Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Atelniar]

Your own words:

And you're wrong. The subscription also goes to pay for the customer support and community management teams. It doesn't depend solely on content being added.


You forget that even a 'stale' game would still need near-constant development: weekly maintenance, updating for new hardware and software drivers as well as new OS's and OS updates that will come in the future, as well as fixing whatever bugs those updates may cause.


No, it's not. That's you just building and attacking a strawman. Again, it's objectively wrong to force players who are not interested in vanilla servers to pay for others who want to play vanilla for free.


The only ones being "entitled" are the ones who believe that people who don't care or don't want vanilla should pay for those servers so the pro-vanilla crowd could play in those servers for free.


And you're going to argue that costs would be minimal, then? You do know the issue is not about creating one, two, three, or even ten vanilla servers, right? Because making one or ten of them would take basically the same amount of effort, since most of it resides in re-working the code to make it fully work with today's hardware and software.

1) You take misquote me on purpose, disregarding the terminology distinctly stating: "if it was the only reason". Aka: I argue that you ignore additional content, and how it to a customer justifies the subscription model in a way servers and maintenence does not. You seem to be under the illusion that F2P titles or B2P titles doesn't have similar issues in managing their games. You still chose to ignore the idea of additional content justifying subscription models as relevant, hence you fail to address the issue I raise. Please be more constructive in future, rather than acting stubborn just for the sake of being stubborn.

2) Beep!

"You forget that even a 'stale' game would still need near-constant development: weekly maintenance, updating for new hardware and software drivers as well as new OS's and OS updates that will come in the future, as well as fixing whatever bugs those updates may cause."

I never forgot that, that is included in my reasoning as F2P MMORPG's and B2P MMORPG's address the same issue. You still refuse to accept than equal pricing for a lesser product (in terms of content updates) is unreasonable. I will not continue this discussion if you continue to grasp at straws to avoid that fact.

3) "No, it's not. That's you just building and attacking a strawman. Again, it's objectively wrong to force players who are not interested in vanilla servers to pay for others who want to play vanilla for free."

This speaks for itself. You are allowed to construct false premises based on assumptions, and I am not even allowed to raise questions regarding that by bringing up the only way your assumption could prove relevant? Failure to comply with reason? Check. You like to state something is objectively wrong when your entire premise is a subjective viewpoint on the whole debate. In which you have admitted you do not like the concept of paying for legacy servers. As if that was the actual case when finances are involved in development...

But you know what IS objectively wrong? Making up bullshit assumptions from a subjective perspective to justify ignoring valid reasonings as to why the price of 15 USD per month for legacy servers would not be fair.

4) "The only ones being "entitled" are the ones who believe that people who don't care or don't want vanilla should pay for those servers so the pro-vanilla crowd could play in those servers for free."

You a) confuse a F2P payment model with being entirely free of cost. F2P titles can in fact end up making more income per costumer than a subscription model, depending on how well it is implemented. Then you b) accuse others of being entitled for stating their desire to play on legacy servers, while you proclaim that you do not wish to pay for those costs out of your own pocket and refuse to accept that you are as a result "entitled"? Hypocrite.

5) "And you're going to argue that costs would be minimal, then?"

Nay, nor did I claim they would be so minimal as to amount to nothing. You assume I do.

"You do know the issue is not about creating one, two, three, or even ten vanilla servers, right?"

Uh, actually, the number of realms in question would indeed have something to say on the expenses. Hence, why Blizzard shut down some dying realms and merge realms. To avoid some expenses. There are of course other factors to consider.

"[...]most of it resides in re-working the code to make it fully work with today's hardware and software."

Code that exist for reference and is frankly a one-time endeavour, but would amount to quite some time. It doesn't necessary require dozens of people working on the project. In fact, as provided by the statements regarding legacy servers in the case of Runescape: far less.

[Deleted]

It's so cute, seeing all those naive players thinking that their petition of Morhaime will do anything. It won't.

It's not feasible as an investment and it will be voted away instantly by the board of directors simply because of that.

150.000 accounts, even with a 15 EUR sub per month is only 2.25 million EUR per month, granted that blizzard itself would have to train employees specifically for this, and then have enough staff to support the game, not to mention also rent additional infrastructure, and additional devs to keep the game functional, that would easily surpass the amount of money gained through subscriptions, and that's not even with taxes calculated into it.

You could say oh well why not use Nostralius people? Well that wouldn't work, they'd have to officially get a license agreement with blizzard and granted how big the franchise is, could cost millions of euros per month. They can't give it for free either because then that would open a lot of ways for people to abuse it.

So do yourself a favor, prepare yourself for disappoint, because that's the only thing this will lead to.

[HuxNeva]

First, those compiled builds aren't the source code. The source code has moved along and evolved. Once a version of a program is released, there is no reason to keep its source code around besides as a back-up in case someone screws things up. People seem to think that programmers keep all their old source code neatly filed away, which simply doesn't happen. If your program went from version 1.0 to 1.5, you don't keep the source code for versions 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4. You keep the source code for the last stable version (1.5), and use that as the basis for your next stable release.

You are not a programmer. You haven't even touched a software development business with a barge pole. If you had, you would know source code is stored in a source-control system that keeps every single change form the very beginning. Not only is '1.0' there, fact is that later versions don't even exist as anything but differences to the version they are derived from. This not only holds for 'production' code, but for every sidetrack and test any developer ever did. Besides code, also the tools needed to build and work on the code are archived just for this exact situation.

Second, this is a server application we're talking about here. The client will likely run just fine on most machines out there because it was made to run on as broad an install base as possible (from shiny obsidian monoliths made out of raw computing power, to your average toaster). The server software, however, had to be heavily optimized to work with a very specific set of hardware and network configurations. Why? Because that's what servers do. Software intended to run on a server has to be robust and efficient, because as opposed to clients -- which can suffer in terms of performance because it's just one person being affected -- an unstable or laggy server screws things up for hundreds to thousands of people at once. And so they're programmed to squeeze every last drop of performance they can from the hardware they're running on. That means your server may malfunction or even not work at all if you try to run it on the hardware it was not made for. And the server hardware and network infrastructure of 10 to 12 years ago is very different from what we have now. I know that first hand, since I used to work at a data center that ran servers from the early 90s to the early 2010s.

Hardware changes all the time and comes in many different flavors. That is the reason we invented these things called an 'operating system', which abstracts this away and presents to the programs a 'uniform' environment. Yes, operating systems do change over time, but companies such as Microsoft go to extreme lengths to make sure they are backwards compatible with things that did run on the previous version. This goes so far as to include specific 'fixes' in the new OS to make sure that code that abused bugs or undocumented features of the previous OS version still runs. Dive into the archives of The Old New Thing if you want some nice examples of that. These days we go even further and use virtual machines to run older OS's on top of newer OS's if needed.

[Aehl]

What does paying money have to do with genuine interest in the subject matter from a potential demographic?

Those servers wont run for free now, will they?

1) Private server activity and their success as such inspite of their questionable nature, which would normally cause people to avoid them.
2) There are half a dozen active private servers with classic orientation and has been like this for many years.
3) Many of these private servers rival or topple most of the large servers in WoW in terms of activity.
4) Nostalrius alone could be compared to 3-4 of the largest WoW-servers currently running in terms of activity (put together, not one by one).
5) 150k+ signatures on an actual petition.
6) Anything from 80k up to 2+ million views per youtube video (depending on the chosen video-creater) which focuses on the topic.
7) One of the largest threads currently running on MMO-Champion, while others also address the topic (legacy servers/classic WoW) but in a different manner than focusing on Nostalrius.

Sorry but any argument started by people using illegal pirated software on an illegal server holds ZERO water. Oh and name me another way to finance this server other than a subs model.

Call me Sherlock, baby, I'd say that there's very little for the nay-sayers of legacy servers to stand on. Other than conjecture based around subscription having to be a payment model and assumptions regarding how many would pay their own subscription for a stale server (duh) and Blizzard's stance (which Blizzard is allowed to have, I am merely arguing there is a fucking demographic).

So

I ask again.

who pays for the server? Demographics are fucking useless

What proof do you have that a Vanilla server will be financially viable?

Because THAT is the bottom line.

[OreoLover]

(I feel cheated that all the money used to develop HoTS, Overwatch, Diablo 3 is not being spend on making WoW a better product).

Those support the health and growth of Blizzard, which is better for WoW than a consistent decay, and more feasible with popular products that use similar/same IP. Pumping full investment into WoW with diminishing returns would sacrifice WoW quality, too

[Atelniar]

Yes, sure, sure. Blizzard only lies and makes excuses, they are never right, and every single petition on Change.org and the like have always worked, without fail, yadda-yadda-yadda.


Again with the strawman because I never claimed such. I merely said that, between a criminal and a legitimate business, I tend to believe the word of the legitimate business. That, between the word of an unknown schmuck in the internet and a legitimate business, I tend to believe the word of the legitimate business. Simple as that. I never claimed they never made mistakes.

1) Excuse =/= lies.

2) "Again with the strawman because I never claimed such."

I quote:

I'd argue their word have more weight, though, considering they're a legitimate business, and, as such, care about the bottom line, and if vanilla servers were indeed as profitable as people claim, they would do it.

Your trust in Blizzard is wavering, almost cute in fact, but it doesn't stand as a relevant argument.

[HuxNeva]

For those arguing WoD WoW is a good alternative for 'classic' WoW: do you also believe Age of Empires III was a good alternative to Age of Empires II? Note that II is still very much alive and active, whereas III is but a footnote in the history of the game.

[Atelniar]

Curiosity makes them join, mimetic desire makes them like it

I approve of your post. It made me chuckle.

[Deleted]

I never said every time a new video driver is developed, but when there's enough of a change in a video driver, either by a new version or a new model, the game needs to be kept up-to-date. Every software needs to be kept up-to-date to current hardware and software, because backwards compatibility only goes so far. Otherwise we would still be able to play MS-DOS games like Loom, Day of the Tentacle, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D and other games of that time without needing extra programs to create backwards compatibility.

Asked before, and I ask again: show some proof. Any tech savvy person can tell you that it's the other way around: video drivers are developed so they support a game.

I will start believing it when you prove it to me that it's a fact. Your word does not make it a fact.

So HoTS, Overwatch, Diablo 3 financed themselves before they even existed

[Darkeon]

Well, if it was directed at the CEO of Activision, then yes, I guess you could.

If you actually want something done, you need to speak to those who are in charge of said things.

Example: If there is a pothole right in the middle of your home street, then you go to the city planner or maintenance or whoever is in charge, not to the president of your country.

Basically you are taking your little picture to a guy who only looks and cares about the big picture. The result will not satisfy you.

Not me who pulled numbers from communities outside WoW to prove a point about an issue regarding WoW...

[Aehl]

Will this make us money?

Yes = lets look at it and maybe do it

As opposed to

Will this make us money?

N0. Scrapheap.

- - - Updated - - -

D3 already had a hold as part of a franchise to two other successful games.

[Deleted]

Those support the health and growth of Blizzard, which is better for WoW than a consistent decay, and more feasible with popular products that use similar/same IP. Pumping full investment into WoW with diminishing returns would sacrifice WoW quality, too

I only pointed this out to Ielenia, who thinks that specific Blizzard products financed their development before even existing. Of course money generated by selling WoW has been used to finance other projects, it's stupid to think differently.

[Ielenia]

Please show me some examples... Most hot-fixes are because bug-fixes didn't work or created other bugs.

Let's start with patch Patch 5.1.0a. It pure bug fixes, and among those, there was this:

Bug Fixes

• Mac
  
  • Fixed an issue that could cause a crash to occur during in-game cinematics in OSX v.10.6

Patch 5.0.4. Other than the content it brought, it brought this:

Mac

• Mac OS X 10.5 is no longer supported.
• Added full support for Retina displays.
• Added support for game resolutions that match Mac screen aspect ratios.
• Switching between Windowed and Fullscreen display modes should be faster.

Patch 3.2.2a, among other bug fixes, did this:

• Fixed a crash Mac clients were experiencing with ATI driver.

Patch 3.2.0a:

• Fixed a performance issue with players logging into the game.
• Fixed an issue with Mac clients freezing near water.
• Fixed a crash Mac clients were experiencing with shadows on Fixed Function cards.

[Deleted]

So

I ask again.

who pays for the server? Demographics are fucking useless

What proof do you have that a Vanilla server will be financially viable?

Because THAT is the bottom line.

Funny, because everybody anti Legacy Servers directly claims they are not financially viable without any proof to back that up. Most of us are claiming that we don't know and some are claiming that even Blizzard doesn't know. So only the anti Legacy Server crowd is making facts out of opinions.

[Atelniar]

Those servers wont run for free now, will they?



Sorry but any argument started by people using illegal pirated software on an illegal server holds ZERO water. Oh and name me another way to finance this server other than a subs model.



So

I ask again.

who pays for the server? Demographics are fucking useless

What proof do you have that a Vanilla server will be financially viable?

Because THAT is the bottom line.

1) Did I say that? No relevant data regarding costs contra possible profit has been put forth. None. Only assumptions and the word of Blizzard. I am not arguing costs.

2) Sorry, but I didn't partake in Nostalrius, as such my arguments are not tied to their fold. I have reasearched private servers however, and are aware of their presence and popularity long before Nostalrius even launched...

You mean, other than a mentally challenged sub model that contradicts fair pricing and is suggested by someone wholy subjective on the matter, with the intent of trying to make the prospect as unpopular as possible (aka: exaggerated pricing)?

Sure: A decently priced subscription model, at around 5 USD, fair considering the users will never receive any updates. Why the hell should they pay the same as retail? A F2P model with well-thought out monetization schemes. I have personally suggested several examples of how it can be done, you haven't lifted a finger to question them or bring up alternatives. You merely blurt out: it must be a sub model, duuuuh! B2P, include legacy servers in the battle chest and have a service that provides interest for new players uncertain of how much they enjoy WoW as an IP. The trial version certainly fails at that. It increases the value of the battle chest and everyone get's the service, including those playing retail. So they don't feel cheated, heck they didn't even have to pay for it. It's already on their account if they want to try it. Or make it a stand-alone B2P service for around 20-30 USD (similar to the battle chest). There are many ways.

3) Just because you say that is where the bottom line is doesn't make it so. You are an upset individual failing to consider alternatives when arguing the poor idea that legacy servers are supposed to be. Aka: you are biased. Heck, you called demographics useless, that's about as unintelligent as it gets when we are discussing game development and target audience. Especially if we are going to argue costs and profitability...

[Deleted]

Let's start with patch Patch 5.1.0a. It pure bug fixes, and among those, there was this:

So basically Blizzard fixes things because THEY created bugs so already existing video drivers don't work? You have everything the wrong way: bug fixes because of already existing drivers and technologies that Blizzard didn't implement correctly, not because the other way around. Did you notice something else too: mostly Mac? If you really know something about Blizzards history, this isn't a big surprise...

-edit- Still waiting for your proof that NO money ever paid for WoW has been used to develop other products. That HoTS, Overwatch and Diablo3 financed themselves even before existing.

[Darkeon]

Will this make us money?

Yes = lets look at it and maybe do it

As opposed to

Will this make us money?

N0. Scrapheap.

While that's certainly a possibility, what it looks to me is more of a case of:

a. Will this make us money?
b. It will, but if we disregard this and instead focus all our team on pseudo-yearly expansions, our profits will be even higher in relation to the effort input.
a. Then say no more!

And it's all fair and game. They are a company seeking profit. But when will enough be enough? When will WoW playerbase stop accepting the standard bar to get lower and lower and, instead, start demanding quality content back? Because we know they are able to, it's just not as profitable to them.

We are players. Not shareholders. We should be happy with receiving as much as we can from our Buck, not with the fact that a company makes the most money it can.

[Deleted]

Sure: A decently priced subscription model, at around 5 USD, fair considering the users will never receive any updates. Why the hell should they pay the same as retail? A F2P model with well-thought out monetization schemes. I have personally suggested several examples of how it can be done, you haven't lifted a finger to question them or bring up alternatives. You merely blurt out: it must be a sub model, duuuuh! B2P, include legacy servers in the battle chest and have a service that provides interest for new players uncertain of how much they enjoy WoW as an IP. The trial version certainly fails at that. It increases the value of the battle chest and everyone get's the service, including those playing retail. So they don't feel cheated, heck they didn't even have to pay for it. It's already on their account if they want to try it. Or make it a stand-alone B2P service for around 20-30 USD (similar to the battle chest). There are many ways.

Funny thing is: they ask for possibilities and when they are brought up, directly go into the "Blizzard said no" mode without even trying to discuss things. It HAS to be run in Blizzards server structure. It HAS to be integrated with Battle.net. It HAS to be a subscription model. When asked why, no answers. I guess they never outgrew that phase when their parents said no and they had to accept it always.

[Atelniar]

Funny thing is: they ask for possibilities and when they are brought up, directly go into the "Blizzard said no" mode without even trying to discuss things. I guess they never outgrew that phase when their parents said no and they had to accept it always.

It's why this bloody debate isn't moving forwards. I have offered possible solutions to other payment methods multiple times in this thread only to be ignored due to that specific reason. "Blizzard said no". Yea, no shit, how are we supposed to have a discussion if we can't discuss beyond what Blizzard says? That's currently a big issue.

[Ielenia]

This speaks for itself. You are allowed to construct false premises based on assumptions, and I am not even allowed to raise questions regarding that by bringing up the only way your assumption could prove relevant?

"False assumptions"? What "false assumptions"? Are you saying that saying that the subscription money doesn't go to pay for the community management and customer support teams is a "false assumption"?

You like to state something is objectively wrong when your entire premise is a subjective viewpoint on the whole debate.

Are you implying that it's not objectively wrong to force others to pay for your servers while you play in said servers without giving anything in return? That's it?

You a) confuse a F2P payment model with being entirely free of cost. F2P titles can in fact end up making more income per costumer than a subscription model, depending on how well it is implemented. Then you b) accuse others of being entitled for stating their desire to play on legacy servers, while you proclaim that you do not wish to pay for those costs out of your own pocket and refuse to accept that you are as a result "entitled"? Hypocrite.

Are you defending 'pay to win' for Vanilla? Because I sincerely doubt vanity mounts and items would be sufficient. And even if it did became sufficient: hey, more development that you claim vanilla doesn't need!

Uh, actually, the number of realms in question would indeed have something to say on the expenses. Hence, why Blizzard shut down some dying realms and merge realms. To avoid some expenses. There are of course other factors to consider.

I never claimed hardware has no effect in the expenses. I simply pointed out it's not the main issue. Paying the personnel is.

Code that exist for reference and is frankly a one-time endeavour,

It's not a one-time endeavor. Here's where you are objectively wrong: software drivers get updated regularly. OS systems are updated less frequently, but still regularly. Not only that, but person A's computer with Windows 10 will not work 100% like person B's computer which also has Window 10, thanks to the different software drivers which work rather uniquely among themselves. The game will have to be regularly updated to keep up with the times, and therefore will need its own development team. If you think I'm wrong, please: find a game that ran on MS-DOS, before Windows 3.1 came along, and try to run it without using any extra programs for backward compatibility. Will it run?

- - - Updated - - -

2) "Again with the strawman because I never claimed such."

I quote:


Your trust in Blizzard is wavering, almost cute in fact, but it doesn't stand as a relevant argument.

That has nothing to do with your strawman that Blizzard is 'omnipotent'. Read on the word. If you mean it as 'without flaws', I never claimed Blizzard doesn't have faults. If you mean 'never lie', I never claimed they never lied. I only said, and repeated, that, to me, between the word of an unknown poster with no evidence and Blizzard, Blizzard's words hold more weight because they're much more likely to have done the extensive market research to back their words than an unknown poster in the internet.