The felmyst project (aka gummy’s) owner talks about balance in classic wow

[8bithamster]

Tbh, he worked during years on his project as a hobby, and did it because he wanted to provide people who couldn't play TBH with a home. If we had to follow your logic, nostalrius should have never been born...and guess where we would be today without nostalrius? Yup, that's right, in the same shitty "do you think we'll be able to play the ancient expansions one day" situation.

Are private servers illegal? Yes. Would we get classic servers without people like Daemon, Viper (nostalrius), shiro and nim (corecraft), gummy (felmyst)? No.
Plus, if you take a look at all the illegal things we resort to everyday (because we consider them as just minor things), then we don't exactly have the right to complain about what he did.

I'm 100% in favor of the removal of ALL the existing private servers out there if there's an option for vanilla, tbc, wotlk, and it looks like it will indeed be the case in the future. But again, this is mostly thanks to these guys.

so.. it's ok to do illegal stuff because "someday it might do something good"..

I love that logic.

My point is that his opinion is as relevant as the random MMO-poster here. Saying "Yea but he's a dev so he knows more!" is completely untrue. Let's list some developers to dispute that point:

Digital Homicide
Alex Mauer (composer/self proclaimed game dev)
whatever the company was that made the whole kickstarter mmo scam from a while back.



Let's face it:

He used illegal means to build a TBC server, which according to some people here makes him more relevant than the average person. Even though he's not. Yay! he made a TBC server, not alone, nope. With a team. But let's ignore that and focus on the person, because he apparently knows better what anyone else wants than anyone themselves do

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Ok, 8bit hamster is just a troll it would seem...

Any input? thought so.. <3 keep trying

[voidillusion]

so.. it's ok to do illegal stuff because "someday it might do something good"..

I love that logic.

This horse was already beaten to death a thousand times in these forums... I don't want to start a armchair lawyer discussion again but providing private servers for a game that wasnt available to be played officially, and doint it without profiting is far from being clear that it is illegal.

You speak of this like if we were talking about selling drugs or something, and we're not.

[8bithamster]

This horse was already beaten to death a thousand times in these forums... I don't want to start a armchair lawyer discussion again but providing private servers for a game that wasnt available to be played officially, and doint it without profiting is far from being clear that it is illegal.

You speak of this like if we were talking about selling drugs or something, and we're not.

and you coveniently ignore the rest actually from what I remember, Blizzard is kind of obligated to enforce ownership of their IP, letting other people use it is rather.. a stupid move and will just send a message of "Feel free to use our IP however you want"

[Deleted]

the balance back then was ridiculous, i knew so many players in my guild who left the game because their expectations of their class at 60 were different. So many druids who wanted to tank or DPS as feral simply left the game because they didn't wanted to heal but there was simply nothing else to do without gear

A thousand times this, funny how it was glanced over.


Vanilla wasnt complicated, or finely tuned or any of those fancy words "True Vanilla Fans" will use.

It was utter dogshit. The game straight up lied to players on the character creation screen.

Paladin: Healer, Damage Dealer, Tank. Guess what? Only one of those actually works to play. Not to mention that even by 2004 standards, the class was mind numbingly boring to play.

The rest of them pretty much follows this pattern with mage, warlock, warrior and hunter being mostly okay in terms of their design.


Vanilla WoW was an amazing game, and by all rights one of the best versions we've had of the game, but the Class balance was waaaaaay of the mark, there is a reason that WoW peaked in WoTLK, and the fact that it was the first expansion that allowed for every spec to be viable for any given class, no wonder.

Classic WoW rests upon nostalgia and the mental gymnastics used to avoid talking about the class balance shitshow is hilarious, but if you think its not going to have a negative effect on the game... You're wrong, I lost so many friends during vanilla simply due to them feeling that the thing they liked about their class, just wasnt viable.

If they wanted to play a shadowpriest, they wanted to be a shadowpriest in everything, not just PvP. It's a RPG game, your characters indentity matters, and if the game promises that you can fill a role and then retracts that promise due to horrible horrible class design, well... People are going to find it dull and lacking, sadly.

Vanilla WoW with wotlk class balance would be a golden gem, but thats never happening so no point mentioning it because blizzard will get eaten alive if they even wiggle with class balance.

[Sanguinerd]

Meh what worthless video.. he basically sums up the entire video at the end saying classic was better balanced because "it did a better job at doing what it was going for".

His way of thinking that the game was so deep and shit is just a joke..



I'll never get those 9 minutes back

[Deleted]

This horse was already beaten to death a thousand times in these forums... I don't want to start a armchair lawyer discussion again but providing private servers for a game that wasnt available to be played officially, and doint it without profiting is far from being clear that it is illegal.

You speak of this like if we were talking about selling drugs or something, and we're not.

... If you dont protect your IP, you lose the rights to it. Doesnt matter if its old versions or not, thats just how these things work.

[Lochton]

the balance back then was ridiculous, i knew so many players in my guild who left the game because their expectations of their class at 60 were different. So many druids who wanted to tank or DPS as feral simply left the game because they didn't wanted to heal but there was simply nothing else to do without gear

Man, you give me nightmares. Basically how it went for many. It wasn't much about balance than to be the right class that was needed.

[Deleted]

and you coveniently ignore the rest actually from what I remember, Blizzard is kind of obligated to enforce ownership of their IP, letting other people use it is rather.. a stupid move and will just send a message of "Feel free to use our IP however you want"

Blizzard has every right to shut down a private server, since they're simply protecting their own IP like you said yourself, and no one should even blame them for doing it. However, I disagree when you said that private servers developers are just a bunch of scummy pirates or IDK what else. There was a demand, and he worked for years to provide people with a tbc option, WITHOUT making anyone pay...contrarily to some pservers (cough cough WARMANE cough cough) that are indeed really scummy.

[Shibito]

How many wow servers have you launched and mantained? Just curious...

Too be fair you can ask him if he got shut down by blizzard while you at it too

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and you coveniently ignore the rest actually from what I remember, Blizzard is kind of obligated to enforce ownership of their IP, letting other people use it is rather.. a stupid move and will just send a message of "Feel free to use our IP however you want"

butbut muh free gaem

[Lochton]

Paladin: Healer, Damage Dealer, Tank. Guess what? Only one of those actually works to play. Not to mention that even by 2004 standards, the class was mind numbingly boring to play.

You... You spoke the truth... This was basically my fate.

"Hey guys! Thanks for having me in this guild, I'm aiming to be a tank!"
"HAH! Get in the back, BUFFADIN!"

[valky94]

isnt it against ToS of the forums to advertise or promote any kinds of private servers?

[Lochton]

How many wow servers have you launched and mantained? Just curious...

Shouldn't the answer be, none? Unless you're a Blizzard employee?

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isnt it against ToS of the forums to advertise or promote any kinds of private servers?

Well, not ToS but guidelines, yes. Mentioning of private servers by name isn't really on.

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... If you dont protect your IP, you lose the rights to it. Doesnt matter if its old versions or not, thats just how these things work.

Basically this, yup.

[voidillusion]

and you coveniently ignore the rest actually from what I remember, Blizzard is kind of obligated to enforce ownership of their IP, letting other people use it is rather.. a stupid move and will just send a message of "Feel free to use our IP however you want"

I'm not ignoring anything mate, convinently or not, ofc blizz has to enforce it's IP, and nobody will dispute that, but there are 2 things that are important in this discussion:

1- Private servers that dont generate profit and work with a version of the game that isn't provided by blizzard work in a grey area of the law
2- The importance of these folks in keeping the legacy movement alive culminating in blizzard's official classic servers can't be understimated

Also, do you know that many of these servers, the most importants at least, rejoyced with blizzcon news and made public statements announcing that they were to shutdown once official servers were live? This to me says a lot. Many ppl volunteered to keep these servers up and running for the good of the community, hurting their own personal lives, giving hours of their free time that they didnt have to give, they did a great job recreating something that was considered lost for many years. They did it only because blizzard wouldnt do it themselves, and they did it, in most of the cases, without seing a cent for the work and trouble. Labeling these folks as illegal isnt fair. Dismissing their expertise in keeping these servers up and running, fixing bugs, tweeking servers, etc, just because you consider them illegal is play dumb.

[Lochton]

Meh what worthless video.. he basically sums up the entire video at the end saying classic was better balanced because "it did a better job at doing what it was going for".

His way of thinking that the game was so deep and shit is just a joke..



I'll never get those 9 minutes back

I feel for you, rest in peace for your 9 minutes. I didn't click because well, was a 'developer' of a private server. So, not the same size of image or numbers.

I shall pray for your nine minutes.

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1- Private servers that dont generate profit and work with a version of the game that isn't provided by blizzard work in a grey area of the law

The client and content is Blizzard's, doesn't matter how you really change it. Unless you like, change it so much to not have much resemblance but then a video about balancing wouldn't be valid. Doesn't matter if they take money or not, just look on videos removed on YouTube.

2- The importance of these folks in keeping the legacy movement alive culminating in blizzard's official classic servers can't be understimated

Not about keeping the legacy alive, they run it for their own wishes. And now you have the owner creating it for you - bet you, people would still go on private servers.

[Biomega]

1- Private servers that dont generate profit and work with a version of the game that isn't provided by blizzard work in a grey area of the law

Can't believe how often I see this argument. This is not a "grey area of the law". It's very clearly defined. And it's illegal. It doesn't matter that you're not charging for it, and it doesn't matter that it's not otherwise available. It's Blizzard's property. People can't just go "oh well but you're not using it" and take that property. That's, you know, stealing. The reason these servers hang around, for a while, is simply that it's often not worth it for Blizzard to move against them, or move against them to the extend they could. There's entire legal departments who know very well what they need to do to comply with IP defense, and what they can do to save money. But just because Blizzard doesn't immediately send SWAT teams to the private server dev's home doesn't suddenly make what those devs are doing legal.

[8bithamster]

Blizzard has every right to shut down a private server, since they're simply protecting their own IP like you said yourself, and no one should even blame them for doing it. However, I disagree when you said that private servers developers are just a bunch of scummy pirates or IDK what else. There was a demand, and he worked for years to provide people with a tbc option, WITHOUT making anyone pay...contrarily to some pservers (cough cough WARMANE cough cough) that are indeed really scummy.

They are scummy pirates. If you sold something for quite an income, and someone went "LAWL IMA REMAKE IT AND MAKE MONEY OF OF IT!" (they pretty much all had premium or other services) you would just sit by "But they are so noble!"? if you do, you will never make a profit

[Deleted]

isnt it against ToS of the forums to advertise or promote any kinds of private servers?

Where am I advertising or promoting a pserver? Felmyst was shut down months ago just like nostalrius, and was definitely one of the big 3 projects mentioned the last two years (with nostalrius/elysium). We can talk about nostalrius all the time but we can't mention this one? Just lol, please.

[Lochton]

Where am I advertising or promoting a pserver? Felmyst was shut down months ago just like nostalrius, and was definitely one of the big 3 projects mentioned the last two years (with nostalrius/elysium). We can talk about nostalrius all the time but we can't mention this one? Just lol, please.

I think the user, even I, thought it was still running.

[Deleted]

Cummies for Gummy anyone?...Nah I'll stop...

[Jyggalag]

So you use this opinion piece to support your arguement which is effectively that unless you know, or research, which class/talent combo is optimal for your preferred choice of end-game content, that players new to Vanilla, or not that heavily invested in min/maxing, or who aren't familiar with/don't recall the how well class/talent combos perform in different scenarios, should be able to get all the way to 60 after a weeks or maybe even months of time investment before finding out that they picked the wrong class? And that this is perfectly fine and acceptable game design for the majority and not the few? Nice meme.

Just have a look at the top comment in this thread for the real pros and cons of each class, determined purely by awful itemization and poor class balance - https://www.reddit.com/r/Nostalrius/...each_class_in/

Hypothetical scenario -
Jimmy, 25-27 years old, played Vanilla first back when he was 13-15. Jimmy enjoyed Vanilla thoroughly but didn't get to experience everything at end-game at such a young and tender age. He longs for the chance to return to the good-ol' days and re-live that content with the skills/knowledge he has accumulated over the years, perhaps with the intent to join a PvE focused raid guild with a handful of friends from his guild on retail today, and clear the content at a somewhat reasonable pace.
Jimmy's mained a Paladin since day 1, strictly playing as retribution. He is uncomfortable playing as a tank or a healer, and hates PvP. Jimmy then invests, based on a made up average of time needed to reach 60 of 8-12 days; 192 to 288 hours of his life into reaching end game on his Ret paladin in classic WoW. None of the other classes/roles appeal to him, and he doesn't enjoy the gameplay for whatever reason.
Jimmy slowly comes to the realization that his character is complete garbage for the content he wants to see. He carries some guilt from expecting his raid team to have to put up with his sub-optimal contribution on progress boss fights, and is unable to compensate due to the lack of gearing options out of raids. He is now faced with a tough decision - start fresh on a class that his guild actually needs, and that he personally hates, leaving him somewhere between 2 and 4 months behind his peers, depending on how fast he can pump out a new level 60 class, or quit the game.

Purists need to get over this notion that everyone wanting to experience 1-60 Azeroth is as skilled and as good as they perceive themselves to be. A vast majority of today's playerbase rely on options like LFR/LFG to achieve/experience anything in WoW, and would find themselves unable to progress their characters without them (to be clear I am 100% NOT advocating either of these awful features make it into WoW: Classic), and you could argue that the game in 2007 was more complex/difficult compared to today's LFR experience (I believe it most certainly is). In order for Blizzard to incentivize their existing subs to experience what's looking like their 25th anniversary retail game option, they will need to revise some obvious major flaws. Class/talent combos being complete garbage in specific environments, and not just ST vs AoE, but literally PvE vs PvP, is absolutely not ok, and not something they should be happy with delivering to paying customers.