I would happily buy2play Legacy WoW but NEVER subscribe

[Fatherben]

$15/month is the price of an HBO subscription which has billions of dollars of production value with hundreds of shows, tens of thousands of union employees, talent, and contractors to pay, much more demanding bandwidth, and user support.

We are talking about playing a completed 12 year old game which needs a few developers and GMs.

I love vanilla but the price should be like $5/month..

I have a job too, and I'd rather put $15 into my 401k, Hulu, or Amazon Prime or something.

[Forcerius]

I bought Counter-Strike.

You bought a licence to play it that could be revoked any time for whatever reason. Also even if you arent paying for the dedicated servers someone else has to. basically your business model is "wow should be free because other people than me can pay the server fees"

Counter-Strike has been free to play for 17 years since release in 1999. Why would they revoke it now? I already said I was willing to contribute for the server. A vanilla server costs $200,000 per month at most . The petition had over 250,000 signatures. The issue is not the cost of the server or the staff, its Blizzards unwillingness to let us play an old game for free, despite the unimaginable profits they've already made with zero losses from Nostalrius except potential customers. They can't just be good guy greg. While the majority of other companies like Riot, Valve, Hi Rez, etc all have free to play games with more viewers on Twitch than WoW. Vanilla wow is a good game, perhaps more from nostalgia than actual gameplay, but I wouldn't pay $15 a month to relive the experience, especially with other things I could potentially spend my time on.

[Snibb]

Why should blizz let us play for free? How is that a smart company decision? You seriously feel like you're owed it because you used to pay for the service? You got what you paid for already.
If Blizzard nets zero on the servers with say a $5 subscription, then why wouldn't they just invest the time and money into something that will make them a profit?
That just isn't how the world works. If that stops you from playing, well your loss. I'm sure you aren't alone.
But, it won't stop me or any of my friends, however.

[reysode]

You paid 15 bucks a month back then why wouldnt you do the same now?

[Forcerius]

You paid 15 bucks a month back then why wouldnt you do the same now?

There's other free games out now, even Overwatch. And i've played WoW for 12 years since open beta and done everything i've wanted to do like getting HWL, plenty of PVE, gladiator, etc. So I just care less about the game now and I have other interests that I could spend my time and money on. I also longer trust Blizzard for multiple reasons. They don't express honesty anymore, only fakery and greed. And those words are meant to be more accurate than dramatic.

[Forcerius]

Why should blizz let us play for free? How is that a smart company decision? You seriously feel like you're owed it because you used to pay for the service? You got what you paid for already.
If Blizzard nets zero on the servers with say a $5 subscription, then why wouldn't they just invest the time and money into something that will make them a profit?
That just isn't how the world works. If that stops you from playing, well your loss. I'm sure you aren't alone.
But, it won't stop me or any of my friends, however.

All top games on Twitch are $60 at most and you can play online for free for life. What makes WoW different relative to the cost of running? Nothing since its the same amount of players and staff or less since we're talking about vanilla not live.

Blizzard shut down the only good server, Nostalrius, for no just reason since it caused no losses and the majority of players have paid for more than what the game is worth. The least they could do is give us an equal replacement, or let someone else run it off crowdfunding like Nostalrius, then apologize for trying to gouge the price and for instantly destroying characters that some people worked on for years. There's a line between profit an walmart profit. Its fine to charge for services but its important to be reasonable and give back every every so often.

[Undertanker]

If you are finished and "could care less" then why are you posting on a forum for a server that has been down for 50 days.

You think you don't care, but you do.

[Snibb]

...What makes WoW different relative to the cost of running? Nothing since its the same amount of players and staff or less since we're talking about vanilla not live....

That's a pretty big assumption. Neither you or I know what the actual cost is... but if you think about the steps involved in setting it up, the cost certainly isn't nothing. Even using Nostalrius as an example, there was a cost, and those guys were donating their time. Not to mention the level of polish that would need to come from blizzard would need to be higher (as good as Nost was.)
Also, those other games you mention have other ways of getting money. Classic WoW just isn't set up like league or similar games where you can buy hero packs, skins, etc. Unless you want to lock all the classes and races, character slots, etc behind a paywall that you can unlock them... NO THANKS.

[melak]

This thread seems pointless, OP just desperatly trying to justify that he should not have to pay (or pay a hell of a lot less), like people have already said, if this is a deal breaker for you, then thats just the way it is. Blizz would not make legacy servers just to please you, they want to earn money, and i think most people who want legacy servers would hardly break their balls if it means they have to pay the same sub fee. Just move on dude if this is such a bitch for you

[Forcerius]

...What makes WoW different relative to the cost of running? Nothing since its the same amount of players and staff or less since we're talking about vanilla not live....

That's a pretty big assumption. Neither you or I know what the actual cost is... but if you think about the steps involved in setting it up, the cost certainly isn't nothing. Even using Nostalrius as an example, there was a cost, and those guys were donating their time. Not to mention the level of polish that would need to come from blizzard would need to be higher (as good as Nost was.)
Also, those other games you mention have other ways of getting money. Classic WoW just isn't set up like league or similar games where you can buy hero packs, skins, etc. Unless you want to lock all the classes and races, character slots, etc behind a paywall that you can unlock them... NO THANKS.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cost+of+wow+servers

"The server side of WoW consists of 20,000 computers, 1.3 petabytes of storage, 75,000 CPU cores, 5.5 million lines of code and 2 million words of text. The server upkeep costs $136,986 per day, the same as purchasing a sparkling new AUDI R8 every single day."

Keep in mind that's for 20,000 computers, not a single server for a small community that costs around $200 a month if you divide that price.

Nostalrius was running just fine for free, so why can't they reactivate it with our characters? Because Blizzard won't allow it, not because of the server fee's or technical limitations. But because they can't just let us play an old game for free, despite already making billions of dollars from it already. They're free to do what they want but they look more like walmart than a company that cares about its players.