World of Warcraft: Legion (Beta/Pre-Release)

[Aksannyi]

I just feel like if I were unsubbed, this probably wouldn't be the thing to make me resub. Maybe some will though.

[Zetanio]

All my friends would resub, we talk about leveling together in Vanilla/TBC all the time. That's anecdotal of course but whatever.

[brozy]

It's not just the people that were on that server that'd be willing to pay either, theres plenty of people out there that want to play older versions of WoW but won't of had any idea about private servers so while yes not all of that 100k would be willing to pay for an offical legacy server i'd say the vast majority would plus those that currently play WoW and those aforementioned people.

It's definitely an inherent problem with MMO's though, for pretty much every other entertainment medium we can always go back and enjoy that thing as we once did to try and feel what we did back then but the only way to do so for MMO's is though frowned upon means.

[Meresgi]

Yeah, I don't really understand people that want this either.

Same people who want old FFXI style gameplay back...I mean shit yeah it was fun back then when we all had shit loads of time but not anymore. can't fucking manage that sort of gameplay AND jobs/families/degrees and everything else lol.

[fantasticdan]

It's definitely an inherent problem with MMO's though, for pretty much every other entertainment medium we can always go back and enjoy that thing as we once did to try and feel what we did back then but the only way to do so for MMO's is though frowned upon means.

Yeah that's what was sad playing WoD recently. You can always go back and reread/rewatch/replay your favorite books/movies/nearly any other video games/whatever, but old school wow/ffxi/etc. literally don't exist anymore.

I just feel like if I were unsubbed, this probably wouldn't be the thing to make me resub. Maybe some will though.

I think tons of people would sub for proper legacy servers, surely enough to turn a profit with minimal cost. If blizzard doesn't have the programmers or snapshots of the code from those eras thou, their official attempts could very well be less accurate than some private servers.

Nobody is going to sub for their 'pristine' servers as described thou. I mean this;

So what can we do to capture that nostalgia of when WoW first launched? Over the years we have talked about a “pristine realm”. In essence that would turn off all leveling acceleration including character transfers, heirloom gear, character boosts, Recruit-A-Friend bonuses, WoW Token, and access to cross realm zones, as well as group finder. We aren’t sure whether this version of a clean slate is something that would appeal to the community and it’s still an open topic of discussion.

just sounds like it would be modern wow with a bunch of features turned off. I mean yeah, being able to avoid crz bullshit might be nice, but besides that who cares?

[Aksannyi]

Yeah that pristine shit sounds awful.

I just think a lot of them look at Vanilla with nostalgia goggles. Even if you went back and played a Vanilla WoW server, or pre-Abyssea FFXI, it still wouldn't bring back the feeling you had when you first explored the world for the first time ever.

[Zetanio]

Yeah that pristine shit sounds awful.

I just think a lot of them look at Vanilla with nostalgia goggles. Even if you went back and played a Vanilla WoW server, or pre-Abyssea FFXI, it still wouldn't bring back the feeling you had when you first explored the world for the first time ever.

Eh... I think their playerbase proves you wrong.

[Aksannyi]

I don't think that logging into Vanilla WoW would make the game feel new to me. I might be like "Oh cool look it's Org before it was updated" but it wouldn't feel like a whole new game. So not sure how my point was proven wrong.

I get that a lot of people were playing it, I just don't personally see the appeal and I think a lot of others don't really either. Would I check it out if it were available? Perhaps, but I don't think I'd personally spend a lot of my time there when I could be progressing on my main.

[Cantih]

Aks, I'm generally against when people rag on you for thoughts you post in the fail thread.

But in this case, you're going "I don't want X, so I doubt there's a desire for X.", when there is a literal amount of people who outnumber you going "We want X, there is a desire for X."

[Aksannyi]

I'm not speaking just for myself though. I read the official forums regularly and the vast majority of people in those threads also agree with me. I know that the forums are not a representative sample but despite whatever demand for Vanilla servers is out there, the fact is, no one - not even Blizzard - can know if they would turn any profit or be worthwhile to them to maintain. I think, based on things I've read and the opinions I've seen (not just mine) that they wouldn't be a worthwhile venture, and I wouldn't want Blizz to spend any time and resources doing it when we've already been starved for content n current-gen WoW. Maybe I just haven't worded it the right way.

[Zetanio]

So making an extra million bucks is bad.

Sounds great dumbass.

[brozy]

There were at least 100k people on Nostalrius, not to mention every other private server out there and as Zet mentioned it only cost them 3600 to run that server for the year so i fail to see how Blizzard could make a loss on this, after a couple of years activity may decline but by that time it would of by far made more than enought to pay for itself for many years to come.

As for taking away devs from creating current content, why not just hire the Nostalrius team to deal with the private server stuff, create a private server department? Sure they'll probably need a server tech or 2 from Blizzard to help them route shit but i really don't see them ever making a loss on this venture.

And as an afterthought, WoW is a part of gaming history and having a server that still shows where it all came from will still attract people years from now, sure it had its faults but it got as big as it did for a reason and those who want to experence it should have the opportunity to do so

[Kachiko]

The private servers have none of the back-end integration to support what a retail Blizzard game requires. Everything you expect when you play retail has to be available in the 'vanilla' server they offer: Customer service, QA, DEV, marketing, hardware, and it also has to be on a scale greater then just 100k accounts, which doesn't mean anything when talking about consistent concurrent users. You also have to maintain it it at an enterprise level, not just 'when we get around to it'.

I guarantee you Blizzard has looked into the logistics of this, and if they thought they could make as much, or more, profit on 'vanilla' servers, vs what they could create in one of their other properties, or a new property, they would get on that shit fast. It is a very vocal minority that wants the 'vanilla' servers' and yes, a lot of it is rose-tinted glasses, wanting to re-live that experience; I'd be willing to bet the feeling is short-lived as most of the people you experienced that era with wouldn't play on those servers, so you'd be missing out not only on that first time feel, which can never be re-lived, but you won't even be able to re-experience it with the same crew.

Blizzard has to viciously defend it's IP, due to how US copyright laws work. Any approving pass on someone else using it is tantamount to Blizzard giving up all ownership of said IP. It's kinda dumb, but it's complicated at the same time and the potential loss is worth a few people pissed at them for doing so. I'd love to be able to re-live FFXI and WoW back when my guilds were playing; it was a blast, and I enjoyed almost every minute of it. I can never get that back though, and that's the nature of the MMO beast; it's a game that is never completed and so can never be re-played again.

[Zetanio]

Again, this very vocal minority is over 100,000 people. That's not a small group. I don't care much about the IP protection, Blizz has to do that.

Just having over 100,000 accounts active within the last 10 days puts them ahead of a majority of active, fully supported MMO's.

I can tell they did a cost-benefit on this but I think they're undervaluing the market substantially.

[Rhyis.]

Why peeps want to lvl their h2h again

[Zetanio]

Achievement bruh. You know that.

[Bweigelt]

Again, this very vocal minority is over 100,000 people. That's not a small group. I don't care much about the IP protection, Blizz has to do that.

Just having over 100,000 accounts active within the last 10 days puts them ahead of a majority of active, fully supported MMO's.

I can tell they did a cost-benefit on this but I think they're undervaluing the market substantially.

I think you are vastly overestimating the market, even if there are 100k people that would sub, which I don't think there is anywhere near that number, but lets say there is. How many of those people are actually gonna stick around after 2 months when they have to pay for the experience. All the private servers had massive turnover, people would play for a bit then leave, and new people would hear about it and try it out for a bit and then leave, and so on. There is no way blizz could expect 100k subs for any significant amount of time.

[Rhyis.]

It'd be easier for Blizz to just down-level character stats and gear when you walk into different expansion zones.

Actually expanding upon that: They could add heroic and mythic difficulties for all older raid content while doing the above.
Make all higher level gear cap out at a certain point, and have it so that only gear from that specific raid content continues to increase gear stats. So you'd have to progress through heroic AQ to get to mythic AQ, etc.

I could see making old content relevant again really popular, without having to start from scratch.

[Kachiko]

It'd be easier for Blizz to just down-level character stats and gear when you walk into different expansion zones.

Actually expanding upon that: They could add heroic and mythic difficulties for all older raid content while doing the above.
Make all higher level gear cap out at a certain point, and have it so that only gear from that specific raid content continues to increase gear stats. So you'd have to progress through heroic AQ to get to mythic AQ, etc.

I could see making old content relevant again really popular, without having to start from scratch.

Guild Wars did this, to a certain extent, and blizzard has Time Walking dungeons rotating around on weekends, but even so, it takes resources to do it, and Blizzard generally wants to make new content and not update old content.

The one thing you can say about the classic server issue is that the movement is growing. If it continues to grow, it will increasingly be the case that Blizzard will work on a way to monetize it, and their statement basically said as much.

[Rhyis.]

Yeah Guild Wars was where I was drawing the concept from. It's completely feasible, just takes time and effort to physically code it.