Inside the WoW server Blizzard wants to shut down - PC Gamer

[winfernal]

I think this deserves its own thread. Please sue me if im wrong and implent it with the stickie one

This is huge, how this all blew up.

http://www.pcgamer.com/inside-the-serve ... -shut-down

[Keftenk]

There's not enough to offset the cost? 150,000 ACTIVE players just on Nost. Surely not all 150k would pay to play the game, but there are thousands on other projects that may come to join as well.

How is it that Sony can support Everquest with less players but Blizzard wouldn't be able to support vanilla? Obviously the man hours does somewhat double because you're stretching your reach between current retail and then this.

I'm undoubtedly missing something here...

Are they just afraid of what happens when progression ends? It becomes a crypt?

I'm missing something.

[Dr. Doom]

I really doubt that econometrically, a couple of vanilla private servers, each populated by about 20k people, with 4k peaks (realistic % of people from private servers who would resub for a grand total of 40k people, 1/4 of Nost's population) wouldn't manage to offset the hardware and connection costs. Maybe add in 3-5 GMs with the lousy standard salary Blizzard pays them.

The real issue is they don't want to. Chiefly because they don't want to admit the game has more past than future (something all of us can notice, retail players included) due to how marketing works, nor to tacitly acknowledge that their design choices have alienated people over time, which is also something that everyone can verify.

It's not a problem really. World of Warcraft (I mean with no expansions) was such a gigantic cultural phenomenon, that regardless of copyright laws, people will systematically try to revive it again, whether for nostalgia (those that played it) or curiosity (those that didn't play it, like me). As time goes by, and Activision moves on to other games, letting the retail version die, they'll either support a few legacy servers so long as they cover the operative costs, or they'll just stop caring about private initiatives, pretty much how Star Wars Galaxies private servers are handled.

[Aurkanthis]

....It's not a problem really. World of Warcraft (I mean with no expansions) was such a gigantic cultural phenomenon, that regardless of copyright laws, people will systematically try to revive it again, whether for nostalgia (those that played it) or curiosity (those that didn't play it, like me). As time goes by, and Activision moves on to other games, letting the retail version die, they'll either support a few legacy servers so long as they cover the operative costs, or they'll just stop caring about private initiatives, pretty much how Star Wars Galaxies private servers are handled.

So, basically, patience is a virtue.

I hope you're right, and I certainly believe you are. The facts definitely point there. Sooner or later, we'll be able to have an unmolested Nostalrius server, or one like it with another name. Maybe I should play a vanilla SW: Galaxies server until then. LOL

[Dr. Doom]

So, basically, patience is a virtue.

I hope you're right, and I certainly believe you are. The facts definitely point there. Sooner or later, we'll be able to have an unmolested Nostalrius server, or one like it with another name. Maybe I should play a vanilla SW: Galaxies server until then. LOL

Certainly. I think that the reason why I actually keep attention to MMOs and follow them, play them, etc, in spite of being a generally asocial person, is because they're such a completely new thing ontologically for humanity that it's hard to not turn your gaze at them.

Prior to them, everything you could purchase was either: A static product (that could decay if you didn't maintain it, but that's up to you), like a TV set, DVD player, etc are; or a limited service that once completed couldn't be reaccessed, like an appointment with a doctor, the legal services of attorneys, or 1 hour with a whore.

MMOs are technically both a product and a service, but a product that doesn't remain static like a home theater or a LEGO Star Wars kit; and a service that although originally conceived to have a limited duration (subscription models, expacs changing the world, company shutdown), can materially be replayed again and again and again so long as there are people willing to build a server and play it.

Here:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/1 ... servation/

or here for more in-depth on SWG

http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sec ... u-project/

To be honest, the idea is incredibly interesting, I just don't have the time or youth to really delve hardcore into it and make the most of it, as it deserves:

“World of Warcraft hadn’t yet cemented the template that we take for granted today,” Koster says, “and the future of MMOs looked to me like it was going to develop much more in the direction of a richer environment and more ways to play.” Instead, massively multiplayer online games since Galaxies have largely provided static worlds within which players enjoy prebuilt encounters, like dungeons. The worlds have a sameness to them, and they rarely change"

Galaxies was not friendly to newcomers. In most massively multiplayer online games, you choose a discrete role. Warriors swing swords, mages throw fireballs, clerics heal the warriors and the mages. Identities, once chosen, are set in stone.

In Star Wars Galaxies, you could be a Scout/Entertainer/Medic/Squad Leader, and then change your mind a week later and become a Brawler/Marksman/Pistoleer/Politician. Without a veteran Galaxies player to guide them, fresh players could easily get lost and lose interest in the game.


In 2005, LucasArts, the video game arm of Lucasfilm and the company from which Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) licensed the Star Wars intellectual property, wasn’t happy with the subscriber numbers for Star Wars Galaxies. Speaking to the New York Times in December 2005, Nancy MacIntyre, then-senior director of Star Wars Galaxies at LucasArts, said Galaxies was bleeding players more quickly than most online games. By then, World of Warcraft had launched; designed to reach the largest possible audience, its runaway success would ultimately cement the “theme park” template Raph Koster had tried to avoid.

“We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer,” MacIntyre told the New York Times. “We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves.”

“We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat.”

LucasArts and SOE implemented two major sets of changes to Galaxies in 2005. The first set of changes, called the Combat Upgrade, landed in April. It substantially simplified the game’s combat system, which set off a cascade of other related changes. Weapons and armor were different; items that were previously valuable became worthless. Players focused on item crafting had to update their entire stock of goods.

The Combat Upgrade forced some veteran Galaxies players, like Doug Rush, to abandon the game. “Things had changed quite drastically on the surface. It played differently,” he said. “On the surface, they reduced it down to common denominators that just removed a lot of the complexity from the combat side. I didn’t like it. I left.”

The second set of changes, the New Game Experience (NGE), was implemented in November 2005 and was far more sweeping. The entire professions system, with all its complexity and freedom it granted players in customizing their play styles, was wiped out overnight.

“They reduced it down to common denominators that just removed a lot of the complexity from the combat side. I didn’t like it. I left.”

Post-NGE, Galaxies players chose from one of a limited number of cookie-cutter character types like Smuggler and Jedi, which mimicked the way players chose roles in games like World of Warcraft. Disgust from veteran Galaxies players flooded the official forums, and a mass exodus from the game began.

Mention of the NGE in online communities dedicated to MMOs still rankles former players of Galaxies. The game limped along for six years, a shadow of its former self, until it was shut down on Dec. 15, 2011.
- See more at: http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sec ... PPq0n.dpuf

[Aurkanthis]

I know nothing about Vanilla SWG, and always wish I did. Anyone know a good way to play that? Is it still possible?

[scorpadorp]

There's not enough to offset the cost? 150,000 ACTIVE players just on Nost. Surely not all 150k would pay to play the game, but there are thousands on other projects that may come to join as well.

I think it's hilarious when claims like these come up. When they say that the community is too small to generate a profit.

Don't they realize that the people who are playing on private server are a minority of the people who actually wants Legacy servers?

Most people don't know that private servers exist, most people don't know how to find or connect to one, most people are afraid of connecting because they think Blizzard can ban their real accounts if they find out, most people don't want to play on a server that isn't hosted by Blizzard.

If Blizzard made a legit legacy server there would be most of us Nostalrius players joining, also the majority of other vanilla projects (bar the people who can't afford/won't pay) There would also be returning players who never got to experience Vanilla, or people who did experience Vanilla and wanted to relive it.

New people who heard about Vanilla from others would also join in, and then they would bring their friends in turn.

IF Legacy servers (vanilla to mop) would be a thing, and Blizzard endorsed them, I'm very sure that they would exceed the numbers that retail currently have.

[Dr. Doom]

I think it's hilarious when claims like these come up. When they say that the community is too small to generate a profit.

Don't they realize that the people who are playing on private server are a minority of the people who actually wants Legacy servers?

Most people don't know that private servers exist, most people don't know how to find or connect to one, most people are afraid of connecting because they think Blizzard can ban their real accounts if they find out, most people don't want to play on a server that isn't hosted by Blizzard.

If Blizzard made a legit legacy server there would be most of us Nostalrius players joining, also the majority of other vanilla projects (bar the people who can't afford/won't pay) There would also be returning players who never got to experience Vanilla, or people who did experience Vanilla and wanted to relive it.

New people who heard about Vanilla from others would also join in, and then they would bring their friends in turn.

IF Legacy servers (vanilla to mop) would be a thing, and Blizzard endorsed them, I'm very sure that they would exceed the numbers that retail currently have.

Except for the last bit, you're spot on.
There is a very easy way to confirm this: When Nost got the cease and desist letter, and information was published in different news outlets, a fair amount of comments from people that never played the server stated how "If I had known this existed, I would have played it".

I don't know if when you substract all the people that play in private servers that wouldn't pay a commercial version of WoW, and then add all the people that want to play WoW but do not want to/know how to connect to private servers, you'd get a higher number compared to the people that currently are subscribed (4.5-5 mill right now reasonably).
What I do know, is that siad number is without a shred of a doubt, enough to be comercially viable (covering operation costs and leaving a profit on top of it).


Just for reference. Prior to the explosion of World of Warcraft and MMOs, Everquest, DaoC, SWG, etc, worked under the assumption that having more than 200.000 active subscribers was a success. That number would easily be achieved and surpassed by Blizzard-operated vanilla servers that offered progressive content release; or by any servers that were operated by a recognisable company that didn't have copyright issues (imagine Blizzard leased/sold the rights to another software company).