Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[TOM_RUS]

there were people playing the way they wanted to play and were affecting nobody but blizzard still shut them down.

Tell that to my friends that were on Nost instead of playing with me on retail. That sure wasn't affecting me at all... This split of the community is never good thing.

[Kyanion]

Anyway to summarize my thoughts.

The demand is there. They dont have to open 20 servers at once they can open 1 pvp and 1 pve realm per region and see how it goes from there. Normal subscription cost as for retail (no token crap. 15 $ per month). Vanilla content only to begin with and IF the demand is there offer BC realms as well. Those are servers that will never need new content. Its the standard Vanilla and BC content without the need and resources needed to develop new one.

Support could be minimal as well forums for example could be maintained from the community like with diablofans or even MMO champion.

If Blizzard doesn't do it themselves private servers will only keep emerging and if Nost releases its code we will soon see hundreds of them. The code was really good was a nearly perfect Vanilla experience and the bugs where very few and not gamebreaking.

Cant chase them all after some point and considering the publicity Nost's shutdown received on media and from streamers more players will start turning towards private realms. Even the poll here on MMO forums with players mostly subscribed to retail has a 48% in favor of vanilla realms atm.

They need to seriously think of some way to make them available. I would gladly pay for them personally.

Which sounds all well and good until you see the can of worm it opens. First of all why Vanilla? Why not WotLK as the choice to start with. More people played in WotLK and it had a lot of iconic things going on with Lich King.

So let's say they pick Vanilla, where does it start, a late patch, fresh? What bout balance changes people will say. What about features they know and love like pet collecting tabs and so on. You do know if Blizz actually opens a retro server that it is going to get all sorts of people wanting things that aren't what they opened.

[urasim]

MS is much bigger than Blizzard and invested much more into analysis and marketting and design.
Yet they crashed hard with Windows 8, despite all their efforts.
Why is that ?

Apples to oranges. Also, prove to me they've done more marketing and analysis. You made the claim. Time to back it up bro.

Not everything goes according to plan.

[Jester Joe]

Again... You're taking their word... The word of people who stole... They've proven to be untrustworthy with their ACTIONS. No amount of words will ever change that.

You're making it sound as though they committed murder. Look at their reason, not the action. I see no reason to doubt them when they had noble intentions.

Well that's the thing - let's say they prepare for their max amount of subs possibly expected. We'll put it at, say, 8 mil. They buy servers, set them up, pay people to maintain them, increase electricity costs for running them and the AC to cool them, make sure everything meshes together, and spend a ton of time and effort.. and only 7 million people hit the server. Sure, the servers are stable. But now you've got a huge amount of blades that are costing you a lot of money that server no purpose.

If the projections say 6 mil, you might make server capacity for 6.5 mil, but not 7-8 mil because it'll end up costing you a lot of a surge that will happen once every two-three years. The rest of the time that server capacity is just a drain on your profits because it'll NEVER be used past that initial expansion surge.

Call me ignorant, but is it not possible to just rent a server rather than buying one? I mean, I imagine even with the amount of already low pop servers they had, they could of used part of them for the higher populated servers at the very least.

- - - Updated - - -

That's a bold claim to make. You have no idea really how much money they brought in donations. Crowdfunding these days can go through the roof in no time flat.

No reason to lie? You mean like a lawsuit?

When jail time and/or fines are at stake? I think that would be an excellent reason to be untruthful regarding the details of how much money you did or didn't bring in.

What?
The only direction someone would lie is to downplay it for the sake of a lawsuit. Unless you meant to say there's more than 150k players, and they're lying by saying there was less so it seems like it wasn't as bad as it was.

Also it's not a bold claim, it's based on what they're saying themselves. That it was a personal project they did. I see no reason to believe they were pocketing the donations, and unless anyone has proof to prove they were...

[l33t]

Cant chase them all after some point and considering the publicity Nost's shutdown received on media and from streamers more players will start turning towards private realms. Even the poll here on MMO forums with players mostly subscribed to retail has a 48% in favor of vanilla realms atm.

You should not misinterpret the data from that poll. Me, for example, voted "yes" for Blizzard's Vanilla server, but I don't want to play it and I for sure do not support private servers. There is a huge difference in wanting for Blizzard to not waste business opportunity to milk nostalgic weirdos who want to live in the past and wanting to be a part of a theft.

[Gadzooks]

Anyway to summarize my thoughts.

The demand is there. They dont have to open 20 servers at once they can open 1 pvp and 1 pve realm per region and see how it goes from there. Normal subscription cost as for retail (no token crap. 15 $ per month). Vanilla content only to begin with and IF the demand is there offer BC realms as well. Those are servers that will never need new content. Its the standard Vanilla and BC content without the need and resources needed to develop new one.

Support could be minimal as well forums for example could be maintained from the community like with diablofans or even MMO champion.

If Blizzard doesn't do it themselves private servers will only keep emerging and if Nost releases its code we will soon see hundreds of them. The code was really good was a nearly perfect Vanilla experience and the bugs where very few and not gamebreaking.

Cant chase them all after some point and considering the publicity Nost's shutdown received on media and from streamers more players will start turning towards private realms. Even the poll here on MMO forums with players mostly subscribed to retail has a 48% in favor of vanilla realms atm.

They need to seriously think of some way to make them available. I would gladly pay for them personally.

They have seriously thought about it, and decided it was too expensive, and they don't want to maintain two copies of the same game. Their choice, their game. No polls, interest, or temper tantrums will overcome that.

More illegal servers can pop up all they want - and if they get too obvious, they'll be shut down, too. Two wrongs don't make a right, as the saying goes.

I don't have a problem if someone wants to play the original WoW experience. I really don't. I also don't get a justice boner if Blizzard goes after them - but I do support their right to protect their copyrights, as a creative professional who deals with my won copyrights, and the copyrights of the people I work for.

I just laugh at the "it's trivial" comments, and correct posters when they make outlandish claims about copyright law and what they think they're owed and how easy it would be. I try to be reasonable, but some people here won't listen unless you bash the table with a baseball bat, which I have no problems doing, even if they snivel after and call me a "thug".

[ls-]

Call me ignorant, but is it not possible to just rent a server rather than buying one? I mean, I imagine even with the amount of already low pop servers they had, they could of used part of them for the higher populated servers at the very least.

If you use custom hardware, then no. And as far as I remember, that's what they actually do, until new hardware is delivered. They reassign servers if needed.
Also, dun forget about the scale of the company.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Maybe we'll get an announcement at Blizzcon? Or something before the movie gets released. "Live the original experience of World of Warcraft and get in the world before the Movie!"

[Vanyali]

Call me ignorant, but is it not possible to just rent a server rather than buying one? I mean, I imagine even with the amount of already low pop servers they had, they could of used part of them for the higher populated servers at the very least.

Not really. Each server has the data, so you'd have to migrate the data and then you'd be erasing the original.. the one that all your damage data was created and stored on. Bad move. Always keep the originals untouched. More than that, each server is configured differently; turning a kalimdor server into an authentication server (which are the ones that always get hammered) would require recoding the server from scratch ANYWAY, as well as probably physically moving it so it's in the correct cluster for organization as well as changing some hook-ups.

You can (and they have!) merge two of the same type of servers together - a high pop and low pop kalimdor, EK, draenor, whatever can be merged since you're really just telling them that they can pull from each other now. and that does help server strain a bit, but it's never going to stand against everyone on the high pop server trying to logon at once no matter how many low-pop you put into it.. servers just have limits to how many things they can calculate at once, and wow players tend to slam the shit out of them.

[AeneasBK]

Well that's the thing - let's say they prepare for their max amount of subs possibly expected. We'll put it at, say, 8 mil. They buy servers, set them up, pay people to maintain them, increase electricity costs for running them and the AC to cool them, make sure everything meshes together, and spend a ton of time and effort.. and only 7 million people hit the server. Sure, the servers are stable. But now you've got a huge amount of blades that are costing you a lot of money that server no purpose.

If the projections say 6 mil, you might make server capacity for 6.5 mil, but not 7-8 mil because it'll end up costing you a lot of a surge that will happen once every two-three years. The rest of the time that server capacity is just a drain on your profits because it'll NEVER be used past that initial expansion surge.

I mean, they could just have multiple areas to start the expansion instead of funneling the entire comunity through 2 gated quest points, I get thats a radical response to the situation but. The situation at that time was fucking bullshit really Certainly makes me laugh when people talk about "Blizzards high standards" at any rate. We'll have to see regarding OW but Hearthstone is about the only game they've released since The Frozen Throne that was actually ready to be released

[Snackpack]

Not sure about Nostalrius but I certainly know a very large private server community with many different versions of WoW where many play just because it's free and I'd imagine Nostalrius had those players too. No matter what it is much easier to start playing a game when it's free.

I'm sure that's true in some cases. From my understanding this server was mostly people who've played Vanilla (grown adults who can spare some change) who wanted to play it again for whatever reason, some of which who were still subbed to retail.

I believe people are more willing to pay for official, legal servers with proper support as well. I wouldn't pay for a private server that could get shut down or crash at any moment but I probably would if it was legit and ran smoothly (e.g; lag, bugs, etc.).

It will be interesting to see what happens in the future.

[Akka]

Of course I'm wrong. And the only reason I'm wrong is because you said I'm wrong. Of course. (/sarcasm)

No, it's because what you claim is just wrong. You underrate the complexity of changing the working of an OS, you overrate the complexity of dusting off the old source and adapt it to today, and you start talking about software-hardware compatibility while you have no idea if there actually was a noticeable coupling in it.

As for your point, I imagine it was companies not always making good decisions, and not always 'knowing' what the customer wants? Am I correct?

Yes you are, which means you did purposedly avoid the point in your answer. While accusing me of dishonesty about something completely unrelated and which I didn't say. Cute.

[AeneasBK]

Maybe we'll get an announcement at Blizzcon? Or something before the movie gets released. "Live the original experience of World of Warcraft and get in the world before the Movie!"

I could be wrong but even Vanilla is some 15 years after the movie is set.

[Jester Joe]

If you use custom hardware, then no. And as far as I remember, that's what they actually do, until new hardware is delivered. They reassign servers if needed.
Also, dun forget about the scale of the company.

Not really. Each server has the data, so you'd have to migrate the data and then you'd be erasing the original.. the one that all your damage data was created and stored on. Bad move. Always keep the originals untouched. More than that, each server is configured differently; turning a kalimdor server into an authentication server (which are the ones that always get hammered) would require recoding the server from scratch ANYWAY, as well as probably physically moving it so it's in the correct cluster for organization as well as changing some hook-ups.

You can (and they have!) merge two of the same type of servers together - a high pop and low pop kalimdor, EK, draenor, whatever can be merged since you're really just telling them that they can pull from each other now. and that does help server strain a bit, but it's never going to stand against everyone on the high pop server trying to logon at once no matter how many low-pop you put into it.. servers just have limits to how many things they can calculate at once, and wow players tend to slam the shit out of them.

This is getting way to deep for something that was meant to be a single point to me.

Alright, so the servers can't be rented, but they could allocate more room on another.

But they still weren't correct in their predictions for how popular WoD would be at launch, which is why I doubt their ability to predict how popular a Legacy Server would be.

I mean, hell, if even Runescape had enough interest...

[Ghier]

Anyway to summarize my thoughts.

The demand is there. They dont have to open 20 servers at once they can open 1 pvp and 1 pve realm per region and see how it goes from there. Normal subscription cost as for retail (no token crap. 15 $ per month). Vanilla content only to begin with and IF the demand is there offer BC realms as well. Those are servers that will never need new content. Its the standard Vanilla and BC content without the need to develop new one.

Support could be minimal as well forums for example could be maintained from the community like with diablofans or even MMO champion.

If Blizzard doesn't do it themselves private servers will only keep emerging and if Nost releases its code we will soon see hundreds of them. The code was really good was a nearly perfect Vanilla experience and the bugs where very few and not gamebreaking.

Cant chase them all after some point and considering the publicity Nost's shutdown received on media and from streamers more players will start turning towards private realms. Even the poll here on MMO forums with players mostly subscribed to retail has a 48% in favor of vanilla realms atm.

They need to seriously think of some way to make them available. I would gladly pay for them personally.

Yea, Blizzard is just going to be playing whack a mole if they don't offer their own. They are gonna knock 1 down and 3 more will pop up. Some of them have already moved to Russia where they are believed to be immune from legal repercussion. The people will get their content. Blizzard should be making sure it's on their paid servers if they have any sense.

[Akka]

Not all of us are against legit classic servers. Some of us just want to see thieves punished.

As I said in another thread, bullshit. The amount of venom about an inconsequential violation of IP for a game that hasn't been available for 9 years, and which doesn't cause any real harm to Blizzard, is completely out of proportion. People foaming at the mouth and celebrating with glee and throwing accusation and hate around, and that's just because out of some supposed sense of justice ? I could understand it if we were talking about murder, but for something that's more akin to jaywalking it's ridiculous.

So don't feed me that crap. Hiding behind the pretext of "I'm just so honest the idea of a small misdemeanor makes me see red and spiteful" is not only comically inconsistent, it's just flat-out a fucking hypocrital lie.

[A dot Ham]

What?
The only direction someone would lie is to downplay it for the sake of a lawsuit. Unless you meant to say there's more than 150k players, and they're lying by saying there was less so it seems like it wasn't as bad as it was.

Also it's not a bold claim, it's based on what they're saying themselves. That it was a personal project they did. I see no reason to believe they were pocketing the donations, and unless anyone has proof to prove they were...

Way to twist words there sport.

If you have proof your belief means nothing. Why does your belief require no proof, and mine does?

So its all speculation on both our parts. My opinion on the lawsuit is just as valid as yours Mr. Moderator.

Ultimately the amount received in donations is irrelevant. Whether that all went to costs, whether some was left over and they were taking a pay check. If they received ANY money at all... they committed a crime punishable by fine or jail time.

Truth or no truth the obvious defense to that would be, "No I didn't."

Which wouldn't fly because one could speculate that if there was a way to donate they must have received something.

So then unless you want to find yourself in jail what would your natural response need to be? "It all went to costs, I didn't keep any of it for myself."

[Gavan]

Yet a team of 30 nobodies at Nost did it?

Exactly, apparently we should believe that a handful of script kitties are smarter than programmers at a multi-billion dollar corporation.

[ls-]

This is getting way to deep for something that was meant to be a single point to me.

Alright, so the servers can't be rented, but they could allocate more room on another.

But they still weren't correct in their predictions for how popular WoD would be at launch, which is why I doubt their ability to predict how popular a Legacy Server would be.

I mean, hell, if even Runescape had enough interest...

They predict more or less accurately, thing is, you dun want to waste money on hardware you might not need, getting rid of custom hardware is pain in the ass, even for a big company.

You have high and low predictions. You aim for somewhere in between, not too high to overspend, and not too low to make things completely unmanageable.

P.S. Damn Ctrl+Z works weirdly in Chrome T_T

[Kyanion]

Everquest's most popular server is it's classic server. Runescape's 2007 server is doing phenomenally.

Yes and neither of those games are WoW. Everquest basically died ~12 years ago when WoW came out. So I can see some people wanting to relive the earlier days of EQ since there was just constant expansions that no one saw because they game was nearly dead. I can't speak on runescape.

The thing is it feels like a much more massive undertaking if Blizz was to do something like open a vanilla server. And like many have said it will just open a can of worms with people demanding TBC servers/WotLK servers and so on. Besides the fact that the Vanilla server itself would have constant demands about "Why isn't it on X patch" or "can we get some balancing done on specs" or "levelling takes too long, make it faster" stuff.