"Make the game easier" and "Introduce garrisons" were the result of listening to "them", in case you've forgotten.
But, listen to them? Who? No one can seem to agree on anything in this genre. Group A wants one thing. Groups B and C want other things. Listen to group A and B & C get angry. Listen to group B and....well, you get the picture.
Game developers are better off listening to no one and just building the game they envisioned.
Yeah, the only thing funny with that comic is how laughably wrong it is.
Blizzard's problem is that they listen to the players too much.
In TBC the players complained that dungeons and raids were too hard, so in WotLK they made them really easy, so the players complained that dungeons and raids were too easy.
Garrisons was because the players said they wanted housing but wanted something that felt "Warcraft"-y.
So, if Blizzard listens to player complaints they just complain more expecting their stupid demands to be met like spoiled children and if Blizzard doesn't listen then the players complain that Blizzard is out of touch and only cares about money.
Of course they could just license out the rights to run a vanilla server for $x a year. They don't have to invest their own money. They can make the contract so that the licensee cannot change or expand the game in any way. If they feel there is no market for it, then they need not worry about the competition. No risk of losing or devaluing their IP.
Blizzard will never allow unofficial vanilla legacy server, why would they ? , they would achieve absolutely nothing for themselves by doing so. However , everything points for blizzard to release their own legacy server. It will be a interesting blizzcon
Blizzard has been allowing emulated servers for years. ED, Rebirth, etc etc. There is another server out there which I won't name that is getting all the people from Nost and it growing huge again.
Of course they could just license out the rights to run a vanilla server for $x a year. They don't have to invest their own money. They can make the contract so that the licensee cannot change or expand the game in any way. If they feel there is no market for it, then they need not worry about the competition. No risk of losing or devaluing their IP.
Yet how much does it cost them in the end? It's not just a matter of spending their own money on the introduction of those servers, it's a matter of how much revenue they lose by offering them, from those who would have otherwise played the main-game proper and spent on it's expansions etc...Again they'd be creating their own competition. Something they're trying to rid themselves of already.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
"Make the game easier" and "Introduce garrisons" were the result of listening to "them", in case you've forgotten.
But, listen to them? Who? No one can seem to agree on anything in this genre. Group A wants one thing. Groups B and C want other things. Listen to group A and B & C get angry. Listen to group B and....well, you get the picture.
Game developers are better off listening to no one and just building the game they envisioned.
normally i would agree with you but in this case there isn't much gray area. it's not like the typical whine to get your favorite class buffed or get this or that feature introduced.
wow vanilla is wow vanilla, there isn't much to agree or disagree on. you either offer the service which will bring in more people or you don't.
sure it's a valid argument that it may not be worth their time from a business standpoint, i actually agree with that opinion. but if that's the case i just think it's a dick move to disallow private servers from offering the service without making any kind of profit off their product., if blizz refuses to offer it.
80,000 wow fans have spoken (that's the cartoon reference by the way) and want to play on a server like that, there is no gray area or anything else to agree on.
"Make the game easier" and "Introduce garrisons" were the result of listening to "them", in case you've forgotten.
But, listen to them? Who? No one can seem to agree on anything in this genre. Group A wants one thing. Groups B and C want other things. Listen to group A and B & C get angry. Listen to group B and....well, you get the picture.
Game developers are better off listening to no one and just building the game they envisioned.
Yeah, the only thing funny with that comic is how laughably wrong it is.
Blizzard's problem is that they listen to the players too much.
In TBC the players complained that dungeons and raids were too hard, so in WotLK they made them really easy, so the players complained that dungeons and raids were too easy.
Garrisons was because the players said they wanted housing but wanted something that felt "Warcraft"-y.
So, if Blizzard listens to player complaints they just complain more expecting their stupid demands to be met like spoiled children and if Blizzard doesn't listen then the players complain that Blizzard is out of touch and only cares about money.
this ins't a player complaint though, is it? this is just wanting to play on a vanilla server, a service that blizz doesn't offer. they don't need to have anything to do with if they don't want to offer it either.
i understand where you are coming from and agree with what you are saying but this is simply a different situation entirely. people know they like wow vanilla, it's what got a lot of them hooked to wow and they want to play that game again with their friends and an awesome community.
blizz can either listen to those fans or ignore them but it isn't the same as whining for stupid features that can ruin the game going forward.
a wow vanilla server is something separate from the current wow game and a lot of people want that, even though the blizz devs say they don't. lol
normally i would agree with you but in this case there isn't much gray area. it's not like the typical whine to get your favorite class buffed or get this or that feature introduced.
wow vanilla is wow vanilla, there isn't much to agree or disagree on. you either offer the service which will bring in more people or you don't.
sure it's a valid argument that it may not be worth their time from a business standpoint, i actually agree with that opinion. but if that's the case i just think it's a dick move to disallow private servers from offering the service without making any kind of profit off their product., if blizz refuses to offer it.
80,000 wow fans have spoken (that's the cartoon reference by the way) and want to play on a server like that, there is no gray area or anything else to agree on.
I don't think it's that simple, as even here among those arguing for such a server, there's a disparity in what's being asked for. You say "Vanilla" while another says TBC.
I also think it's missing the bigger picture to say "disallow private servers from offering the service without making any kind of profit off their product., if blizz refuses to offer it."
As the very presence of such servers could be costing Blizz profit, regardless of that server making it's own profit or not. I know many act as though these people wouldn't play otherwise, that's a huge leap in judgment to make. Something it's quite obvious Blizz isn't counting out, otherwise they'd just let them exist without a care. An alternative is an alternative, they're obviously not taking any chance of that alternative costing them revenue from potential sales/subs.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Blizzard will never allow unofficial vanilla legacy server, why would they ? , they would achieve absolutely nothing for themselves by doing so. However , everything points for blizzard to release their own legacy server. It will be a interesting blizzcon
Blizzard has been allowing emulated servers for years. ED, Rebirth, etc etc. There is another server out there which I won't name that is getting all the people from Nost and it growing huge again.
the thing is, blizz actually promoted private vanilla servers by shutting down nost. how many people were not aware of this before who are now going to be looking into playing on private servers?
it's not just vanilla wow servers either, there are all kinds of them, custom and legit.
normally i would agree with you but in this case there isn't much gray area. it's not like the typical whine to get your favorite class buffed or get this or that feature introduced.
wow vanilla is wow vanilla, there isn't much to agree or disagree on. you either offer the service which will bring in more people or you don't.
sure it's a valid argument that it may not be worth their time from a business standpoint, i actually agree with that opinion. but if that's the case i just think it's a dick move to disallow private servers from offering the service without making any kind of profit off their product., if blizz refuses to offer it.
80,000 wow fans have spoken (that's the cartoon reference by the way) and want to play on a server like that, there is no gray area or anything else to agree on.
I don't think it's that simple, as even here among those arguing for such a server, there's a disparity in what's being asked for. You say "Vanilla" while another says TBC.
I also think it's missing the bigger picture to say "disallow private servers from offering the service without making any kind of profit off their product., if blizz refuses to offer it."
As the very presence of such servers could be costing Blizz profit, regardless of that server making it's own profit or not. I know many act as though these people wouldn't play otherwise, that's a huge leap in judgment to make. Something it's quite obvious Blizz isn't counting out, otherwise they'd just let them exist without a care. An alternative is an alternative, they're obviously not taking any chance of that alternative costing them revenue from potential sales/subs.
well TBC isn't vanilla but if blizz did introduce "legacy servers" i see no reason to believe they cannot have a server with TBC enabled or at the very least introduce one a few months after they launch vanilla.
to me working out those details isn't the major issue. here is the thing about those subs they are supposedly missing, they are not coming back now, that is for sure.
those players are now flocking to other private servers or possibly other games, they are not going to just say "well, guess we have to sub to wow now"
maybe a select few are but i hope blizz causing this shit storm was worth those few coming back.
well TBC isn't vanilla but if blizz did introduce "legacy servers" i see no reason to believe they cannot have a server with TBC enabled or at the very least introduce one a few months after they launch vanilla.
to me working out those details isn't the major issue. here is the thing about those subs they are supposedly missing, they are not coming back now, that is for sure.
those players are now flocking to other private servers or possibly other games, they are not going to just say "well, guess we have to sub to wow now"
maybe a select few are but i hope blizz causing this shit storm was worth those few coming back.
Respectfully, that's a stretch to say Blizzard is "causing" a shit-storm, they did what is perfectly in their right to do, they shutdown a "rival" who got too big for their britches. What causes such "storms" is people being people, thinking they're entitled to have whatever they want, regardless of what it costs the creator.. Sorry if that sounds harsh, yet in the end that's the truth of the matter.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I still maintain the biggest reason Blizzard won't do this is hubris. If they do it and it's as popular as I suspect it will be, they will A. Have to eat crow and admit that they've fucked the game up with later expansions, and B. Not make as much potential money from expansion sales (though I think A is a much larger portion of the reason).
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Was the private server Nostalrius actually charging players to play or making money somehow? If not, I don't even see the big deal!
The big deal is that some people played Wow without paying Blizz $15 a month and I can tell you that at least the Activision part of them hate when people aren't paying them money... If they even lost a few it is too much for their taste.
The more interesting question is why Blizz didn't add a legacy server years ago if they thought it would keep some more players paying? It is certainly some work but I have a feeling it would earn the cost for that and some more.
I still maintain the biggest reason Blizzard won't do this is hubris. If they do it and it's as popular as I suspect it will be, they will A. Have to eat crow and admit that they've fucked the game up with later expansions, and B. Not make as much potential money from expansion sales (though I think A is a much larger portion of the reason).
Blizzard's original strategy of expansions has been wrong to start with.
They should've never added more levels every expansion, but rather just add more areas, battlegrounds and classes as they did. The levels are what caused the game's number of skills to be over-tedious and which causes them to over-simplify the game to compensate, and ended up making the skill system less interesting to the players.
wow killed their own game with gear score and artifact gear theres sooo much content that is totally useless now because of it..even if they rolled out a vanilla server it wouldnt be what ppl would think it would be..knowing them they would roll out a vanilla server with it being able to use artifact gear..not to mention that the pvp was hugely over hauled soo many times..i really dont think it would be as great as some would think it to be..the world pvp was alotta fun before they plopped it into the crapper
80k supporters so far @ $15 per month = $1,200,000 potential revenue, that is a lot of money to just dismiss per month.
I agree is alot money, but what would it cost them to set it up and keep it running. They still need to dig in the old code, they have and fix it up. Or people would have bad experience with all the exploiter that their found around the code. Maybe looking at 30 to 50+ million to get a Vanilla server from start and get it up running.
wow killed their own game with gear score and artifact gear theres sooo much content that is totally useless now because of it..even if they rolled out a vanilla server it wouldnt be what ppl would think it would be..knowing them they would roll out a vanilla server with it being able to use artifact gear..not to mention that the pvp was hugely over hauled soo many times..i really dont think it would be as great as some would think it to be..the world pvp was alotta fun before they plopped it into the crapper
Can't forget Gear Score start off by a add on and the player base used it as a gate. Like who is in what gear level to do stuff with them and leave out the players didn't have that level of gear. Blizzard took the idea and add it in there game.
Wow in its current state of play is terrible compared to what we got in vanilla wow i keep on trying the two free weeks every time the new patch comes out and one patch has made me think it is worth my money for the game never mind the subscription fee
players want progression servers or at least vanilla servers. Blizzard wants money. Seems like a match made in heaven. When the developers start telling you what or how you should be playing, it's time to find another developer.
I don't blame them for protecting their rights, but they aren't being honest as to why they don't want vanilla servers. And I don't believe that the source code repositories from back then are lost.
I play blizzard games, but WOW isn't one of them. I tried Nostalrius briefly and I just can't commit to unofficial servers. Once they asked for money(donations) to keep the servers running they were asking for trouble. But that wasn't even needed as they gained too many players and WoD is a wasteland with no buzz.
I don't believe they wouldn't make money with vanilla servers. Although would it produce high enough profit margins? That I have no clue on. But it would garner goodwill with their former subscribers.
I don't even understand this. So like what people want is to raid MC, BWL, ZG Naxx and AQ40 forever, with no new content. Or are these same people going to start whining a year or two that they want BC added cause it's getting dull.
While free servers are amazing for games like UO where the whole game is end game with a balanced economy. WoW on the other hand is a progression kind of game. Once you geared in the best raid content, games over.
Blizzard might not want someone else doing this because they might want to find a way to implement this content later through scaling with new rewards. Which is what they should do.
But either way I'm sure Blizzard isn't threatened by private servers taken there numbers. They have been around since at least since BC. 150,000 active accounts on a free server vs 5 million plus on a live servers that has no new content for the past year paying a subscription fee of $15 a month. Is this even comparable. The people that are still on live server don't even know other games exist and are not going anywhere any time soon. Thats the average WoW player.
The way people go on about the doom and gloom of this 12 year game is pathetic. It sucks if you one of those people that lost you account on Nostalrius, and the option is nice if vanilla is what you want. But it's Blizzards game and the threat of your server going down has always been a possibility.
I hate nostalgia. Nostalgia it what gave us a recycled Star Wars movie. Nostalgia is what keeps given us the same Zelda game over and over again. Nostalgia is sadly what raised the price a boxed copy of Earthbound from $80 to $500 in 5 years, despite it not being the best RPG in SNES *cough* (Chrono Trigger). Nostalgia is what keeps WoW looking and playing like dated trash. Seriously even after all these updates it still looks like a PS2 game. Thanks nostalgia goggles for keeping garbage relevant.
Enjoy a game = it's good. Enjoy it 10 years later = it's just nostalgia. Sometimes a version of a game was just plain good.
Of course, but not everyone feels that, though you are entitled to that opinion.
I never liked WOW. Played for a month in 2005. But I play a lot of other good retro games & see the word nostalgia being abused too often. And too often it's applied as shady tactic to dismiss the modern validity of a great old game & avoid debating its merit. I'll also add (lightheartedly) that there is not one single thing on the face of the planet that everyone feels, not even hunger & pain;)
The difference here is though, that this private server has seemingly been running for several years, without blizzard caring about it. They darn well knew about it and let it run it's course.
Ofcourse sub numbers were high at that time and now things have changed with WoW sub numbers seen the steepest decline ever.
So this sudden legal action can either mean two Things:
1. Blizzard is getting desperate and finally decided to Close this server down with Cease & Desist, in hope addiction would make these players Return to the "Legal" servers and pay sub again.
2. Blizzard is finally planning to launch their own Classic servers in an attempt to get subs back and in preparation of this, is starting a legal action to close down the popular private servers, in hope to make these players come back and pay a sub for official "Classic" servers.
My gut tells me it's option 1, but one can hope for option 2. Time will tell.
Seeing how popular Legacy servers have been in EQ1 and now EQ2, it's utterly retarded why Blizzard is holding back on this!
It's easy Money to be made on this. Especially since they have plenty of (near) Death game servers that can easily be converted to Classic Legacy servers.
Comments
80k supporters so far @ $15 per month = $1,200,000 potential revenue, that is a lot of money to just dismiss per month.
Blizzard's problem is that they listen to the players too much.
In TBC the players complained that dungeons and raids were too hard, so in WotLK they made them really easy, so the players complained that dungeons and raids were too easy.
Garrisons was because the players said they wanted housing but wanted something that felt "Warcraft"-y.
So, if Blizzard listens to player complaints they just complain more expecting their stupid demands to be met like spoiled children and if Blizzard doesn't listen then the players complain that Blizzard is out of touch and only cares about money.
Blizzard has been allowing emulated servers for years. ED, Rebirth, etc etc. There is another server out there which I won't name that is getting all the people from Nost and it growing huge again.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
wow vanilla is wow vanilla, there isn't much to agree or disagree on. you either offer the service which will bring in more people or you don't.
sure it's a valid argument that it may not be worth their time from a business standpoint, i actually agree with that opinion. but if that's the case i just think it's a dick move to disallow private servers from offering the service without making any kind of profit off their product., if blizz refuses to offer it.
80,000 wow fans have spoken (that's the cartoon reference by the way) and want to play on a server like that, there is no gray area or anything else to agree on.
i understand where you are coming from and agree with what you are saying but this is simply a different situation entirely. people know they like wow vanilla, it's what got a lot of them hooked to wow and they want to play that game again with their friends and an awesome community.
blizz can either listen to those fans or ignore them but it isn't the same as whining for stupid features that can ruin the game going forward.
a wow vanilla server is something separate from the current wow game and a lot of people want that, even though the blizz devs say they don't. lol
I also think it's missing the bigger picture to say "disallow private servers from offering the service without making any kind of profit off their product., if blizz refuses to offer it."
As the very presence of such servers could be costing Blizz profit, regardless of that server making it's own profit or not. I know many act as though these people wouldn't play otherwise, that's a huge leap in judgment to make. Something it's quite obvious Blizz isn't counting out, otherwise they'd just let them exist without a care. An alternative is an alternative, they're obviously not taking any chance of that alternative costing them revenue from potential sales/subs.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
the thing is, blizz actually promoted private vanilla servers by shutting down nost. how many people were not aware of this before who are now going to be looking into playing on private servers?
it's not just vanilla wow servers either, there are all kinds of them, custom and legit.
to me working out those details isn't the major issue. here is the thing about those subs they are supposedly missing, they are not coming back now, that is for sure.
those players are now flocking to other private servers or possibly other games, they are not going to just say "well, guess we have to sub to wow now"
maybe a select few are but i hope blizz causing this shit storm was worth those few coming back.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
The more interesting question is why Blizz didn't add a legacy server years ago if they thought it would keep some more players paying? It is certainly some work but I have a feeling it would earn the cost for that and some more.
They should've never added more levels every expansion, but rather just add more areas, battlegrounds and classes as they did. The levels are what caused the game's number of skills to be over-tedious and which causes them to over-simplify the game to compensate, and ended up making the skill system less interesting to the players.
I don't blame them for protecting their rights, but they aren't being honest as to why they don't want vanilla servers. And I don't believe that the source code repositories from back then are lost.
I play blizzard games, but WOW isn't one of them. I tried Nostalrius briefly and I just can't commit to unofficial servers. Once they asked for money(donations) to keep the servers running they were asking for trouble. But that wasn't even needed as they gained too many players and WoD is a wasteland with no buzz.
I don't believe they wouldn't make money with vanilla servers. Although would it produce high enough profit margins? That I have no clue on. But it would garner goodwill with their former subscribers.
While free servers are amazing for games like UO where the whole game is end game with a balanced economy. WoW on the other hand is a progression kind of game. Once you geared in the best raid content, games over.
Blizzard might not want someone else doing this because they might want to find a way to implement this content later through scaling with new rewards. Which is what they should do.
But either way I'm sure Blizzard isn't threatened by private servers taken there numbers. They have been around since at least since BC. 150,000 active accounts on a free server vs 5 million plus on a live servers that has no new content for the past year paying a subscription fee of $15 a month. Is this even comparable. The people that are still on live server don't even know other games exist and are not going anywhere any time soon. Thats the average WoW player.
The way people go on about the doom and gloom of this 12 year game is pathetic. It sucks if you one of those people that lost you account on Nostalrius, and the option is nice if vanilla is what you want. But it's Blizzards game and the threat of your server going down has always been a possibility.
I hate nostalgia. Nostalgia it what gave us a recycled Star Wars movie. Nostalgia is what keeps given us the same Zelda game over and over again. Nostalgia is sadly what raised the price a boxed copy of Earthbound from $80 to $500 in 5 years, despite it not being the best RPG in SNES *cough* (Chrono Trigger). Nostalgia is what keeps WoW looking and playing like dated trash. Seriously even after all these updates it still looks like a PS2 game. Thanks nostalgia goggles for keeping garbage relevant.
Ofcourse sub numbers were high at that time and now things have changed with WoW sub numbers seen the steepest decline ever.
So this sudden legal action can either mean two Things:
1. Blizzard is getting desperate and finally decided to Close this server down with Cease & Desist, in hope addiction would make these players Return to the "Legal" servers and pay sub again.
2. Blizzard is finally planning to launch their own Classic servers in an attempt to get subs back and in preparation of this, is starting a legal action to close down the popular private servers, in hope to make these players come back and pay a sub for official "Classic" servers.
My gut tells me it's option 1, but one can hope for option 2. Time will tell.
Seeing how popular Legacy servers have been in EQ1 and now EQ2, it's utterly retarded why Blizzard is holding back on this!
It's easy Money to be made on this. Especially since they have plenty of (near) Death game servers that can easily be converted to Classic Legacy servers.