WoW vanilla brainstorm - Page 20

On April 12 2016 03:32 Klowney wrote:
WoW is nowhere near the biggest mmorpg, also the current expansion is complete crap. There is a reason why they aren't talking about sub numbers anymore in public.

On April 12 2016 03:32 daemir wrote:
Setting it up in Blizzard's own systems now is not a trivial task. The game was different back then and even bnet has changed a lot. If Blizzard was to offer vanilla servers, it would have to integrate into current bnet and they would have to support it as well, which means more staff. It's just not in their corporate image to put something half assed up on the servers and let it be there for a few interested people. Blizzard puts out polished games everytime they do so. Hell their betas are more polished than some AAA releases.

On April 12 2016 03:22 deth2munkies wrote:


Why do they need to advertise WoW? Everyone has heard of WoW, even non-gamers. The IP has gone on for 11 years and is still the biggest in their field. They don't need to spend millions of dollars in startup and upkeep for something a few thousand people (at most) would use.

There's already a free trial for WoW (play up to lvl 30 IIRC), the Vanilla experience is more likely to turn off rather than turn on any newer gamers who aren't used to the old days when grind and inaccessibility was the rule rather than the exception, and the Vanilla servers do have a negative effect by letting people play WoW without a subscription, even if it is a different version.

The last point is really the only one that's controversial, but I'd argue that even the people that say they wouldn't touch WoW anymore will get tempted from time to time to resub for a while (I know I do), and Vanilla private servers let them scratch the itch without paying Blizzard a dime. But I'd also posit (this is reaching moreso than the last statement) that most of those people who use the Vanilla servers as such wouldn't pay to play on them if they were offered for a sub by Blizzard. That's one of the real rubs with Blizzard making an official one, it's not just who will play, but who will pay to do so. And if people are playing the private servers but wouldn't pay for playing on official ones, that's really just straight up piracy.

On April 12 2016 03:38 daemir wrote:
And people would cry for support and whine about bugs, don't kid yourself. People whine about anything.

On April 12 2016 03:32 TheYango wrote:

I did and I already responded:

None of the things you say they "have" to do are things that anyone interested in vanilla WoW cares about or expects.

On April 12 2016 03:38 Godwrath wrote:

Answering paragraphs.

1 - Heard off =/= Keep playing. You are thinking of it just as a TV ad. when people play a private game version of your MMO, eventually they will try out your LIVE version. It keeps people invested into your franchise, which is the important part.

2 - Trial comes with huge limitations to protect from gold seller spam which make it enjoyment rather bland. And more importantly, it's not something you can keep playing and getting invested into.

3 - If i am tempted to resub, it's because i want to play live WoW, not a legacy pirate server. Let get this straight, people who keep playing on pirate servers from different past versions of WoW, either also play live WoW or are not interested into live WoW. It's the same kind of argument people use against piracy when they say "piracy stole 20k copies". How the frack do you know how many of those would had bought it in the first place, if any. The piracy line gets even stupidier here since we are not talking of versions of WoW which are avaible to the customer otherwise. We are talking about versions of WoW which Blizzards neglects to release by its own here. Damn, for all i know, these "pirate" servers are doing a service to Blizzard for free, and they still manage to shit on them.

On April 12 2016 04:06 deth2munkies wrote:

1) What the hell does an offered Vanilla server do to help any of that? You aren't making any sense at all. Saying "this is what my game was 11 years ago" doesn't help anyone decide whether or not to play the game now. Also, Blizz can't offer this shit for free, so why would they PAY to play an old version of the game, when they can pay to play the NEW version of the game, absent nostalgia?

2) It's restrictive, but if you buy the game your trial character becomes a full character that you can play in the real game. Can't say that about a vanilla server.

3) It is piracy by any definition, you are copying copyrighted material that you don't own for personal benefit. Financial benefit if you're running it for sub fees or donations. As far as legality goes, it's 100% illegal, no question. What we're doing is quibbling over the morality of "how bad" it is. I'm saying it's potentially worse than you think it is, and that's really it.

On April 12 2016 03:56 deth2munkies wrote:
All of their connectivity is through Battle.net. They can't set up a server that isn't connected through Battle.net. Even if they HAD the source code for the original Vanilla WoW, they'd have to set it up to be compatible with Battle.net which, they've said in the past when asked about Vanilla servers, is very difficult. They also still have to provide tech support, customer service, and a relatively bug free and complete environment (none of this half assed scripting to gapfill or dropping certain quests). That means a lot of work for the engineers instead of improving WoW and its other games, and hiring of additional staff, all of which is expensive.

WoW is different than other games because it still exists and has been wholly changed in small bits over the course of its lifespan, unlike D2 and WC3 that have been consistently running this whole time.

On April 12 2016 05:10 Godwrath wrote:
Widening your IP's range is good to keep people investing into your franchise
...

And i didn't say it isn't piracy, and i am not talking about the morality behind, what i am questioning is the financial and business value that Blizzard extracts pursuing the piracy of legacy servers.

On April 12 2016 05:39 DCRed wrote:
I remember reading Blizzard say that the game is really butchered and they couldn't release patch 1.3.X or something, they'd actually have to go find alpha or something code and then develop from there. Vanilla launch was horrible for many patches as well.

On April 12 2016 05:41 NonY wrote:

It's not their IP anymore if someone else can use it. Their only choices are to shut them down or make them official. If you see how important IP is to a video game company, especially Blizzard, then I'm surprised that you think releasing their IP is going to be okay, or somehow paradoxically better for the value of their IP in the long run.

On April 12 2016 06:51 Godwrath wrote:
We are talking about a free private server not monetizing the IP. Not a company making a game making use of the IP or just copying it and profiting from it. Legally i don't think it harms your IP's hold.

On April 12 2016 09:59 deth2munkies wrote:
Honestly, there's no getting through to you guys. It's a horrible business decision, they've told us it's a horrible business decision, it's obvious it's a horrible business decision, but you guys want what you want.

On April 12 2016 10:59 bo1b wrote:

Fair enough to argue that, but you were just telling us how we don't really want to play it like 2 pages back. Take a look at runescape/everquest to see what there customer base thought of reimplimenting vanilla. Hint, it's now bigger then the up to date version.