Blizzard Drops the Hammer on Popular Vanilla World of Warcraft Nostalrius Private Servers
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't was a sad day for me indeed, Nostalrius did the vanilla thing for well over a year, proving that there is indeed a community for it.
The appeal of Vanilla probably is that it's hard work to get anywhere, getting full epic gear is a hard won achievement and time investment, despite it's flaws, it's the version I enjoy the most.
The appeal of Vanilla probably is that it's hard work to get anywhere, getting full epic gear is a hard won achievement and time investment, despite it's flaws, it's the version I enjoy the most.
There will always be a committed chunk who believe the original was better. A game this size, I'm not really surprised there were this many people.Yojoo said:
The funny bit is, a Vanilla server might actually get me to resub to WoW. Especially if they'd roll out the content at a reasonable pace, more or less replicating how it went originally. I quit WoW in half way through TBC and didn't come back until the end of Pandaria. I missed all the good bits. And I just couldn't get back into it at that point. It also bugged me that I didn't get to properly experience a lot of the content during leveling, as it was basically obsolete. Getting to do it all over again might just be worth $15 a month from me.
OK. Now they do this? After how many years?
Yep, it's clear. WoW is starting to bleed more and more of its players. This is the act of a desperate publisher. They went for the private servers in the hope of leeching players off of them. Yeah, they let them emulate classic WoW before and do their dirty work for them, but now their own cash cow is beginning to run dry, guess it's time to pay up.
BTW, fun fact. Gif I posted is ironically from Make Love, Not Warcraft.
This is another reason for me not to trust online only games. If the publisher decides they want to change the game and you don't get to play the old version anymore than you are out of luck. Some games allow me to play older versions if I want and some games apparently send me cease and desist orders if I try to play the old version. If you are asking for 60 bucks up front I think that I should be entitled to play with what I bought, not with something else that you claim is just as good. That stops being your call to make after you sold the thing. It might not work that way legally but it should.
Have you played Vanilla WOW? At all?Arnoxthe1 said:
OK. Now they do this? After how many years?
Yep, it's clear. WoW is starting to bleed more and more of its players. This is the act of a desperate publisher. They went for the private servers in the hope of leeching players off of them. Yeah, they let them emulate classic WoW before and do their dirty work for them, but now their own cash cow is beginning to run dry, guess it's time to pay up.
BTW, fun fact. Gif I posted is ironically from Make Love, Not Warcraft.
Have you gotten to level 60 and raidied in Blackrock Moutain? Or did a PVP raid on a capital city?
Did you know that many classes were not viable for raiding at all? So playing a certain class was pointless for progression. Did you know that Naxrammas required EIGHT Warrior Tanks to kill a certain boss?
Vanilla WOW may had its great moments and at times is better then live, but godamn it the game can be increadibly frustrating, depressing, grindy.
I've been a long term player of WoW, started late Vanilla and only quit in Warlords. People always like to put words in the mouths of others and assume that nobody wants to play Vanilla because it's a 'grindfest' etc. Lots of us LOVE Vanilla because of these features. WoW before Wotlk felt a lot more like a 'traditional' RPG as opposed to the more mechanical based raiding of the later expansions (this started with Wrath, in my opinion). As someone who has raided heroic in every single expansion (including AQ etc in Vanilla, only sections I missed out on were Throne of Thunder in Mists and Firelands), I can see why people would prefer the newer content. This doesn't excuse the fact that MANY people simply prefer the simpler gameplay in Vanilla/TBC. It's certainly much less of an action-RPG approach and while the game is a lot slower in general, it's so, SO much more satisfying to reach your goals.
WoW has become a themepark MMO. There's exclusively a focus on the endgame, and the levelingis far too streamlined to reach that point (you can simply queue your way to 100 if that's what you desire, with fully loomed groups able to pull multiple rooms at once etc). The lack of importance placed upon the leveling is also demonstrated by the ability to purchase a max level character ("b-but you don't HAVE to purchase it!" lmao). The beauty of Vanilla is that it's less about the destination, and more about the journey. The times I had on Nostalrius (and yes, I did reach 60 which people who zealously defend retail will dispute to the bitter end) were among the most memorable times I've had in WoW (or even video games for that matter) in the past ~8 years. You're actually forced to think about what you're doing when you level, and you're encouraged to actually group up/socialize. Dungeons are a lot more difficult, and to the previous poster who stated that heroics at the start of an expansion are harder than Vanilla 60 5 mans? Not true. The only time this has been the case has been initial Burning Crusade heroics when finally hitting 70, and the overtuned Cataclysm 5 man heroics (which I absolutely loved until Blizzard nerfed them to the ground).
Raiding in Vanilla was never the end goal. Sure, you can turn up to raids and earn some gear, but on those off days you'd utilize the gear you earned to carry out your standard tasks more efficiently out in the world. You actually do out and do stuff. In Warlords (and Mists, to a lesser extent), gear obtained from raids is utilized mainly for efficient raiding. You're hardly out in the world doing anything and this is the key pitfall. Maybe Legion will fix these problems, maybe not. But Blizzard are shooting themselves in the foot for not supporting legacy servers (I'd personally gladly pay a subscription fee for them). When a bunch of devs only relying on donations for server upkeep can do it, it's hard to believe that Blizzard's official stance on legacy servers have any merit, when you consider the fact that subscription fees would most likely cover the costs.
WoW has become a themepark MMO. There's exclusively a focus on the endgame, and the levelingis far too streamlined to reach that point (you can simply queue your way to 100 if that's what you desire, with fully loomed groups able to pull multiple rooms at once etc). The lack of importance placed upon the leveling is also demonstrated by the ability to purchase a max level character ("b-but you don't HAVE to purchase it!" lmao). The beauty of Vanilla is that it's less about the destination, and more about the journey. The times I had on Nostalrius (and yes, I did reach 60 which people who zealously defend retail will dispute to the bitter end) were among the most memorable times I've had in WoW (or even video games for that matter) in the past ~8 years. You're actually forced to think about what you're doing when you level, and you're encouraged to actually group up/socialize. Dungeons are a lot more difficult, and to the previous poster who stated that heroics at the start of an expansion are harder than Vanilla 60 5 mans? Not true. The only time this has been the case has been initial Burning Crusade heroics when finally hitting 70, and the overtuned Cataclysm 5 man heroics (which I absolutely loved until Blizzard nerfed them to the ground).
Raiding in Vanilla was never the end goal. Sure, you can turn up to raids and earn some gear, but on those off days you'd utilize the gear you earned to carry out your standard tasks more efficiently out in the world. You actually do out and do stuff. In Warlords (and Mists, to a lesser extent), gear obtained from raids is utilized mainly for efficient raiding. You're hardly out in the world doing anything and this is the key pitfall. Maybe Legion will fix these problems, maybe not. But Blizzard are shooting themselves in the foot for not supporting legacy servers (I'd personally gladly pay a subscription fee for them). When a bunch of devs only relying on donations for server upkeep can do it, it's hard to believe that Blizzard's official stance on legacy servers have any merit, when you consider the fact that subscription fees would most likely cover the costs.
That's why Mythic dungeons exist. Not that any of the "WoW has become too easy!" crowd ever seem to acknowledge that those exist, because apparently they can play the same "boring" Heroic 500 times but playing the Mythic version once would just be treading old ground.Bradmaster Flash said:
I never said that there aren't any redeeming aspects in WoD. Mythic dungeons are a step in the right direction, and apparently HFC is a great raid (if you're going to focus on the endgame in an expansion though, how about having more than TWO whole tiers?).Aeshi said:
There's a clear decline in the amount of content WoW is pushing per expansion. Let me break it down for you:
Vanilla 23 dungeons, 7 raids (assuming UBRS is a raid and not a dungeon, Stratholme considered 2 instances and Dire Maul considered 3), 8 of these dungeons considered 'endgame'.
TBC 16 dungeons, 9 Raids. All dungeons considered endgame because of heroic level.
Wotlk 16 dungeons, 8 raids. All dungeons considered endgame because of heroic level.
Cataclysm 14 dungeons, 6 raids. All dungeons considered endgame because of heroic level.
Mists of Pandaria 9 dungeons, 5 raids. All dungeons considered endgame because of heroic level.
WoD 8 Dungeons, 3 Raids. All dungeons considered endgame because of heroic level.
I'm not necessarily saying that WoD's content is bad. The dungeon design was pretty nice, and the raids were decent (although I thought Highmaul was awful and that's one third of the entire raid content). There's just a lack of content overall.
Are you actually going to deny that WoW as a general (not talking mythic endgame) has become a lot easier over time though? Pretty much every other aspect of it has become easier and that's not the direction us private server players want it to take. Give us challenges outside of raiding!
There were more aspects to the game than just the dungeons and raiding. One of the things that I miss most from the early days of Vanilla and BC was honestly crafting. It is what kept me playing, knowing I had a skill that was actually interesting and it required me a good deal of work to actually make the high level items that were actually useful.
I enjoyed jumping through hoops to be an armor and weaponsmith, I enjoyed having to make choices when playing a leather worker. Tailoring had it's rewards and so did engineering. Enchanting and alchemy were in demand and even when they added jewelers, it gave at least something to keep coming back to.
WotLK and later expansions slowly stripped away the sense of accomplishment that came from high level crafting as many top tier dungeons for each expansion made what ever you actually worked hard to craft almost immediately worthless and the general high speed of leveling that now exists in the game makes even crafting feel like a worthless endeavor... outside of cooking (for buffs), enchanting (for buffs), alchemy (for buffs), gem cutting (for those slots), and inscribing... any of the actual real crafting professions that produced wearable items just seemed to fall to the wayside as late WotLK, Cata, and later came rolling down the pipe.
Having come from a background of games like EVE Online or the old Star Wars Galaxies and other similar MMOs where there was a viable crafting community that keeps the world rolling, the slow but complete murder of crafting by Blizzard in WoW just detracted more and more from the appeal of the game... obviously focusing more and more on just raiding, instant gratification dungeons, battlegrounds, and their failed attempt at the PvP E-Sport scene with Arena that also detrimentally to the greater feel of the game during the Vanilla/BC era.
Yes, it was grindy but it was not a terrible form of grindy for those who were willing to put in the work for it.
Honestly, the point where they started handing out 'welfare' epics via their badge system introduced at the tail end of BC... handing out items for little real effort that pretty much made sure that anything you actually crafted or worked for was negated with the next major content update was really the first nail in the coffin of the game.
So yeah, if they actually would roll out an official Vanilla/BC era set of servers, that would be wonderful. It would be nice to revist the game back when it was actually interesting and even slightly engaging. Perhaps provide some standard of living improvements but let people go back and have a bit of fun before the writing went down hill and the badges ruined the appeal.
I enjoyed jumping through hoops to be an armor and weaponsmith, I enjoyed having to make choices when playing a leather worker. Tailoring had it's rewards and so did engineering. Enchanting and alchemy were in demand and even when they added jewelers, it gave at least something to keep coming back to.
WotLK and later expansions slowly stripped away the sense of accomplishment that came from high level crafting as many top tier dungeons for each expansion made what ever you actually worked hard to craft almost immediately worthless and the general high speed of leveling that now exists in the game makes even crafting feel like a worthless endeavor... outside of cooking (for buffs), enchanting (for buffs), alchemy (for buffs), gem cutting (for those slots), and inscribing... any of the actual real crafting professions that produced wearable items just seemed to fall to the wayside as late WotLK, Cata, and later came rolling down the pipe.
Having come from a background of games like EVE Online or the old Star Wars Galaxies and other similar MMOs where there was a viable crafting community that keeps the world rolling, the slow but complete murder of crafting by Blizzard in WoW just detracted more and more from the appeal of the game... obviously focusing more and more on just raiding, instant gratification dungeons, battlegrounds, and their failed attempt at the PvP E-Sport scene with Arena that also detrimentally to the greater feel of the game during the Vanilla/BC era.
Yes, it was grindy but it was not a terrible form of grindy for those who were willing to put in the work for it.
Honestly, the point where they started handing out 'welfare' epics via their badge system introduced at the tail end of BC... handing out items for little real effort that pretty much made sure that anything you actually crafted or worked for was negated with the next major content update was really the first nail in the coffin of the game.
So yeah, if they actually would roll out an official Vanilla/BC era set of servers, that would be wonderful. It would be nice to revist the game back when it was actually interesting and even slightly engaging. Perhaps provide some standard of living improvements but let people go back and have a bit of fun before the writing went down hill and the badges ruined the appeal.
Hmm. I'm impressed they could even do this on a technical level, but I'm not surprised they got shut down.
This kind of thing is important from a long-term historical point of view (that is, the technical ability for people other than the creator to run servers of some kind), in that this will at some point be the only way anyone could possibly experience most MMO's.
That aside, doing this while the game's official servers are still up and running seems like you're just asking for problems.
Even if your motivation is doing something the official servers do not, it still seems like you'll get taken down sooner or later.
Pity.
Hmmh.
Remind me to look for a Matrix online server at some point. XD
This kind of thing is important from a long-term historical point of view (that is, the technical ability for people other than the creator to run servers of some kind), in that this will at some point be the only way anyone could possibly experience most MMO's.
That aside, doing this while the game's official servers are still up and running seems like you're just asking for problems.
Even if your motivation is doing something the official servers do not, it still seems like you'll get taken down sooner or later.
Pity.
Hmmh.
Remind me to look for a Matrix online server at some point. XD
True, but I'd debate how much credit the older expansions deserve for that given how fond they were of re-using the same assets over and over again to make those dungeons. TBC in particular was the poster child for this. It has 16 dungeons. Let's take a look at them, shall we?Bradmaster Flash said:
- The Botanica (aka. "Crystal Spaceship with Blood Elves... AND PLANTS!")
- The Mechanar (aka. "Crystal Spaceship with Blood Elves... AND GOLEMS!")
- The Alcatraz (aka. "Crystal Spaceship with Blood Elves... AND DEMONS!")
- Slave Pens (aka. "Waterlogged Cave with Naga... AND DRAENEI!")
- Underbog (aka. "Waterlogged Cave with Naga... AND DRAENEI (again)!")
- Steamvault (aka. "Waterlogged Cave with Naga... AND LEPER GNOMES!")
- Mana-Tombs (aka. "Old Crypt being plundered... BY ETHEREALS!")
- Auchenai Crypts (aka. "Old Crypt being plundered... BY DRAENEI!")
- Sethekk Halls (aka. "Old Crypt being plundered... BY ARAKKOA!")
- Shadow Labyrinth (aka. "Old Crypt being plundered... BY DEMONS")
- Shattered Halls (aka. "Orc Fortress full of Orc warriors.")
- Blood Furnace (aka. "Orc Fortress full of Orc casters.")
- Hellfire Ramparts
- Magister's Terrace
- Escape from Durnholde
- Opening the Dark Portal
- The Mechanar (aka. "Crystal Spaceship with Blood Elves... AND GOLEMS!")
- The Alcatraz (aka. "Crystal Spaceship with Blood Elves... AND DEMONS!")
- Slave Pens (aka. "Waterlogged Cave with Naga... AND DRAENEI!")
- Underbog (aka. "Waterlogged Cave with Naga... AND DRAENEI (again)!")
- Steamvault (aka. "Waterlogged Cave with Naga... AND LEPER GNOMES!")
- Mana-Tombs (aka. "Old Crypt being plundered... BY ETHEREALS!")
- Auchenai Crypts (aka. "Old Crypt being plundered... BY DRAENEI!")
- Sethekk Halls (aka. "Old Crypt being plundered... BY ARAKKOA!")
- Shadow Labyrinth (aka. "Old Crypt being plundered... BY DEMONS")
- Shattered Halls (aka. "Orc Fortress full of Orc warriors.")
- Blood Furnace (aka. "Orc Fortress full of Orc casters.")
- Hellfire Ramparts
- Magister's Terrace
- Escape from Durnholde
- Opening the Dark Portal
I will totally deny that. I played Vanilla and it was not the epic, Dark-Souls-ian nightmare its fans make it out to be. WoW was just as easy then as it is now, it's just that the enemies all took about 3 times longer to kill back then. The only part of the game I'd say has actually gotten easier are the dungeons (not factoring in Mythics.)
To say nothing of the other countless little time wasters "Old WoW" was stuffed with to pad out the runtime. Like how you had to spend 10 minutes swinging away at random critters to level up your weapon skill every time you get a new piece of equipment.
Or either:
A) Spending 10 minutes getting to the meeting stone, only to have one of your members leave, meaning you now have to either go all the way back to your capital of choice to use the LFG channel again or acknowledge that you wasted 10 minutes on nothing.
or
B) Spending the first 5 minutes of a given dungeon group having a passive-aggressive fight over which 2 members are going to have to spend 10 minutes dragging themselves out to the meeting stone to summon the other 3.
Or having to spend about 15 seconds eating & drinking after every boss/3rd or 4th group of mobs.
Or put up with the long travel times you had back when it took several weeks of non-stop grinding to get a mount.
They are however well within their rights since it is copyright infringment and violates the terms of service.Arnoxthe1 said:Well, they've got a 150,000 user playerbase, so I think that says a lot.Samtemdo8 said:Maybe they don't play it for the raids?
But really, none of that has anything to do with Blizzard being douches here.
Yes I imagine it does, doesn't it? The presence 2 lines that can be made to make it sound like I didn't play vanilla (so long as you carefully remove all that pesky "Talking about old WoW in general" context) tell you that you can now pretend the reason you ignored every other bit of my post is due to it not being worth arguing with rather than the fact that you're either too lazy/stupid to come up with counter-arguments to any of them.Bradmaster Flash said:
Alright, I'll bite.Aeshi said:
Your "X Variant of Y" argument doesn't hold. I was referring to literal amount of dungeons, your opinion on them does not change the fact that they are separate dungeons with different mobs, quests, and bosses. If you're going to say that raids are dungeons scaled up, are you meaning to imply that Blackwing Lair, Molten Core and Blackwing Descent don't count either? Just because an instance shares aesthetics, doesn't change the fact that the content is vastly different.
To state that the leveling in WoW is not easier now compared to then is absolutely ridiculous. Class dependent, pull an extra mob mid combat? Whoops, you're dead. You actually had to plan your movements and pay attention to respawns etc. Where were the elite mobs in Warlords? Where were the areas in leveling zones full of elite mobs which actually require a group to complete? Don't get me wrong, the questing was alright. But there was absolutely no challenge in any of it. I died literally once as an arcane mage the entire way through and hit 100 within ~13 hours of the expansion going live including server downtime (granted this was with previous mythic gear but Blizzard should implement a catchup mechanic and actually make it difficult).
I actually agree with you on downtime after boss fights in Vanilla. That's one thing they actually improved. However you have definitely exaggerated how often you needed to do this. If you planned pulls properly you didn't need to rec up that often at all.
Getting a mount didn't take a gargantuan amount of effort. All you had to do was save your money, not waste money on gear you don't need, waste money on spells you didn't need and you'd have your mount by around level 45 no problem.
The time taken in Vanilla was one of the great things about it. The more time you put in, the more you got out of the game. Current WoW is definitely more about instant gratification which some people may enjoy (and that's fair enough, but the people enjoy this should empathize with the people who've been playing from the start and prefer it how it was), but Blizzard really need to understand that demand for the classics is certainly there.