Expension servers, an Idea?

[Darknova]

I started to play Wow in vanilla and have played every expansion since i started. but after Wotlk came out some years back, many of the old players left the game. I come to think of an idea that could bring the old Wow players back.

If blizzard made diffrent servers to play that expension you wanted to play. What do you guys think? is it just a silly idea or could it be done?

[Deleted]

That will never happen

[Ratboy]

This has been asked many times and Blizzard has stated many times it's not going to happen. They are not going to spend resources to do something that will cause more problems than it would solve.

[Deleted]

They wont do it cause they cant accept the fact the older teams did a far better work than they will ever achieve

[Neotokyo]

This idea has been flogged to death, the amount of Dev time to roll back the code would be insane, even if the code actually still existed. It would be great for a week or 2 but would quickly get old again as you knew exactly what was coming or worse that there was nothing else left in that expac.

[Glormon]

It can be done, whether there would be any point is the other question. You essentially giving them content thats already technically available to them -NOW- just without the other changes that came after it. What purpose would you have to go backwards and cut off your access to content that appeared later.

Its also difficult to have the player base in general feel truly interested in playing in old Vanilla. A number of the mechanics and systems of the old world are basics the community as a whole has uncovered, making it difficult to have that same feeling of pleasure of doing the same things you did in the past all over again.

[Deleted]

Blizzard have said numerous times they won't do this, for various reasons. Its a shame because it would be awesome to play, but for now your best bet is private servers.

Maybe someone should start a petition or something, or a really serious private server project sort of like SWGemu.

[Howard Moon]

Blizz has already said about a billion times that it will never happen.

Just go find one of the "unofficial" Vanilla servers.

[Pharm]

Too bad this will never happen. I would love to obtain Scarab Lord title and mount.

[Deleted]

Why would you want the old game back, blizzard have improved the game for most players overall ( maybe they made it a little bit too easy in certain parts ), but apart from that it has been improved and the content is more accessible for the player base. A lot of the old players just quit because of real life things or the game was just boring to them not because they miss having to spam LFG wailing cavers for an hour in chat.

[ArMeD_SuRvIvOr]

The Wall of No will be in shortly


Courtesy of Aberzombie.

THE WALL OF NO!

Summary of Blizz’s public stance:

1. Blizz does not believe there are enough people interested in utilizing this idea long term to justify the various costs necessary to bring it about.

2. Blizz feels this idea is counter to the nature of MMO’s; non-progression equates to stagnation and eventual boredom.

3. The original game code does not exist in that form anymore. All the old data has been replaced, with the newer data which was not saved (archived) for later reuse. It was over-written and destroyed. “There is no switch to flip on the realms to roll back years of patches and changes…” In keeping with the sentiment in expressed in #2, above, it’s gone, never to return. Even if it were “recoverable” by other means it would still require lengthy and expensive rewrite.

4. They have no plans or desire to recreate the original version from scratch. They refer to the notion of attempting to do so as “a logistical nightmare,”… and in keeping with their stance in #1, above the time, money and resources required are prohibitive and unjustified.

To paraphrase it all: “Too much cost, too little interest and it’s not what the game is about… we’re not doing it.”

Proponents are adamant it is a good thing and continue to post it (in various forms), sometimes multiple times a day despite heavy resistance.

Analogies:
Those who argue for “Classic”, “Vanilla”, “Old Content”, “Old Style”, “Realm Specific”, “Locked Progression”, “Throwback”, “Retro”, “Premium” (or any other variant thereof) servers frequently fail to put real thought into their idea. Consider how this would work in similar situations in other venues.

The movie industry:
“The earliest days of film were so much better; we really had fun and such a sense of adventure. We really had to work at understanding what was going on and those that couldn’t read the subtitles were just bad. We want special theaters that play only silent films (Vanilla), those were so awesome and we miss them so much. For those that want black and white “talkies” (BC) we can maybe have some that do those too, but no further. Technicolor (WotLK) is where the studios went wrong and this fancy Bullet-Time fx (Cata) junk is just taking the whole thing in the wrong direction…Blizz, fix it now! Give us our silent films back!”

The auto industry:
We want our Model-T’s back (Vanilla)… Henry Ford’s stuff was so awesome (blah, blah)…We could support maybe the Mustang (BC), but no further (blah, blah)… Datsun’s 280Z (WotLK) is where it all went wrong (blah, blah)…Chrysler Minivans (Cata) are just too bad to deal with (blah, blah)…

Proponents are asking either for (a) regression to the past where things were not better than they are now…and want to drag everyone else in the game with them… or (b) the ability to segregate themselves from everyone else so they can indulge in their nostalgia. Not only does the majority of the player base not want that, neither does Blizz. Not enough people want it to justify the costs of doing it and… most importantly… it goes against the progressive vision the company -- and players -- have for the game as a whole.

You will have no better chance of getting Blizz to do this than you would convincing the movie industry to revert to silent or even black and white only films or the auto industry to revert to producing nothing but cars like the Model-T or Edsel.

Blizzard specific references on the issue:

They were going to, long ago…
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. We'd effectively be developing and supporting two different games.
Drysc (CM), Feb 21, 2008
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/6...lassic-servers

We occasionally see requests for us to open pre-TBC realms, or classic realms if you prefer. Lately there have also been requests for pre-WotLK realms, and I am sure that once the next expansion pack is released there will be requests for pre-Cataclysm realms as well. We have answered these requests quite a few times now saying that we have no plans to open such realms, and this is still the case today.

We have no plans to open classic realms or limited expansion content realms, and you should not expect to see the opening of such realms with the launch of Cataclysm either.

We realize that some of you feel that the classic game was more fun than the current game, and as a result would like to revel in nostalgia; the developers however prefer to keep the game moving forward as they want the game to continuously evolve and progress.
Vaneras (CM), Nov 28, 2009
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/1...igional-realms

We have no plans of making pre-TBC realms. This goes against the very nature of an MMO and would be a logistical nightmare. There's no switch to flip on the realms to roll back years of patches and changes, and we don't intend to invent one so that a very small minority of players can play what we feel would be an inferior cousin of the World of Warcraft of today.
Zarhym (CM), April 27, 2010
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/1...the-wow-killer

Question: The whole topic of classic servers has been popping up on the forums, always on yours - I assume with the release of Cataclysm there's this huge wave of nostalgia here because you can't play in the old world anymore. Is this something you might consider doing after the Cataclysm launch?

Chilton: Currently, my answer would be probably not. The reason I say that is because any massively multiplayer game that has pretty much ever existed and has ever done any expansions has always gotten the nostalgia of, "Oh God, wouldn't it be great if we could have classic servers!" and more than anything else that generally proves to be nostalgia. In most cases - in almost all cases - the way it ends up playing out is that the game wasn't as good back then as people remember it being and then when those servers become available, they go play there for a little bit and quickly remember that it wasn’t quite as good as what they remembered in their minds and they don’t play there anymore and you set up all these servers and you dedicated all this hardware to it and it really doesn't get much use. So, for me, the historical lesson is that it's not a very good idea to do *laughs* - it's a great idea to talk about.
Tom Chilton (lead game designer), Aug 20, 2010
http://www.wowhead.com/news=166540/e...tails-and-more
(approx. half way down page)

https://twitter.com/ghostcrawler/sta...81503165054976
Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street, Dec 31, 2012

Additionally, read this player post that might remind you of some of what you “miss” about Vanilla WoW:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...1718715?page=1

WowInsider has a similar negative view:
May 2, 2012
http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/02/5-...one/#continued

Also –

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...0659727?page=2
I work for a software company with corporate customers. Each of them has rather more invested in equipment than a PC gamer, and they like paying for upgrades even less.

Our products have been advancing technologically over time in a gradual fashion, so as not to lose the customers with the oldest equipment. However, things like operating system support and hardware version support are outside our control--which means we have to keep slowly advancing the requirements, and adjust existing code to match. Over time that means stuff eventually falls off the list of what we can support, because our code, gradually upgraded as it is, starts to require OS or hardware features the oldest equipment can't support.

We couldn't turn the clock back ten years, or probably even five, if we wanted to.

Blizz is no doubt in the same pickle. They've changed their database structure, upgraded the graphics, and likely done a lot of more subtle stuff over the last seven years that makes it fundamentally impossible to support Vanilla code, even assuming that code still exists in pristine form somewhere.

MOP will, as I understand it, very likely require at least a duo core CPU. That's another significant difference that can't be rolled back.

Therefore: what the Vanilla crowd is actually asking for is the development of new code to duplicate old code. That's not easy or cheap, and is going to compete directly for resources with development of current content. There would have to be a monumental ground surge of interest to make it feasible, an order of magnitude greater than what has ever been exhibited on the forums.

TLDR: That's not how software works.

[Ratboy]

If Blizzard created a Vanilla server people would log in, see that's it's not at the patch that they thought was the peak of WoW and start bitching like crazy about it.

[Mirishka]

The Wall of No will be in shortly


Courtesy of Aberzombie.

THE WALL OF NO!

God I love you. Well, I love the guy who actually made the WALL OF NO, but you quoted it so you're pretty great too! I'd make the WoN my freaking signature if I could.

[Imnick]

oh god, not this again

I am glad someone posted the wall of No

[Deleted]

This shit again? Ugh. No it will never happen...

[Mosotti]

I don't think there is a software company in this universe, especially Blizzard, that "deletes source code and overwrites data"

They most likely have a very good version control system and they could probably make any version of server with minimum effort, but there's no point in it. Yet. I'm pretty sure that when WoW will be really dying they will think about playing the nostalgia card and put up a shitload of servers in maintenance mode, served by a hand of people and make another pile of money

[Darknova]

well guys seems this question has been asked many times before. diden`t know that :S
but thanks for the feedback xD

[Imnick]

I don't think there is a software company in this universe, especially Blizzard, that "deletes source code and overwrites data"

They most likely have a very good version control system and they could probably make any version of server with minimum effort, but there's no point in it. Yet. I'm pretty sure that when WoW will be really dying they will think about playing the nostalgia card and put up a shitload of servers in maintenance mode, served by a hand of people and make another pile of money

You only bother to keep the data for code you intend to maintain, if you are fixing bugs and upgrading functionality why would you not overwrite what used to be there? It's not like you ever intend to go back, you're making it better.
Software companies that make operating systems and utility software have good reason to keep legacy code because people will be running outdated versions that need support long after the new version is released. This is not so for a video game, where players will always be running either the most recent version or no version.

When you are not expecting clients to be running outdated versions of your code then there is no reason to keep backups of your previous builds for more than one or two patches, as there will never be any need to roll back or provide support for outdated versions.

[gee]

@OP
It is "expansion", not expension.

[Adoxe]

No. /10chars