Sorry to interrupt the pissing match but This seems to have done the trick of deflating the balloon, the forums and press seem to be going back to normal. I think a lot of the players weighing in helped too, I had a buddy who was convinced legacy servers would be some sort of panacea but I invited him to play on Kronos for 2 hours and that was all it took.

They've learned a lot of lessons since WoD and I feel like they're going to do great things again in the future with a new team in place.

Kxmode wrote on Apr 29, 2016, 00:32:
Again, I haven't addressed any of your illogical points because you have none. Anything else?

You haven't addressed my perfectly logical points because you have no rebuttal. You just want what you want even if it makes zero business sense and even if it will never sustain a long term player base. But that's ok, you're allowed to have childish unrealistic opinions just like I'm allowed to point it out.

Redmask wrote on Apr 28, 2016, 07:12:
Posting about it ten thousand times and trying to spam your views everywhere is what makes you a crazy ex. Talking like a crazy person about Blizzards egos and making up conspiracy theories about a video game patch revision is what makes you a crazy ex. My points about why vanilla WoW servers are still unaddressed which in vanilla WoW terms that you should understand is a FAIL.

Again, I haven't addressed any of your illogical points because you have none. Anything else?

Kxmode wrote on Apr 27, 2016, 22:33:
Criticizing Star Citizen because Chris Roberts didn't stay true to his word on the game's scope, its duration and budget isn't being a "crazy ex". Signing a petition to play a version of World of Warcraft no longer available and being vocal about wanting such a thing isn't a "crazy ex" move.

Posting about it ten thousand times and trying to spam your views everywhere is what makes you a crazy ex. Talking like a crazy person about Blizzards egos and making up conspiracy theories about a video game patch revision is what makes you a crazy ex. My points about why vanilla WoW servers are still unaddressed which in vanilla WoW terms that you should understand is a FAIL.

Redmask wrote on Apr 27, 2016, 07:05:

Kxmode wrote on Apr 26, 2016, 22:47:
Lots of rage. Lots of passion! I especially like the part where I'm labelled a "professional victim". Good stuff Redmask. Really hit the nail on head. Anything else I'm missing?

Rage? Hahah. I'm not the one signing petitions or following around game devs like a crazy ex.

Criticizing Star Citizen because Chris Roberts didn't stay true to his word on the game's scope, its duration and budget isn't being a "crazy ex". Signing a petition to play a version of World of Warcraft no longer available and being vocal about wanting such a thing isn't a "crazy ex" move.

If you're going to use metaphors at least try to be accurate.

Redmask wrote on Apr 27, 2016, 07:05:
Your utter failure to address any of my points both there and here has been noted.

I didn't address your points because you have none.

Anything else? If not, GG.

This comment was edited on Apr 27, 2016, 22:40.

Drayth wrote on Apr 27, 2016, 15:53:
Gah... ok, one more...

Yeah there was a way to get under SW over by either the gryphons, or the outer city wall in front of it.

There was also a place in Dun Morogh where you could simply run (or ride a mount) up on top of the mountains. Once up there, you could travel along on top until you get to a place where you can drop down into Searing Gorge, or keep going and you could drop down into the large unfinished area under Stormwind. All you needed was some Noggenfogger for slow-fall. Of course along the way you could also see a lot of other unfinished area. Obviously all changed and gone in Cata.

This was the one cool thing I discovered completely on my own in WoW while exploring.

Gah... ok, one more...

Yeah there was a way to get under SW over by either the gryphons, or the outer city wall in front of it.

There was that deserted Tauren village out on the south west tip of Kalimdor, with the spent mine nearby.

Getting on top of Iron Forge and using Noggin Fogger to feather fall to Menethil Harbor.

The farm you could find if you swam east in the river from the bridge leading into the Arathi Highlands.

The troll village you would normally fly over north of Dark Shore. You kinda needed a paladin along for that one (my main) to survive the final jump.

There was a short span of time where they updated the map for BC before the expansion was out. A friend and I swam north till our map markers showed us as being in the Blood Elf lands (even though we were just hanging out in the ocean). We invited some guild members into our party so they could see us on their maps and convinced them we got in somehow.

Good stuff.

This comment was edited on Apr 27, 2016, 16:02.

Drayth wrote on Apr 27, 2016, 14:25:
My favorite memories of the vanilla years was breaking into places we weren't supposed to be able to get to.

Caverns of Time was a crazy process, of jump here.. jump there.. walk over here.. drop here... When you got in there was no texture to the walls, you just saw items floating and that trippy background with the star field and nebula.

Mount Hyjal was fun too. "*[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]*"

Oh yeah, I loved that too. I went all those places, including Old Ironforge, and a few other less noteworthy ones. At one point, myself and a friend even found an exploit (using pet classes) that allowed you to make your character immune to everything. We used it to explore the ocean all the way to the edge of the accessible game world (no, developer island was not there).

Also, I know people found lots of ways to get to the unfinished area under Stomwind, but I found a way most people didn't where you could get there completely without using exploits of any kind (including wall-jumping) and it existed until they changed everything in Cataclysm.

Original ZF temple fight... oh man that was a blast. Totally lifted from a scene in the original Aliens vs Predator movie. It was a crime when they nerfed it.

Obviously I can discuss ol' WoW all day, so I'll just leave it at this.

My favorite memories of the vanilla years was breaking into places we weren't supposed to be able to get to.

Caverns of Time was a crazy process, of jump here.. jump there.. walk over here.. drop here... When you got in there was no texture to the walls, you just saw items floating and that trippy background with the star field and nebula.

Mount Hyjal was fun too. "*[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]*"

I fell through the world a few times while trying to get into Hyjal. My only fond memories of old school WoW are all nostalgia borne and more related to the awesome guild we had rather than the gameplay itself being any good. Getting my Thunderfury was pretty nuts but even that was a stupid grind though when I look back on it. I really enjoyed Twin Emps and felt it was a perfectly tuned encounter but it relied on 40 people being in perfect sync which is pretty dicey even for a good guild. The good thing about WoW now is that you can still go back and do most of the old raid stuff thanks to LFR, its not just dead content like most of the player run shards I tried.

Karazhan was a ton of fun. Awesome design, wacky encounters, lots to do for every class. The game needed more stuff like that and less filler thats just designed to waste time.

I know this isn't exactly what you guys are after, but EQ opened up Progression servers and I thought that those were the best of both worlds. As guilds progress through raid content they essentially "unlock" the next expansion (could even be a time-delay situation where you beat the last raid and then the next expansion will unlock in 30 days or something.

You get to experience the old content as it was (to feed your nostalgia) but aren't stuck playing in it forever. You could even open up a new "base" progression server every time a server moves on to the next expansion so there is a rolling set of content available to your subscribers.

I know, time and effort make this difficult to implement but I feel like this would at least be more motivating for people to come back and play (making it more worthwhile to Blizzard to pursue) rather than just "vanilla WoW".

My favorite memories of the vanilla years was breaking into places we weren't supposed to be able to get to.

Caverns of Time was a crazy process, of jump here.. jump there.. walk over here.. drop here... When you got in there was no texture to the walls, you just saw items floating and that trippy background with the star field and nebula.

Mount Hyjal was fun too. "*[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]*"

Oh and I forgot Hunters rolling on everything. Shaman losing their 2H skill by switching specs. Yes bring back 1.12 the glory days LOL.

I remember a buddy of mine doing the GM PvP grind back then too. He had to use up his stacked 18 days of vacation time, playing like 12-14 hours a day himself and he still had to account share to get it done. Old raids were terrible grinds too. People think of the good fights like Nefarian and forget the awful crap in AQ20/40, almost everything in Molten Core and shit like that. Hammering your Decursive bind because half of the encounters were just debuff spamfests. Auto-cancel healing mods. Hell the early UI had no real raid frames and the first ever implementation worked by broadcasting status through a chat channel.

I don't know why they would bother trying to sort out the mess of "what do we put in a pristine server?" and instead just make another game at that point. The WoW lore is nearly used up at this stage with the weird story reboot anyway. Titan sucked but they can still do something else.

This comment was edited on Apr 27, 2016, 13:44.

Verno wrote on Apr 27, 2016, 11:31:
- Crushing Blows

Oh god.


Endo - your vision for a legacy(ish) server I can respect.

I think part of the problem with legacy servers is that even old-school WoW players (like myself) want too many different things from them, and can't necessarily even agree on which patch would make the best one. For myself, I tend to prefer TBC because it had a lot of improvements over vanilla, without adding a lot of the garbage from later expansions. But if I'm really honest, what I really want is a combination of vanilla, TBC, and WotLK.

In a nutshell, IMO:

Vanilla - best pacing. Yeah, people complained about having to walk everywhere til 40, etc. etc. But the game world was designed around that. Things like that which slow you down can actually be good for players, because it stretches out the same content without adding grind. It takes longer to do the content, so the content lasts longer without getting more repetitive. But the class design in vanilla was horrible. Beyond horrible, actually.

TBC - best end-game progression. Not much else to say to elaborate on it. I honestly don't think any other MMO or WoW expansion has even come close in this regard. But TBC also introduced flying mounts, which ruined the game in many ways, yet it still also had a lot of the irritating limitations from vanilla that really didn't benefit anyone, like debuff limitations. Certain things like buffs being limited to groups instead of raids, I always liked. It made it more interesting how you grouped up players.

WotLK - best class design. I felt like there were too many talent points at level 80, but the class design improvements over TBC were spot-on. I also thought dual-spec was a great addition to the game, and the changes to debuff limitations was good. But most of the rest of the expansion just made the game worse overall.

And now, if I'm really dreaming big and going all out, what I'd like to see is a level 70 cap with difficulty tuned to TBC levels, but have (as much as possible) the zones, dungeons, and raids added in from later expansions, so literally all the content in the game would be viable and relevant. Along with that, I'd like to see progression be strictly-story based and not gear-based, so the gear would all have to be side-grades or alternatives, either for stat variations or purely for cosmetics.

Now, that's my take on it, and reflects my personal preferences. But that's where the problem arises: I doubt most (possibly not even many) players will agree with all of them. So if you're Blizzard, how do you decide exactly which patch to use for a legacy server? How do you decide which QoL features to include from later patches? Most people on the TBC private server I used to play on agreed that dual-spec would have been a great addition. Would vanilla players feel the same way? How many would want it? And on and on. I want WoW legacy servers, but I'm not so sure I want vanilla legacy servers, because I can't play the classes and specs I want in vanilla, as they're not viable.

Drayth wrote on Apr 27, 2016, 10:16:
Remember only being able to go one flight path hop at a time? One main auction house per faction (so your computer died when you flew over whichever city). Is that how far back these vanilla servers run at..?

It was all good at the time because the sense of exploration, and the camaraderie, but at this point where nothing's new.. yeah, no.

That's the other problem with the player shards, no one agrees. Some run ultra old versions of the game and others start bringing features in from the expansions, usually in a buggy mess. Some encounters don't work at all, sometimes the server has to be rebooted constantly because a raid guild boss is broken and yadda yadda yadda. Then you get the human element where drama happens in the background which affects the players. They often have problems funding themselves too, I've played on a few that just poofed when the money ran out.

Some of the old crap I never minded in the past that I would never tolerate now:

- Crushing Blows
- Weapon skills
- Classes pigeon holed forever into a single role
- Buff/Debuff limits
- Buff juggling because totems/auras were not raid wide
- Raid bosses immune to a specific damage type, rendering entire specs useless
- 30 minute Shield Wall cooldown hahaha
- Leveling via grinding outdoor mobs was actually optimal in some circumstances
- One tank class
- One stop flights
- Sorry I would love to do Scholo but I have to start making water 30 minutes before the raid
- No slow mounts until level 40
- Advertising for a dungeon group for an hour
- Absurd CC stacking in encounters
- Wanna join us for a dungeon? Uldaman? Maraudon? Nope sorry too far away
- Sorry I would love to do a dungeon but I have to farm soul shards for an hour before the raid starts

And there are SO many more I don't feel like listing, everything interface to simple quality of life stuff.

This comment was edited on Apr 27, 2016, 12:23.

Remember only being able to go one flight path hop at a time? One main auction house per faction (so your computer died when you flew over whichever city). Is that how far back these vanilla servers run at..?

It was all good at the time because the sense of exploration, and the camaraderie, but at this point where nothing's new.. yeah, no.

Redmask wrote on Apr 27, 2016, 07:05:
"when you see 2 sunders you can start doing damage" Grinding out weapon skills. Watching your ammo crafting bar number rise. Poison charges. Bring back resist gear so I can fill my bank with useless shit I had to grind out for no reason. Let the fun begin

Yeah I think people forget about all of the warts we had back in the days of mounts being items in your pack and forced to run everywhere before level 40. Every time I start an alt I say I'm going to do it old school but by level 20 I'm already tired of the nonsense.

The only decent thing from the old WOW days was non-linear dungeon design and I'd like to see some of that come back. Everything else is a massive improvement, the game is so much better now than it was then. Classes can fulfill multiple roles so you're not screwed when your MT leaves for another guild. You're not told to just roll another class if god forbid you want some variety in life. God old WOW was awful. Back then I thought it was fun but looking back I can see how much of it was grindy bullshit that I just excused due to my age.

Kxmode wrote on Apr 26, 2016, 22:47:
Lots of rage. Lots of passion! I especially like the part where I'm labelled a "professional victim". Good stuff Redmask. Really hit the nail on head. Anything else I'm missing?

Rage? Hahah. I'm not the one signing petitions or following around game devs like a crazy ex. Yes I did hit the nail on the head, yet another example here of your antics. It hurts because it cut to the quick and you know I'm right. Your utter failure to address any of my points both there and here has been noted.

And yet their last expansion, Warlords of Draenor was a huge bomb. It had fun questing but once you hit max level there was nothing to do for 2 years. There is no reason not to have vanilla servers for people to mess around on as extra fun content. They can open up a new vanilla server each year to reboot the experience, sort of like seasons in Diablo 3.

They are aiming to produce an expansion a year for just that reason. And yes there are practically a million reasons why you can't have vanilla servers both from a practical and a technical point. Before some tard says oh but look what some guys in a basement did, those player run shards are unstable pieces of shit with busted encounters and a dearth of features. Blizzard can't make money off the whiners until the game itself is ready to die, that's when you will see some sort of server ruleset aimed at peoples sense of nostalgia. It will be an intern project to wring that last bit of money out of the game. You will end up with time locked servers like EQ which are a total joke.

I guess no one remembers Wildstar which was literally a game aimed at diehard WoW nerds from vanilla days and almost every aspect was tailored to them. That game went over like a wet fart. People don't just want vanilla Warcraft, they want it to be 2004 and they have no job and no real responsibilities and be in the 16-21 crowd again.

"when you see 2 sunders you can start doing damage" Grinding out weapon skills. Watching your ammo crafting bar number rise. Poison charges. Bring back resist gear so I can fill my bank with useless shit I had to grind out for no reason. Let the fun begin

This comment was edited on Apr 27, 2016, 07:24.

While Hearthstone just made 50 million registered players, Activision is too busy 24/7 just trying to process the influx of cash, to seriously consider putting significant resources into WOW.

Read my lips, that's nice dear, we will see, later...