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This is an article I have wanted to write for a long time. Today with all of the news about the shut down and response to the World of Warcraft server Nostalrius, I feel like it is time to finally talk plainly about the existence and importance of "legacy servers" in MMO gaming.
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the missing link in a chain of destruction.
All spelling and typographical errors are based soely on the fact that i just dont care. If you must point out my lack of atention to detail, please do it with a smile.
and yes gives us CIty of Heroes back!!
I would personally love CoH to make a return as that was my fallback MMO for many many years. However I can also understand the point made by @DMKano in that for most studio's, it doesn't make sense at all.
I think if the studio's would just be willing to sell or lease their code to private folks so they could run a server for a fee, then you would see these being a lot more common and would give a reason for these studio's to still get credit for the game without having to keep dev teams around to keep the game running well.
That's the thing, there's no need to devote dev time to them. Server upkeep and that's it. People just want to play. Unless there are utterly game-breaking bugs afoot, the servers can just be left on auto-pilot.
With the plummeting costs of hosting due to cloud computing options (I'm an AWS fan myself - stupidly scalable and very cheap), this seems to be like a very, very missed opportunity by Blizzard.
Set up legacy servers, charge $15 for three months of playtime, and watch the profit roll in.
I think this is the crux of it.
Garret seems to think that it's just as easy as firing up a server, putting an old version of the software on it and opening up the credit card lines.
While running a server might be less expensive it still costs money. Additionally, any company worth its salt is going to want to at least have someone responsible for answering support tickets. That additional work for the CS teams. Or maybe a gm.
And then are people going to ask for expansions after they have played the original game over and over and over again? If they add the standard expansions then we are right back where we started. Are they going to demand expansions but still keep the original server's rules? Well that's a lot more money and work.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
That's the bottom line...not is it financially viable, is it within the game's philosophy etc. That's all BS.
So forget about it. Official vanilla servers will never happen as long as people keep buying WoW expansions.
I don't think it's as easy as that. And as I've mentioned, eventually people are going to get tired of the same material. And what happens when they have had their fill? Now you have a server with a very small population no it. Is there $15 per month enough?
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
you think people would play for years on a stagnate server where nothing changes?
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Not at all. I think your average player would only play 3-6 months, if that. But how often would they return, and how big is the audience? I definitely don't think it would hold people the way MMORPGs traditionally try to, but the nostalgia factor isn't one that should be easily dismissed when it comes to bringing players back for second helpings.
I thoroughly enjoyed Vanilla WoW. If they offered a retro server, I would definitely play for a few months on (probably long enough to work to max level and clear T3 with at least one character). A year or two from now, I would probably do it again. After the initial excitement wore off, I don't imagine the population would be huge, but with minimal to non-existant dev and support cost I have trouble imagining it wouldn't be profitable.
CoH has enough variety in the game to keep it from going stagnate too quickly. Also if you didn't know, they were one of the first MMOs to have user generated content. Players could make their own missions to share with other players. I can also see some of the people who worked on it donating some time between to work on new content to keep up their skills and boost their resume.
That's a pretty awful analogy lol. There are version of "Vanilla Chess" with different rules. How many people are playing chess with rules that are 1500 years old?
Those of you who want a vanilla wow server from Blizzard I would take a look at the petition here: https://www.change.org/p/michael-morhaime-legacy-server-among-world-of-warcraft-community?recruiter=522873458
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