Pristine servers, Blizzards response
Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 10:23 amI just posted this on reddit but I'd like more people to see this so for the people that don't check reddit here it is:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NostalriusBegi ... _thoughts/
and if you cba to check the link, here's what I wrote:
Hello everyone, I renewed my subscription just to discuss subject.
I would like to mention a couple of things and it will be a massive wall of text so let me summarize the things mentioned below for the TL;DR guys so you can skip to the part you'd like to read.
1. Pristine servers
2. Legacy / Progression Servers
- Not just nostalgia
- Progression content
- Development
3. Current state of WoW
- My story
- Fixing retail
4. Closing
- 1. Pristine servers. -
Blizzard, you guys are definitely going a step into the right direction but not let's not stop here.
The idea of adding pristine servers is bad and let me tell you why. The game in its current state is completely different from how it was back then and you know it is. Even if you disable things like BoA's, LFR, LFD and all that, doesn't change the fact that the core of the current state of WoW is completely different. Right now, the game is only focused on end-game. And let's be honest, there's not much to do in end-game since you can just rush through raids, and pvp and get gear really easily. And it's not just content that is the problem. The way your spells behave and scale, the difficulty of leveling/dungeons/raids, The way you HAVE to interact with other players to progress etc. I could go on and on about everything that is different but I'm pretty sure plenty of people have mentioned most things already. I think I can speak for most people when I say that pristine servers won't help the situation at hand. So, please Blizzard, don't waste valuable time and resources on this idea.
- 2. Legacy/Progression servers -
Many people on these forums and I think even the employees at Blizzard seem to think that people that want to play Legacy/Progression servers only want to do so out of pure nostalgia, and even though it surely is a factor it's not just the nostalgia that makes us play. As I mentioned in the first paragraph there's alot of difference between the current state of wow and how it is now.
As much as I loved nostalrius and the idea of legacy servers, it doesn't change the fact that this is a really difficult subject to discuss. even though Vanilla truly is so much better than the current retail version. It's not perfect and you WILL run out of content eventually. ( even if it takes ages. )
How do we fix this? It's not simple but I do have an idea.
Let's begin by how Blizzard treats expansions, Blizzard has introduced expansions as a "new game" rather than dlc or just an expansion. What I mean by a new game is that they've added them in such a way that you are forced to abandon all previous content and are left with only the expansion (making previous content obsolete). I saw a post on reddit the other day and it goes a little like this: "Imagine you have a house. Every 2 years you add something to your house giving it more value. This is what an expansion should be, you BUILD onto your current building ADDING content rather than completely removing your old building to build a new one." and I really believe this is true. Let's stop thinking of expansions as a "new game" and treat them as a content patch. It's still the same game but there's alot more to it.
On the topic of progression servers, let me take Nostalrius as an example, Nostalrius was run on the 1.12.1 build. and all new content released was tuned to that build rather than constantly changing spells and the way spells behave for different classes.
Now let's say we've cleared all content in Vanilla, a vast majority of guilds and players have kicked the living hell out of kel'thuzad ( Let's not mention the extreme difficulty and time spent before we reach this point.. xD) and got their hands on in my opinion the best gear in all of World of Warcraft. What now? Rather than adding TBC and let people level to 70 and start their character progression all over again and making all previous raids obsolete, add TBC as a true "expansion" tune outlands to level 60 and first add Karazhan/Gruul tuned for level 60 players. Now, I could keep giving suggestions but I'm sure you get my point by now.
Development,
Blizzard, of course adding legacy/progression servers will require alot of time, hard work and dedication.
But, this doesn't have to be rushed, even if you told us that it would take a year ( which imo is still pretty quick considering how much work this would require and took the Nostalrius team 5 years to create. )to get released I'm pretty sure most people here would be just fine with that.
I'm sure there's more to it than just the time, maybe the developers simply don't want to work on it because they'd rather invest their time into new things like legion etc, or maybe it's a financial point which makes it unattractive for you to do. but honestly guys, look how many of us are desperate to play the game we love so much again. sure, the petition is only at around 236k ( which is still a really large number considering the current player base in retail WoW and most of this is done underground. imagine how many people would come back/try it if a major company like blizzard marketed this and brought attention to it. )
- 3. Current state of WoW -
As it currently stands, the game has been simplified so much and has tried to cater to the mass audience so much that it has became a completely different experience. And for alot of people a worse experience.
I'm not saying that the current WoW is garbage, honestly if you haven't tried WoW before I'm pretty sure you could have alot of fun with it. The problem is that for people like me that have witnessed the old days there's just no real feeling of satisfaction in playing anymore. and it has been like this since cataclysm.
Let me tell you a bit of my history in World of Warcraft, this is my second account which I bought in Mid 2011. But, I have been playing World of Warcraft since the age of 10 ( I am now 22 years old. ) so I have been playing this game for over half my life. After all these years I am still playing on the same realm I was playing on back then and I have always been playing horde. my first character was a tauren druid called nickdruidftw which I had leveled to level 31 ( which literally took me weeks since I hardly spoke and understood english back then ) and then decided to reroll to an undead rogue. leveling my rogue was one of the hardest and most amazing experiences I've had to this day since I've met so many people ( which I still know to this day, yay for the internet. ) and had so much fun with. It took me around 4 months to get to level 60. I still remember everything since it has left such a big impact on me as a person. It may sound sad but to me WoW is more than just a game, it has shaped me into a better person because of the community.
Now let's fast forward a few years and TBC launches, I have learned enough english to communicate properly and have been doing some raiding/pvp to know the game quite well. ( I'm still grateful to my guild for being so patient and kind to me back then, I was quite a rude and impatient kid but these people have learned me so much and allowed me to raid with them even though I didn't understand anything. ) WoW has basically become a job at this point, you'd find me playing for atleast 3 - 4 hours everday after playing with friends outside etc and I still don't regret spending so much time in-game to this day. I started hardcore raiding with my guild all the way up to ICC in WOTLK. that's when I went to college and had less time to play, nevertheless I still kept playing. it was in Wrath when I really started to notice that the game was dumbing down, the content became significantly less difficult ( there's a few exceptions like some bosses in ICC/Ulduar but for the majority of Wrath there really was a noticeable decrease in difficulty. ) but I still enjoyed the game. It wasn't until Cataclysm that the game really stopped to give me a feeling of satisfaction whenever I cleared content and I became so unhappy that I decided to just give my account away and stop World of Warcraft. It only took me like 6 months to realise that that was the most stupid decision I could have ever made and decided to come back and make a new account, so I did. and this character was born. even after leveling a few characters to max level and clearing all content and raiding regularly again I still didn't feel satisfied with the game and from this point onwards I would only play for a month or so, clear content and then just quit the game until a patch releases and repeat the cycle. I've been doing this since Cataclysm all the way up to now. It's literally been going on for YEARS, the last time I played was around 8 months ago and I logged back in yesterday and it only took me about an hour to get extremely bored again.
Luckily I didn't renew my subscription to play but only to lurk the forums for progression servers.
I have been playing for a while and I have really found myself to love World of Warcraft again. It was indeed just pure nostalgia that kept me playing the game at first, but it becomes so much more the more you play it. It truly is an MMORPG and it is so rewarding to play. I was so excited when I got my first BoE Green off of a random mob in the barrens and it upped my dps just enough to struggle a little less with each mob. It is true character progression and I truly can't love it enough. This is an experience that just doesn't happen anymore in the current state of WoW, where you just rush to level 100 in a day ( with or without BoA's/boosts ) and get fully geared in both pvp/pve in just a week. Even if you're an extremely casual player it is truly easy to reach this point.
This brings me to my final point, fixing retail.
Honestly, I don't have a clue on how we could fix retail. I've been following all updates on legion for quite a while and honestly, there's not a single thing that gets me excited. every update I see just makes me more disappointed. I'm not trying to be disrespectful but it's the truth. Especially with all the spell pruning and major changes that are going to happen. The only way I can see myself play legion is if legacy/progression servers are released and I find myself having some off-time and trying out some raids.
So let me try not to be so negative and think about how we should fix this, most things that turn me off are the fact that there is no satisfaction in playing current wow, and this is caused by many things such as LFR/LFD/No social aspect etc etc. but even if we were to remove those things from the game there's still so many things that need to be changed in order for people like me to want to play again. so this doesn't really help anything. Also, the only thing I've talked about so far is how people like me can get to enjoy WoW again. but what about the people that still play and DO enjoy the current state? if Blizzard were to remove all those things and make all these changes they would also become unhappy and we don't want to do that to these players.
- 4. Closing -
Closing on this subject, we shouldn't make this a battle between everyone to decide who get what they want. But rather we should focus and think about a solution that caters to both. I've seen people like Aenjin just attack other people and making negative assumptions, but that's not what we should be doing. We all love this game and we all want a play to have fun so let's not attack each other. I think we can all agree that everyone that is reading this thread truly cares about the game and only wants to improve their experience playing WoW, so let's keep it positive and focus on positivity.
Thanks for reading and I really hope we can find a solution for this problem, let's show the world why WoW has always had the greatest community and has been the most popular MMORPG. Let's make great things happen!
P.S. I'm sure there are plenty of people that disagree with me, but like I mentioned before, there is no need to be disrespectful. Before you completely bash me for playing an "illegal" server ( even though that version of the game is 12 years old and is not really pirated. ) please try to empathize with us and see why we really want this to happen. for the same reason I'm not attacking you for wanting to play the current game, if you love the current state I'm happy for you and I really hope you can continue to play the game.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
What are your thoughts? Let me know what you think.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NostalriusBegi ... _thoughts/
and if you cba to check the link, here's what I wrote:
Hello everyone, I renewed my subscription just to discuss subject.
I would like to mention a couple of things and it will be a massive wall of text so let me summarize the things mentioned below for the TL;DR guys so you can skip to the part you'd like to read.
1. Pristine servers
2. Legacy / Progression Servers
- Not just nostalgia
- Progression content
- Development
3. Current state of WoW
- My story
- Fixing retail
4. Closing
- 1. Pristine servers. -
Blizzard, you guys are definitely going a step into the right direction but not let's not stop here.
The idea of adding pristine servers is bad and let me tell you why. The game in its current state is completely different from how it was back then and you know it is. Even if you disable things like BoA's, LFR, LFD and all that, doesn't change the fact that the core of the current state of WoW is completely different. Right now, the game is only focused on end-game. And let's be honest, there's not much to do in end-game since you can just rush through raids, and pvp and get gear really easily. And it's not just content that is the problem. The way your spells behave and scale, the difficulty of leveling/dungeons/raids, The way you HAVE to interact with other players to progress etc. I could go on and on about everything that is different but I'm pretty sure plenty of people have mentioned most things already. I think I can speak for most people when I say that pristine servers won't help the situation at hand. So, please Blizzard, don't waste valuable time and resources on this idea.
- 2. Legacy/Progression servers -
Many people on these forums and I think even the employees at Blizzard seem to think that people that want to play Legacy/Progression servers only want to do so out of pure nostalgia, and even though it surely is a factor it's not just the nostalgia that makes us play. As I mentioned in the first paragraph there's alot of difference between the current state of wow and how it is now.
As much as I loved nostalrius and the idea of legacy servers, it doesn't change the fact that this is a really difficult subject to discuss. even though Vanilla truly is so much better than the current retail version. It's not perfect and you WILL run out of content eventually. ( even if it takes ages. )
How do we fix this? It's not simple but I do have an idea.
Let's begin by how Blizzard treats expansions, Blizzard has introduced expansions as a "new game" rather than dlc or just an expansion. What I mean by a new game is that they've added them in such a way that you are forced to abandon all previous content and are left with only the expansion (making previous content obsolete). I saw a post on reddit the other day and it goes a little like this: "Imagine you have a house. Every 2 years you add something to your house giving it more value. This is what an expansion should be, you BUILD onto your current building ADDING content rather than completely removing your old building to build a new one." and I really believe this is true. Let's stop thinking of expansions as a "new game" and treat them as a content patch. It's still the same game but there's alot more to it.
On the topic of progression servers, let me take Nostalrius as an example, Nostalrius was run on the 1.12.1 build. and all new content released was tuned to that build rather than constantly changing spells and the way spells behave for different classes.
Now let's say we've cleared all content in Vanilla, a vast majority of guilds and players have kicked the living hell out of kel'thuzad ( Let's not mention the extreme difficulty and time spent before we reach this point.. xD) and got their hands on in my opinion the best gear in all of World of Warcraft. What now? Rather than adding TBC and let people level to 70 and start their character progression all over again and making all previous raids obsolete, add TBC as a true "expansion" tune outlands to level 60 and first add Karazhan/Gruul tuned for level 60 players. Now, I could keep giving suggestions but I'm sure you get my point by now.
Development,
Blizzard, of course adding legacy/progression servers will require alot of time, hard work and dedication.
But, this doesn't have to be rushed, even if you told us that it would take a year ( which imo is still pretty quick considering how much work this would require and took the Nostalrius team 5 years to create. )to get released I'm pretty sure most people here would be just fine with that.
I'm sure there's more to it than just the time, maybe the developers simply don't want to work on it because they'd rather invest their time into new things like legion etc, or maybe it's a financial point which makes it unattractive for you to do. but honestly guys, look how many of us are desperate to play the game we love so much again. sure, the petition is only at around 236k ( which is still a really large number considering the current player base in retail WoW and most of this is done underground. imagine how many people would come back/try it if a major company like blizzard marketed this and brought attention to it. )
- 3. Current state of WoW -
As it currently stands, the game has been simplified so much and has tried to cater to the mass audience so much that it has became a completely different experience. And for alot of people a worse experience.
I'm not saying that the current WoW is garbage, honestly if you haven't tried WoW before I'm pretty sure you could have alot of fun with it. The problem is that for people like me that have witnessed the old days there's just no real feeling of satisfaction in playing anymore. and it has been like this since cataclysm.
Let me tell you a bit of my history in World of Warcraft, this is my second account which I bought in Mid 2011. But, I have been playing World of Warcraft since the age of 10 ( I am now 22 years old. ) so I have been playing this game for over half my life. After all these years I am still playing on the same realm I was playing on back then and I have always been playing horde. my first character was a tauren druid called nickdruidftw which I had leveled to level 31 ( which literally took me weeks since I hardly spoke and understood english back then ) and then decided to reroll to an undead rogue. leveling my rogue was one of the hardest and most amazing experiences I've had to this day since I've met so many people ( which I still know to this day, yay for the internet. ) and had so much fun with. It took me around 4 months to get to level 60. I still remember everything since it has left such a big impact on me as a person. It may sound sad but to me WoW is more than just a game, it has shaped me into a better person because of the community.
Now let's fast forward a few years and TBC launches, I have learned enough english to communicate properly and have been doing some raiding/pvp to know the game quite well. ( I'm still grateful to my guild for being so patient and kind to me back then, I was quite a rude and impatient kid but these people have learned me so much and allowed me to raid with them even though I didn't understand anything. ) WoW has basically become a job at this point, you'd find me playing for atleast 3 - 4 hours everday after playing with friends outside etc and I still don't regret spending so much time in-game to this day. I started hardcore raiding with my guild all the way up to ICC in WOTLK. that's when I went to college and had less time to play, nevertheless I still kept playing. it was in Wrath when I really started to notice that the game was dumbing down, the content became significantly less difficult ( there's a few exceptions like some bosses in ICC/Ulduar but for the majority of Wrath there really was a noticeable decrease in difficulty. ) but I still enjoyed the game. It wasn't until Cataclysm that the game really stopped to give me a feeling of satisfaction whenever I cleared content and I became so unhappy that I decided to just give my account away and stop World of Warcraft. It only took me like 6 months to realise that that was the most stupid decision I could have ever made and decided to come back and make a new account, so I did. and this character was born. even after leveling a few characters to max level and clearing all content and raiding regularly again I still didn't feel satisfied with the game and from this point onwards I would only play for a month or so, clear content and then just quit the game until a patch releases and repeat the cycle. I've been doing this since Cataclysm all the way up to now. It's literally been going on for YEARS, the last time I played was around 8 months ago and I logged back in yesterday and it only took me about an hour to get extremely bored again.
Luckily I didn't renew my subscription to play but only to lurk the forums for progression servers.
I have been playing for a while and I have really found myself to love World of Warcraft again. It was indeed just pure nostalgia that kept me playing the game at first, but it becomes so much more the more you play it. It truly is an MMORPG and it is so rewarding to play. I was so excited when I got my first BoE Green off of a random mob in the barrens and it upped my dps just enough to struggle a little less with each mob. It is true character progression and I truly can't love it enough. This is an experience that just doesn't happen anymore in the current state of WoW, where you just rush to level 100 in a day ( with or without BoA's/boosts ) and get fully geared in both pvp/pve in just a week. Even if you're an extremely casual player it is truly easy to reach this point.
This brings me to my final point, fixing retail.
Honestly, I don't have a clue on how we could fix retail. I've been following all updates on legion for quite a while and honestly, there's not a single thing that gets me excited. every update I see just makes me more disappointed. I'm not trying to be disrespectful but it's the truth. Especially with all the spell pruning and major changes that are going to happen. The only way I can see myself play legion is if legacy/progression servers are released and I find myself having some off-time and trying out some raids.
So let me try not to be so negative and think about how we should fix this, most things that turn me off are the fact that there is no satisfaction in playing current wow, and this is caused by many things such as LFR/LFD/No social aspect etc etc. but even if we were to remove those things from the game there's still so many things that need to be changed in order for people like me to want to play again. so this doesn't really help anything. Also, the only thing I've talked about so far is how people like me can get to enjoy WoW again. but what about the people that still play and DO enjoy the current state? if Blizzard were to remove all those things and make all these changes they would also become unhappy and we don't want to do that to these players.
- 4. Closing -
Closing on this subject, we shouldn't make this a battle between everyone to decide who get what they want. But rather we should focus and think about a solution that caters to both. I've seen people like Aenjin just attack other people and making negative assumptions, but that's not what we should be doing. We all love this game and we all want a play to have fun so let's not attack each other. I think we can all agree that everyone that is reading this thread truly cares about the game and only wants to improve their experience playing WoW, so let's keep it positive and focus on positivity.
Thanks for reading and I really hope we can find a solution for this problem, let's show the world why WoW has always had the greatest community and has been the most popular MMORPG. Let's make great things happen!
P.S. I'm sure there are plenty of people that disagree with me, but like I mentioned before, there is no need to be disrespectful. Before you completely bash me for playing an "illegal" server ( even though that version of the game is 12 years old and is not really pirated. ) please try to empathize with us and see why we really want this to happen. for the same reason I'm not attacking you for wanting to play the current game, if you love the current state I'm happy for you and I really hope you can continue to play the game.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
What are your thoughts? Let me know what you think.
