Crispy™ WoW Rebirth: a vanilla private server

[Ninjerk]

Gotta play dindu faction

 

[dibens]

Wait, there are other factions? I thought all those elves and gnomes I was killing were NPCs.

 

[Jaesun]

I am honestly shocked this hasn't been shut down yet.

 

[Ulminati]

A vanilla player wouldn't have to buy expansions. That alone is reason enough for Blizzard to ignore the idea until they hit the 11th hour in terms of dwindling subs.

Nothing stopping them from going "Legacy servers! Free if you're subbed and have latest expansion!"

Which would probably lower the number of people who would play on them.

For a vanilla server that's somewhat stable, with working scripting and AI and 100% guaranteed not to get shut down? It seems like a fair deal to me.

 

[Wulfstand]

How 'bout we gather a Codex guild on Kronos' 2nd PvP server? I'm up for rolling a dindu.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Remember that Kronos doesn't do the progression thing like Nost did, so you have buffed dungeon sets and blue items available from Day 1. This makes loot from Molten Core, for example, pretty meaningless. Craftable resist gear makes getting enough FR/NR/FR a trivial thing as well. So if you had a list of dream items on Nostalrius, it won't be valid on Kronos.

As for legacy server, Blizzard finally opens up:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20743584206#1

We wanted to let you know that we’ve been closely following the Nostalrius discussion and we appreciate your constructive thoughts and suggestions.

Our silence on this subject definitely doesn’t reflect our level of engagement and passion around this topic. We hear you. Many of us across Blizzard and the WoW Dev team have been passionate players ever since classic WoW. In fact, I personally work at Blizzard because of my love for classic WoW.

We have been discussing classic servers for years - it’s a topic every BlizzCon - and especially over the past few weeks. From active internal team discussions to after-hours meetings with leadership, this subject has been highly debated. Some of our current thoughts:

Why not just let Nostalrius continue the way it was? The honest answer is, failure to protect against intellectual property infringement would damage Blizzard’s rights. This applies to anything that uses WoW’s IP, including unofficial servers. And while we’ve looked into the possibility – there is not a clear legal path to protect Blizzard’s IP and grant an operating license to a pirate server.

We explored options for developing classic servers and none could be executed without great difficulty. If we could push a button and all of this would be created, we would. However, there are tremendous operational challenges to integrating classic servers, not to mention the ongoing support of multiple live versions for every aspect of WoW.

So what can we do to capture that nostalgia of when WoW first launched? Over the years we have talked about a “pristine realm”. In essence that would turn off all leveling acceleration including character transfers, heirloom gear, character boosts, Recruit-A-Friend bonuses, WoW Token, and access to cross realm zones, as well as group finder. We aren’t sure whether this version of a clean slate is something that would appeal to the community and it’s still an open topic of discussion.

One other note - we’ve recently been in contact with some of the folks who operated Nostalrius. They obviously care deeply about the game, and we look forward to more conversations with them in the coming weeks.

You, the Blizzard community, are the most dedicated, passionate players out there. We thank you for your constructive thoughts and suggestions. We are listening.

J. Allen Brack

He's the "You think you do but you don't" guy. The response is good in the sense that at least Blizz admits that there is something going on. It's bad because either he is flat-out lying or Blizzard has turned into incompetent, bumbling fools or worse - both. That pristine realm thing is the laziest suggestion ever.

 

[hivemind]

1.) Hire the nost team
2.) Reopen nost under Blizzard name and hosted on blizzard servers
3.) Integrate it with Battlenet somehow
4.) Profit


When can I start as CEO of Blizzard ?

 

[Scroo]

Woah, they seem to be actually thinking about it

Please hire the nost guys and do eeeeeet

Also personally I won't create a char on Kronos 2, I'm done with private servers

 

[Ellef]

I don't trust official reboots. What's the likelihood of them making it vanilla with MODERN FUNCTIONALITY?

 

[felipepepe]

That's why it won't happen. They could easily build a WoW vanilla server, just like in the olden days, but that won't cut.

A lot of Blizzard's profit nowadays comes from milking the fan-base with mounts, pets and all that crap - you can bet all those "operational challenges" are about implementing those into Vanilla. They probably also think it's VITAL to add in achievements and all that social stuff... Just look at that stupid "pristine realm" shit, they don't even understand what people are asking for...

 

[Wulfstand]

They just don't want to admit that their current game sucks. Imagine if they'd hire the guys behind Nostalrius and Corecraft, I bet you they could release a fully-scripted vanilla + tbc server before Legion launched.

What's even more idiotic, is that there are so many idiots that are willing to gobble down Blizzard's PR bullshit; I've seen polls in which 50% of the voters were in favor of playing on 'Pristine' servers, Jesus fuck.

 

[Lyric Suite]

As pointed out here, it is not so much that that they don't want to admit it, they even don't understand why modern WoW sucks ass.

 

[dibens]

Hope I can get Pristine name on my orc warrior tomorrow. Could you bros secure it for me if you get the chance, I will only be able to play later that evening.

 

[Mustawd]

We explored options for developing classic servers and none could be executed without great difficulty. If we could push a button and all of this would be created, we would. However, there are tremendous operational challenges to integrating classic servers, not to mention the ongoing support of multiple live versions for every aspect of WoW.

That's why it won't happen. They could easily build a WoW vanilla server, just like in the olden days, but that won't cut.

A lot of Blizzard's profit nowadays comes from milking the fan-base with mounts, pets and all that crap - you can bet all those "operational challenges" are about implementing those into Vanilla. They probably also think it's VITAL to add in achievements and all that social stuff... Just look at that stupid "pristine realm" shit, they don't even understand what people are asking for...

I think they mean, "It's probably doable for us, but we don't think it's worth the money to put in the effort as there would probably be some work to be in to do it from scratch and integrate it in our network."

If they can find a cheap way to do it then I think we'll see it. That or if the demand indicators are strong enough. I doubt it'd get launched without some packaged marketing gimmick. These marketing people never really understand the communities they market to. At least not outside the extreme mainstream.

 

[Scroo]

The thing about these "pristine servers" is - when they launch and ppl stop playing on them after 2 weeks because modern wow without LFG is still modern wow they can be all like "see, that's why we didn't create vanilla servers"

 

[hivemind]

Kungen made more money from streaming his bitching about legacy server than blizzard will from legion release

 

[Ninjerk]

Hope I can get Pristine name on my orc warrior tomorrow. Could you bros secure it for me if you get the chance, I will only be able to play later that evening.

Pristine is the name you want...?

 

[dibens]

Pristine is the name you want...?

You think I do, but I don't. Ayyy

 

[Xor]

It's good that they're talking with the Nost developers, but there's no way in hell Nost gets reopened. I don't think Blizzard's stance on private servers is going to change even in the face of obvious demand.

As for the barriers to get a classic server set up, there's definitely some significant work involved: they'd need to update the client code to use the new battle.net launcher, since all their games use that now, I'm sure they've made changes to the logon system that they'd need to apply as well so everything uses the same logon servers. They'd need to update Warden, which I'm sure has evolved since 2005. They'd need to make changes to the server code to make sure their modern GMing tools are compatible with it, it's either that or train a bunch of GMs on ancient tools, assuming they even still have those. All those code changes, and probably more that I'm not thinking of, would need to be tested. We don't know what the server code looks like, and there might be other issues running it on newer hardware. Then there are a bunch of deployment issues - updates to their website to support the classic servers, armory support, advertising and promotion, etc. And lastly, they have to worry about hurting the modern incarnation of the game. If players are spending time on a classic realm instead of the modern game, that just makes the population problem on the modern realms that much worse. I still think it would be profitable for them to do in spite of all those issues.

 

[J1M]

It's good that they're talking with the Nost developers, but there's no way in hell Nost gets reopened. I don't think Blizzard's stance on private servers is going to change even in the face of obvious demand.

As for the barriers to get a classic server set up, there's definitely some significant work involved: they'd need to update the client code to use the new battle.net launcher, since all their games use that now, I'm sure they've made changes to the logon system that they'd need to apply as well so everything uses the same logon servers. They'd need to update Warden, which I'm sure has evolved since 2005. They'd need to make changes to the server code to make sure their modern GMing tools are compatible with it, it's either that or train a bunch of GMs on ancient tools, assuming they even still have those. All those code changes, and probably more that I'm not thinking of, would need to be tested. We don't know what the server code looks like, and there might be other issues running it on newer hardware. Then there are a bunch of deployment issues - updates to their website to support the classic servers, armory support, advertising and promotion, etc. And lastly, they have to worry about hurting the modern incarnation of the game. If players are spending time on a classic realm instead of the modern game, that just makes the population problem on the modern realms that much worse. I still think it would be profitable for them to do in spite of all those issues.

Or they could just put it out there and see if it sticks. Rolling out those features as patches.

 

[Khorne]

They could just contribute to mangos tools, push them through official channels and make a moderated starcraft-like platform for hosting free custom games.
Though I guess as long as generic realms remain popular and people subscribe to farm achievements all day every day, there's no real incentive to invest in such a thing.
What they need is 'old' battlenet, and a different custom mode featured each month for free, then the thing would skyrocket, I'd even spare a couple hours a week to play orcs & humans AV.
But as it stands right now, I don't have time at all, am still cross at blizzard for some things that happened nearly a decade ago, and sincerely doubt their ability to release something above the average PG-13 pokemon toy.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Does Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 use Battle.net? I don't think they do.

 

[shihonage]

They use legacy Battle.net.

 

[Ninjerk]

its live

 

[Ninjerk]

there are 8-14 people per mob spawn. there are so many people that other players dont' render until they're about 15 yards away