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273,859 supporters can't be wrong.
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Post by
basset45
I know this issue has been addressed but it is far from solved.The Mike Morhaime Legacy server petition has reached 273,859 supporters. There are thousands of loyal players still waiting to dive back into the game that we loved and grew up playing. If Blizzard doesn't announce anything meaningful about Legacy server at Blizzcon it will be their biggest wasted opportunity so far. Strike when the iron is hot (because it damn sure ain't getting any hotter then now...) Content updates every 2 years will not build a long lasting community. Gameplay that fizzles out in a couple of months dose not make a legendary game. An end raid boss that gets killed in less then a day will not challenge players and help motivate them to attempt killing it. There is no excuse on Blizzards side for not bringing these types of servers online. They have the money, manpower and playerbase that will be glad to enjoy it.
Help reignite the passion of hardcore World of Warcraft players and spread the word.
Post by
Nulgar
Content updates every 2 years will not build a long lasting community. Gameplay that fizzles out in a couple of months dose not make a legendary game.
And you propose... a static server with no content updates at all.
And South Park summed it up quite well this week:
Every great empire reaches a point where going backward can seem more appealing than forward.
When the world is changing so fast, it makes us yearn for the old ways, when life seemed simpler.
But it doesn't mean those old ideas are good for us now.
We have to face one hard reality as a country, \
It may seem fun to go back and recycle the past we loved, but we end up with no sustenance.
Post by
jarycu
And South Park summed it up quite well this week:
Every great empire reaches a point where going backward can seem more appealing than forward.
When the world is changing so fast, it makes us yearn for the old ways, when life seemed simpler.
But it doesn't mean those old ideas are good for us now.
We have to face one hard reality as a country, \
It may seem fun to go back and recycle the past we loved, but we end up with no sustenance.
That's a quote from South Park? Wow...I need to start watching again if the writing has gotten that good.
Post by
Adamsm
I think they should release Legacy servers....because in two weeks they'll be ghost servers as everyone's rose colour glasses are shattered by the reality of the original game; the endless grind to level cap, the endless grind for money, the endless grind in dungeons, the endless grind in the raids.
Post by
skribs
I think they should release Legacy servers....because in two weeks they'll be ghost servers as everyone's rose colour glasses are shattered by the reality of the original game; the endless grind to level cap, the endless grind for money, the endless grind in dungeons, the endless grind in the raids.
As opposed to now, where you have a quick rush to level cap, then an endless grind for money, and an endless grind in raids. Except you don't even get new raids to progress through, just the same one with bigger numbers and maybe a new mechanic.
Legacy servers would be a very welcome addition to WoW. If someone who has Skyrim can still play Oblivion, if America's Army can still have 2.8.5 servers up even though they're on 4.0, if I can log in to any of the several iterations of Counter-Strike that are available on Steam, if I can play the StarCraft II Wings of Liberty campaign even though we're in Legacy of the Void, if I can still log in to Diablo II and create expansion or non-expansion characters...I should be able to play WoW in the expansion I want to.
For most people, that means either Vanilla, TBC, or Wrath. Now I'm not going to say that any of them were perfect, or that everyone would prefer them to live. For the first time in a long time, Live has offered an experience that's actually fun, and hopefully will continue to release content at a rate that it doesn't get stale. However, in TBC, the pacing was designed so it took a lot longer for the same amount of content to get stale. You almost always had something to look forward to. It might be the next level (which is a minor accomplishment today with very little that you get to do when you level up). It might be to get some more gear or get a new riding skill (a huge deal then). It might be the next raid (not just the next difficulty).
While I am enjoying Legion, there is a lot about the style of Vanilla and TBC (TBC especially) that I miss. I miss the way tanking worked. I miss the way talents worked. I miss the way PvP worked in TBC (which was probably among the most balanced, IMO). I miss my friend and I taking a tank and healer class, gathering all the quests for a dungeon, and then leading a group through dungeons either loved (like Deadmines) or hated (like Gnomeragon) and getting a massive chunk of XP and loot from it. I miss the old raiding system, where a raid simply was...there was no flex or different difficulties. I miss gold being scarce, and being able to buy greens for less than my first mount cost me. I miss the gearing systems in TBC and Wrath. I miss weapon skills. I miss leveling that takes more than a week. I miss downranking my heals to be more efficient. I miss having an identity on my realm. I miss the shape I was in 10 years ago. Okay, maybe Blizzard can't help me with that last one.
The point is, the game has changed. It wasn't bad before, and it's not bad now. (It was bad from Cata through WoD). However, the game is basically a completely different game today, much like how Diablo II and Diablo III are different games. People like different things. You prefer Legion to legacy, and that's fine. It's especially fine for you, because you have Legion. Others, like me, prefer legacy. However, all we get from most people who prefer Legion is, "shut up and deal with it" or "old content sucks you progress-hating buffoon." I'm okay with the fact you like and want to play Legion. I'm not okay with the fact I can't play the game I really want to play.
Post by
Adamsm
I agree skribs; you should be able to play WoW in the expansion you want...and then watch how fast you are back to actual game when the stagnation point of that expac hits you. I played from Vanilla to now, and not once have I ever wanted to go back to what was there previously; the game has put in nothing but improvements no matter how you look at it.
Vanilla was nothing but grinds. Grinding for resist gear, grinding for full 8 piece set items, grinding for the mats, grinding for gold because it was a grind. If you were incredibly lucky you maybe had enough gold for your mount training, otherwise you would be spending all your time on foot. The instance groups back then could suck; if a group fell apart, that meant someone was hoofing it back to a city to find more, then everyone was hoofing back to the instance which probably had the mobs reset.
BC had 90% of the content locked away if you were not in a hard core raiding guild; if you were in a casual one, the most you ever saw was Kara and ZA when it was released. The 25 mans were a step up from the 10 mans, so it was a hard thing to change into the next set. The Heroics were a pain in the butt; not due to difficulty but because if you lost anyone, there went your chance for completing it for the day because no one wanted to join up.
Wrath had the start of the mechanics that I liked...but dear goddess the story was meh after the first run through. And while Ulduar was the pinnacle raid of the Expac, the others were lackluster and got old really fast.
Like I said; there were improvements each expansion. BC added rep in the dungeons, Wrath built on that and gave you more ways to get the reps and so on and so forth. But what is the point in going backwards; the past is the past and while it should be looked at, you don't really want to get stuck in it.
Post by
skribs
You talk about progress each expansion, but WoD was the absolute worst in terms of having nothing to do unless you raided. If you didn't raid, you played facebook games in your garrison, and that was about it. Legion is better, yes, but WoD came after every other expansion before it and it was the worst of all of them.
Yes, Blizzard made improvements in each expansion. They also made controversial changes (I preferred forming my own groups and all of the social banes and boons associated with that). They also made some bad changes. Sometimes the content was great, and sometimes it was terrible. Sometimes PvP balance was okay, and sometimes it was terrible.
"The past is the past" is true, but it doesn't mean it's worse. Take Battlefront for example. Battlefront (EA) has online content, and includes a lot more game modes for multiplayer than Battlefront II did. But for someone who wants to play it single-player or in split-screen mode, the game is absolutely terrible because there's only a couple game modes and maps available, and you get far less offline content than you got in the old Battelfront Games. Just because the EA game is newer, doesn't mean it's better.
You and I can argue until we're blue in the face about which systems and features were better. I prefer the old style. Lots of others do, too, as evidence by Nostalrius being popular enough that Blizzard had to shut it down. Obviously, lots of players prefer the newer systems as well. There are some I like, but I still prefer the old style of game.
Post by
Strand
Nostalrius was poplular yes, but it was also free. Although there is some appeal to me to see a legacy server, I can't see myself sticking with one, nor can I see Blizzard adding one without having an active subscription. I'm sure that sub will be enough for people who used to play on Nostalrius to not bother joining.
Post by
Adamsm
Again: I'm not against Legacy servers because once they come out, they'll finally kill this desire for it as people get to experience the past and see what it was about. But they wouldn't make money; they may make some cash for a month but then it would be a ghost town as people went back to the regular game.
Blizzard took down Nostalirus because it was a private server and was stealing Blizzard's game code to run it.
Also..the Battlefront comparison doesn't really work because they are two different games and not actual progression of the game. A better choice would have been comparing FFXIV 1.0 to A Realm Reborn; after all, there are Legacy servers for that game where you can compare the game as it was to what it is now, and the most people do on those servers is experience the old story before jumping back to the real game.
Post by
civgw
I think they should release Legacy servers....because in two weeks they'll be ghost servers as everyone's rose colour glasses are shattered by the reality of the original game; the endless grind to level cap, the endless grind for money, the endless grind in dungeons, the endless grind in the raids.
Nostalrius comissioned a survey of it's player base after it was closed and found that 30% of their players were still active 7 months after the launch, so you are quite a bit wrong with your two weeks.
Nostalrius was poplular yes, but it was also free. Although there is some appeal to me to see a legacy server, I can't see myself sticking with one, nor can I see Blizzard adding one without having an active subscription. I'm sure that sub will be enough for people who used to play on Nostalrius to not bother joining.
The survey showed that most of the players were ex retail players (ie official WoW game) and that only 10% of them had stopped playing retail because of the cost of the game. So I don't think the putting a sub on the game would have affected numbers on Nostalrius very much.
You are also missing the biggest barrier to playing on private servers which is that at any time they can be closed by legal action. Would you play Legion if you knew there was a possibility that the game could be shut down overnight? If Blizzard opens legacy servers then that threat goes away and more people will join them.
Blizzard took down Nostalirus because it was a private server and was stealing Blizzard's game code to run it.
There a plenty of servers illegally using Blizzard's code but Blizzard haven't moved against them. They moved against Nostalrius because of their success. They had exanded to two servers and were inviting players to test their BC server which was to be launched this year. I think Blizzard wanted to stop it before the momentum grew too much for their liking.
Post by
Adamsm
Nostalrius comissioned a survey of it's player base after it was closed and found that 30% of their players were still active 7 months after the launch, so you are quite a bit wrong with your two weeks.Notice that; 30% which means the other 70% had bailed already.
Would you play Legion if you knew there was a possibility that the game could be shut down overnight?Technically that already exists; at any time Blizzard could close the game down. I was a player of Marvel Avenger Alliance on Facebook(yes I know) and that game just shut down after 4 years even though it had a massive player base, regular infusion from people who purchased the in game currency and in fact was producing content right before it closed the doors. It can happen to any game after all.
There a plenty of servers illegally using Blizzard's code but Blizzard haven't moved against them. They moved against Nostalrius because of their success. They had exanded to two servers and were inviting players to test their BC server which was to be launched this year. I think Blizzard wanted to stop it before the momentum grew too much for their liking.Or..since they were technically stealing Blizzard's IP, they shut it down due to that. And Blizzard does routinely take down the paid for private servers as well when they catch wind of them.
But then again, there is Blizzard's own words in regards to the Legacy server from
here
:
We wanted to let you know that we’ve been closely following the Nostalrius discussion and we appreciate your constructive thoughts and suggestions.
Our silence on this subject definitely doesn’t reflect our level of engagement and passion around this topic. We hear you. Many of us across Blizzard and the WoW Dev team have been passionate players ever since classic WoW. In fact, I personally work at Blizzard because of my love for classic WoW.
We have been discussing classic servers for years - it’s a topic every BlizzCon - and especially over the past few weeks. From active internal team discussions to after-hours meetings with leadership, this subject has been highly debated. Some of our current thoughts:
Why not just let Nostalrius continue the way it was? The honest answer is, failure to protect against intellectual property infringement would damage Blizzard’s rights. This applies to anything that uses WoW’s IP, including unofficial servers. And while we’ve looked into the possibility – there is not a clear legal path to protect Blizzard’s IP and grant an operating license to a pirate server.
We explored options for developing classic servers and none could be executed without great difficulty. If we could push a button and all of this would be created, we would. However, there are tremendous operational challenges to integrating classic servers, not to mention the ongoing support of multiple live versions for every aspect of WoW.
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.
One other note - we’ve recently been in contact with some of the folks who operated Nostalrius. They obviously care deeply about the game, and we look forward to more conversations with them in the coming weeks.
You, the Blizzard community, are the most dedicated, passionate players out there. We thank you for your constructive thoughts and suggestions. We are listening.
Post by
skribs
Or..since they were technically stealing Blizzard's IP, they shut it down due to that. And Blizzard does routinely take down the paid for private servers as well when they catch wind of them.
There are still tons of private servers that exist, both Blizzlike and custom. Why are they still up? The point is, the reason Blizzard was able to shut Nost down was because of intellectual property law. The reason Blizzard chose to shut Nostalrius down, out of all the other private servers, is its popularity.
Notice that; 30% which means the other 70% had bailed already.
That's basically what happened with MoP and WoD. We'll see what happens with Legion.
You keep talking about how people will get bored after 2 weeks. We have shown you that people who are not playing through rose-tinted glasses would play legacy. You talk about how people only play Nost because it was free; well, I'm a paying WoW player, and surveys have shown people would be willing to pay for legacy.
You can argue about whether or not you would prefer legacy or which mechanics you did and didn't like, but you cannot do what you are so arrogantly doing: assume that because you prefer Legion, everyone else would hate legacy. Some of the things you talk about I actually prefer to live, some of them are the same as live (such as grinding*) and some of them I prefer the live version, but would be willing to put up with the inconvenience in Legacy for the rest of what legacy has to offer.
*You say the old game was nothing but a grind, how is that different now? What is your average process now?
1) Level up to 110. That's basically a grind of quests.
2) Grind artifact power by doing world quests and dungeons.
3) Grind gear by doing dungeons and progressing to raids.
4) Progress through the same content on higher difficulties and grind them for gear to help with further or future content.
The grind is still there. It's changed form, but it's still there. There's a combination of grinding and progression, which is what WoW has always been.
Post by
Adamsm
No what I prefer is a game that evolves and changes over time, with new ideas coming into it, new lore, new quests, new dungeons, new raids and so on and so forth. Legacy servers would cause stagnation of the game in my own personal arrogant opinion; that would be people pulled off the main game to maintain these, and that just seems silly to me.
And while the grind is there, it's still not as bad or as gated as it was in Vanilla/BC where it was very easy to get trapped in specific raid content because A) You liked your guild and B) No one was willing to actually take random's due to that being loot that is 'taken' from raiders' and yes I have seen both of those occur.
I do like the fact that I have choices in Legion, which was more then what you got in Warlords, especially after what we were offered in Pandaria; I can choose what I want to do. I have a very random schedule for work, so I can run LFG or use the Custom Raid finder to find runs when I am on. I like the fact that I can pick and choose which of my artifacts that I want to level; I have a level 100 mage who I got to rank 6 for the artifact just by running Time Walker dungeons recently. I enjoy the fact that at 110 I can go back and solo Warlords and Mists content, which I wasn't really able to do at 100...but then again, that could just have been me.
Post by
civgw
But then again, there is Blizzard's own words in regards to the Legacy server from
here
:
Discussions betweeen Blizzard and Nostalrius have moved on since then and the people from Nostalrius seem confident of an announcement at Blizzcon.
They said on their website, which is still running even though the game isn't, "According to the discussion we had since our official meeting at their headquarters, they now have everything in their hands to fulfil the large community request for Legacy servers, solving all the previous technical issues they highlighted during the feedback they provided."
Post by
skribs
No what I prefer is a game that evolves and changes over time, with new ideas coming into it, new lore, new quests, new dungeons, new raids and so on and so forth. Legacy servers would cause stagnation of the game in my own personal arrogant opinion; that would be people pulled off the main game to maintain these, and that just seems silly to me.
That isn't an arrogant opinion. That is logical thinking that resources would have to be devoted to the legacy servers if they were built. What was arrogant is to assume that because you wouldn't want legacy, nobody else would.
And while the grind is there, it's still not as bad or as gated as it was in Vanilla/BC where it was very easy to get trapped in specific raid content because A) You liked your guild and B) No one was willing to actually take random's due to that being loot that is 'taken' from raiders' and yes I have seen both of those occur.
What I get out of this is that community was much more important in TBC and Vanilla. Stuff is still gated today, and in some cases is even worse than in TBC. For example, I still only have about half my artifact unlocked on my main. My alt cannot do LFR because of gear requirements. There's requirements to have done the proving grounds in order to do various content on various roles.
I will not argue that Legion is the best the game has been in a long time. I will not argue that some people would prefer Legion to legacy, as Legion is different and people have different tastes. However, my playing time in Legion is mostly about treading time until the next expansion. If I were given access to a TBC realm, I would have a lot of things I would want to do, and it would keep me occupied for a long time.
You may not think so, and that's okay. But don't think that just because you would get bored of legacy realms and hop back to live that everyone else thinks the same way.
Post by
Nulgar
The reason Blizzard chose to shut Nostalrius down, out of all the other private servers, is its popularity.
Of course. And the reason other, way smaller private servers are still up is cost effectiveness. Imagine two thieves, one stealing bread from a bakery, and another stealing valuable items from people's homes, and you could only pursue one of them, which one would you choose?
It could also be that it's hard to move against the smaller ones, because they would just set up shop under a different name. Probably depends on where the servers are hosted, and where the people running it are living.
Post by
skribs
What does Blizzard get out of shutting down a private realm, then? If you're talking about it in terms of cost-effectiveness, anyway.
Are these players who quit live to go to play private realms? In this case, if players cannot play private realms they will come back to live and re-subscribe. If so, it suggests that these particular players prefer legacy to live.
Are these players who don't play live because of the subscription model, but play private servers because they are free? If this is the case, then what does Blizzard get out of shutting them down? The only thing is protection of their intellectual property. In that case, it doesn't matter the size of the infraction. Blizzard should have the opportunity to shut a lot more of them down.
If, as you say, Blizzard is trying to be cost-effective in how they approach private realms, then what is the effect? If the effect is to bring players back to live, it suggests that players would prefer legacy to live.
As I've said in most of my posts in this thread: Legion isn't bad, but it is a different animal than what we had before. Some of us would rather grind away, farm resistance gear, run dungeons with people we recruited from the city, have to put up with some inconveniences that have been erased...all in order to play the game as it was when we fell in love with it.
Post by
Nulgar
Some of us would rather grind away, farm resistance gear, run dungeons with people we recruited from the city, have to put up with some inconveniences that have been erased...all in order to play the game as it was when we fell in love with it.
You can still pretty much do that (well, except resist gear) by stopping XP progress and ignoring the modern conveniences.
Use your Hearthstone only once every hour, run Molten Core over and over until you have full T1, etc. That doesn't require a Vanilla server.
Post by
skribs
You can still pretty much do that (well, except resist gear) by stopping XP progress and ignoring the modern conveniences.
The game isn't nearly the same as it used to be, for many, many reasons. If I stop XP progress on a level 70 character and want to progress, here are some differences from TBC:
1) Pretty much all the badge gear from TBC is available for gold now.
2) Gold is super-plentiful so players have a large amount to spend on level 70 items.
3) WotLK greens and heirloom items.
4) Epic flying is now easy to obtain, which simplifies a lot of the game.
5) If you want to stop at level 70 and ignore LFG, it's going to be difficult to find players who aren't utilizing the conveniences to play with. This would be different in a realm where 70 was the level cap and your goal is to progress through the content.
6) The game mechanics are entirely different.
6A) Tanking is much easier to generate AoE threat on, making some encounter mechanics (such as the large AoE pulls in Magister's Terrace) easy as pie.
6B) CC has changed significantly from TBC, in terms of when to use it and who has it.
6C) Healers cannot gear for more mana efficiency.
6D) Ratings such as hit, defense, and important factors like weapon skill are now gone.
7) You don't have players selling BoE epics for level 70 or crafting level 70 gear to put on the AH.
7A) The number of players with recipes from that era is probably less than it was in TBC, since there are a lot of players who never even played in TBC.
8) Cataclysm fundamentally changed leveling content from 1-(58)60, as well as many of the dungeons. Deadmines and SFK are completely different, if I want to stop at level 60, then Scholo is different (and maybe strat). You don't have hordes of elites outside dungeons like you used to, making them trivial to fight your way inside.
To say that "you can stop leveling and experience the same thing as Legacy realms" is like saying if you floor it in a Subaru it can feel like a Ferrari.
Post by
Interest
Just going to skirt this conversation briefly with a few things.
273,859 supporters can't be wrong.
This is blatantly argumentum ad populum. Not a great way to start this discussion. There's plenty of valid reasons to have a legacy server but it should start with those instead of some statistic that only shows how many people have an opinion on something.
An end raid boss that gets killed in less then a day will not challenge players and help motivate them to attempt killing it.
This completely misses the point that players have simply gotten better at the game. If WoW went fully into its legacy roots, this sort of skill cap that causes
non-glitchy
bosses to die within a matter of hours would still be around. This can be observed on the Old School Runescape servers, where the mentality of the playerbase is one more tuned to efficient veterans who min-max everything as opposed to clueless newbs.
The biggest "challenge" older content presented was punishing mechanics that have little place in modern game design and, more notably, bugs that got patched out later on anyways.
Content updates every 2 years will not build a long lasting community. Gameplay that fizzles out in a couple of months dose not make a legendary game.
And you propose... a static server with no content updates at all.
Weird, I interpreted that as more of an issue with how infrequently Blizzard releases updates especially due to the second sentence, but maybe that's just me.
But really though, some real talk on this topic since this topic gets posted so often and I basically always make these points every time:
-If you really want to see how a legacy server operates, go play Old School Runescape. Go see the obscenely toxic community it has fostered on the 2007scape subreddit that in its collective elitism continues to make demands after being catered to so thoroughly. See how they also collectively dump on Runescape 3 on a regular basis, assuming that literally everything about it has no redeeming value. Go see that it has constant updates that the users demand (it requires a 75% vote from the playerbase to implement nearly anything) to keep the game relevant to the point
it's essentially branched off into its own thing that no longer evokes a feeling of nostalgia so much as slaking a thirst for new adventures
.
-Bringing back old stuff won't bring back the friends you enjoyed it with. Plenty of people have quit and moved on and being able to experience the bull!@#$ that gets flung at you and your friends from time to time by game design from the 2000s was what made it fun. It's certainly possible to make new friends, but it won't be the same and it won't even really be a new experience but a replacement for what once was - a roundabout way to live in the past.
-The mechanics were not that great. A majority of the time they were busted in some sort of way due to programming quirks (see: various Vanilla and BC bosses like C'thun) or exceptionally simple because at the time those who developed the games were relatively new to the gig too. What happened as time went on was that they were reiterated upon and improved. The control scheme for WoW has largely gone unchanged and the same hotkey-based play is there but without the annoying input lag and with a variety of more complex, yet more approachable mechanics that can be traced back to their legacy roots with ease.
TL;DR: It's fine to want legacy servers and to appreciate it for what it once was, but trying to present it as a paragon of game design compared to present day game design is frankly rather ludicrous. We've come a long way since the 80s, 90s, or even the 2000s. Also, there's a lot less waiting for you on a legacy server than you might think since there are many negatives to consider.
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