AtheneWins opinion on Nostalrius & legacy servers

[rosembergwatt]

I remember back to late 2009 when I first discovered Athene's videos and he simply became my favorite gaming cerebrite, which he still is today.

During the last days we have seen many people from the World of Warcraft community commenting about Nostalrius shutdown & possibility of legacy servers in the future, but Athene was mouth shut about it because he had some issues with TwitchAlerts some weeks ago. So I decided to crawl into one of his live streams and do something that I really hate to do: spam for attention.

Gladly he's a nice guy and after some minutes of spamming I got his attention. Here's the result:

https://www.twitch.tv/athenelive/v/60124295 - He speaks about it from 3:02:00 til 3:21:00

I have not played retail wow since Cataclysm and that's why I don't bash the current state of the game. However, I don't think the question is if WoW has or not develop throughout the years. In my opinion is that EACH EXPANSION IS A DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE WITH IT'S POSITIVE AND NEGATIVES POINTS.

I mean, what about the players that didn't experience the Classic/Burning Crusade/Wrath/etc raiding experience? Nowadays you can solo all raids from previous expansions - in my opinion that is throwing all the work they did on the thrash bin. But it goes beyond raiding - all the class balance/talent design philosophy/general feel of the expansion/QUESTS/challenges - each expansion is a different experience, none is "better" than the other in my opinion.

Anyways, I just felt like sharing this. Athene is still a gaming icon for me, whatever is his opinion on this topic.

I stand for the legacy servers cause.

[Desolace]

This guy is a fking jew and blizz fanboy.

[Noxm]

If i understood right, he said he gonna make a video about it ?

[rosembergwatt]

This guy is a fking jew and blizz fanboy.

A fanboy wouldn't criticize any Blizzard game, have you watched what he said? Please watch the interval that I said, you might be surprised.

If i understood right, he said he gonna make a video about it ?

I think so. He will discuss it with Reese.

[Desolace]

I watched his stream some days ago and he insulted us and nostalrius saying we are pirates and blizz did good.

[Drain]

Some people like to white knight Blizzard/retail and shun us, using the law as the excuse that it is for us "not" being allowed to play a discontinued video game, which is stupid.

What's ethical is that if Blizzard doesn't want Nost to host this, they should host it themselves. If they're worried about lost revenue, again, they should host it themselves and they would then GET that revenue. Instead, like a schoolyard child, they don't want anyone to touch their favorite toy. They won't host it, don't want anyone else to do so, and don't want you to play it ever again. It's totally irrelevant how it compares to retail today. It's different, and regardless of which is viewed as better or worse, we should have something called a CHOICE. They've never given us choice, and opt instead to shove each new expansion down our throats. Don't want to move up? Too bad. HF in your empty bracket with content no one ever does anymore.

With most games, they can always be brought back. Want to play original Zelda again? Boot back up the Nes, or fire up the emulator. But with MMOs, like any multiplayer, you need online hosting, and fellow players to play with. This means they do have a shelflife. But with Classic WoW, along with any expansion, there's plenty of people to justify the servers and play on them. But Blizzard, the legal holder, refuses to do it, and downright goes out of their way to stop you from doing it. This is greedy, selfish, unethical, and downright childish and using the law to bully.

[Vaulken]

If you watch it to the end Athene isn't taking sides but he's all for community engagement and does acknowledge that Nostalrius had that, citing why it had grown so big.

[fordragon77]

He can't really give a relevant opinion on this subject cause he is not playing WoW regularly and he hasn't even played nostalrius. It's true that modern WoW is better but only in the technical aspects like better graphics, better mechanics etc. The game structure and the feel of a real MMORPG is long gone. There is no journey, no interaction with other players and the world and everything you do feels insignificant.

It's all about the experience and it doesn't matter how much better the game is now technically if it can't give you the same experience because of fucked up game design it doesn't fulfill it's purpose as an MMORPG anymore.

[rosembergwatt]

I watched his stream some days ago and he insulted us and nostalrius saying we are pirates and blizz did good.

Of course Blizzard did good, Nostalrius was starting to become more important than their live servers. But they what was good for them, not for the community and that is the point. Athene also criticizes Blizzard for not hearing it's community.

[scorpadorp]

It's all about the experience and it doesn't matter how much better the game is now technically if it can't give you the same experience because of fucked up game design it doesn't fulfill it's purpose as an MMORPG anymore.

It feels like he throws around the age old argument that:

New = Better

Old = Worse

To take this stance is intellectually dishonest. There have been plenty of newer games that haven't lived up to the legacy of the prequels. And it's not because of nostalgia. They simply had a better feel, gameplay and/or aesthetic direction.

In my opinion, WoW is in the list of games that got worse after every big change to the game that Blizzard did.
It went from being an MMORPG, with a big focus on character development, community, big scale PvP/PvE.
Into being an MMO with less importance of character development, community, smaller scale PvP/PvE.

Character development went from an actual path. Gearing up through quests/dungeons/professions, working on your personal professions to craft the important items, including working on reputations that held some of the formulas that were needed for endgame. Working week after week on acquiring a high rank enough to buy PvP gear.

It turned into just going and looting epics off the ground (timeless isle, tanaan jungle) Having all the professions you want through the garrison, getting a full set of PvP gear within 1 day.

Community went from being part of a guild, making friends to regurarly run dungeon content with, getting helped by strangers and then help strangers in return, making premades in BGs to improve your chances of winning.

It turned into not being part of a guild, using the Blizzard LFG queue tool to find groups of people that you never speak to, or will ever speak to again, and more focus on singleplayer aspects, having crossrealm battlegrounds that matched you into BGs faster more reliably, but it removed the feeling of community since probably never met the people inside your BGs before, and you won't have the need to meet them again.

PvP went from guilds vs guilds in the world, Blackrock Mountain holding, Alterac Valley not finishing until the boss is dead, constant world PvP at the hotspots and leveling zones.

It turned into a rare sight in the world, flying into the raid portal to avoid conflicts, Alterac Valley finishing in 10 mins on average, very rarily world PvP at hotspots and none at leveling zones.

PvE went from 40 man raiding for the "serious" raids, 20 man raiding for catchup raids, having to use professions like alchemy to create consumables, go around the world to collect buffs/food/elixirs, that made your raids able to prepare and defeat encounters that were more challenging, raiding was very much connected to the world itself.

It turned into just having a role specific flask on that you can easily acquire with a fraction of the gold you make per day. No need to collect world buffs/food/elixirs, the raiding content was disconnected from the world.