Blizzard, you are dumb.
I hope someone makes a new one.
How is it piracy when it's a really fucking old version of their game that nobody would buy? You don't see Jagex pulling out the warez card on private servers for the very first RuneScape.
[QUOTE=FunnyStarRunner;50086692]How is it piracy when it's a really fucking old version of their game that nobody would buy? You don't see Jagex pulling out the warez card on private servers for the very first RuneScape.[/QUOTE]
Exactly, I have no interest in modern wow.
[QUOTE=FunnyStarRunner;50086692]How is it piracy when it's a really fucking old version of their game that nobody would buy? You don't see Jagex pulling out the warez card on private servers for the very first RuneScape.[/QUOTE]
Damn right
While you're on the topic of Jagex too, Jagex accepted that they fucked up along the road and released Oldschool Runescape. Currently OSRS has more players than Runescape 3, and is run entirely by a development team of 11 people. Clearly there's demand for wow classic/tbc servers (130,000 active Nostalrius players) so I find it really really strange that Blizzard haven't done something similar and made their own oldschool servers. I'd play them and I'm sure the majority of my friends that quit current wow would play them too
Maybe them shutting this down is hinting at oldschool servers coming? Wow is at its lowest ever subscription numbers, the last couple of expansions sucked balls - and the next one doesn't look great either - so I'd expect them to try something like this soon while the main game is constantly declining
I enjoyed WotLK and earlier, but WoTLK was honestly a decline in anything difficult, Cataclysm was just ridiculously easy, and from a week of playing on free game time I got to endgame in MoP, WoW really is just a shadow if its former self.
WoWs been pretty bad since you couldnt dismount flying mounters anymore from attacks.
They got away cheap compared to [url=http://www.geek.com/games/blizzard-wins-88-million-from-scapegaming-over-illegal-wow-servers-1277800/]Scapegaming[/url].
[QUOTE=Hoffa1337;50087156]They got away cheap compared to [url=http://www.geek.com/games/blizzard-wins-88-million-from-scapegaming-over-illegal-wow-servers-1277800/]Scapegaming[/url].[/QUOTE]
It was probably because they weren't profiting from it, they could take them to court but they would get peanuts before they declared bankruptcy
I had the best time when it was vanilla
PvP was so much fun then
im sure my opinion is unpopular but i played vanilla wow, and it sucked. it was just completely unfun. everything was a bore, and it took so long to do literally [I]anything[/I] that i lost interest after a few weeks. MoP got a lot of hate, but i enjoyed that. WoD has been devoid of long-lasting content, but the first time i ran through all of it, it was great. i vastly prefer WoW today over vanilla. i would pick modern WoW every day of the week over vanilla.
What's worst about all this is that Blizz were asked during a panel whether they would ever have vanilla/legacy servers, and they replied with something along the lines of "You think you want that but you don't".
Then look over here at a private server on vanilla wow, with a fucking huge player base of people who would probably pay to play an official vanilla server if it was presented to them.
[QUOTE=Anti Christ;50087360]im sure my opinion is unpopular but i played vanilla wow, and it sucked. it was just completely unfun. everything was a bore, and it took so long to do literally [I]anything[/I] that i lost interest after a few weeks. MoP got a lot of hate, but i enjoyed that. WoD has been devoid of long-lasting content, but the first time i ran through all of it, it was great. i vastly prefer WoW today over vanilla. i would pick modern WoW every day of the week over vanilla.[/QUOTE]
I'd agree if I wasn't such a sucker for games that don't hold your hand. Sure, WoW was a lot more boring before, but the enjoyment found in exploring and finding quests yourself, not being guided to everything that's worth seeing, actually having to make up your own adventures to reach level cap and all that stuff really feels so much better than the soulless quest-chain fest that is modern WoW. It feels like you're guided everywhere and never really given a strong individual challenge, everything you fight is weak as heck compared to you for example, while back in vanilla days you could kill a few mobs before having to eat and drink to regain your strength. I dunno, it was just a little more sadistic back then, still an EASY game, just not completely mindless like it is now
Most fun I'd had on Wow in ages. Such a disappointment that they're being such fucks about it.
[QUOTE=Zondac;50087398]I'd agree if I wasn't such a sucker for games that don't hold your hand. Sure, WoW was a lot more boring before, but the enjoyment found in exploring and finding quests yourself, not being guided to everything that's worth seeing, actually having to make up your own adventures to reach level cap and all that stuff really feels so much better than the soulless quest-chain fest that is modern WoW. It feels like you're guided everywhere and never really given a strong individual challenge, everything you fight is weak as heck compared to you for example, while back in vanilla days you could kill a few mobs before having to eat and drink to regain your strength. I dunno, it was just a little more sadistic back then, still an EASY game, just not completely mindless like it is now[/QUOTE]
Social aspect was huge too. Right now you can just log in, queue for a dungeon, teleport there, say nothing to the rest of the party and leave with a big bag of epic items and some gold. Back then the goals were more long term, and so achieving the goals felt more rewarding. You had to actually make friends and talk to people which was all very rewarding in itself. I spoke to more people and made more friends on Nostalrius in a few months than I did in the last 3 retail expansions. This might not be an important thing for everyone, but it definitely is for me. The addition of the LFG tool in late wrath is the turning point in my mind where wow kept getting easier and easier and was catering to people that only had an hour each night to play. Which is fair enough, I'm sure there's people enjoy that but I personally don't
I'd love an official Burning Crusade era server from Blizzard. TBC was the sweet spot in the wow timeline where things weren't pointlessly hard/long or ridiculously easy, and it still had a huge focus on social interaction
[QUOTE=zerosix;50087547]Social aspect was huge too. Right now you can just log in, queue for a dungeon, teleport there, say nothing to the rest of the party and leave with a big bag of epic items and some gold. Back then the goals were more long term, and so achieving the goals felt more rewarding. You had to actually make friends and talk to people which was all very rewarding in itself. I spoke to more people and made more friends on Nostalrius in a few months than I did in the last 3 retail expansions. This might not be an important thing for everyone, but it definitely is for me. The addition of the LFG tool in late wrath is the turning point in my mind where wow kept getting easier and easier and was catering to people that only had an hour each night to play. Which is fair enough, I'm sure there's people enjoy that but I personally don't
I'd love an official Burning Crusade era server from Blizzard. TBC was the sweet spot in the wow timeline where things weren't pointlessly hard/long or ridiculously easy, and it still had a huge focus on social interaction[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I'm not resubbing to WoW until I see a legacy option of sorts. One server per expansion doesn't sound too difficult to accomplish. The client file size would be the biggest problem, but they could have been something you could DL optionally and play only if you want to. Fuck, Blizzard, this isn't too hard for you to do, why are you denying us what we want :c
[video=youtube;XuOYmqSF6OQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuOYmqSF6OQ[/video]
oh okay, that's why
[QUOTE=Zondac;50087569]Yeah, I'm not resubbing to WoW until I see a legacy option of sorts. One server per expansion doesn't sound too difficult to accomplish. The client file size would be the biggest problem, but they could have been something you could DL optionally and play only if you want to. Fuck, Blizzard, this isn't too hard for you to do, why are you denying us what we want :c
[video=youtube;XuOYmqSF6OQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuOYmqSF6OQ[/video]
oh okay, that's why[/QUOTE]
This video right here literallly brings me 10 years back. They filmed all the places you spent so much time doing nothing in. Nostalgia overload!
[QUOTE=zerosix;50086919]
Maybe them shutting this down is hinting at oldschool servers coming? Wow is at its lowest ever subscription numbers, the last couple of expansions sucked balls - and the next one doesn't look great either - so I'd expect them to try something like this soon while the main game is constantly declining[/QUOTE]
No it's them shutting down a private server because they were hosting a version of the game using Blizzards assets while asking for donations. They have done this many, many times before and will continue to do it. The subscription decline will, if anything, cause them to be more reactionary towards people hosting illegitimate versions of the game.
[QUOTE=FlakTheMighty;50086986]I enjoyed WotLK and earlier, but WoTLK was honestly a decline in anything difficult, Cataclysm was just ridiculously easy, and from a week of playing on free game time I got to endgame in MoP, WoW really is just a shadow if its former self.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=zerosix;50087547]The addition of the LFG tool in late wrath is the turning point in my mind where wow kept getting easier and easier and was catering to people that only had an hour each night to play. Which is fair enough, I'm sure there's people enjoy that but I personally don't [/QUOTE]
What are Heroic/Mythic raids. What are Mythic dungeons.
You guys know the difficulty and the social aspects weren't removed, right? Like they didn't force players to stop meeting up the world? They didn't stop making content that one percent of guilds actually successfully clear? They gave alternatives.
[QUOTE=Raidyr;50089160]No it's them shutting down a private server because they were hosting a version of the game using Blizzards assets while asking for donations. They have done this many, many times before and will continue to do it. The subscription decline will, if anything, cause them to be more reactionary towards people hosting illegitimate versions of the game.
What are Heroic/Mythic raids. What are Mythic dungeons.
You guys know the difficulty and the social aspects weren't removed, right? Like they didn't force players to stop meeting up the world? They didn't stop making content that one percent of guilds actually successfully clear? They gave alternatives.[/QUOTE]
I don't want to do the content only 1% of people can clear in order to have a challenging, social experience in an MMO though. I did that for a while in FFXIV and it sucked because you have to show up on time and forcing everyone else to do the same is like fucking herding cats.
I wanna have to put together a party and think about the composition and then fight through a difficult, non max level dungeon over the course of the better part of an hour for some blue loot. I wanna actually have a chance of wiping on trash because someone fucked something up. I want to randomly meet people like this and get into hour long conversations about shit after the fact.
I played nostalrius way less than I played modern MMOS and I got into social situations constantly where in other games I'd log in and never have a reason to talk to anyone all day. Difficulty and a slower pace DO foster a more social experience.
Funny you say assets, because I'm pretty sure a server typically doesn't render a single pixel. In fact, I'm sure that every line of code in their server emulator was original. All they did was reverse engineered the protocol and allowed you to connect with a client if you own a copy of the base game.
I'm not going to argue that blizzard doesn't have a leg to stand on in prosecuting, but it makes my blood boil when people act like these people were just some parasites leeching off of poor blizzards hard work. This was a labor of love by hobbyists in order to recapture an experience that's been lost to time, that only accepted donations to cover hosting costs. Its shutdown is a net loss for the preservation of gaming history, imo.
[QUOTE=froztshock;50089370]I don't want to do the content only 1% of people can clear in order to have a challenging, social experience in an MMO though. I did that for a while in FFXIV and it sucked because you have to show up on time and forcing everyone else to do the same is like fucking herding cats.[/QUOTE]
I only mention that because it's the closest thing to an objective observation of difficulty achieveable. That is, how many people are capable of clearing fights. It's hard to make the case that follow-up expansions from TBC or Wrath were "easier" when the fights took longer to down and were downed by less people in general. Siege of Orgrimmar was regarded as the hardest raid ever by the two top ranked PVE guilds, and that was one expansion ago.
[QUOTE=froztshock;50089370]I wanna have to put together a party and think about the composition and then fight through a difficult, non max level dungeon over the course of the better part of an hour for some blue loot. I wanna actually have a chance of wiping on trash because someone fucked something up. I want to randomly meet people like this and get into hour long conversations about shit after the fact. [/QUOTE]
You can totally get both experiences in current WoW. People do it every day. But you can also just queue for dungeons if you want to hit stuff with a sword and get loot and not worry about socializing.
They didn't remove anything, they gave people a choice. Now you can argue the fact that most people choose quick and easy over long and fulfilling, but thats a debate over human nature, not game design.
[QUOTE=froztshock;50089370]I played nostalrius way less than I played modern MMOS and I got into social situations constantly where in other games I'd log in and never have a reason to talk to anyone all day. Difficulty and a slower pace DO foster a more social experience.[/QUOTE]
Again, WoW offers both. You can join a social guild and do casual progression. You can join a raiding guild and get the classic experience. If you are good enough you can join a mythic guild that runs content at the absolute highest levels in competition with other high ranked guilds. Or you can log in for an hour a day and feel like you got something done because you did your daily heroic and garrison missions.
[QUOTE=froztshock;50089370]Funny you say assets, because I'm pretty sure a server typically doesn't render a single pixel. In fact, I'm sure that every line of code in their server emulator was original. All they did was reverse engineered the protocol and allowed you to connect with a client if you own a copy of the base game.
I'm not going to argue that blizzard doesn't have a leg to stand on in prosecuting, but it makes my blood boil when people act like these people were just some parasites leeching off of poor blizzards hard work. This was a labor of love by hobbyists in order to recapture an experience that's been lost to time, that only accepted donations to cover hosting costs. Its shutdown is a net loss for the preservation of gaming history, imo.[/QUOTE]
They were hosting an illegitimate version of the game that Blizzard owns the IP too. You can play word games with it if you want but the point is it was inevitably going to be taken down.
I can absolutely sympathize with the people who want to play old WoW. TBC was probably the high point of the game for me personally. But that doesn't mean people are entitled to private servers, even if they are really popular and really hard to run.
[QUOTE=Raidyr;50089160]No it's them shutting down a private server because they were hosting a [B]version of the game using Blizzards assets while asking for donations. [/B]They have done this many, many times before and will continue to do it. The subscription decline will, if anything, cause them to be more reactionary towards people hosting illegitimate versions of the game.
[/QUOTE]
you do realise they made 0 profit from Nostalrius and did it just because they wanted to give something to the community
[QUOTE=Raidyr;50089420]I only mention that because it's the closest thing to an objective observation of difficulty achieveable. That is, how many people are capable of clearing fights. It's hard to make the case that follow-up expansions from TBC or Wrath were "easier" when the fights took longer to down and were downed by less people in general. Siege of Orgrimmar was regarded as the hardest raid ever by the two top ranked PVE guilds, and that was one expansion ago.
You can totally get both experiences in current WoW. People do it every day. But you can also just queue for dungeons if you want to hit stuff with a sword and get loot and not worry about socializing.
They didn't remove anything, they gave people a choice. Now you can argue the fact that most people choose quick and easy over long and fulfilling, but thats a debate over human nature, not game design.
Again, WoW offers both. You can join a social guild and do casual progression. You can join a raiding guild and get the classic experience. If you are good enough you can join a mythic guild that runs content at the absolute highest levels in competition with other high ranked guilds. Or you can log in for an hour a day and feel like you got something done because you did your daily heroic and garrison missions.
They were hosting an illegitimate version of the game that Blizzard owns the IP too. You can play word games with it if you want but the point is it was inevitably going to be taken down.
I can absolutely sympathize with the people who want to play old WoW. TBC was probably the high point of the game for me personally. But that doesn't mean people are entitled to private servers, even if they are really popular and really hard to run.[/QUOTE]
Oh I know, I went into it with the understanding that it was probably going to get taken down someday. But it really makes me wonder [i]why[/i], you know? Not on the legal front, even if it's a [i]somewhat[/i] gray area (a little less gray than emulators). I know that copyright law is what it is, and why Blizz is bound to do what they did but it still rubs me the wrong way because it feels like there was no net gain for anyone here, company or consumer, considering how few of the people there are actually going to head back to retail, because it's not the same product.
You can try to pitch it however you want but there's no way I'm going back to WoW in its current state, [i]especially[/i] when everything I hear about it suggests that they're hemorrhaging subscribers so bad that they decided to stop publishing subscription numbers and I keep hearing about merges and server pop problems, and I doubt that most people who played on Nostalrius are any different. It's not a game that we want to play anymore.
The only thing that would get me back onto official WoW servers is if they offered legacy, which they don't want to do for various reasons, some likely technical others of the more infuriating "I KNOW BETTER THAN YOU WHAT YOU WANT" nature.
People think Blizzard wants to shut private servers down to get people to switch to retail but that really isn't the motivation I don't believe. I don't think they are naive to assume that the people playing one version of the game for free are just going to switch over to the $15 a month version they don't even like. I think it really just comes down to defending their intellectual property.
In regards to WoW's grievous decline, there are a lot of factors at work but it's still far and away the most populated MMO in terms of active players. There haven't been any merges yet and server's have recently increased in carrying capacity. Some servers are dead, but servers have been dead since TBC (when I transferred off of Dethecus to go to Illidan). It's not breaking 12 million subs anymore, but its still quite popular.
Finally, as for legacy servers and Nostralrius, a solution would be nice because it seems like contrary to that one devs comment (seriously, one of the worst possible ways to respond to that question) it seems like a lot of people are interested in playing the older version of the game but I can see a lot of reasons for Blizzard not to. Namely, the costs. Nostralrius cost over $1000 a month and it was a small indie project. There is no guarantee that people would actually pay a fee to play on these servers. Opening a vanilla server also opens a whole new barrel of monkeys: What versions are they going to officially support? Because a TBC server would be almost as popular, same with a Wrath server. I don't think Cataclysm would ever top anyones "Best Expansion" list but surely there is an audience for a Cata legacy server? Also how would this impact development of the actual game World of Warcraft? The one that currently has millions of people playing, people who wouldn't take kindly to developer resources being shifted from a game they like to a game they in all likelihood don't even care about?
This isn't a simple issue of comparing pictures of Nostralrius Ironforge and Warlords of Draenor Ironforge and saying "Gosh Blizzard is so [I]dumb [/I]for not having their own legacy server and going after private servers".
[QUOTE=Raidyr;50090228]People think Blizzard wants to shut private servers down to get people to switch to retail but that really isn't the motivation I don't believe. I don't think they are naive to assume that the people playing one version of the game for free are just going to switch over to the $15 a month version they don't even like. I think it really just comes down to defending their intellectual property.
In regards to WoW's grievous decline, there are a lot of factors at work but it's still far and away the most populated MMO in terms of active players. There haven't been any merges yet and server's have recently increased in carrying capacity. Some servers are dead, but servers have been dead since TBC (when I transferred off of Dethecus to go to Illidan). It's not breaking 12 million subs anymore, but its still quite popular.
Finally, as for legacy servers and Nostralrius, a solution would be nice because it seems like contrary to that one devs comment (seriously, one of the worst possible ways to respond to that question) it seems like a lot of people are interested in playing the older version of the game but I can see a lot of reasons for Blizzard not to. Namely, the costs. Nostralrius cost over $1000 a month and it was a small indie project. There is no guarantee that people would actually pay a fee to play on these servers. Opening a vanilla server also opens a whole new barrel of monkeys: What versions are they going to officially support? Because a TBC server would be almost as popular, same with a Wrath server. I don't think Cataclysm would ever top anyones "Best Expansion" list but surely there is an audience for a Cata legacy server? Also how would this impact development of the actual game World of Warcraft? The one that currently has millions of people playing, people who wouldn't take kindly to developer resources being shifted from a game they like to a game they in all likelihood don't even care about?
This isn't a simple issue of comparing pictures of Nostralrius Ironforge and Warlords of Draenor Ironforge and saying "Gosh Blizzard is so [I]dumb [/I]for not having their own legacy server and going after private servers".[/QUOTE]
See, this I agree with. But the solution isn't as big a problem as you make it out to be. If blizzard cared they could easily let the community host the servers within the official realm list. It's like the old saying, "if you can't beat em, join em". Blizzard wouldn't even have to pay for the servers, much like nostalrius, servers like these could be funded by the players directly. And if blizzard wants to demand money for it instead of using a donation model, why not have a secondary subscription you could pay for access to legacy servers? If you wanna take it all the way, you could have both subs be optional, meaning some players would only bother to play legacy, as that's what they want to play and fund, and have other players pay for standard retail. There are already servers that do every patch of wow that ever was, pretty much, why not help them as well as their selves? If blizzlike servers were officially accepted and easier to connect to while gaining blizzard money, why wouldn't they? If you read the AMA with the nostalrius development team, you'll see how they spent all this effort to keep something they care about alive. Why can't blizzard put us in that position forcefully? "If you want legacy servers, fix them yourself and pay the cost"
When it's no longer economically viable, a server run like this would be shut either way, and blizzard would be right in that we don't actually want this. But right now we do, and we do enough to pay for keeping it up illegally as well.
[QUOTE=Anti Christ;50087360]im sure my opinion is unpopular but i played vanilla wow, and it sucked. it was just completely unfun. everything was a bore, and it took so long to do literally [I]anything[/I] that i lost interest after a few weeks. MoP got a lot of hate, but i enjoyed that. WoD has been devoid of long-lasting content, but the first time i ran through all of it, it was great. i vastly prefer WoW today over vanilla. i would pick modern WoW every day of the week over vanilla.[/QUOTE]
The main issue with modern WoW is the shallow and lacking content. In Vanilla, you had a reason to log in every day and you always had something to do which would progress your character. Same is true for TBC and partially WOTLK. WoD, outside of sending off your garrison mission and shipyard missions, you don't really have a real reason to login if you're a hardcore raider. Casual players who enjoy soloing old content and farming achievements/mounts/reputation etc. have a ton to do, but it doesn't make a game good..
Gear in World of Warcraft has also lost all meaning. You know that all your gear from Heroic/Mythic raiding will become obsolete within a few months to a year, and you will have to repeat the process all over again. I still have a few friends who are actively raiding in World of Warcraft and gear doesn't mean anything to them anymore, it's more of an obstacle for the hardcore raiders at this point and just a barrier of entry for new players.
Leveling is always a pain in the ass, even with heirlooms and recruit-a-friend bonus. It's just something which has lost all meaning in the game, especially with the release of level 90/100 boosts.
I think games such as Black Desert have done things right. There's always something to do, a ton of content for the casual player and enough content to keep the hardcore crowd satisfied.
Vanilla was a chore, but atleast it had depth unlike the modern WoW. Legion is already DOA for me, not really interested in it. I was on the hype train for Warlords of Draenor and it was such a let down.
I think it would be really neat if Blizzard opened their own vanilla server and gave you account rewards for playing through it, like cosmetic transmog gear. Similar to the rewards you get in Diablo for starting a new character and playing during a new season. But I doubt we'll get a vanilla server anytime soon, period.
[QUOTE=FunnyStarRunner;50086692]How is it piracy when it's a really fucking old version of their game that nobody would buy? You don't see Jagex pulling out the warez card on private servers for the very first RuneScape.[/QUOTE]
private servers being taken down is nothing new, welcome to 2008
if I made a game and people were still keeping it alive a decade later (ok obviously WoW still lives but I'm talking in general), I would literally join the team doing it, totally congratulate them, and give them what help they need for a bit.
If you give a shit about a game/version of a game a decade after its relevance and put your own work into it for fans of it, you deserve at least a pat on the back.
[QUOTE=J!NX;50092420]if I made a game and people were still keeping it alive a decade later (ok obviously WoW still lives but I'm talking in general), I would literally join the team doing it, totally congratulate them, and give them what help they need for a bit.
If you give a shit about a game/version of a game a decade after its relevance and put your own work into it for fans of it, you deserve at least a pat on the back.[/QUOTE]
I belive it has been mentioned already but I assume one of the reasons this isn't the case with Blizzard is because the people who MADE Vanilla WoW no longer work there, so to the people who work there now, the game is just a cashflow, not something they actually care about. I'm sure some of the old devs find it flattering that people prefer old WoW, but after BlizzActivision happened it's impossible for me to imagine them not taking the corporate scum path over the support the fans one
Hopefully once WoW dies for good they won't care.
Sony/LucasArts don't seem to give a shit about the Star Wars Galaxies emulators.
Heck I'm pretty sure they didn't give a shit when the game was still live, though it was near the end of its life I believe when they started popping up.
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