Help me understand two things about this server.

[Redcap]

The TL:DR version:

1) Is this really going to be that tremendously much of an upgrade over Emerald Dream?

2) Do those upgrades really justify pulling apart the already very small population of us who love vanilla WoW?

1) I have a bit of experience with both Emerald Dream and Valkyrie, so here's my 2 cents of what I observed and what I'll be expecting as an upgrade. With ED, the unbelievable amount of crashes due to DDoS strikes and hacked fixes made the place an unreliable place to game on. If you played there you know what I'm talking about (8-20+ server restarts a day). No competent devs remain to take well documented bug reports and actually do anything with them. I'll refer to class abilities mostly for this one. A warlock summons doomguards and infernals in crossroads, wipes out the NPC's, and the demons hang around forever because their duration is 30 minutes reset by new targets on their Hate list.

http://wowmb.net/forums/f9/2827-inferna ... ussion/p2/

Bug reports were made, and server staff were all "um can't be fixed please don't exploit". I could go on with numerous other class ability bugs, and I would be here all day talking about script errors and bugs with quests and instances, along with crafting (say, how ABOUT that Icy weapon enchant?). But no! Let's continue with the server staff themselves, in how they played on the server/made friends with guilds and abused power for self gain in the game. Anyone remember the infamous multiple server crash string that was intentional so that a World Dragon could be mobilized on by a favored guild, denying one of the attempt that was already there?

Valkyrie on the other hand was a great sever with really good scripts, DDoS protection, and server stability with uptime measured of going down once a week. For Honor updates. At one time, they had GREAT devs that took your bug reports seriously and fixed stuff within 2-3 weeks tops as a wait time. But times changed, they lost their devs that had actual skill, and the English (or at least non Russian) speaking population was ignored for over 8 months. The core started developing bugs and errors for things had had been fixed and working fine previously... pretty much they're in a state of decay and a slow death. They also suffered with a repeat issue of the server staff abusing powers to gain access to World Dragon targets as well as temp and permanent ban American players when said players responded to a Russian guild shouting in game "Go Home Burgers!" with "USA USA USA USA". It was more than I could stomach.

So yes. For myself and the expectations that I have in terms of server stability, a competent staff and bug fixes, and a server with little or no corruption with the hosts running it... I think this server will be incredibly better over the servers I've named and the experiences I've had with them.

2) People playing on a server with an incompetent dev staff that is corrupt are doing themselves a disservice by not looking for something superior, where they can have fun in a reliable setting. That's the only answer I have for your second question.

[Whiskey]

I just found out about this server a couple days ago. It looks promising and I'm quite excited to play here. I also heard of another private server that begins with the letter K, I'm not sure which will be better in regards to a blizzlike vanilla experience but from the little research I've done I'm leaning more towards Nostalrius.

Just a question or 2...

How have the recent tests been, are there many game breaking bugs present?

I've read that a certain guild called Grizzly is notorious for shitting up a private server's economy and for being avid cheaters are about to start here. Are these just false claims or what?

Sorry to the OP if you feel like I've hijacked your thread, I didn't think my post would warrant posting a new thread.

[Corm]

I want to thank everyone for their thoughtful and insightful replies. You guys all make a lot of good points. I didn't realize that the bugs on ED (many of which you all mentioned) had been fixed for a long time but not implemented. I guess especially considering the devs there actually have a source of revenue that does seem a bit odd. And I do agree that the most likely outcome is one server sucking everyone onto it once the dust settles. I'm ok with that; sometimes a Darwinian approach is the best one.

That brings up another point. I've seen this discussed on some other threads, but I think we'd all feel a lot better if the Nos crew were to detail and explain what (if any) sort of business plan they have for maintaining this server and it's development, neither of which come cheap. I'm made to wonder if there's just some ultra-wealthy French guy who was like, "You know what, I want a perfect Vanilla WoW server and I have infinite money," and just made it happen or something. I'd be totally fine with that, by the way :p

[Patience]

ED = Easy mode
Nostalrius = Hardcore


I choose the latter one.

[Cousy]

As a former ED player / test team member, I've come to realize that ED presents a cheapened arcade-like version of vanilla retail. At this point most people who are raiding have been raiding for a long time and mainly do it to put them name higher on the scoring sheet.

Blackwing Lair has been released for nearly 2 years on ED (Team Plague got it's server-first Nef kill on May 17th, 2013 - patch day). Comparatively on retail, BWL was released on July 12th (killed world-first 9/26) and AQ40 released in January-March for most servers. The difference in time means that all the guilds who have been farming BWL on ED all basically have BiS (hell my warlock is only 2 pieces from BiS and I haven't raided there in over a year) and progression through AQ will take all of 1 week (if not 1 day) for the top guilds.

ED is a cheap imitation of the real thing. I believe Nostalrius is striving to deliver more.

[konked]

As a former ED player / test team member, I've come to realize that ED presents a cheapened arcade-like version of vanilla retail. At this point most people who are raiding have been raiding for a long time and mainly do it to put them name higher on the scoring sheet.

Blackwing Lair has been released for nearly 2 years on ED (Team Plague got it's server-first Nef kill on May 17th, 2013 - patch day). Comparatively on retail, BWL was released on July 12th (killed world-first 9/26) and AQ40 released in January-March for most servers. The difference in time means that all the guilds who have been farming BWL on ED all basically have BiS (hell my warlock is only 2 pieces from BiS and I haven't raided there in over a year) and progression through AQ will take all of 1 week (if not 1 day) for the top guilds.

ED is a cheap imitation of the real thing. I believe Nostalrius is striving to deliver more.

All this + no corrupt management, Feenix lets child-like people run they're servers.

[Soyoen]

It's impossible to state which server is better until the server has remained and held a stable healthy population for a longer time. If you ask any hardcore raider on Emerald Dream you will get to know that they mainly remain due to (1) the community, and (2) time invested. The community on any vanilla server is what makes or break the existance of the server.

If nostalrius ends up having a stable population of 1000 players, I'd say they did good - and hence the server will most likely be considered in accordance high quality due to the scripts that come with the server. If the server instead would have 3-400 in population it's not certain that the project at any point can be considered a success. Vanilla servers live and die by their population, and the ones who moderate it accordingly. Hopefully we will have three vanilla realms that are up and have a healthy community within 2-4 months, I doubt it - but let's hope.