Crispy™ WoW Rebirth: a vanilla private server

[hivemind]

Either Kronos or playTBC which is launching tonight

 

[belowmecoldhands]

The thing I've not figured out yet is what causes it.

What causes it is that the game has changed so much over the past 12 years that it is completely unrecognizable to people who played back then, and there's nothing out there like classic pre-cata WoW, so private servers are the only recourse for people who still enjoy that kind of game. If someone came along and made a moderately hardcore MMO with a ton of content, solid gameplay, and none of the streamlining crap that has ruined the genre, people who miss that bygone era of MMOs would flock to it. Nobody is going to do that, though, because they can make way more money with microtransactions.

Ok so the MMO changed, but what makes you prefer its older incarnation over the newer one?

That's the question which I haven't answered. Because even as I can supply an opinion, just like you did, the reality can still be far different. I wanted a classic Everquest server and I was protesting it in the forums 8 years ago. Project 1999 was live a couple years later and I immediately played it and enjoyed it. But my long list of reasons I liked classic Everquest don't really answer why gamers tend to like their first MMO or the games they played when they were young.

The phenomenon is so common it begs for an explanation.

 

[Ninjerk]

Rebirth looks a bit more populated than I remember it being. Still don't like the all-faction chat, but I suspect that could get changed if the population gets large enough.

 

[zeitgeist]

But my long list of reasons I liked classic Everquest don't really answer why gamers tend to like their first MMO or the games they played when they were young.

The phenomenon is so common it begs for an explanation.

The overall cultural decline makes it so that there's a higher chance of a random game from anyone's younger age being objectively better in a multitude of ways than its equivalent from their older age. I thought that was common knowledge.

 

[dibens]

So everyone moved to Kronos or what?

Kronos seems to be the most sensible choice right now. Blizzlike and buzzing with new people and is quite stable for the amount of stress they are going through. Cosmetic store doesn't bother me much. They did fuck up by throwing a x7 event just right before Nostalrius went under, which they get most of the flack for and promise to never do again.

Rebirth has been on for too long and still too empty for my tastes, population fluctuates between 400-700ish. I've met some really friendly people on there, though, which are willing to do entire quest zones with you because of the smaller pop. The final deal breaker for me is the x5 exp rate. I love leveling process and this dicking around with experiences, optional as they are, really break my immersion.

I think it's safe to say PlayTBC is a flop/scam. The site is still down, launch has been delayed several times and devs on the Q&A sessions/twitter have killed all their credibility. Not even counting the instant lvl 60 shit and broken vanilla content.

 

[Wilian]

Rebirth looks a bit more populated than I remember it being. Still don't like the all-faction chat, but I suspect that could get changed if the population gets large enough.

It gets removed very soon, guaranteed.

As far as player amount, Rebirth has now about over 2000 active players going around the clock. Which is quite fine considering that actual vanilla servers were built around 2.5k players (upgraded to 5k around time for TBC).

Or to quote:

We strive for 100% vanilla like ultimately altough some concessions have been made in the past to accomodate our lower playerbase.

Some of these accomodations include the following that we tied with War Effort event and will go away with it:

Optional XP increase
Reduced respec costs
Increased AH times

Some of these accomodations are dependant on amount of players and state of economy:

Cross-faction Global (This one will be removed very soon)
Reduced AH cut prices
Combined AH between factions

The batch of first three will be removed immediatly after War Effort ends, the second batch is based on the situation at the hand and will be adjusted accordingly.

 

[Wilian]

You do realize that you're defending the server where the previous owner scammed all of you fucks, took the money and ran? What kind of asshole gets scammed, yet keeps playing on the shitty server in the hope that "it'll get better". None of the people on Nost I've talked to who used to play on Rebirth had anything good to say about it.

Fucking hell, I had almost 90 days played across all my characters.

Alright, as an insider I'll give this some bite. Accusations grow quick over internet and gain propotions that do not reflect reality.

You say previous owner scammed the server. That might be true, to an extent altough not fully. Rebirth started in 2011 and was paid by this single individual up til 2013 without single request on donation. During that time, Rebirth went into court within US twice, first time surviving in settlement case (which you can publicly see in Iowa court rulings if you bother to find out), which was quite the defining victory against multinational corp like Activision Bllizzard and later after another court after opening donations, in which we case moved to Canada.

The donation money you talk of was not simply "stolen" however, it was put into a fund that ran the server for half a year within it's existance in Canada. Now a proper question is how much was put into the fund and what was taken, but undeniable fact is that a big sum of it was used to host the server in Canada (as none of the existing team added any money at the time). Clearly some of it disappeared but that was dealt with by booting the guy away eventually.

That's all far past though, the management and dealings are very much different now and without exaggerating, our team has put more than several thousands of our own money just to run this fan project despite all the opposition. And we'll keep doing so.

If there's something certain it's that Rebirth will always be there and it'll always evolve. If you made character in 2011, you can find it intact now. If you did it two weeks ago you can be certain it'll be there five years from now.

 

[Veelq]

If there's something certain it's that Rebirth will always be there and it'll always evolve. If you made character in 2011, you can find it intact now. If you did it two weeks ago you can be certain it'll be there five years from now.

Great news for all those 100k people that lost Nost, lets hope the server can handle them all.

 

[Wilian]

If there's something certain it's that Rebirth will always be there and it'll always evolve. If you made character in 2011, you can find it intact now. If you did it two weeks ago you can be certain it'll be there five years from now.

Great news for all those 100k people that lost Nost, lets hope the server can handle them all.

There's 130 000 characters created on Rebirth, it can take a few more :p

 

[Wilian]

And since there's always those who say "Omg Rebirth was never challenged, it's a ruse!"

https://www.iowacourts.state.ia.us/ESAWebApp/TIndexFrm

There, court case, dismissed. We won. In case wondering about naming, Sampica = original creator of server, now gone

 

[J1M]

It would be very interesting to see what a WoW that didn't drastically change its design philosophy would look like today. When the game launched it imparted a strong sense of adventure, which has been lost. The refinements that eliminated the 'hybrid' slot from the dungeon group and the desire to make every spec viable for every activity in the game also did serious damage. Today it simply serves as a no-adventure, no-challenge, time sink.

What surprises me about this Nostalrius thing is that nobody has leaked the server code and config settings. The obvious way for that work to be preserved is for it to be 'stolen' and 'leaked'.

 

[Xor]

The devs said they were going to release the source code if they were legally allowed to, although as far as I know they haven't yet.

 

[Ninjerk]

It would be very interesting to see what a WoW that didn't drastically change its design philosophy would look like today. When the game launched it imparted a strong sense of adventure, which has been lost. The refinements that eliminated the 'hybrid' slot from the dungeon group and the desire to make every spec viable for every activity in the game also did serious damage. Today it simply serves as a no-adventure, no-challenge, time sink.

What surprises me about this Nostalrius thing is that nobody has leaked the server code and config settings. The obvious way for that work to be preserved is for it to be 'stolen' and 'leaked'.

It occurred to me the other day that TBC and maybe some later expansions have the same problem Fallout 2 had--massive increase in pop culture references and a tendency to mock the seriousness of the setting.

 

[Wilian]

It would be very interesting to see what a WoW that didn't drastically change its design philosophy would look like today. When the game launched it imparted a strong sense of adventure, which has been lost. The refinements that eliminated the 'hybrid' slot from the dungeon group and the desire to make every spec viable for every activity in the game also did serious damage. Today it simply serves as a no-adventure, no-challenge, time sink.

What surprises me about this Nostalrius thing is that nobody has leaked the server code and config settings. The obvious way for that work to be preserved is for it to be 'stolen' and 'leaked'.

What surprises you is no surprise. There's no server code to leak, no config things to leak. There are adjustments to the ManGOS core that they drew everything from. When they released, outside of re-adjusting all items they gave out stock Mangos you can DL yourself and make server based on it.

Nostalrius, as I said over a year ago in this very same thread, is just a testing bed of systems. I told it year ago it'll fall apart and I stand here witnessing it. But what does it matter? Most of you go for next popular realm and then be bummed out when Kronos also shuts down for 3rd time. Lel.

 

[J1M]

It would be very interesting to see what a WoW that didn't drastically change its design philosophy would look like today. When the game launched it imparted a strong sense of adventure, which has been lost. The refinements that eliminated the 'hybrid' slot from the dungeon group and the desire to make every spec viable for every activity in the game also did serious damage. Today it simply serves as a no-adventure, no-challenge, time sink.

What surprises me about this Nostalrius thing is that nobody has leaked the server code and config settings. The obvious way for that work to be preserved is for it to be 'stolen' and 'leaked'.

What surprises you is no surprise. There's no server code to leak, no config things to leak. There are adjustments to the ManGOS core that they drew everything from. When they released, outside of re-adjusting all items they gave out stock Mangos you can DL yourself and make server based on it.

Nostalrius, as I said over a year ago in this very same thread, is just a testing bed of systems. I told it year ago it'll fall apart and I stand here witnessing it. But what does it matter? Most of you go for next popular realm and then be bummed out when Kronos also shuts down for 3rd time. Lel.

Not sure why you would assume these things are common knowledge. Especially for people like myself who haven't played on private servers. Your explanation comes across as elitist and needlessly obtuse.

 

[dibens]

Nostalrius, as I said over a year ago in this very same thread, is just a testing bed of systems. I told it year ago it'll fall apart and I stand here witnessing it. But what does it matter? Most of you go for next popular realm and then be bummed out when Kronos also shuts down for 3rd time. Lel.

It's silly to bemoan the fact that Nostalrius got more attention than Rebirth, as you can't claim that the player base was always there, just foolishly redirected to "inferior" product. I and many others would have probably never started playing Vanilla in the first place if not for the whole hype surrounding Nost. And the massive flop that was the Warlords of Draenor, ofcourse. And as with most things on the internet, once something gets big, the snowball effect comes into play. If anything, you should be thankful- Rebirth has more players now than it ever had. The Nostalrius refugee guild Murlock Holmes is 85% of the horde population it seems.

 

[Metro]

Wilian = resident Rebirth shill. If it ever gets popular it'll be shut down, too.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Rebirth isn't any better scripted than Nost was or Kronos is. Even now, with tens of thousands of Nost players searching for a new home, its population hasn't surpassed 1k concurrent players. If you don't believe me, well take it from people who spent years on Rebirth:

Here is another concise collection of evidence against Rebirth:
http://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=43211&start=50#p298890

So do keep on shilling for your virtual shithole Wilian.

 

[zeitgeist]

And since there's always those who say "Omg Rebirth was never challenged, it's a ruse!"

Interesting, can you offer some insight or speculation on what really happened to Nostalrius? It seems suspicious that they would simply keel over at the very first sight of a C&D, when many private servers that actually make lots of money on virtual items and services have managed to endure even when faced with legal action.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I'm sorry, but why bother? As soon as the next server gets popular, it is going to get shutdown again. Why risk it?

 

[shihonage]

I gave up on Rebirth when sometime 2 years ago or so, both the server and website went down for 2+ weeks, with no warning, explanation, point of contact, etc. And their scripting seemed rough from just small observations - like, slowed enemies had the wrong speed on server end, which, for an ice mage, resulted in constant enemy teleporting.

They did fix that blatant bug since then. But the downtime was real too, I did not imagine it, and the kind of attitude that allowed it to happen, was a big flashing "KEEP AWAY" sign.

 

[Ninjerk]

 

[Ellef]

I'm sorry, but why bother? As soon as the next server gets popular, it is going to get shutdown again. Why risk it?

Nostalrius was obscenely big (like 2-3x bigger than the largest TBC server) which made it a prime target. I think people the decent smallish 1-3k servers should be safe, just avoid the next big thing (Kronos) and hackfrauds (rebirth).

 

[shihonage]

I'm sorry, but why bother? As soon as the next server gets popular, it is going to get shutdown again. Why risk it?

Nostalrius was obscenely big (like 2-3x bigger than the largest TBC server) which made it a prime target. I think people the decent smallish 1-3k servers should be safe, just avoid the next big thing (Kronos) and hackfrauds (rebirth).

1) Name specific examples of those 1-3k servers.
2) If those mysterious servers do in fact exist, what do you think is going to happen to them when Kronos gets taken down?

Unless there's a movement to resist this desperate Blizzard thuggery, no server is safe.

 

[Ellef]

No server is safe, but some are safer than others. Clearly popularity drives what's worth blizzards time and money to C&D. Nobody can stop Blizzard, it's not worth the time and money for any sane server provider.