Mark Kern, Blizzard, and the Legacy (Servers) of World of Warcraft

[ffronw]

I wouldn't have a clue of what is a reasonable percentage of Nostalrius' population paying the sub. To say otherwise is pure speculation on my behalf.

Like, this is my thing with this whole discussion. We don't have the data. We haven't a fucking clue what numbers Blizzard has looked at that's made them go 'this isn't viable'. Maybe they looked at the projections and the data and whatever else they have and gone '10% just won't cut it', '1% just won't cut it', 'whatever% just won't cut it'. Given they're still having internal discussions about the whole thing, it's entirely possible they've looked at what we don't have and gone 'It's not feasible, but what if we can make it so'. We're not privy to those discussions though, so we're all just out here shouting 'You bastards' or 'Good decision'.

I, personally, am totally down with Legacy servers (I hate Vanilla WoW with a fiery passion, but good on anyone still wanting to play it for whatever reason) and would like to see Blizzard figure out a way to get them working on some official level. It's just that, at this point in time for whatever reason, they've gone 'it's not viable'. They've looked at all the numbers and the costs and subscribers and legalities, and somewhere along the line they just went 'nope'. Not a definite nope, but it's a nope, and sitting around talking about the 'numbers' is pure speculation unless we have access to the same data they're operating with.

One would think that Blizzard has done those calculations. I would assume that they've looked at it (and probably have looked again, in light of this uproar). If they don't think it's worthwhile, then they're not going to do it. As you say, we can speculate all we want, but the truth is that they have the only numbers that matter. We don't know what the costs would be, and we don't know what kind of money they would expect to rake in from it.

I feel like I can safely assume that if there was an untapped market worth a lot of money out there, they'd be willing to capitalize on it. The fact that they haven't is at the very least persuasive to me that they don't believe such a market exists.

 

[Dragonbums]

You are under a very big assumption that these same people whining are actually going to put their money where their mouth is and re sub, and do it long enough to actually make it worth it. Servers are not a one time cost. They are a continous thing that requires paid mods, customer service, a debug team, etc.

This is a great point, and still doesn't take into account that after a while of playing on "vanilla" servers, players would either get bored with playing the same content over and over. Then they'd either quit, or start bugging Blizzard to "just do Burning Crusade again, you guys." You know, just like what happened when vanilla was actually out.

Either way, you're talking about either losing the tiny little bit of profit this was generating, or creating yet another sunk cost. The profit motive just isn't there, unfortunately.

Agree. I did take that into account but I was more rebuffing the comment I responded to. In short most of the people on those servers were simply doing it for nostalgia purposes and 'shooting the shit' with old friends. But I'd be damned if a server like that would last two years at most.
They aren't going to grab new people with this. They are simply going to get old nostalgia people to play and it will only last as long as they get their fix and drop the game again. And once again, it was free.
Nostalgia is just that. Nostalgia. People harping about how great it is ironically enough bring up how absolutely broken it is as well. And the only thing keeping it together was community. That's fucking it.

It's the same eye rolling attitude I have when people talk about how good the original Pokemon games were. My dude, you like the nostalgia and community of it with fellow players like yourself. The games themselves were broken garbage on a mechanical level that only got a pass because it was good broken garbage in a sea of otherwise broken games at the time.

 

[Dragonbums]

You're forgetting that Nostalrius had 800,000 accounts, and 150,000 active users.

800k dud accounts means absolutely squat for Blizzard.

Over about 14 months of time.

And none of those people payed a single dime. That's not going to work for Blizzard

The server wouldn't have been nearly so successful if what you two are saying is true. And if the Legacy Vanilla server was profitable.

The legacy server wasn't profitable. It was bloated and bleeding money left and right. It was slated to shut down sometime soon anyway because they couldn't keep up with the costs. Blizzard just ended it's misery with a C&D order.

As long as its making money there's no reason for them not to do it. If it wouldn't then they don't.

They would of made money, but the money wouldn't be nearly enough to justify paying the teams to integrate the code, fix the bugs caused by integration, fix the bugs Vanilla had in general, upkeep customer support, upkeep the servers, upkeep mod overwatch, etc, etc.
That's every reason for them not to do it. No business runs on negative/or petty profits if they aren't making relatively big bank on a project they are going to axe it.
That kind of crap is only reserved for Microsoft who have so much money that they can afford to throw it at anything.

The point is that the speculations and arguments against the mere feasibility of the idea are being contradicted by objective reality and hard numbers.

Reality and hard numbers of what? Twitch streamer fan tears and an empty number of registered accounts that ignore all context of reality and situation?

ONE private server disproved this point tremendously. Then add in all the other private servers with unmodded legacy or vanilla as their focus.

One of the biggest legacy servers and it was financially in the red long before Blizzard did anything to it because they couldn't up keep the costs. paired with a bunch of other servers that ran like garbage and were chockfull of bugs and exploits that would NEVER pass a baseline quality test but people let slide because it's from a bunch of pirates.
Yeah, no. Blizzard isn't stupid. That's not a good business venture.

 

[Jirekianu]

See below post as this one has glitched out.

 

[Jirekianu]

You're forgetting that Nostalrius had 800,000 accounts, and 150,000 active users.

800k dud accounts means absolutely squat for Blizzard.

Over about 14 months of time.

And none of those people payed a single dime. That's not going to work for Blizzard

The server wouldn't have been nearly so successful if what you two are saying is true. And if the Legacy Vanilla server was profitable.

The legacy server wasn't profitable. It was bloated and bleeding money left and right. It was slated to shut down sometime soon anyway because they couldn't keep up with the costs. Blizzard just ended it's misery with a C&D order.

As long as its making money there's no reason for them not to do it. If it wouldn't then they don't.

They would of made money, but the money wouldn't be nearly enough to justify paying the teams to integrate the code, fix the bugs caused by integration, fix the bugs Vanilla had in general, upkeep customer support, upkeep the servers, upkeep mod overwatch, etc, etc.
That's every reason for them not to do it. No business runs on negative/or petty profits if they aren't making relatively big bank on a project they are going to axe it.
That kind of crap is only reserved for Microsoft who have so much money that they can afford to throw it at anything.

The point is that the speculations and arguments against the mere feasibility of the idea are being contradicted by objective reality and hard numbers.

Reality and hard numbers of what? Twitch streamer fan tears and an empty number of registered accounts that ignore all context of reality and situation?

ONE private server disproved this point tremendously. Then add in all the other private servers with unmodded legacy or vanilla as their focus.

One of the biggest legacy servers and it was financially in the red long before Blizzard did anything to it because they couldn't up keep the costs. paired with a bunch of other servers that ran like garbage and were chockfull of bugs and exploits that would NEVER pass a baseline quality test but people let slide because it's from a bunch of pirates.
Yeah, no. Blizzard isn't stupid. That's not a good business venture.

You keep arguing against things I've never said. Over and over and over again. I never said Nostalrius was profitable. I didn't even imply it.

I bring up Nostalrius numbers so much in my argument because those numbers are HUGE and show a clear demand for a Legacy WoW experience. Which can be leveraged into an officially supported and potentially profitable product.

You're so ready to point out peoples arguments are speculation when it suits your aim to disprove them. But then your speculation doesn't even have a remote reference to server costs or the costs of the game itself.

You seem to be making a lot of presumptions with what I have been arguing and you seem to like to only address what is objectively known about Nostalrius' popularity in a way that supports your argument. Conveniently ignoring objective numbers when it doesn't.


I'm going to try and parse down my argument to it's core so that it's hard for you to put words in my mouth.

-Nostalrius' server numbers show a clear demand for a Legacy WoW server.
-Blizzard can and has supported a number of legacy products older and more out of date than Vanilla WoW successfully. I.e. Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, etc. These products are not bringing in new money. They are a good will gesture to support loyal customers and fans.
-Nostalrius' volunteer teams and their successful deployment of Vanilla WoW shows that its possible from a technical level to not only reproduce Vanilla WoW on modern servers and modern end user systems, but to do so on a large scale. (The arguably biggest technical hurdle in all of this.)
-Nostalrius did this with 30 people who volunteered in their spare time. 6 of which were actually people with programming experience.
-Mark Kern has announced that he's gotten a response from Mike Morhaime and there's a meeting scheduled in a couple weeks when they can conveniently meet to discuss Legacy servers in person and Nostalrius team members will be involved in some capacity.

So, suffice to say. All of our back and forth and arguing is going to come to some kind of conclusion that hopefully answers the wishes of a sizable number of their fans and customers.

 

[Colt47]

Right now, Blizzard needs the legacy servers as a base to build a better WoW. The whole population problem is a game design issue because they built a game for casual players when the core players just wanted more accessible systems like what FFXIV ARR offered. Have the hard content, break it up into bite sized chunks, let people tackle them how they want, and keep the crafting and gathering relevant by making recipes people can use that make BoE gear.

Also, they got to slow down the whirlwind the game has become. Way too much focus on rapidashing to end game via the one viable path there is when the game was about leveling the different jobs and picking your own path through the world. Not everyone wants to be the god child lackey of thrall, and in fact the original no one was. We helped minor characters throughout the game world and dealt with the lore of the world rather than the major cast of WC3. When the major cast of Warcraft did show up to do something, it was a spectacle for everyone to witness, not a linear story path.

Well, I could go on forever, but they really effed up their game for a lot of people.

 

[Tassit]

I'd love it if they put up some legacy Vanilla servers, maybe then all these rose tinted whiners will finally shut up.

I played WoW back in Vanilla, I definitely for sure, like the state of the game now a hell of a lot more.