World of Warcraft - Game Thread

I don't care about the fact that the number of subscriptions might be at its lowest point and this kind of reasoning never appealed to me.
I personally play the game because I still enjoy it with friends (never stopped or took a break since 2009).
Of course, the game has gone through tremendous changes since its inception but it's still one of the rare MMOs that offer a lot of things to do (even at max level).

Totoro wrote Blizzard are meeting with the people who created the private server Nostralius this week I believe. They're working something out. And if that doesn't work out they'll create a pristine realm for players that resembles Vanilla, of course no one would want that as much as classic WoW but still it's something.

Maintaining diverging paths of software is way too costly and complex for any company. (even one as big as Activision-Blizzard)

Pristine realms aren't going to satisfy the Vanilla cravers and Blizzard has clearly said that they will not maintain or allow Nostralius folk to maintain a vanilla realm. The link was pretty clear on that.

My guess is they will simply keep the discussions open indefinitely or until such a time when they find good reason in having a vanilla realm. (factoring number of players, difficulty to maintain and income)

I'd much rather they invest every single asset they have making the game better, than worrying about vanilla, but that's just me.

xterm wrote

Totoro wrote Blizzard are meeting with the people who created the private server Nostralius this week I believe. They're working something out. And if that doesn't work out they'll create a pristine realm for players that resembles Vanilla, of course no one would want that as much as classic WoW but still it's something.

Maintaining diverging paths of software is way too costly and complex for any company. (even one as big as Activision-Blizzard)

Pristine realms aren't going to satisfy the Vanilla cravers and Blizzard has clearly said that they will not maintain or allow Nostralius folk to maintain a vanilla realm. The link was pretty clear on that.

My guess is they will simply keep the discussions open indefinitely or until such a time when they find good reason in having a vanilla realm. (factoring number of players, difficulty to maintain and income)

I'd much rather they invest every single asset they have making the game better, than worrying about vanilla, but that's just me.

Yeah I wish they would do that too. But I would definitely play Vanilla-TBC realms if they were released again. I don't want to sound like the typical 'it was so good back in the day' guy but I actually had the most fun playing the first three expansions of WoW with friends. I've tried many MMO's and they were all just meh. After a while it just gets boring playing shooter and moba games.

However, if Legion fails, the WoW subscription numbers are going to tank and this will raise a few questions about the direction of WoW and it may provide the incentive to create legacy realms.

MMOs tend to be on a decline, they peak at some point and only pickup on new releases especially when you consider this game being on top of the subscriber chart, breaking most records in sales on release and subs for quite a long time (it's highest being during WotLK iirc?). I wouldn't expect it to get any better in Legion, it'll peak at the start but declined fast towards mid-life.

The current ~10k subs to Nostalrius may have a reason to play Vanilla (It was fun back in the day, I agree) but that doesn't mean that if Legion fails, people will resort to Vanilla servers.

Jagex did so and now there are two entirely different games of RuneScape, each being updated regularly.

The costs with creating and maintaining these legacy realms are also not expensive at all, considering a team of hobbyists were able to do it.

I don't know Jagex well enough to make an informed opinion, but I know software and diverging software paths are quite difficult to maintain *especially* when you have 8 years worth of bugs and fixes that ought to be in that vanilla realm. While a team of hobbyist quite easily could settle for a working vanilla instance disregarding the entire fixes that went through these 8 years (9 assuming pre 1.1?), blizzard would not.

Blizzard would rather tell its subscribers "we know what you want" than give them the honest truth about their profit margin concerns.

Money talks, and its voice is getting louder.

They've made and still are making drastic mistakes in their design decisions, which is costing them a lot of subs. Legion has the very same flaw that WoD had, they've simply renamed it "Order Halls".

I hope Legion succeeds.

xterm wrote MMOs tend to be on a decline, they peak at some point and only pickup on new releases especially when you consider this game being on top of the subscriber chart, breaking most records in sales on release and subs for quite a long time (it's highest being during WotLK iirc?). I wouldn't expect it to get any better in Legion, it'll peak at the start but declined fast towards mid-life.

The current ~10k subs to Nostalrius may have a reason to play Vanilla (It was fun back in the day, I agree) but that doesn't mean that if Legion fails, people will resort to Vanilla servers.


I don't know Jagex well enough to make an informed opinion, but I know software and diverging software paths are quite difficult to maintain *especially* when you have 8 years worth of bugs and fixes that ought to be in that vanilla realm. While a team of hobbyist quite easily could settle for a working vanilla instance disregarding the entire fixes that went through these 8 years (9 assuming pre 1.1?), blizzard would not.

They've made and still are making drastic mistakes in their design decisions, which is costing them a lot of subs. Legion has the very same flaw that WoD had, they've simply renamed it "Order Halls".

I hope Legion succeeds.

I don't understand why a game's subscription numbers has to naturally decrease if the developer is providing incentive for subscribers to stay. What has happened at Blizzard is the complete opposite: not only are they not providing sufficient incentive, but they are actively alienating and destroying their user-base. Perhaps WoW reached a point where too many of its consumers were young, unintelligent teenagers (or perhaps this is a symptom of the progresson of our larger society, but that's another topic) that couldn't be bothered to think for themselves. Blizzard then realized that they wanted to cater to this new majority and so they did what they thought would best do so. And they failed. They made a bad decision.

One of the main reasons they are reluctant to create pristine realms is because they don't want to go back on their word and face embarrassment, especially considering how many expansions have been released after WOTLK.

There's no doubt it would not be easy to create these realms but Blizzard is a truly massive company with massive resources. There is no way this task would be too difficult or costly for them.

It's simply a matter of money and of sticking with the company's decisions and hedging their bets on Legion, for now.

tt400 wrote I don't understand why a game's subscription numbers has to naturally decrease if the developer is providing incentive for subscribers to stay. What has happened at Blizzard is the complete opposite: not only are they not providing sufficient incentive, but they are actively alienating and destroying their user-base. Perhaps WoW reached a point where too many of its consumers were young, unintelligent teenagers (or perhaps this is a symptom of the progresson of our larger society, but that's another topic) that couldn't be bothered to think for themselves. Blizzard then realized that they wanted to cater to this new majority and so they did what they thought would best do so. And they failed. They made a bad decision.

That's basically the gist of the matter; Blizzard took decisions in order to cater for the masses, all the while indirectly alienating the dedicated (not necessarily hardcore) player base. Take a look at the subscriber chart across expansions:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/5063-WoW-Down-to-5-6-Million-Subscribers

People have been bashing WoD to oblivion whereas the drops have been happening since Cataclysm. Cataclysm is the expansion when blizzard started caving in to demands on making the game friendlier, at which point it was all downhill. If we assume that blizzard has destroyed their game by alienating their player base, we can easily also take into account what would've happened if they had not catered for the none-raiding none-hardcore none-pro-pvp portion of their subscribers. So while we can easily blame the failure on dumbing the game down, I don't think we can be sure that it's the sole reason this happened.

I myself believe a major part of the drop was due to the story; Look at the chart again and see the climb in subscriptions during MoP ~900K whereas the climb in subscriptions during WoD was ~2.6M. I like to take that as simple evidence that people prefer the "Warcraft, Orcs and Humans" lore over anything else.

I seriously hope "Legion" will remedy this problem.

There's no doubt it would not be easy to create these realms but Blizzard is a truly massive company with massive resources. There is no way this task would be too difficult or costly for them.

You should consider that at the time when WoW was massively successful, blizzard only had to maintain 2 games. Now they have 6 and while they are of different Genre and different teams, I bet it's not helping the situation. Not to mention losing many of the original staff that made WoW successful.

tt400 wroteDon't join WoW now. It is at it's lowest point since the game was created. Wait until the reviews for Legion or until Blizzard makes legacy realms.

-Quick reply to that is that NOW is the best time to try the game cause now you can buy it for a cheap price and for a new player that never played the game you have TONES of content to do (11 years worth of content) since every little thing the game would be new for a new player.

-About the legacy server discussion, I find other than the maintenance problem a problem that a vanella server(s) would not live long.
lets say they release there patches the same speed they did originally,
what will happen after 2 years when the expansion life ends??
they gonna keep the last patch for ever??
are they gonna release TBC then?? and the WoTLK and Cata and so on ??
so my point is if it's gonna be only vanella, you think blizzard will invest in (old) servers and in a maintenance teams for EU/US/NA for just a 2-3 years project??
and when a player go for the vanella server and be done with it, is he gonna come to the NEW expantion?? cause technically they would need to start all over again and there won't be any char progression feel for there Main char they played 2-3 years on.

-I am with the idea that Blizzard should just see what ppl enjoyed in vanella/TBC and try to implement it in there new stuff and ofc keep supporting the expansion and not abandon it half way throw.
I have high hopes for Legion, cause from what I see is that they are taking a lot of steps in the right direction.
Last, about the order halls, ppl on the alfa that don't just make rage vids for more money are saying that you only need to go there for 5 min every couple of days, on top of it's not a single player instance, this is nothing like the garrison.

Yeah seriously if there order halls are the same as garrisons I'm going to rage at them.
Once thing I really dislike is the fact that they gave all classes the same artifact. I play a Paladin, if there was an Ashbringer, I would want to earn in and not just get it because i'm a special snowflake.

Totoro wroteYeah seriously if there order halls are the same as garrisons I'm going to rage at them.
Once thing I really dislike is the fact that they gave all classes the same artifact. I play a Paladin, if there was an Ashbringer, I would want to earn in and not just get it because i'm a special snowflake.

I am so glad I will get the Ashbringer cause now I can refer to all the other classes/specs as ''Peasants'' !

I'm in Legion Beta by the way, if anyone has any specific questions, feel free to ask, i'll try my best to answer them. Please note though that i will not be leveling any character so make sure you take that into consideration.

xterm wroteI'm in Legion Beta by the way, if anyone has any specific questions, feel free to ask, i'll try my best to answer them. Please note though that i will not be leveling any character so make sure you take that into consideration.

One question, does it suck?

Well it's too soon for me to tell especially given the massive issues with NPC phasing that the beta realms are witnessing.

Is there anything that stands out so far? No.

What I can say so far is that i particularly like the ability pruning that happened.
The new transmog system looks nice too (You no longer need to store mass items just for transmog).
The new animations are sweet.
Demon Hunters are very "swift" and "jumpy", but there's nothing original about them, monks were far more original.
Demon Hunters abilities are very chaotic at the moment, still need work imho.
The new artifact leveling system looks interesting.
Class halls don't particularly look that interesting.
There's a nice new "npc announcement overhead interface" that shows an animated image of the NPC talking.

This is all icing though.

Let's hope Legion offers more than that. Especially in terms of end game because I don't feel like reaching level 110, play two months and complete everything I wanted to complete. Also, let's hope it's harder this time too.

Thanks for the updates Xterm keep'em coming!

Played alpha and beta now.. leveling is smooth with nice dungeons and quests...raid testing soon playing balance druid atm, which i find very nice also tried resto shammy..
Lets just hope for competitive raiding that doesnt require going hardcore again. The artifact system is epic and very rewarding, legendaries with nice item effects will ruin the game in my opinion and destroy the balance between some raiding guilds with RNG taking some role.

My guilds schedule is 14 hours a week top 100 ranks .

All i want is a nice raiding environment and harsh bosses.
P.S. looking for a dps dk with excessive experience and big boy logs.

Thx hope to cu guys in legion

Thanks for your feedback Ploto! Let us know how the raiding goes :)

Also, if you have any input on PvP I would really appreciate it. Happy hunting.

"FOR THE HODOR" Looking For Raiders.

Lately some friends of mine have made a new guild (horde) and are looking to raid when Legion is out. Our server is on Karazhan / Lightning’s Blade / Deathwing / The Maelstrom (since they are connected realms). We are also aiming for PvP action. We currently have a Tank DK and maybe a guardian druid. Healers (if the druid doesn't go tank he will be healer). Dps Enhancement Shaman and warlock. We are aiming for 12-13 man, BUT we need to be active. I'm not looking to add over 50 people and only 5 are active. Your alts are welcome. Since we are all from Lebanon or live in the middle east. Fixing a good raid time wont be a problem.

We are looking for:
Tank: Guardian Druid.
Healers: Druid, Shaman, Priest, and Paladin. (one of the healers should have OS dps in some fights.)
DPS: Mage, Warrior, Shaman(can be the OS), Hunter, Demon hunter, and druid or rogue.

Thanks

My Undead Shadow Priest is on Kazzak if that works. I'm not sure how guilds and different realms function honestly.

Totoro wroteMy Undead Shadow Priest is on Kazzak if that works. I'm not sure how guilds and different realms function honestly.

Can you go as healer or OS as healer?