Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

Hi mates!

Imagine that: "Its a great day for all of us! Blizzard made an announcement during the night: LEGACY COMING SOON".

Great indeed. But we would have a big question: "Do we want progressive servers or not?" What is the best option? If we all agree about opening a legacy server, our community isnt sure enough about that question.

Mark Kern will meet Mike Morhaime in two weeks probably. On twitter, Mark said: "I'm doing polls for a few days to see how people feel about specific legacy issues. I will discuss these with Mike."
So, its time for us to discuss about these issues. I suggest you to create a Twitter account to answer this polls.

https://twitter.com/Grummz

So, what about a progressive server? I dont ask you what you prefer, but what is the best choice for everyone. We all know we want different things. There is players who wants Vanilla and nothing else. Some others TBC, WOTLK, and some players wants to play it succesively.

The problem with progressive servers would be that once TBC launched, there wouldnt be a Vanilla server anymore. And what about players who just want Vanilla? The same problem with Wotlk. And once Wotlk is over, should we continue and launch Cataclysm?...At least, we keep the community together. Unless the Vanilla community goes back on private server to play it.

We have another option, thanks to NostalriusBegins. We could copy our character from a Vanilla server to a TBC or Wotlk server. Then you have your 60 char on the Vanilla server, and the same 60 on the TBC server.
But, wouldnt it split the Legacy community? How to avoid an empty server? How Blizzard could be sure a Wotlk server would be used, or a Vanilla server once TBC launched? At least, with this solution, everyone is happy.

Furthermore, could we start a level 1 character on a TBC or WOTLK server, or should we start on the Vanilla server to be 60 (58?) and go on the TBC server? Then on the TBC / Wotlk server, there will be none character under the level 60? Isnt that a problem? Im just asking, I dont know.

The last possibility is to create at least 3 differents servers: 1 Vanilla, 1 TBC, 1 Wotlk, with no connections between them. But the "split problem" is much more important here.

What do you think? Once again, Im not asking you what do you prefer, like: "I just want to play vanilla, fu** TBC" Lets deeply think what is the best for the community.

i think Nostralius was is the best way, do Vanilla 1st and when TBC would have come out then make a TBC server and players have the option to copy from the Vanilla to the TBC server leaving their 60 on Vanilla and a copy on TBC this also gives you tho option to jump back to your lvl 60 at any time and do that content, win win.

As far as being able to lvl on the TBC or even WLK servers when they are out, whatever, personally i would lvl on the Vanilla and copy at 60 to TBC then copy to WLK at 70 that way i have my toon on each server at max lvl so i can jump back to raid BWL then next night raid TK or BT ETC, if the copy option was there like Nost was gonna do then i would imagine most people would also take this path.

If it was made compulsory to do 1-60 on the Vanilla server ans 60-70 on TBC and 70-80 on WLK then it would increase the population in the 1-60 zones as they would not be spread over servers and that would be a good thing i guess.

I would definitely do a copy over to a new server. That way people who join late don't miss out and people who prefer a specific expansion get to stay on.

It all depends on the community for me. I do like progression servers, and as long as there is enough active community on each server, I wouldn't mind keeping open e.g. a classic server once a BC server is opened.

Having said that,
A) I'd think Blizzard would segment servers per Region (EU, US, Asia etc) separately, so this will thin out the playerbase in each region; meaning it has to be seen if you could have something like 3 or more (classic, bc, wotlk) servers with enough players on it in the long run
B) The most fun part is always the start of a server, imho. Nost was always amazing, but looking at the videos, I'm a little sad I have missed out on its start, with so much world pvp and all going on. Everybody is on a similar standing on their journey to 60 and through all dungeons and raids. If you open up a classic server and keep it alive forever, you will only ever have people experience this once, and it might be off-putting to late newcomers.

So ideally, I'd actually like to have a fresh start, say, every 2 years or so.
Of course, just resetting a classic server after two years would upset a ton of people who'd lose all their chars etc., and at the same time, you won't have enough players to maintain 20 different servers eventually.
But maybe you could start out with a classic server. After two years, you start an additional new server, while keeping the old one alive. After another two years, you merge both of them, and then start another new one. After another two years, you merge these again, and start another new one. Etc.
That way, you could have "established" servers where people can indefinitely progress their chars with a reasonably high player count, whlie at the same time keep providing new servers regularly for those who want to re-start the journey.

This will all be down to personal opinion. I've mentioned it elsewhere. But it'll be only a stop-gap measure if legacy server ONLY means vanilla. I think that while many of the potential players will be from the era, you can't count out those that joined on later x-pacs and want to re-experience the game from the era.

So, I think that the ultimate solution would be to have progressive realms, but always at least one at each expac level. There's two ways to achieve this.

1: Allow free transfers ONLY for max level characters and ONLY to a realm on the next expac. That way you can progress yourself. The downside with that is, you will join a realm that is already maybe filled with max levels and you won't be progressing with everyone.

2: Start with say 1 realm at each expac. Step them through the major patches and into the next ex-pac, replacing a vanilla server moving up with a fresh vanilla server and offering a transfer to the new server, but maybe with some limits (I wonder if you could fairly do this at all...). If they're moving forward at the same speed as original retail then it's unlikely you'd ever catch up with the current version. There'd need to be some management of realms per expac. The more popular ones might need extra ones added and free transfers to even things up, etc. Less popular expacs would probably need to merge. So they would need to employ some extra staff to manage these processes.

I'd really like to see situation 2. However, I realise that the extra manpower costs money. So, I can see why Blizzard want to deliver such a watered down solution. They want the problem to go away with the least expense possible. So, really it's the job of us, and ultimately those that actually go to meet Blizzard to ensure they're aware that Pristine servers, and indeed anything that won't deliver the full range of gameplay the original game provided will not be enough. But, I think it's safe to say most of us would re-subscribe and SOME of us might even be prepared to pay a couple of dollars/euros extra to support these servers.

If there's a poll at all there should be an honest one about how much we'd be prepared to pay for classic servers.

My ideal server is pretty much exactly what Nostalrius did.

A progressive Vanilla server which slowly releases content. Once it reaches 1.12, I guess have a TBC server you can transfer to if you want. I'm not interested in TBC, but I'm sure a lot of people would like to start TBC after they clear Naxx.

I want vanilla.

A character copy/transfer option if TBC servers open would be nice but I don't want to lose the vanilla realm.

Yep, same here. Given the choice I don't really want to "move on" to TBC. I might mess around for fun but I'd like my character to stay on Classic! How Nostalrius did it was perfect, I hope that's how it will be.

realm is proggresive, after the last content is cleared, there will be some time and after that time the realm is wiped / reset, only characters who achieved high ranks or high quality gear would be playable on a "hall of fame" server

vanilla, tbc, wotlk and the rest could be released at the same time as progressive realms maybe :d because i think there is alot of people like me, who want legacy only for tbc