If they announce legacy servers at Blizzcon, would you play them?

[Tic Tacs]

Yes, it is my concern, because it's my money. I'm paying Blizzard to play and support WoW, not to also support a game I have no interest whatsoever to even install in my hard drives. The moment Blizzard makes the Legacy servers leech off Retail WoW subs, then they're forcing me to pay for something I do not want.

I'm paying them monthly to support WoW. The sub I'm playing is to access WoW and WoW only. It's not some kind of "Blizzard sub fee" that gives me access to all their games for them to just keep adding games into that sub. I did not sign up for that.

Do you really believe monthly sub, wow tokens, pets, mounts, level boost money are going towards WoW and WoW alone? Please, your argument has more holes than swiss cheese.

I wouldn't worry how Activation Blizzard spends their money. I'm sure they have qualified people to understand what majority want at specific moment in time, the time comes and legacy servers will be more profitable but not right now.

[Thimagryn]

Why would I care? If money went into making the movie it was returned by ticket sales, dvd sales and what have you. It is NOT the same thing as Legacy realms being free and tied to a retail sub. They are two different things.

Then Legacy isn't free if it were tied to a retail sub. You would be paying the same amount for your WoW sub while getting Legacy as an added bonus, assuming the cost of sub hasn't increased. What are you unsubbing for if you are getting more content for no added cost? Again, what point are you making by saying 'I can complain because I pay a sub'?

My point is even if your sub funds Legacy, you have absolutely no control over what Blizzard chooses to do with your sub money. You choosing to unsub doesn't change their business model or internal development. What matters is a larger collective, and if this business model happened to be successful, then everything you mention about what you do as an individual is moot.

[Kyanion]

Do you really believe monthly sub, wow tokens, pets, mounts, level boost money are going towards WoW and WoW alone? Please, your argument has more holes than swiss cheese.

I wouldn't worry how Activation Blizzard spends their money. I'm sure they have qualified people to understand what majority want at specific moment in time, the time comes and legacy servers will be more profitable but not right now.

*woosh* is apt here

[Deleted]

Ah... dishonesty, misrepresentations and strawman. Par for the course, I guess.

You, Shadowpunkz, seems to be openly and blatantly dishonest, considering I've already had to state my position twice (or more) to you in the last couple of pages, yet you continue to double-down on the same misrepresenations.

If what i said is not what you and Kyanion mean...im honestly completely lost.
I need to read again your posts to try and understand -__- but i think i can't

edit: I was starting to understand your position...but then you said i was wrong. Now im completely lost.

[Vynny]

They won't be. There's very little overlap between people who like the classic MMORPG experience and those that prefer the modern one. It's two completely different demographics.

No they aren't. There are plenty of live WoW players who are unwilling to play on private legacy servers primarily because they don't want to invest time and effort into a character that could be deleted at any moment, so what do you think would happen if the threat of the server being shut down was no longer a factor?

[Thimagryn]

What would we do? Nothing. We don't care, because movies make money through ticket sales, and therefore, you know, return the investment. Seriously, how hard is it for you people to understand that simple fact!?

That's not what you said. What you said is you are concerned where their sub money goes and what they use it on. You still have no control over any of their projects whether you chose to unsub or complain about it. Their business practices aren't controlled by you as an individual.

So your answer here is the same as Blizzard's. What would Blizzard do if you complained and unsubbed because they added Legacy as a bonus to the subs without increasing cost? Nothing. They don't care, because the business model they choose to go with would have been proven to work before implementation and wouldn't suffer from the few individuals who think added content to subs somehow creates a negative value.

[Charge me Doctor]

Valid point. Would an additional sub fee for Legacy servers not roughly equate to the same thing?

Problem with legacy servers is that they require as much resources as making a new game, but kickback is going to be minimal. And before you say "but private servers..." - private servers are out of question, it's not vanilla and it's not legacy. They do not represent blizzard servers, they are just emulations. And while yes, private servers now are just download and play - they took thousands of hours of work of people from all over the world to become that.

Nah. Starcraft 1 & 2 servers are being maintained by Blizzard from a buy to play perspective. Aside from regular maintenance the amount of actual updates due to content they receive is minimal to none.

Granted popularity and size of sc1 in general they had all the reason to keep it running (people were still playing sc1 competitively afaik) and even make an HD update (reminder: HD update and re-making the game are not the same)

Legacy servers have the same issue. They have already reached their peak, not needing any actual development updates and would require little in terms of maintenance except for the weekly ones. We are already paying for access to functioning server, I don't see how this is any different.

The problem here is that vanilla was buggy as fuck. Blizzard, as a business, can't just say "fuck you" to his customers and leave this bug ridden game in the market. They can't and won't do that, so it's either extremely changed vanilla/legacy (which will take a lot of resources, because they are basically making a game from a scratch at this point), or nothing.

Next to that people which own a live sub also own the licenses to vanilla/older expansions, so since we technically own these licences, we would not need to buy another copy.

Old licenses will be definitely out of question, because it will be newly developed game

[Thimagryn]

If what i said is not what you and Kyanion mean...im honestly completely lost.
I need to read again your posts to try and understand -__- but i think i can't

edit: I was starting to understand your position...but then you said i was wrong. Now im completely lost.

They're essentially using an irrational argument in the perspective of a 'customer is always right'; that customers have control over what content Blizzard produces as long as enough people choose to complain and unsub. It's an argument that existed from cases like Blizzard's change on flight removal back in WoD; or say the vocal upheaval on real names on BNET. Real Money Auction Hall in D3 is another good one.

It's only relevant in the most extreme cases. In ones like having Legacy piggy-back on WoW subs; it's too transparent and we have no clue if that would ever be the case even if it happened. There's so many factors to WoW's current business model like the WoW Tokens, paid services, character boosts, microtransactions and more that would get in the way of ever knowing how 'successful' Legacy would be using that particular model. We don't even know how relevant the actual subs are to keeping current WoW alive; for all we know most of Blizzard's revenue could be coming from the 'whales' that are buying tokens for real money; just like how most F2P Loot systems work. Many celphone games have hundreds of thousands of players who pay nothing, yet the games make millions of dollars off the thousand people who do. Trying to pinpoint Legacy's problems on one thing like subs is only a strawman argument at best.

[Babadoo]

Would roll a character on a TBC and Vanilla server in a heartbeat.

[Ielenia]

If what i said is not what you and Kyanion mean...im honestly completely lost.
I need to read again your posts to try and understand -__- but i think i can't

edit: I was starting to understand your position...but then you said i was wrong. Now im completely lost.

I'll bite. One last time.

It all started when you mentioned 'Heroes of the Storm' as an example of Blizzard spending money "willy-nilly", and I countered that it's not the case, since HotS has micro-transactions that helps it keep afloat without "leeching" from other income revenues.

Later in the thread when it was mentioned that an option was to make the game linked to the retail WoW sub, I mentioned that I don't want to pay a sub fee to support Legacy WoW as it'd leech off the current subs, and you mentioned Heroes of the Storm, Diablo 3 and Overwatch (I think it was those three), and I countered that those games had return investment in the form of box prices and micro-transactions.

Later you added the "Warcraft Movie" to that list, and again I argued that it's not the case, since the movie had return investment in the form of movie ticket prices.

Legacy WoW, if made to leech from the retail WoW sub, would not have any form of return revenue, and I imagine that pro-legacy supporters would not want micro-transactions in the game. God knows the retail game already has enough people complaining about a cosmetic cash shop.

More on the point, I imagine there would be a big backlash from players if Legacy WoW was made entirely free or made part of retail WoW's sub fee. Because that meant they're maintaining a version of the game they have no interest in playing.

I think a similar analogy would be if the money you're paying monthly to NetFlix suddenly also started being used to support a free, similar service that aired only shows for kids of age up to four. And no, I'm not using that analogy to call legacy supporters 'babies', just using it as an example as a service you would not use, but you're now being forced to support and maintain. "But you don't have to use it", yeah, I'll be paying for it, anyways.

- - - Updated - - -

That's not what you said.

That was exactly what I wrote. Several times, in fact.

[Ielenia]

They're essentially using an irrational argument in the perspective of a 'customer is always right'

No, we're not. The customer isn't "always right", but we do have a right to protest if we think our money is being used in ways we don't agree with. We have the option of terminating our subscription if we think we're not getting our money's worth, especially if, again, it's being used to maintain a version of the game we consider inferior that we didn't sign up to maintain, in the first place.

[MoanaLisa]

So, are you saying that, if Blizzard does decide to implement Legacy servers and make them leech off of Retail WoW subs, I won't have the right to complain about that nor terminate my subscription in protest of their decision?

You are saying there won't be some backlash if Blizz tries to make Legacy realms free to play and leeching off a WoW sub? Think again. There is one thing they listen to and that is people voting with their wallet when they stop playing and take the survey when you quit.

I'm not sure how "leech" is defined here but if Blizzard wants everyone to maintain a subscription to the current game to have access to any other sort of realm they put up that seems reasonable. I doubt that this sort of thing will be successful but anything is possible.

That seems to me to be the most obvious revenue model for this other than outright charging a separate subscription fee for it. That would outright sink the whole thing. I'm not even going to consider the idea that Blizzard would do this and then say "Welcome, free for everyone." That's fantasy-thinking.

[clevin]

So if they DO NOT announce legacy servers at Blizzcon... will all of you STFU about them?


Right, didn't think so.

[zinfandel]

Having had a quick bash at a vanilla wow (you know how but not saying) to me it's classic trade off between design philosophy, which was excellent in vanilla, and design execution, which was shitty as hell. In 5hrs /played I think I've spent an hour travelling between darkshore and darnassus for fed-ex quests. That's not gameplay, that's just filler. I wouldn't put money on their being a large number of people willing to *pay* for that type of experience.

[Hotsforyou]

No they aren't. There are plenty of live WoW players who are unwilling to play on private legacy servers primarily because they don't want to invest time and effort into a character that could be deleted at any moment, so what do you think would happen if the threat of the server being shut down was no longer a factor?

This is what stops me from playing on a private server. If we got official legacy Servers i would ditch whatever xpak is in the works immediately.

[Thimagryn]

That was exactly what I wrote. Several times, in fact.

What you said and what you meant are conflicting with each other.

In that scenario, Legacy is not Free as you are describing. For it to share a WoW sub, it means it is not Free; it costs a SUB itself. What you are paying for with a WoW subscription is access to WoW Current as well as WoW Legacy. In that example, the Return of Investment comes from the WoW Sub. It's not free.

If you disagree with that business model, of course you can choose to unsub. You can also complain. But by no means does that mean you are able to dictate any control over where your Sub money actually goes, despite it being your concern.

If parking is free at a mall only if you buy something at the mall, then it's not really free parking. Being concerned that you don't want your money to go into free parking and deciding to stop shopping at the mall is completely valid, but also considered petty reasoning. It's akin to not wanting to go to a restaurant because your money is used to buy a brand of toilet paper you don't like.

- - - Updated - - -

No, we're not. The customer isn't "always right", but we do have a right to protest if we think our money is being used in ways we don't agree with. We have the option of terminating our subscription if we think we're not getting our money's worth, especially if, again, it's being used to maintain a version of the game we consider inferior that we didn't sign up to maintain, in the first place.

Then let me pose a scenario here.

Your sub also goes into making 1-20 free for all players. If people choose to play twinks at 1-20 for free and you don't like that, what would you do about it? Unsub and complain until they remove it?

Like I said, you have the right to be a customer, but the customer isn't their financial advisor. How likely do you think complaining will affect their 1-20 Free WoW business model?

As a second question; what value is lost to you if Legacy servers are added with no added cost to your subs? What was made inferior? There seems to be a hidden value of 'adding Legacy servers = inferior current WoW' that you're assuming here.

[Kyanion]

Yeah they're gonna have to solve that one. Even though progressing through the game is much slower than on retail you'll still reach that point sooner or later. Let's say they release TBC after vanilla and let you copy your character over to that legacy realm and then the same with WotLK it'll only last for roughly 5 years and then it's over assuming they unlock patch content at the same pace they did originally.

In that scenario wouldn't that be splitting up an already dwindling Legacy population up even further? This is in the scenario that people drop off of Legacy over time.

[Ielenia]

I'm not sure how "leech" is defined here but if Blizzard wants everyone to maintain a subscription to the current game to have access to any other sort of realm they put up that seems reasonable. I doubt that this sort of thing will be successful but anything is possible.

That seems to me to be the most obvious revenue model for this other than outright charging a separate subscription fee for it. That would outright sink the whole thing. I'm not even going to consider the idea that Blizzard would do this and then say "Welcome, free for everyone." That's fantasy-thinking.

Actually, that's exactly what I'm going against. There is a difference between adding another realm to the main game, and adding a whole separate game to the sub fee. With another realm I can either transfer my character over there, or team up with someone from that realm. With Legacy WoW, that won't be possible. It'd be a completely separate game, tied to the same sub fee I'm paying that I will not be able opt out of, since I have no interest whatsoever in what I believe to be an inferior version of the current game.

[Kyanion]

I'm not sure how "leech" is defined here but if Blizzard wants everyone to maintain a subscription to the current game to have access to any other sort of realm they put up that seems reasonable. I doubt that this sort of thing will be successful but anything is possible.

That seems to me to be the most obvious revenue model for this other than outright charging a separate subscription fee for it. That would outright sink the whole thing. I'm not even going to consider the idea that Blizzard would do this and then say "Welcome, free for everyone." That's fantasy-thinking.

I think it would make more sense if it was an additional fee for Legacy on top of a normal sub or a separate fee for playing on those realms. I just don't like the idea of the realms being free and sub money from retail players being funneled into those realms.

- - - Updated - - -

So if they DO NOT announce legacy servers at Blizzcon... will all of you STFU about them?


Right, didn't think so.

Ah don't worry every Blizzcon that passes with no word on Legacy the 'movement' dies that much more.

[MoanaLisa]

Actually, that's exactly what I'm going against. There is a difference between adding another realm to the main game, and adding a whole separate game to the sub fee. With another realm I can either transfer my character over there, or team up with someone from that realm. With Legacy WoW, that won't be possible. It'd be a completely separate game, tied to the same sub fee I'm paying that I will not opt out of, since I have no interest whatsoever in what I believe to be an inferior version of the current game.

OK, thanks for the clarity. I'm not hung up on where subscription money goes. Money is fungible at Blizzard. They take it in and budgets are allocated. Some part of our subscription right now is paying for development on any number of projects that we don't know about and in some cases may never know about or see. Software projects get abandoned frequently enough with the investment considered a write-off. We contributed a lot to Titan for all those years and that never made it out of the barn as Titan.

No one should be under the impression that revenue for X goes strictly back into investment to improve or expand X. That's not how it works.