Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Ielenia]

Notice the bolded, italic part of your sentence. It specificly implies that Blizzard knows if vanilla servers are profitable or not and would be guaranteed to submit resources to such an undertaking if it was profitable. Which is at best speculation, if not down-right bullshit. I am not attacking a strawman, you are by focusing on the wrong part of your sentence.

Actually, you are the only one implying 'omniscience' on Blizzard's part. Anyone else reading what you quoted, who isn't either trying to build a strawman or grasping at straws, would understand their knowledge is still limited by the market research they, just like all businesses, do. Also: the line you carefully bolded? That doesn't imply omniscience on Blizzard's part in any way.

And here's the thing: if an 'average schmuck' can know, for a "fact", that vanilla servers are profitable, why do you only question me when I

Do you know what omnipotent means?

It literally means 'all-powerful', deriving from latin.

Yes, and it has nothing to do with this subject. The word you're looking for your strawman is omniscience.

You imply that Blizzard knows if vanilla servers are profitable based on theorical research you claim exist, but there is no evidence of at all,

You mean, other than Blizzard's claims that the interest doesn't off-set the costs, that the logistics wouldn't be worth it, and that running two versions of WoW concurrently is not feasible?

This is arguably heightening Blizzard as a deity among gaming companies, because even with the most extensive market research you can never be 100% certain of making a profit. And in many cases market research can be misleading.

You're the only one here trying to state as fact a false dichotomy: that either Blizzard knows nothing or Blizzard knows everything. It doesn't work that way. Not to mention that I never claimed Blizzard is omniscient, I only claimed that Blizzard knows more about the market than you or basically any other MMO-Champion poster.

You're the one trying to strawman it to somehow mean that I'm saying Blizzard is omniscient.

And do keep commenting on my reading-comprehension and use of strawmen, when I am consistent in my critic of your statements.

Consistently grasping at straws, obviously.

You said those words,

And you either lack the reading comprehension to understand something so simple or, again, you're trying to strawman my arguments.

now you must accept the consequences when I argue that it's a highly biased attitude to have that showcases blind belief in Blizzard's abilities as a company.

You're arguing against your own strawman, there. Not to mention that the idea that an average person would know more about the market than Blizzard, or just about any other company you disagree with, is quite, well, arrogant.

[Kyanion]

Second, we know Blizzard could have done this as close to zero cost to themselves, simply by making a deal with Nost. Nost already had a deal with their hosting provider where players could pay them directly, they could've made a deal with Blizzard where their players need a subscription from Blizzard. Blizzard could've then made it absolutely clear that this is not a sub to a Blizzard run server, but simply a license to connect to third party servers. Literally the only thing they needed to do is to collect money.

I wish we could drop this part of the debate on the forum. It is VERY UNLIKELY Blizz would EVER let people running a private server infringing on Blizz's IP to have the 'key to the kingdom' as it were. And secondly just because Nost people got an emulator version working (which reportedly took them a couple years) does not mean they'd be able to even handle what Blizzard does on their own servers.

[Deleted]

Nearly a week and I still havent seen a single word or pioece of data to substantiate this myth.

Still waiting for the cold hard numbers that support this garbage.

I think the fact that a sever that could support 15k-20k being logged in at one time was supported by volunteers and optional donations suggests that it's no where near as costly as you like to pretend.

Didn't Blizzard have enough servers for 12 Million people? Can't they simply be reused on demand?

[Ielenia]

They wouldn't be if they had an official legit way of accessing what they want to access.

So you're basically saying: "obey the law, unless it stands between me and what I find fun, then it's ok to break the law"?

[Clbull]

I think the general censenus is that there would be one Vanilla server, one TBC server and one Wrath server, all with progression. Maybe a Vanilla server that progresses from Vanilla to Wrath. I'd end up playing on all the, though so I don't mind what way they go about doing it if they do.

The only problem I can see with that is the amount of versions of the game Blizzard would need to keep maintained. In order to prevent this, I think there are two potential soltuions

1) Develop one legacy version of the game and have different legacy realms with varying rulesets, i.e.

- Classic - Level cap is 60, Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms are available, features a rebalanced version of 1.12 era classes and talents with some improvements towards underappreciated classes and specs, i.e. Paladins get Crusader Strike at Level 1, Redoubt and Recknoning are improved to no longer proc when you're the victim of a critical strike.

- Burning Crusade - Level cap is 70, Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms and Outland are available. Features new abilities and talents for each class.

- Wrath of the Lich King - Level cap is 80, Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Outland and Northrend are available. Features new abilities and talents for each class.

2) Develop one legacy version of the game and do the following:

- Keep the level cap at 60 and the game as close to the original Vanilla gameplay style as possible. Start with 1.12 era abilities and talents and rebalance them as necessary to help underappreciated classes and specs become relevant.

- Add new content including continents, quests, dungeons, raids, zones, etc, that compliment the existing raid progression system, rather than make old raids obsolete.

- Add Seasonal progression servers and regular servers.

[Reapocalypse]

Yeah but here is the can of worms theory.

Why 1.12?
Why not 1.0 and patch the game as it was over time so the server has some progresion instead of already being at 1.12
Why even Vanilla? WotLK was more popular and in some ways iconic with the Lich King.
What about bug fixes? Should those happen? People will bitch for them.
What about graphic updates to handle newer monitors?
What about class balance issues? People will raise hell if their favorite specs are left out in the cold and unable to raid because some specs were absolute shit in raids.

And so on.

But as far as the battle.net point goes. I'm pretty darn sure they'd want to implement those servers to connect with battle.net so people can stay contacted with their friends on other Blizzard games. No idea how much it would cost to do but I think Blizz would go that route given their track record.

My solution would be to do it just like Runescape, they seem to just make Votings/Polls for all choices to make, for example,
The WotLK Legacy realm is soon coming after Sunwell Release! Should LFG be included at all?
and so on, then the Legacy crowd can decide for themselves if they want certain changes to the old game or not, Bugfixing should always be done tho imo.

As far as the Class changes go i havnt seen a single Legacy Fan that wants them or anything similiar like Content nerfs, XP adjustments and so on, but with polls the majority of this crowd could decide that better for themselves.
The alternative to that is to just to try to make it as much Vanilla as possible, starting from 1.0 and then releasing the Patches with the same timeframe as back then, wich would result in alot of exploiting and probably whining, but thats what they asked for after all.

[jvbastel]

Nearly a week and I still havent seen a single word or pioece of data to substantiate this myth.

Still waiting for the cold hard numbers that support this garbage.

Nostalrius devs have said they would be happy to share their entire codebase with blizzard. If blizzard hosted that on their servers, while asking for a subscription fee, it would cost them a marginal amount in setup and they would have a vanilla server running.
If they make a statement that customer support will not be of the same quality as the current customer support, and that bug fixes will be slower, and only implemented if they can be done server side, they would not need a lot of developers/CS employees.

Those aren't cold hard numbers, but expecting random people who have no affiliation with blizzard to provide you with well-researched numbers is ridiculous.

[Kyanion]

I think the fact that a sever that could support 15k-20k being logged in at one time was supported by volunteers and optional donations suggests that it's no where near as costly as you like to pretend.

Didn't Blizzard have enough servers for 12 Million people? Can't they simply be reused on demand?

You do realize it was an emulator right? And not what Blizzard would be putting out if they made legacy realms.

[Deleted]

I wish we could drop this part of the debate on the forum. It is VERY UNLIKELY Blizz would EVER let people running a private server infringing on Blizz's IP to have the 'key to the kingdom' as it were.

Based on what? It's literally free money for them, why would they leave it sitting on the table?

And secondly just because Nost people got an emulator version working (which reportedly took them a couple years) does not mean they'd be able to even handle what Blizzard does on their own servers.

I'm not sure what you mean by "emulator" version. It's a WoW server implementation, and it's available on Github if you want to look at just how much effort it is (MaNGOS Zero). And they showed they could handle 150k active subscribers, that's the same order of magnitude as a retail EU has at the moment.

[Clbull]

I think the fact that a sever that could support 15k-20k being logged in at one time was supported by volunteers and optional donations suggests that it's no where near as costly as you like to pretend.

Didn't Blizzard have enough servers for 12 Million people? Can't they simply be reused on demand?

Nostalrius also had over 150,000 active players that have logged on in the last 10 days, and over 800,000 registered accounts. And this number grew primarily through word-of-mouth and very limited media exposure.

[Kyanion]

The only problem I can see with that is the amount of versions of the game Blizzard would need to keep maintained. In order to prevent this, I think there are two potential soltuions

1) Develop one legacy version of the game and have different legacy realms with varying rulesets, i.e.

- Classic - Level cap is 60, Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms are available, features a rebalanced version of 1.12 era classes and talents with some improvements towards underappreciated classes and specs, i.e. Paladins get Crusader Strike at Level 1, Redoubt and Recknoning are improved to no longer proc when you're the victim of a critical strike.

- Burning Crusade - Level cap is 70, Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms and Outland are available. Features new abilities and talents for each class.

- Wrath of the Lich King - Level cap is 80, Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Outland and Northrend are available. Features new abilities and talents for each class.

2) Develop one legacy version of the game and do the following:

- Keep the level cap at 60 and the game as close to the original Vanilla gameplay style as possible. Start with 1.12 era abilities and talents and rebalance them as necessary to help underappreciated classes and specs become relevant.

- Add new content including continents, quests, dungeons, raids, zones, etc, that compliment the existing raid progression system, rather than make old raids obsolete.

- Add Seasonal progression servers and regular servers.

But Vanilla purists would raise hell if you tried to make all specs viable. The moment you start changing things such as class balancing or adding new content it becomes a huge pitfall where people will try and demand other fixes and QoL changes.

[Deleted]

You do realize it was an emulator right? And not what Blizzard would be putting out if they made legacy realms.

I was talking about server costs.

[Kyanion]

Nostalrius devs have said they would be happy to share their entire codebase with blizzard. If blizzard hosted that on their servers, while asking for a subscription fee, it would cost them a marginal amount in setup and they would have a vanilla server running.
If they make a statement that customer support will not be of the same quality as the current customer support, and that bug fixes will be slower, and only implemented if they can be done server side, they would not need a lot of developers/CS employees.

Those aren't cold hard numbers, but expecting random people who have no affiliation with blizzard to provide you with well-researched numbers is ridiculous.

Yeah but at the same time it is ridiculous to think Blizzard would ever use that emulator code that Nost was running. They'd have to go over it with a fine tooth comb and then fix it to even run on what Blizzard has.

[Atelniar]

Actually, you are the only one implying 'omniscience' on Blizzard's part. Anyone else reading what you quoted, who isn't either trying to build a strawman or grasping at straws, would understand their knowledge is still limited by the market research they, just like all businesses, do. Also: the line you carefully bolded? That doesn't imply omniscience on Blizzard's part in any way.

And here's the thing: if an 'average schmuck' can know, for a "fact", that vanilla servers are profitable, why do you only question me when I


Yes, and it has nothing to do with this subject. The word you're looking for your strawman is omniscience.


You mean, other than Blizzard's claims that the interest doesn't off-set the costs, that the logistics wouldn't be worth it, and that running two versions of WoW concurrently is not feasible?


You're the only one here trying to state as fact a false dichotomy: that either Blizzard knows nothing or Blizzard knows everything. It doesn't work that way. Not to mention that I never claimed Blizzard is omniscient, I only claimed that Blizzard knows more about the market than you or basically any other MMO-Champion poster.

You're the one trying to strawman it to somehow mean that I'm saying Blizzard is omniscient.


Consistently grasping at straws, obviously.


And you either lack the reading comprehension to understand something so simple or, again, you're trying to strawman my arguments.


You're arguing against your own strawman, there. Not to mention that the idea that an average person would know more about the market than Blizzard, or just about any other company you disagree with, is quite, well, arrogant.

You are definetly biased.

I never said I knew more about the market than Blizzard (cite me if you claim so), you fail to admit your phrasing was poor to say the least. I will ignore you from now on. I do not consistently grasp at straws, you do when you try to weasel your way out of an obviously badly phrased sentence by aiming insults at me (regarding expertise, ironically enough I have some level of knowledge regarding development and coding that you do not).

You claim I argue against my own strawman, but you are the one trying to target a part of the sentence that I never questioned to begin with (how ironic).

Your ability to reason is somewhat questionable, take offence if you will, but paraphrasing me consistently while disregarding important plot points in our debacle makes the entire effort pointless. You are a waste of time, because you refuse to accept your own words as what they are. There is terminology you should have applied if you truly meant to phrase yourself differently. Accept the notion that Blizzard can never with 100% accuracy predict profit, or don't bother replying.

I will leave your phrase standing for reference, so you won't forget it:

[...]and if vanilla servers were indeed as profitable as people claim, they would do it.

You assume so much crap, spout so many attempts at slandering, and try to avoid direct confrontation which has been stated with logical reasoning to explain why you are off the mark. It's tiresome.

And people actually wonder why pro-vanilla supporters act toxic? Your ilk is the reason why, you can't be reasoned with, you won't even accept what your own words ACTUALLY mean.

[Deleted]

Nostalrius also had over 150,000 active players that have logged on in the last 10 days, and over 800,000 registered accounts. And this number grew primarily through word-of-mouth and very limited media exposure.

No I know haha, I meant that Nost could have 20k people online at one time and the running costs were purely paid for by volunteers and optional donations so if they can do it, so can Blizzard. I'm pro legacy servers dude lol.

[Kyanion]

Based on what? It's literally free money for them, why would they leave it sitting on the table?



I'm not sure what you mean by "emulator" version. It's a WoW server implementation, and it's available on Github if you want to look at just how much effort it is (MaNGOS Zero). And they showed they could handle 150k active subscribers, that's the same order of magnitude as a retail EU has at the moment.

If the money was so 'free' why haven't they done it? And don't say because the sudden popularity of Nost, PS have been around for years with various stages of community in them. Some pretty large PS have been shut down over the years as well.

Why WOULD they leave free money sitting on the table if it was as free as you claim? It might be that they want to keep the game moving forward and evolving as they have said at Blizzcon last year and mentioned in a blue post this year. Maybe the money ISN'T a big deal right now.

[Deleted]

Yeah but at the same time it is ridiculous to think Blizzard would ever use that emulator code that Nost was running. They'd have to go over it with a fine tooth comb and then fix it to even run on what Blizzard has.

They've had most of the work done for them then? They'd have everything they need because apparently they don't have the source code at all anymore (which I still doubt).

[Kyanion]

Nostalrius also had over 150,000 active players that have logged on in the last 10 days, and over 800,000 registered accounts. And this number grew primarily through word-of-mouth and very limited media exposure.

Well it was getting advertised quite a bit on places where WoW players congregate and it was being 'advertised' by youtubers and twitch streamers. It wasn't quite 'word of mouth' when you involve larger platforms like youtube/twitch. Sure it wasn't TRUE exposure by having media outlets talk about it and all that. But it sure wasn't just a couple friends talking about a server and letting their friends know.

[Clbull]

That's the price people pay for taking someone's intellectual property and use it. They should know better and Vanilla for the love of the cosmos...was not as great as you think it is.

Wasn't it Gabe Newell who once said that piracy was almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem? If Blizzard aren't providing legacy servers and the current version of World of Warcraft is so drastically different to what people liked about Vanilla, can you really blame Nostalrius for wanting to develop a legacy version of the game, and can you really blame hundreds of thousands of players for sinking their time into Nostalrius over retail?

I admittedly played on it back when it was relatively new and didn't really commit to it because I felt it was almost inevitable that Blizzard would shut it down. It was however a relatively bug-free experience.

Also, I'm plugging the Change.org petition here: https://www.change.org/p/mike-morhai...edium=copylink

It's almost at 200k signatures and that is the point where Mark Kern pledged to hand the petition to Mike Morhaime personally.

[Kyanion]

They've had most of the work done for them then? They'd have everything they need because apparently they don't have the source code at all anymore (which I still doubt).

They wouldn't have everything they need but I'm tired of having to go over that multiple times. If it was easy as just taking an emulator code and slapping it on Blizz's servers and flipping a switch...well if you really believe that go for it.