the current shit show to run old raids for items I wish I'd won or gotten to drop in the past, purely for attachment and affection for my characters. But while they're within their rights to shut down any outside entity offering servers for their games, they're SOL re: coming after people using software that they purchased, from a legal standpoint.

Most of the people here don't feel any guilt for "stealing" anything because we friggin' paid for it. A sizable portion of us continue to pay for it, in spite of it being a shadow of its former self. We love the world, we love our characters, and yes we are attached.

The onus is on Blizzard to provide a service and absolutely none of the people contributing to this discussion have given a realistic reason as to why they will not. It's been continually misrepresented as a task that requires a massive undertaking when two servers, one PvE and one PvP, per region (if that) would suffice as a legitimate test, and potentially be all that's needed in the end. "They know that it won't make money." Really? With no testing at all? Did they know that WoD would collapse in on itself in two months? Well, hell, I'd say they risked more on pushing that out in spite of their clear omnipotence than they ever would have by testing out a handful Vanilla legacy servers.

The sad truth is that they very likely spent considerably more on the lawyers used to shut down Nost than they would have putting out a handful of legacy servers.

People who point to the potential spite that those making the current game might feel for the concept aren't just pulling that from nowhere. Look, just look, at the manner in which the question was addressed in that "You think that you want to that to do that" silliness. That's a customer. And not a just a $15/mo customer, but a clearly foreign customer who likely traveled internationally on top of the ~$150 he paid for a Blizzcon ticket(I haven't been since 2007 but it was around $100 then and I know it's gone up), and for what? To get publicly spat on by someone whose special skill is apparently getting paid entirely too much money to come in from a failed MMO, slowly gain position, and then inadvertently trash the work others did to make a better, more successful one? His listed reasons in the full video don't help matters any either, since many people longing for the old days are going to point to Group Finder as one of the current game's downfalls.

Blizzard made a huge mistake in tone for Mists and that was reflected by the huge influx of old players into WoD. What they see as a cyclical loss though was likely those old players realizing that the game they loved was still very much dead outside of visual tone. Even worse off, in fact, due to garrisons.

Garrisons will be my last point here, and in argument to the idea that anyone at the helm has a clue what will and will not be successful. People wanted player housing pretty much since Vanilla. Literally all they wanted was a small area that they could decorate and personalize to show off various achievements and of course to offer expanded storage. Like any other MMO with player housing. The geniuses who you all are telling me know what people want somehow bungled this concept to the point that it offers literally NONE of what players wanted, with the side effect of taking all of the game out of their game. Really?

This is about as sensible as seeing neocons like Bill Cristol back on TV explaining how to fix the mess they made out of Iraq.

Excellent post. I agree.

[Deleted]

Don't have much to add mate.
This is what the tone of this whole thread could have been like.

Do expect to get shouted down with nonsensical 3liners copy-pasted ad-nauseum by the same 5 posters.

All that aside, just wanted you to know that the effort you put in formulating your thoughts isn't wasted on all, good job.

To be honest, both sides are doing that - and the post you quoted was just another (though a bit longer) repetition of the theme that "pro-pserver" people have been hammering here for half of the 750 pages. The other half is the anti-pserver people shouting bloody murder over "stealing".

It's hard to discuss this objectively and with cool head. Half-truths, personal anecdotes and speculation gets thrown around as absolute truth, just like in that post you quoted.

It was well articulated though - it would be nice if discussions could maintain that quality.

[Atelniar]

You should've been here for the TRH thread, it went 1000+ pages overnight iirc

Oh, no, I think I have had more than enough fun with this one thread alone for a lifetime. Big threads tend to lead to unhealthy discussion, but it does showcase the topic's relevance at the current time. At this rate, however, we'll end up with a Private Realm subsection. Which would probably help with the annoyance of people who are tired of people creating vanilla realm topics in the general WoW sub forum.

[Deleted]

What do you expect after 700 pages of the same things being said on both sides

I'm guessing he expects it to get shouted down with nonsensical 3liners copy-pasted ad-nauseum by the same 5 posters, you know... as he said he expected in that post you quoted. kek

[Deleted]

Implying 90K signatures for an illegal, word of mouth, World of Warcraft:Vanilla, private server, isnt a lot.

I think a lot of people are not bothering with the petition just because of all the badmouthing of the people against legacy servers.

No the problem with the petition is that everyone can fake push it.

[trh35hu35y]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/1...rver_Owner.php

[Atelniar]

We understand enough about how PS work but we need to look at this on what Blizzard would do. Then look at what the fans would want. Some would argue for Vanilla 1.0, some 1.12 some wouldn't even WANT Vanilla but TBC or WotLK. Just don't assume because 1.12 is what PS run that it is the right answer and what you'd get from Blizz if it ever happened.

If you want to implement a vanilla server the correct iteration is, without any doubt, 1.12. Pre-TBC patch broke the honor rank system in PvP and Alterac Valley, so of course it would be patch 1.12. That is the patch containing just about everything that was including during classic WoW's life time leading up to and before the pre-TBC changes. It's not really a big and important question that most people seeking a vanilla experience are confused about. There seems to be an overall agreement among most people that it is the correct way to implement a classic private server.

[PixelFox]

But while they're within their rights to shut down any outside entity offering servers for their games, they're SOL re: coming after people using software that they purchased, from a legal standpoint.

So here's an example of how fucked up copyright law can be.

In the computer industry there is conflict between the companies who make computer systems (generally the big server variety) and 3rd-party maintenance companies who would like to sell you a service contract to maintain and repair that hardware for less money than the manufacturer wants to charge for the same services.

Each time you power-up a computer, it copies (you can see where this is going) the operating system from disk into memory. It turns out that the server manufacturers were able to successfully claim that this operation is "making a copy" under copyright law, and thus the manufacturer had the right to control each and every "copy" that was made. The manufacturer could decide whether to permit or deny each operation of their software, so they could allow the customer to turn on the computer, but not a 3rd-party maintenance engineer.

Under this same logic, any device that includes software, and any software covered by copyright, can be absolutely controlled by the owner of the copyright based on this crazy idea that simply executing the software involves a making a new copy under copyright law.

Eventually a law was passed with a specific exclusion that stated 3rd-party maintenance engineers must be permitted to operate the equipment they're maintaining, but there may still be cases where simple copyright law allows a software creator to similarly control the behavior of those using the software.

As fun as Movies and TV programs about law are to watch, and how cool the law seems when you start to study it, the fact is that it's a lot messier in reality, and many times what you think is an open-and-shut case turns out to be much more complex and often nobody can predict what the outcome will be. So even if everyone in this thread knew all the applicable law perfectly, these debates would still be close to pointless. Additionally, the actual outcome of a case may be overshadowed by the costs in both time and money to the participants. If you can hold the threat of a $30,000,000.00 damage verdict over someone's head, along with the more immediate and similarly destructive legal costs for defending yourself, then it often doesn't matter much how "in the right" you are when the outcome can't be predicted with any confidence.

[corebit]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/1...rver_Owner.php

Unlike Wowscape, Nostalrius has not been proven to have taken donations in exchange for in-game items (so far). So Blizzard is content with just warning them, and not actually taking them to court for which the Nostalrius guys should be thankful.

[Deleted]

You like every other proponent out there has this misconception that Blizzard is making bank off subs. It isn't the case... I am not going to go into cost break down because that point has been exhausted. I am not denying that there is some profit there. But to Blizzard that small profit margin isn't enough to make it worth it... end of story.

But again "these many other private servers" you have zero data that suggests that 150k people aren't the some of the same people on those servers. Not all private servers offer the same experience. Nost was unique in that it offered a "Blizzlike" and had the support team that made the bugs that existed/still exist more bearable. Some of those other servers allow you to bypass the leveling process. PvP system is always broken. Cheating abounds etc.

Anyone remember that random bug recently that prevented existing characters from logging in? No update was done, this seemingly random bug just popped up. That shit happens. Now assume that happens on this hypothetical "legacy server" you are going to expect immediate support. Which is going to take away from live support. That OR you as a legacy player have to wait much longer to get things running smoothly again. This would inevitably bring arguments of "Blizz cares more about live than legacy players..." you would also see more posts trying to convince Blizz they need to be course corrected and get back to their roots. The only thing just seems like a can of fucking worms... and I wouldn't want to touch it either.

Bottom line is Nost was doing most of this for free. But they couldn't maintain that model (hence the donation debacle and subsequent closure) Blizzard is not a nonprofit charitable organization. The fact that they needed to start taking donations means there most definitely WOULD be a cost. Most of you are willing to pay that, ok fine. But how much is necessary? I think a legacy server would require more tools and more support than most of you realize, and like I said in the first paragraph the profit margin isn't enough for Blizzard to get out of bed.

1) They aren't making bank off subs? What do you even mean by that? Like they don't make any profit?

2) Donation debacle at Nostalrius... any sources?

[Thanatoss]

I'm guessing he expects it to get shouted down with nonsensical 3liners copy-pasted ad-nauseum by the same 5 posters, you know... as he said he expected in that post you quoted. kek

I guess you missed the part where both sides have been doing that for 700 pages. I can count on one hand how many people actually try to have legitimate conversations in this thread.