New GM canned response

[Tebeda]

Fair point but... I don't know, here is what I think:

If Blizzard would ever open a legacy server they would have to acknowledge the fact that they have screwed up the game for a lot of fans with all those seemingly little features, specially if those legacy servers are a big success (which would probably happen), and IMO that is right now the only reason why they don't lauch legacy servers, I mean, it is a hard pill for them to take. So if they eventually swallow their pride and forget about their egos, do you think they would risk to screw up again making the same mistakes that forced them to swallow their pride in the first place?

This is a world class, multi-billion dollar company we're talking about. They aren't making emotional decisions like what you've described. My guess is that they've done the math, and it doesn't work out as profitable to them. Of course, their math likely includes updates we wouldn't want anyway as well as configuring legacy servers into the battle.net system. With what they have in mind, it probably wouldn't be profitable.

They are like a freaking bureaucracy now. Instead of jumping through all those hoops (and added expenditures), they could do something simpler. They could offer Nost a limited license or if they want to do it themselves, they could keep it separate from live servers and battle.net. It should be separate anyway, since for all intents and purposes, it is a different game.

They could still make money by making people have a current sub in order to play. They could also make the download of Vanilla be a separate thing that you have to pay for besides the battlechest / latest expac (so they'd still have everyone in battle.net through the retail version).

There are plenty of ways they could take an easier route and still make money. Coming up with an idea that is attractive to them is what we need to brainstorm, IMO.

There is no reason to re-invent the wheel. Simply offer a "Classic" version download of each expansion with a small price (for those good samaritans) and a small subscription fee. Maybe implement "CD Keys" to stop those pesky pirates from downloading free versions.

The only problem now is... what can be done so the CEO keeps his pay/profit ?

Ok, so a little break down

Phase 1. Create Legacy servers

Phase 2.

Phase 3. Profit

[Yellstorm]

Fair point but... I don't know, here is what I think:

If Blizzard would ever open a legacy server they would have to acknowledge the fact that they have screwed up the game for a lot of fans with all those seemingly little features, specially if those legacy servers are a big success (which would probably happen), and IMO that is right now the only reason why they don't lauch legacy servers, I mean, it is a hard pill for them to take. So if they eventually swallow their pride and forget about their egos, do you think they would risk to screw up again making the same mistakes that forced them to swallow their pride in the first place?

This is a world class, multi-billion dollar company we're talking about. They aren't making emotional decisions like what you've described. My guess is that they've done the math, and it doesn't work out as profitable to them. Of course, their math likely includes updates we wouldn't want anyway as well as configuring legacy servers into the battle.net system. With what they have in mind, it probably wouldn't be profitable.

They are like a freaking bureaucracy now. Instead of jumping through all those hoops (and added expenditures), they could do something simpler. They could offer Nost a limited license or if they want to do it themselves, they could keep it separate from live servers and battle.net. It should be separate anyway, since for all intents and purposes, it is a different game.

They could still make money by making people have a current sub in order to play. They could also make the download of Vanilla be a separate thing that you have to pay for besides the battlechest / latest expac (so they'd still have everyone in battle.net through the retail version).

There are plenty of ways they could take an easier route and still make money. Coming up with an idea that is attractive to them is what we need to brainstorm, IMO.

Ok, I know we don't have all of the information, but let's try to do the math with a little of guess work.

I think the best option would be to include the legacy servers in the standard subscription, so people could jump easily from one version to another. Otherwise there is a serious risk to split the community too much. This would require integration with battle.net and real ID.

How many people would resub to the game if they released legacy servers? Consider that the number of subscriptions peaked to more thant 12M during WOLK. That is 7M more than the current number. Sure not all of them would resub and sure many of the current subscribers did not play those versions so, a very conservative guess might be 400k? Let's halve it, and halve it again. 100k.

The income of 100k subscribers would mean 1.5 million dollars every month.

Let's guess how long would people remain subscribed, ok? Nostalrius has been alive one year and it was still very alive when it had to shut down. Furthermore, Nostalrius only hosted the vanilla version. However let's be conservative again: halve it, and halve it again. 3 months.

That gives us a total income of 4.5 million dollars in what I would consider a worst case scenario, and that is without any additional one time fee for downloading the client.

How much would it cost if they did it themselves? Let's say you hire or reallocate a team of 100 people for the integration and polishing phase, this phase takes 3 months and you have to pay 10k dollars a month to each one of them: That is 3 millon dollars. You still have 1.5 million dollars of margin to maintain the servers and customer support for three months.

So, yeah, a worst case scenario would still be profitable with an additional bonus: this worst case scenario would prove them right: "See? You thought you did, but you didn't".

Now, let's consider a best case scenario for the business: the implementation of legacy servers is a huge success and the number of people playing them is even higher than the number of people playing the most recent version. There is no doubt that this would render a huge profit for the company but it would prove how badly they have been doing it for the last years.

Although both cases would be profitable for the business, the worst case would be somewhat satisfying for them from an emotional point of view while the best one would be emotionaly devastating. So yes, I think the only issue here is emotional. Don't underestimate it. This is as you say a very successful company, but the company is formed by people, very successful people, and the more you are used to success the harder for you to acknowledge any mistake.

[SanderP]

I don't give a shit what money they make out of it, I just want it

[ceoddyn]

You're not thinking about why Blizzard simply hasn't gone through with this already. You can't do the math on drawing customers away from performing constant microtransaction services on retail servers, stop trying. Blizzard is done with the era of selling flat rate subscription fees to their customers, it doesn't create potentially multiplicating amounts of profit. Their current pack of whale customers probably are bringing in so much money they can afford to lose dozens and dozens of legacy server subscribers for each one of those.

[kiraito75]

Fair point but... I don't know, here is what I think:

If Blizzard would ever open a legacy server they would have to acknowledge the fact that they have screwed up the game for a lot of fans with all those seemingly little features, specially if those legacy servers are a big success (which would probably happen), and IMO that is right now the only reason why they don't lauch legacy servers, I mean, it is a hard pill for them to take. So if they eventually swallow their pride and forget about their egos, do you think they would risk to screw up again making the same mistakes that forced them to swallow their pride in the first place?

This is a world class, multi-billion dollar company we're talking about. They aren't making emotional decisions like what you've described. My guess is that they've done the math, and it doesn't work out as profitable to them. Of course, their math likely includes updates we wouldn't want anyway as well as configuring legacy servers into the battle.net system. With what they have in mind, it probably wouldn't be profitable.

They are like a freaking bureaucracy now. Instead of jumping through all those hoops (and added expenditures), they could do something simpler. They could offer Nost a limited license or if they want to do it themselves, they could keep it separate from live servers and battle.net. It should be separate anyway, since for all intents and purposes, it is a different game.

They could still make money by making people have a current sub in order to play. They could also make the download of Vanilla be a separate thing that you have to pay for besides the battlechest / latest expac (so they'd still have everyone in battle.net through the retail version).

There are plenty of ways they could take an easier route and still make money. Coming up with an idea that is attractive to them is what we need to brainstorm, IMO.

Ok, I know we don't have all of the information, but let's try to do the math with a little of guess work.

I think the best option would be to include the legacy servers in the standard subscription, so people could jump easily from one version to another. Otherwise there is a serious risk to split the community too much. This would require integration with battle.net and real ID.

How many people would resub to the game if they released legacy servers? Consider that the number of subscriptions peaked to more thant 12M during WOLK. That is 7M more than the current number. Sure not all of them would resub and sure many of the current subscribers did not play those versions so, a very conservative guess might be 400k? Let's halve it, and halve it again. 100k.

The income of 100k subscribers would mean 1.5 million dollars every month.

Let's guess how long would people remain subscribed, ok? Nostalrius has been alive one year and it was still very alive when it had to shut down. Furthermore, Nostalrius only hosted the vanilla version. However let's be conservative again: halve it, and halve it again. 3 months.

That gives us a total income of 4.5 million dollars in what I would consider a worst case scenario, and that is without any additional one time fee for downloading the client.

How much would it cost if they did it themselves? Let's say you hire or reallocate a team of 100 people for the integration and polishing phase, this phase takes 3 months and you have to pay 10k dollars a month to each one of them: That is 3 millon dollars. You still have 1.5 million dollars of margin to maintain the servers and customer support for three months.

So, yeah, a worst case scenario would still be profitable with an additional bonus: this worst case scenario would prove them right: "See? You thought you did, but you didn't".

Now, let's consider a best case scenario for the business: the implementation of legacy servers is a huge success and the number of people playing them is even higher than the number of people playing the most recent version. There is no doubt that this would render a huge profit for the company but it would prove how badly they have been doing it for the last years.

Although both cases would be profitable for the business, the worst case would be somewhat satisfying for them from an emotional point of view while the best one would be emotionaly devastating. So yes, I think the only issue here is emotional. Don't underestimate it. This is as you say a very successful company, but the company is formed by people, very successful people, and the more you are used to success the harder for you to acknowledge any mistake.

4,5 millions in the worst case. Okay. But you didnt think about that: how much would they earn if they used their ressources on another project? Probably more. That is a biggest problem. But, between us, we KNOW we want it, and that would be a great succes. So maths isnt the problem. I have the same conclusion you had, but for differents reasons

[Uidrae]

I don't give a shit what money they make out of it, I just want it

Well, there ya go then. That should sway them.