All I can say is the new Elyisum server generated so much hype that there was a 12,000 player queue on top of about 8,000 people in game (versus Blizzards original 2004 debut of ~2500 player servers) -- so much hype so, that the Elysium team already created and released a 2nd server to take some strain off of players waiting in line for 6-8 hours to get in the game.
If that isn't enough of an indication that people actually want this thing, I don't know what is. If Blizzard doesn't want to provide, then OK, someone else will. Legal or not. All the white-knighting about this is so laughably disgusting. Who the fuck are you guys anyway, Blizzard employees? Are they hurting the livelihood of you and your family? Get over yourselves, people want to play this, and they will...and it's not like it's a new thing. This has been going on for years, and you have companies like DBG who allowed P99 to operate, and thrive, because they knew they had a playerbase out there that wanted something that they couldn't really provide in their own right. Even their own attempts at making "progression servers" were nothing like the virign EQ experience of P99.
So -- my point is, even if Blizzard complied and did what their players wanted, the likelihood that they could re-create the same experience of what is being provided on a Nostalrius like server is PROBABLY not possible. They could make their vanilla servers, which would generate some returning and possibly new players for sure, but these vanilla servers (ACTUAL VANILLA, mind you, closer to "Blizzlike" than Blizzard could probably do) will still operate and have their own player base that prefers to play the game as such. It's not even about money, either. I see a lot of older folks who are playing this game, into their 30s, 40s, 50's, whatever, they can afford the $15 sub, but Blizzard can't provide the experience.
I am only interested in a good discussion, and since you brought up a couple of good points, and you seem keen to discuss the matter more in detail I will ask you a couple of questions, in order to make some clarity and consolidate this thread which is all over the place.
1) Why making Legacy Server is not economically viable?
2) Why on a logical point of view is a bad idea?
I actually don't care about the emotional motives believe it or not, I am perfectly happy playing other games. If Blizzard makes Legacy Server or not, doesn't really bother me personally. I am just puzzled by their stubbornness of refusing to explore that option as Daybreak seemed perfectly capable of making Legacy Servers for a much smaller game which has a fraction of WoW player base. So I want to understand why making WoW Legacy Servers is such an issue for Blizzard, you are telling me that Daybreak is a better organized and more competent company than Blizzard? That would be a first.
Nostalgia is a powerful feeling. I get it often and I boot up Legend of Zelda or the original Ninja Gaiden. Then after 5-10 minutes, I realize just how far games have come in the 30 years since and I am fine for a while and then do it again. Kinda like some Groundhog Day nostalgia of gaming.
With MMO's, I do it too. DAOC was my first love. I still revisit it although not officially. But after a day or two, I realize why I stopped playing.
A lot of the legacy discussion with WOW is based on nostalgia. People want it - or they think they want it. Then they get it and after a bit, they realize why they stopped. Blizzard won't deliver on legacy servers because its a ton of work for virtually nothing.
With DAOC, the community begged and begged for special server rulesets - full PVP, PVE only, etc... and we got it. And those servers had little to no population after the initial desire wore off. Blizzard knows this would happen. They would put a ton of resources to develop something that would be HUGE when it was released and would die off quickly.
People should be honest with themselves and honestly say how long they would play a legacy server? 1 month? Maybe 2? How long until they went back to their other games? How long did it take EQ legacy servers to die?
I love WOW. I created our guild the night it launched. I played for years non-stop from launch through probably WOTLK without breaking. I AM the target audience for legacy servers and honestly, I would get to 60...go run a few dungeons, go stare at each other in Hillsbrad and then stop playing.
Sure BLizzard has the resources to do it but what do they have to gain?
Exactly. Perhaps Blizzard doesn't have much to gain from this. So then, why attempt to stop it? Fast forward 04 to 2017, what's still the most popular MMO on the market? Let it slip into the "legal gray area" and leave it alone. It's comparable in an (IMO) less criminal way than marijuana legalization. People are going to do it whether you like it or not right? If it's not really "hurting" anything, then why not just let it be. And IN B4 SLIPPERY SLOPE comments.
only thing i heard before about IP's not sure how much is truth their is thu, if they were aware of someone using your IP an you do not issues a Cease & Desist they risk losing any rights to claims to said IP even if someone else copy it an sell the copy.
I am only interested in a good discussion, and since you brought up a couple of good points, and you seem keen to discuss the matter more in detail I will ask you a couple of questions, in order to make some clarity and consolidate this thread which is all over the place.
1) Why making Legacy Server is not economically viable?
2) Why on a logical point of view is a bad idea? <snip>
Summary: Legacy servers would see "huge" demand followed by a "huge" fall off with disruption to the existing server populations.
As stated above there were queues of 6-8 hours but - heh - that's acceptable because its a bunch of volunteers running at no charge.
Imagine though if Blizzard released "a server" and umpteen million of the 100M+ current and historic accounts XM wanted to try it out of nostalgia or curiosity. "Your estimated wait time is 6 months, 3 weeks and 4 days". WTF! Uproar!
So Blizzard lay on several hundred servers - or more. Its a nostalgia high for a week or a month. And then .... is anyone there? WTF Blizzard these servers / cross-realm servers are empty. We need merger now and we don't expect to have to pay.
And it would be rinse, repeat for some months until things settled down.
That wouldn't be the only impact however since the existing servers would also have lost a lot of population - certainly for the first week, month or maybe longer. And as not everybody would be interested in trying the vanilla server option they to would see population issues. "Mergers" (x-server changes) however would not be an option in the short term since people might come back. DAoC had this problem.
It is such an obvious problem however that if Blizzard decided to introduce legacy "servers" - or more specifically a "vanilla experience" they could plan for it. Something like - say:
History Monks have uncovered a demonic plot to unravel the present by upsetting the past.
Brother Vanilla calls for <<volunteers to put their name down>> for time walking duties to restore the balance.
<<Each week some volunteers>> spirits will be sent back to occupy new bodies and lead the fight to prevent the incursion.
I doubt you would need a serious back story but you might as well have a coat hanger of some description. The key points: <<volunteers putting there name down>> and <<each week some volunteers>>. Which would enable Blizzard to manage supply. Start with a small server capacity, monitor and adjust it week by week. And if a time walker volunteer was inactive in the past for some period then their spirit woul dreturn to the present and they would have to volunteer a fresh. And selection could be random or determined in some announced way - length of continuous sub maybe.
Summary: Blizzard could opt to manage the supply of any vanilla experience from within the existing servers.
And the emulation software used by Nost was made open source of course.
I am just puzzled by their stubbornness of refusing to explore that option as Daybreak seemed perfectly capable of making Legacy Servers for a much smaller game which has a fraction of WoW player base. So I want to understand why making WoW Legacy Servers is such an issue for Blizzard, you are telling me that Daybreak is a better organized and more competent company than Blizzard? That would be a first.
No... I did bring this up before...
SOE/DBG was and still is desperate for anything that stop them form slowly fading in to obscurity. They literally had nothing to loose from trying this. Not only have Everquest lost any cultural significance it might have had. It did no longer generate any real buzz. Compare WoW´s last expansion to EQ 1 or 2 last expansion when it comes to making waves within both the community and media at large.
To DBG this was a desperate but solid move.. low cost and a good way to gain some favor.
but I have yet to hear a sound theory from people who sides with Blizzard, apart from them repeating Blizzard official stand which is not really telling much.
And all i can get out from that is "they do not say what i want them to say"
Especially as me and many others have explained over and over again why any normally functioning business in good standing would not invest in such a project... As well as try to explain why it from a purley logical point is also a bad idea.
I agree that you win the emotional one... From that point it makes perfect sense, but that in turn is another strike... You never really let emotions run a business.
I am only interested in a good discussion, and since you brought up a couple of good points, and you seem keen to discuss the matter more in detail I will ask you a couple of questions, in order to make some clarity and consolidate this thread which is all over the place.
1) Why making Legacy Server is not economically viable?
2) Why on a logical point of view is a bad idea?
I actually don't care about the emotional motives believe it or not, I am perfectly happy playing other games. If Blizzard makes Legacy Server or not, doesn't really bother me personally. I am just puzzled by their stubbornness of refusing to explore that option as Daybreak seemed perfectly capable of making Legacy Servers for a much smaller game which has a fraction of WoW player base. So I want to understand why making WoW Legacy Servers is such an issue for Blizzard, you are telling me that Daybreak is a better organized and more competent company than Blizzard? That would be a first.
I think Blizzard's motives are pretty clear for the most part.
1) Profit margins are priority #1 - They cancelled the planned D3 expansion not because it wouldn't be profitable, but because it wouldn't be profitable enough.
2) They've worked very hard to improve WOWs graphics and make the game more accessible and streamlined. They made customers pay for vanilla zone revamps in CATA and skimped out on endgame and replayabilty.
3) They cater to the LCD of their playerbase and probably believe they'd be "confused" by having multiple versions of WOW
4) The key figures on the WOW team think Vanilla and BC era WOW are inferior and that people won't stick around. The game is so fundamentally different that neither is superior, they are different and cater to different people.
5) I think the current WOW team will also see it as a slap in the face if vanilla WOW is more hyped than their latest expansion. They've already avoided the much needed server merges that will make the game look like it's failing. But all of the different servers added to CRZ already let you know how underpopulated your server hs become.
The best chance of us getting Blizzard run Vanilla and BC progression servers is for those versions to be incredibly popular on private servers. But it will likely also require WOWs active player base to go down to a level that makes creating vanilla servers more appealing.
I am only interested in a good discussion, and since you brought up a couple of good points, and you seem keen to discuss the matter more in detail I will ask you a couple of questions, in order to make some clarity and consolidate this thread which is all over the place.
1) Why making Legacy Server is not economically viable?
2) Why on a logical point of view is a bad idea? <snip>
Summary: Legacy servers would see "huge" demand followed by a "huge" fall off with disruption to the existing server populations.
Huh? I think you greatly underestimate the appeal of Blizzard adding progressions servers that allow players to start from the beginning and work their way up. Blizzard shouldn't care where customers spend their time, as long as it's on one of their servers. The populations will work themselves out and merges/CRZ handle most issues.
Legion mythic end game guilds aren't suddenly going to disappear and the game already has enough tools for finding pugs.
If they added vanilla servers I'd focus there but still spend some time on the expansion. I simply wasn't going to sub just for Legion, even with the coins I had stashed.
only thing i heard before about IP's not sure how much is truth their is thu, if they were aware of someone using your IP an you do not issues a Cease & Desist they risk losing any rights to claims to said IP even if someone else copy it an sell the copy.
Yes. Blizzard sending out C&D letters is enough to show they are trying to protect their IP. If the Nost team ignored the C&D letter they could have been taken to court and they wisely felt it wasn't worth the risk. They also weren't anti-Blizzard, they were just pro Vanilla WOW which had become abandonware by Blizzard.
So how do you come up with this $6 per customer/year ??
Come back to me with solid answers to my questions. Until then your numbers are pulled from thin air.
1 mil $ split over 150.000 accounts.... Since the 1 mil was over a year.. that makes the average per customer per year... ~6$ (or more exact ~6.6...)
I took these numbers because those are the number we happen to have at hand...
as for the "blizz" numbers i did the same in reverse.. just bumped the number from 6 to the 12.99 that blizzard charge (as it is safe to assume that at that price the cost of the servers and others are covered)
And ill ask again.. how many of these accounts are actually active? And again how many of that number came from Nostalrius (in which case they have been on Elysium for just a couple of months) and again.. how many gold sellers are active on Elysium besides the 2 i quoted you? and again.. how many of your 150,000 accounts are actually active? and again how many more players who didnt buy gold in that period would do so if it was from a trusted source like Blizzard? and again.. how many people who dont buy gold would still buy items from a vanila cash shop? Ill also add another question.. the hack showed over a million in gold sales since last year on Elysium alone.. how many of those sales were done in the 2 month period when Nostalrius players migrated to Elysium? For all you know most of those sales were done in that 2 month period when the populations exploded, and if thats the case then its 1million in gold sales over just a few months. Until you can answer my original questions (which you cant) your $6 theory is just pie in the sky.
Vanilla WoW, and modern WoW are two totally different games, it happens that some people like more the Vanilla version than the current one. Why that would be such an outrageous thing to accept?
I'd like a Model T but doubt I can convince Ford Motor Company it's in their best interests to start a new production of them. They are moving forward and making the product they are more interested in making. They don't want to go back no matter how much a "blast from the past" might twitterpate Model T fans.
Maybe I should make a petition.....
Agree, Ford has the right to look forward. However you can still find some Model T around and restore it. Ford is not going to get you an injunction forbidding you to restore the car and resell it. Which is what Blizzard is doing basically.
I agree Blizzard is entitled to do what they like with their IP. However if they do not intend to make their own Vanilla Servers, they should allow fans to run their own as long as is not for Commercial reasons (Like EQ and P99).
It is also not something unheard of for Developers to open their own Legacy Servers, Daybreak did it with EQ and EQ2 for example. I just don't see what damage could do to Blizzard acquiring the Nostalrious code (which is free) and booting up a couple of their own servers, and charge a subscription for it.
Well yeah they could but they decided NOT to as it stands
I know its hard to grasp that people are not magically legally entitled to make pirate servers of a monthly fee game just because they consider themselves the Robin Hood of WoW
I am totally against the illegal activity of Nost. However I think these players that want legacy servers have every right to be mad. There are obviously enough people that want legacy servers that they could make a few servers and they would have healthy populations. After seeing their crappy response on video to that fella who asked about the possibility of legacy servers I would certainly want to move to another MMO.
As they say: they can vote with their wallet if they are unhappy with Blizzard
The analogy wasn't made as a serious comparison of the two issues, but more of a gentle poke at the idea that companies must cater to their former fans by bringing back a now-outdated product. That said, if a company suddenly started making Model Ts using the original product design documents without express written approval of Ford Motor Company, you can bet the legal documentation would start flying.
That's a better fitting analogy. But I don't think the argument should be whether Blizzard is entitled to shut illegal servers down, as legally they are entitled to do so, and I believe in the right of a company to protect their intellectual property. I think most of us are wondering why it is such a big deal to either authorize third party run servers or better open their own Legacy Servers. Other companies already did both, Daybreak supports P99 and also they made their own Legacy Servers. Blizzard is a much bigger Company yet they are making a big fuss about the whole situation, blowing it out of proportion. Sometimes I think Blizzard like the free publicity they are getting from the whole drama, there is no other plausible explanation.
Why is it such a big deal for Blizzard and not DBG? Who knows? You know it would totally be a deal if it were any Nintendo, Square-Enix, or EA IP as well. Some companies are more permissive than others.
In any company people make decisions that others question and puzzle at. Have you ever questioned your partner, boss, or saw your employees doubt your choice? Business choices aren't always cut and dried.
Maybe Blizzard hasn't ruled it out either. This entire argument, and their actions, are based on the premise that Blizz won't ever do anything. All we know is that they aren't doing anything in the time frame that Nost and the other pirates demanded.
Who knows what's up Blizzard's butt. Maybe someday we'll hear the Paul Harvey "and now, the rest of the story".
Gopd point, BUT that doesnt jutifies pirate servers
But that is the point... There is no HARD proof that there is actually a large PAYING customer base.. This mostly because of a few catch 22´s (mostly that the pirvate servers can´t charge a sub fee and that beyond P.99 no company have tried work with or on making a large scale legacy server work.)
But this is the actual point.
Why Blizzard don't acquire the Nostalrium code (which is free) set up a couple of Servers, and see how that goes. They have nothing to lose, worst that can happen they will have to shut the Legacy Servers after a couple of months, but that would also shut up all the Vanilla fan base for good.
Instead they are making the issue worse, blowing it out of proportion, and in all this mess they also risk to be seen like the bad guys.
They could have everything to lose. You don't know that. You know nothing about the risks and benefits from the perspective of Blizzard.
They aren't making anything worse. The entitlement crowd is making the deal out of it. Their customers, outside of a few attention seekers, don't view them as the bad guys. Their customers are paying for their games right now. The freeloaders aren't. I can't see their customers even giving a shit about the freeloaders and what they want.
You realize the original petition Mark Kern presented to Blizzard had over 275,000 signatures. That's more than just a few people interested in legacy servers. The fact you call them freeloaders when Blizzard doesn't offer them an official alternative is also unfair. If they want a product and Blizzard ignores them, of course they will go where the product is available. The fact it happens to be freeshards has nothing to do with who these people are. Blizzard is ignoring them, so I don't have a problem with what they are doing.
FYI making excuses for piracy is usually not a valid argument
And oh just so you wait till Blizzard visits them with some strong armed lawyers because these smartasses really feel the need to play with fire aka a multibillion dollar company that could fuck them in the butthole with a lawsuit so hard that their grandkids would be still paying for the legal damages.
While everyone focuses on the witch hunt because that's what humans are best at. You are all easily distracted from the original point of all this. Vanilla WoW is a wanted product and Blizzard has shown no shits given to provide such a product and yet here you all are, poking your pitchforks at the only people willing to give "some" players a product they want.
I'm not saying what they did was right, because we all know it isn't legal, but at the same time, people should boycott Blizzard for being even bigger asshats by ignoring a fairly decent size community. Especially with the fact the cost to run such a server is a drop in the bucket.
So who truly is the biggest asshole here? Criminal Crusaders for a wanted product aka Robin Hood or the greedy rich executives that don't give a shit about their customers aka Martin Shkreli.
I agree with this. And mainly because Blizzard talks BS concerning vanilla servers. If some random group of pirates can pull it off to run vanilla servers, then why does Blizzard when asked , act as if it is such a big undertaking to start new vanilla servers? But it is probably the corporate part of Blizzard/Activision that fails to see (enough) potential profit that prevents the vanilla servers.
But yeah, witchhunt! *Hands out pitchforks and torches* 'For a limited time three pitchforks for the price of two !'
While everyone focuses on the witch hunt because that's what humans are best at. You are all easily distracted from the original point of all this. Vanilla WoW is a wanted product and Blizzard has shown no shits given to provide such a product and yet here you all are, poking your pitchforks at the only people willing to give "some" players a product they want.
I'm not saying what they did was right, because we all know it isn't legal, but at the same time, people should boycott Blizzard for being even bigger asshats by ignoring a fairly decent size community. Especially with the fact the cost to run such a server is a drop in the bucket.
So who truly is the biggest asshole here? Criminal Crusaders for a wanted product aka Robin Hood or the greedy rich executives that don't give a shit about their customers aka Martin Shkreli.
I agree with this. And mainly because Blizzard talks BS concerning vanilla servers. If some random group of pirates can pull it off to run vanilla servers, then why does Blizzard when asked , act as if it is such a big undertaking to start new vanilla servers? But it is probably the corporate part of Blizzard/Activision that fails to see (enough) potential profit that prevents the vanilla servers.
But yeah, witchhunt! *Hands out pitchforks and torches* 'For a limited time three pitchforks for the price of two !'
Hate to break this to you but in real world the word of the law is what matters, not your personal feelings about it.
Blizzard does not owe you or anyone else explanation as to why they wont implement legacy servers. They said no and thats it.
The moment you own an IP you get to do whatever the fuck you want to with it. Not with others people intellectual property however, although i find it quite amusing how ppl would love to dictate how a company should run their business when they arent the one potentially losing cash on it. If you think you know better than Blizz- make your own company them come back to tell us how it went because playing the armchair smartass is something even I can do.
Can we please drop this dishonest hypocritical bullshit of acting like Elysium and Nostalrius are some sort of justice fighters?
Oh and flash news buddy: companies exist to *wait for it* make money. They are not your friends, they dont personay care about you.
You don't allow people to talk about a Kicks Online private server ( All official servers shut down) yet you keep posting about a private server for a game that has official servers.....
While everyone focuses on the witch hunt because that's what humans are best at. You are all easily distracted from the original point of all this. Vanilla WoW is a wanted product and Blizzard has shown no shits given to provide such a product and yet here you all are, poking your pitchforks at the only people willing to give "some" players a product they want.
I'm not saying what they did was right, because we all know it isn't legal, but at the same time, people should boycott Blizzard for being even bigger asshats by ignoring a fairly decent size community. Especially with the fact the cost to run such a server is a drop in the bucket.
So who truly is the biggest asshole here? Criminal Crusaders for a wanted product aka Robin Hood or the greedy rich executives that don't give a shit about their customers aka Martin Shkreli.
I agree with this. And mainly because Blizzard talks BS concerning vanilla servers. If some random group of pirates can pull it off to run vanilla servers, then why does Blizzard when asked , act as if it is such a big undertaking to start new vanilla servers? But it is probably the corporate part of Blizzard/Activision that fails to see (enough) potential profit that prevents the vanilla servers.
But yeah, witchhunt! *Hands out pitchforks and torches* 'For a limited time three pitchforks for the price of two !'
They said no and thats it.
That's the funny part. Blizzard didn't say 'no', they just didn't say 'yes' soon enough for the Nost team and they decided to put on the big boy pants and release the code. Ignoring that Blizzard was trying to release an expansion at the time. Now they are back peddling for some unknown reason (the reason they gave doesn't even make sense) and the only thing to do is:
I am only interested in a good discussion, and since you brought up a couple of good points, and you seem keen to discuss the matter more in detail I will ask you a couple of questions, in order to make some clarity and consolidate this thread which is all over the place.
1) Why making Legacy Server is not economically viable?
2) Why on a logical point of view is a bad idea? <snip>
Summary: Legacy servers would see "huge" demand followed by a "huge" fall off with disruption to the existing server populations.
Huh? I think you greatly underestimate the appeal of Blizzard adding progressions servers that allow players to start from the beginning and work their way up. Blizzard shouldn't care where customers spend their time, as long as it's on one of their servers. The populations will work themselves out and merges/CRZ handle most issues. <snip>
Quite the opposite. Pick a number: 1M, 10M, 50M - whatever you feel constitute "huge".
What you are assuming though is zero drop off. Maybe I should have said "absolutely huge" take-up followed by "huge" drop off followed by "decline". That OK?
We have seen it so many times. And as I said it actually happened with DAoC. Mythic tried and did a reasonable job anticipating the demand but it was messy. And no one talked about the impact there would be on the existing player populations.
My answer to @ste2000 though was that this is obvious but that Blizzard could avoid it by - essentially - using the existing portals as gateways to a "vanilla experience". Yes some people would get frustrated that they had to wait before being selected for timewalking. So what? If they are that enthusiastic they will wait a little right? Especially as it will avoid all the mergers/CRZ issues.
SOE/DBG was and still is desperate for anything that stop them form slowly fading in to obscurity. They literally had nothing to loose from trying this. Not only have Everquest lost any cultural significance it might have had. It did no longer generate any real buzz. Compare WoW´s last expansion to EQ 1 or 2 last expansion when it comes to making waves within both the community and media at large.
To DBG this was a desperate but solid move.. low cost and a good way to gain some favor.
It is not up to debate that EQ and EQ2 Legacy Servers are less successful than what they hoped for. This is beside the point. The point is that some of you keep coming up with silly calculations and absurd inflated extra costs to support their theory that the Legacy servers were not viable economically, when it's a proven fact that a bunch of kids with zero budget and a smaller company than Blizzard can pull it off. So worse case scenario Blizz can make Legacy Servers without losing money, but best case scenario, they might prove more popular than EQ/EQ2 Legacy Servers, but Blizzard will never really know until they try. That is the point number 1.
Point number 2 some of you are adamant in stating the Legacy servers won't make sense, you keep saying that Blizzard has everything to lose from making those Servers. But exactly what, because that's not really clear yet. I admit that there is a possibility that you might be right, I am open to hear a reasonable scenario, but so far nobody came up with a believable reason of what exactly Blizzard could lose by opening Legacy Servers.
1) Profit margins are priority #1 - They cancelled the planned D3 expansion not because it wouldn't be profitable, but because it wouldn't be profitable enough.
That's all it is. That's what I am trying to explain since I started posting in this thread. I believe that Blizzard could make a decent amount of money from Legacy Servers , however I do believe that their margin would be lower than the Live Servers. Translated in English that means that the Legacy Servers will make less money for every Dollar invested (but they will make money).
This is a cold and heartless Business decision, which is common practice in Business. Maximizing the Margin is at the heart of every business, so Blizzard is perfectly entitled to do the same as any Bank or Building Society out there.
However Blizzard trade in the Entertainment business, it's not a soulless Bank. It has some moral duty towards its fan base (or at least I think they should have). So in the end it all come down to this. Some of you think that Blizzard is just like any other Business (which technically is) and should behave like any other Business with no moral obligation towards their fans. On the other hand some of us think that unless Blizzard are clearly damaged by their own actions (and I explained many times that they won't) they should meet their fans expectations, which is not entitlement as Blizzard doesn't own me anything.
So Blizzard are entitled to behave like any other Business out there, but I am free to disagree with their cold pragmatic decisions and expect better from them (and they could do much better in many ways).
Say what you will about ethics, justice and law. No one really gives a crap. Thievery is how the current world works. From the smallest business to the greatest giant, all of them need to steal, lie and cheat in order to survive.
Ownership is arbitrary. Whatever you own today, with enough hands greased, someone else will own it tomorrow. The private server's only problem is that it can't grease more hands than the official owner.
Say what you will about ethics, justice and law. No one really gives a crap. Thievery is how the current world works. From the smallest business to the greatest giant, all of them need to steal, lie and cheat in order to survive.
Ownership is arbitrary. Whatever you own today, with enough hands greased, someone else will own it tomorrow. The private server's only problem is that it can't grease more hands than the official owner.
People on here taking a high and mighty stance on right and wrong..blah blah blah. How many here go on sites like putlocker and watch a new movie or the latest episode of game of thrones because its not available in their own country yet. Whenever there is a demand for something, someone will always step up to provide, and the general public doesnt give a crap who provides it.
But that is the point... There is no HARD proof that there is actually a large PAYING customer base.. This mostly because of a few catch 22´s (mostly that the pirvate servers can´t charge a sub fee and that beyond P.99 no company have tried work with or on making a large scale legacy server work.)
But this is the actual point.
Why Blizzard don't acquire the Nostalrium code (which is free) set up a couple of Servers, and see how that goes. They have nothing to lose, worst that can happen they will have to shut the Legacy Servers after a couple of months, but that would also shut up all the Vanilla fan base for good.
Instead they are making the issue worse, blowing it out of proportion, and in all this mess they also risk to be seen like the bad guys.
They could have everything to lose. You don't know that. You know nothing about the risks and benefits from the perspective of Blizzard.
They aren't making anything worse. The entitlement crowd is making the deal out of it. Their customers, outside of a few attention seekers, don't view them as the bad guys. Their customers are paying for their games right now. The freeloaders aren't. I can't see their customers even giving a shit about the freeloaders and what they want.
You realize the original petition Mark Kern presented to Blizzard had over 275,000 signatures. That's more than just a few people interested in legacy servers. The fact you call them freeloaders when Blizzard doesn't offer them an official alternative is also unfair. If they want a product and Blizzard ignores them, of course they will go where the product is available. The fact it happens to be freeshards has nothing to do with who these people are. Blizzard is ignoring them, so I don't have a problem with what they are doing.
FYI making excuses for piracy is usually not a valid argument
And oh just so you wait till Blizzard visits them with some strong armed lawyers because these smartasses really feel the need to play with fire aka a multibillion dollar company that could fuck them in the butthole with a lawsuit so hard that their grandkids would be still paying for the legal damages.
I'm not promoting pirating software or IP, I'm scolding Blizzard for being asshats about it, dragging their feet.
Do you have any idea how business works? The "demand" for vanilla servers after this whole issue blew up resulted in the Nost people being invited to Blizzard HQ in JUNE. With a major expansion to be released in August and all the subsequent content and work that needs to be done in the immediate half year after that, who could reasonably expect that any announcement of vanilla servers would be made? I can't believe that a scant six months of time and Blizzard not speaking of vanilla servers between June and now is "dragging their feet"? LOL that's rich.
Businesses, unlike people, don't make decisions in a snap and let's not forget that this is Blizzard that is famous for the "when it's done" mentality on any project. Heck, they worked on Project Titan for what? 7 years without a word and then trashed the whole thing? Blizzard is also expert at keeping its inner projects secret and out of the public eye until it's nearly finished and they want to talk about it.
It's easy to forget fundamental business practices and business practices have nothing to do with being "asshats" or about fulfilling the instant gratification needs of any group of players.
But that is the point... There is no HARD proof that there is actually a large PAYING customer base.. This mostly because of a few catch 22´s (mostly that the pirvate servers can´t charge a sub fee and that beyond P.99 no company have tried work with or on making a large scale legacy server work.)
But this is the actual point.
Why Blizzard don't acquire the Nostalrium code (which is free) set up a couple of Servers, and see how that goes. They have nothing to lose, worst that can happen they will have to shut the Legacy Servers after a couple of months, but that would also shut up all the Vanilla fan base for good.
Instead they are making the issue worse, blowing it out of proportion, and in all this mess they also risk to be seen like the bad guys.
They could have everything to lose. You don't know that. You know nothing about the risks and benefits from the perspective of Blizzard.
They aren't making anything worse. The entitlement crowd is making the deal out of it. Their customers, outside of a few attention seekers, don't view them as the bad guys. Their customers are paying for their games right now. The freeloaders aren't. I can't see their customers even giving a shit about the freeloaders and what they want.
You realize the original petition Mark Kern presented to Blizzard had over 275,000 signatures. That's more than just a few people interested in legacy servers. The fact you call them freeloaders when Blizzard doesn't offer them an official alternative is also unfair. If they want a product and Blizzard ignores them, of course they will go where the product is available. The fact it happens to be freeshards has nothing to do with who these people are. Blizzard is ignoring them, so I don't have a problem with what they are doing.
FYI making excuses for piracy is usually not a valid argument
And oh just so you wait till Blizzard visits them with some strong armed lawyers because these smartasses really feel the need to play with fire aka a multibillion dollar company that could fuck them in the butthole with a lawsuit so hard that their grandkids would be still paying for the legal damages.
I'm not promoting pirating software or IP, I'm scolding Blizzard for being asshats about it, dragging their feet.
Do you have any idea how business works? The "demand" for vanilla servers after this whole issue blew up resulted in the Nost people being invited to Blizzard HQ in JUNE. With a major expansion to be released in August and all the subsequent content and work that needs to be done in the immediate half year after that, who could reasonably expect that any announcement of vanilla servers would be made? I can't believe that a scant six months of time and Blizzard not speaking of vanilla servers between June and now is "dragging their feet"? LOL that's rich.
Businesses, unlike people, don't make decisions in a snap and let's not forget that this is Blizzard that is famous for the "when it's done" mentality on any project. Heck, they worked on Project Titan for what? 7 years without a word and then trashed the whole thing? Blizzard is also expert at keeping its inner projects secret and out of the public eye until it's nearly finished and they want to talk about it.
It's easy to forget fundamental business practices and business practices have nothing to do with being "asshats" or about fulfilling the instant gratification needs of any group of players.
be careful with such statements, before you get stoned by Elysium/Nostalrium apologists
SOE/DBG was and still is desperate for anything that stop them form slowly fading in to obscurity. They literally had nothing to loose from trying this. Not only have Everquest lost any cultural significance it might have had. It did no longer generate any real buzz. Compare WoW´s last expansion to EQ 1 or 2 last expansion when it comes to making waves within both the community and media at large.
To DBG this was a desperate but solid move.. low cost and a good way to gain some favor.
It is not up to debate that EQ and EQ2 Legacy Servers are less successful than what they hoped for. This is beside the point. The point is that some of you keep coming up with silly calculations and absurd inflated extra costs to support their theory that the Legacy servers were not viable economically, when it's a proven fact that a bunch of kids with zero budget and a smaller company than Blizzard can pull it off. So worse case scenario Blizz can make Legacy Servers without losing money, but best case scenario, they might prove more popular than EQ/EQ2 Legacy Servers, but Blizzard will never really know until they try. That is the point number 1.
Point number 2 some of you are adamant in stating the Legacy servers won't make sense, you keep saying that Blizzard has everything to lose from making those Servers. But exactly what, because that's not really clear yet. I admit that there is a possibility that you might be right, I am open to hear a reasonable scenario, but so far nobody came up with a believable reason of what exactly Blizzard could lose by opening Legacy Servers.
1) Profit margins are priority #1 - They cancelled the planned D3 expansion not because it wouldn't be profitable, but because it wouldn't be profitable enough.
That's all it is. That's what I am trying to explain since I started posting in this thread. I believe that Blizzard could make a decent amount of money from Legacy Servers , however I do believe that their margin would be lower than the Live Servers. Translated in English that means that the Legacy Servers will make less money for every Dollar invested (but they will make money).
This is a cold and heartless Business decision, which is common practice in Business. Maximizing the Margin is at the heart of every business, so Blizzard is perfectly entitled to do the same as any Bank or Building Society out there.
However Blizzard trade in the Entertainment business, it's not a soulless Bank. It has some moral duty towards its fan base (or at least I think they should have). So in the end it all come down to this. Some of you think that Blizzard is just like any other Business (which technically is) and should behave like any other Business with no moral obligation towards their fans. On the other hand some of us think that unless Blizzard are clearly damaged by their own actions (and I explained many times that they won't) they should meet their fans expectations, which is not entitlement as Blizzard doesn't own me anything.
So Blizzard are entitled to behave like any other Business out there, but I am free to disagree with their cold pragmatic decisions and expect better from them (and they could do much better in many ways).
Say what you will about ethics, justice and law. No one really gives a crap. Thievery is how the current world works. From the smallest business to the greatest giant, all of them need to steal, lie and cheat in order to survive.
Ownership is arbitrary. Whatever you own today, with enough hands greased, someone else will own it tomorrow. The private server's only problem is that it can't grease more hands than the official owner.
People on here taking a high and mighty stance on right and wrong..blah blah blah. How many here go on sites like putlocker and watch a new movie or the latest episode of game of thrones because its not available in their own country yet. Whenever there is a demand for something, someone will always step up to provide, and the general public doesnt give a crap who provides it.
That doesnt mean such behaviour needs to publicly advertised and defended
Comments
If that isn't enough of an indication that people actually want this thing, I don't know what is. If Blizzard doesn't want to provide, then OK, someone else will. Legal or not. All the white-knighting about this is so laughably disgusting. Who the fuck are you guys anyway, Blizzard employees? Are they hurting the livelihood of you and your family? Get over yourselves, people want to play this, and they will...and it's not like it's a new thing. This has been going on for years, and you have companies like DBG who allowed P99 to operate, and thrive, because they knew they had a playerbase out there that wanted something that they couldn't really provide in their own right. Even their own attempts at making "progression servers" were nothing like the virign EQ experience of P99.
So -- my point is, even if Blizzard complied and did what their players wanted, the likelihood that they could re-create the same experience of what is being provided on a Nostalrius like server is PROBABLY not possible. They could make their vanilla servers, which would generate some returning and possibly new players for sure, but these vanilla servers (ACTUAL VANILLA, mind you, closer to "Blizzlike" than Blizzard could probably do) will still operate and have their own player base that prefers to play the game as such. It's not even about money, either. I see a lot of older folks who are playing this game, into their 30s, 40s, 50's, whatever, they can afford the $15 sub, but Blizzard can't provide the experience.
Summary: Legacy servers would see "huge" demand followed by a "huge" fall off with disruption to the existing server populations.
- As stated above there were queues of 6-8 hours but - heh - that's acceptable because its a bunch of volunteers running at no charge.
- Imagine though if Blizzard released "a server" and umpteen million of the 100M+ current and historic accounts XM wanted to try it out of nostalgia or curiosity. "Your estimated wait time is 6 months, 3 weeks and 4 days". WTF! Uproar!
- So Blizzard lay on several hundred servers - or more. Its a nostalgia high for a week or a month. And then .... is anyone there? WTF Blizzard these servers / cross-realm servers are empty. We need merger now and we don't expect to have to pay.
- And it would be rinse, repeat for some months until things settled down.
- That wouldn't be the only impact however since the existing servers would also have lost a lot of population - certainly for the first week, month or maybe longer. And as not everybody would be interested in trying the vanilla server option they to would see population issues. "Mergers" (x-server changes) however would not be an option in the short term since people might come back. DAoC had this problem.
It is such an obvious problem however that if Blizzard decided to introduce legacy "servers" - or more specifically a "vanilla experience" they could plan for it. Something like - say:- History Monks have uncovered a demonic plot to unravel the present by upsetting the past.
- Brother Vanilla calls for <<volunteers to put their name down>> for time walking duties to restore the balance.
- <<Each week some volunteers>> spirits will be sent back to occupy new bodies and lead the fight to prevent the incursion.
I doubt you would need a serious back story but you might as well have a coat hanger of some description. The key points: <<volunteers putting there name down>> and <<each week some volunteers>>. Which would enable Blizzard to manage supply. Start with a small server capacity, monitor and adjust it week by week. And if a time walker volunteer was inactive in the past for some period then their spirit woul dreturn to the present and they would have to volunteer a fresh. And selection could be random or determined in some announced way - length of continuous sub maybe.Summary: Blizzard could opt to manage the supply of any vanilla experience from within the existing servers.
And the emulation software used by Nost was made open source of course.
SOE/DBG was and still is desperate for anything that stop them form slowly fading in to obscurity. They literally had nothing to loose from trying this. Not only have Everquest lost any cultural significance it might have had. It did no longer generate any real buzz. Compare WoW´s last expansion to EQ 1 or 2 last expansion when it comes to making waves within both the community and media at large.
To DBG this was a desperate but solid move.. low cost and a good way to gain some favor.
This have been a good conversation
1) Profit margins are priority #1 - They cancelled the planned D3 expansion not because it wouldn't be profitable, but because it wouldn't be profitable enough.
2) They've worked very hard to improve WOWs graphics and make the game more accessible and streamlined. They made customers pay for vanilla zone revamps in CATA and skimped out on endgame and replayabilty.
3) They cater to the LCD of their playerbase and probably believe they'd be "confused" by having multiple versions of WOW
4) The key figures on the WOW team think Vanilla and BC era WOW are inferior and that people won't stick around. The game is so fundamentally different that neither is superior, they are different and cater to different people.
5) I think the current WOW team will also see it as a slap in the face if vanilla WOW is more hyped than their latest expansion. They've already avoided the much needed server merges that will make the game look like it's failing. But all of the different servers added to CRZ already let you know how underpopulated your server hs become.
The best chance of us getting Blizzard run Vanilla and BC progression servers is for those versions to be incredibly popular on private servers. But it will likely also require WOWs active player base to go down to a level that makes creating vanilla servers more appealing.
Legion mythic end game guilds aren't suddenly going to disappear and the game already has enough tools for finding pugs.
If they added vanilla servers I'd focus there but still spend some time on the expansion. I simply wasn't going to sub just for Legion, even with the coins I had stashed.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Ill also add another question.. the hack showed over a million in gold sales since last year on Elysium alone.. how many of those sales were done in the 2 month period when Nostalrius players migrated to Elysium? For all you know most of those sales were done in that 2 month period when the populations exploded, and if thats the case then its 1million in gold sales over just a few months.
Until you can answer my original questions (which you cant) your $6 theory is just pie in the sky.
I know its hard to grasp that people are not magically legally entitled to make pirate servers of a monthly fee game just because they consider themselves the Robin Hood of WoW
And oh just so you wait till Blizzard visits them with some strong armed lawyers because these smartasses really feel the need to play with fire aka a multibillion dollar company that could fuck them in the butthole with a lawsuit so hard that their grandkids would be still paying for the legal damages.
But yeah, witchhunt! *Hands out pitchforks and torches* 'For a limited time three pitchforks for the price of two !'
Blizzard does not owe you or anyone else explanation as to why they wont implement legacy servers. They said no and thats it.
The moment you own an IP you get to do whatever the fuck you want to with it. Not with others people intellectual property however, although i find it quite amusing how ppl would love to dictate how a company should run their business when they arent the one potentially losing cash on it.
If you think you know better than Blizz- make your own company them come back to tell us how it went because playing the armchair smartass is something even I can do.
Can we please drop this dishonest hypocritical bullshit of acting like Elysium and Nostalrius are some sort of justice fighters?
Oh and flash news buddy: companies exist to *wait for it* make money. They are not your friends, they dont personay care about you.
That's the funny part. Blizzard didn't say 'no', they just didn't say 'yes' soon enough for the Nost team and they decided to put on the big boy pants and release the code. Ignoring that Blizzard was trying to release an expansion at the time. Now they are back peddling for some unknown reason (the reason they gave doesn't even make sense) and the only thing to do is:
/popcorn
What you are assuming though is zero drop off. Maybe I should have said "absolutely huge" take-up followed by "huge" drop off followed by "decline". That OK?
We have seen it so many times. And as I said it actually happened with DAoC. Mythic tried and did a reasonable job anticipating the demand but it was messy. And no one talked about the impact there would be on the existing player populations.
My answer to @ste2000 though was that this is obvious but that Blizzard could avoid it by - essentially - using the existing portals as gateways to a "vanilla experience". Yes some people would get frustrated that they had to wait before being selected for timewalking. So what? If they are that enthusiastic they will wait a little right? Especially as it will avoid all the mergers/CRZ issues.
This is beside the point.
The point is that some of you keep coming up with silly calculations and absurd inflated extra costs to support their theory that the Legacy servers were not viable economically, when it's a proven fact that a bunch of kids with zero budget and a smaller company than Blizzard can pull it off.
So worse case scenario Blizz can make Legacy Servers without losing money, but best case scenario, they might prove more popular than EQ/EQ2 Legacy Servers, but Blizzard will never really know until they try.
That is the point number 1.
Point number 2 some of you are adamant in stating the Legacy servers won't make sense, you keep saying that Blizzard has everything to lose from making those Servers.
But exactly what, because that's not really clear yet.
I admit that there is a possibility that you might be right, I am open to hear a reasonable scenario, but so far nobody came up with a believable reason of what exactly Blizzard could lose by opening Legacy Servers.
That's all it is.
That's what I am trying to explain since I started posting in this thread.
I believe that Blizzard could make a decent amount of money from Legacy Servers , however I do believe that their margin would be lower than the Live Servers.
Translated in English that means that the Legacy Servers will make less money for every Dollar invested (but they will make money).
This is a cold and heartless Business decision, which is common practice in Business.
Maximizing the Margin is at the heart of every business, so Blizzard is perfectly entitled to do the same as any Bank or Building Society out there.
However Blizzard trade in the Entertainment business, it's not a soulless Bank.
It has some moral duty towards its fan base (or at least I think they should have).
So in the end it all come down to this.
Some of you think that Blizzard is just like any other Business (which technically is) and should behave like any other Business with no moral obligation towards their fans.
On the other hand some of us think that unless Blizzard are clearly damaged by their own actions (and I explained many times that they won't) they should meet their fans expectations, which is not entitlement as Blizzard doesn't own me anything.
So Blizzard are entitled to behave like any other Business out there, but I am free to disagree with their cold pragmatic decisions and expect better from them (and they could do much better in many ways).
Ownership is arbitrary. Whatever you own today, with enough hands greased, someone else will own it tomorrow. The private server's only problem is that it can't grease more hands than the official owner.
Whenever there is a demand for something, someone will always step up to provide, and the general public doesnt give a crap who provides it.
Businesses, unlike people, don't make decisions in a snap and let's not forget that this is Blizzard that is famous for the "when it's done" mentality on any project. Heck, they worked on Project Titan for what? 7 years without a word and then trashed the whole thing? Blizzard is also expert at keeping its inner projects secret and out of the public eye until it's nearly finished and they want to talk about it.
It's easy to forget fundamental business practices and business practices have nothing to do with being "asshats" or about fulfilling the instant gratification needs of any group of players.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
be careful with such statements, before you get stoned by Elysium/Nostalrium apologists
You indeed are free to do soKunai_Vax said:
That doesnt mean such behaviour needs to publicly advertised and defended