🚀 go-pugleaf

On 12 Apr 2016 11:49:18 GMT, Urbin <urbin@invalid.invalid> wrote:

>On Tue, 12 Apr 2016 10:43:31 +0100, Catriona R wrote:
>>  On Tue, 12 Apr 2016 09:29:11 -0000 (UTC), Lewis
>> <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> wrote:
>> 
>> >In message <d0a705ed-3c6d-4667...@googlegroups.com> 
>> >  Shinnokxz <shin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> And that's that with Nostalrius. Too bad.
>> >
>> >> Though it appears the vanilla server community and outcry has reached
>> >> levels it's never been before. Sooner or later Blizzard is going to
>> >> have to breach the subject and offer something up.
>> >
>> >No they will not.
>> >
>> >> The shutdown was typical Blizzard show, but really pissed on the
>> >> people looking for a reason to even bother with WoW anymore. I suspect
>> >> when Legion is released and subscribers have reached an all time low
>> >> post-xpac release, then Blizzard will consider giving it a whirl.
>> >
>> >No. That is never going to happen.
>> 
>>  That's a pretty confident assertion, I don't think anyone can say
>>  "never" with Blizzard.
>
>While that is true...
>
>>  Times change, and right now they're throwing away money by not offering a
>>  service which would have interested a LOT of people
>
>... but I am not convinced that operating vanilla servers would be
>economically viable for them. I don't know the inner workings of Blizzard
>but being a software developer I can tell you that at any company I have
>ever worked at, it would have taken quite a lot of effort to revive a
>software version of 10 years before. Apart from that effort, it would also
>mean running the servers (and while a lot of that is certainly automated,
>there is sure to be some human work required as well) and some kind of
>support infrastructure.
>
>And 15k (or even 150k) players sounds like a lot, that would justify a
>handful of servers and I doubt that the economies of scale would work for
>that low a number.
>
>So even considering people would be willing to pay a full subscription to
>play on vanilla servers, I am not sure it would pay.

It's open to debate, depending a lot on numbers, but the interest
level is very much there, so it's certainly something that they should
be at least considering I think. The total accounts was 800k+, I
wouldn't count on that many, but the 150k active, yes, I reckon when
it was made known to everyone (private servers really aren't that
wellknown unless you're seeking them out - or weren't, until the last
few days...), and given as a legitimate option that isn't under threat
of being shut down, I think it'd be more than 150k playing, especially
in content droughts like the present. 

>Even so, it might be a very good move PR wise to offer vanilla servers
>themselves, but considering how Blizzard is run these days, I doubt they
>would be willing to lose money to satisfy a small part of their player base.

Well, that depends on how small though - they seem happy to spend ages
developing raids that are only used by a small part of the playerbase,
after all! ;-) Admittedly LFR has opened it up a bit, but was it
Sunwell or Naxx that was only seen by 1% of the then population?
Something ridiculous like that... given we're most likely under 5
million population now, it'd only take >50k people interested to make
it more worthwhile than that raid was, if we're judging value by
percentages :-P

>So I my take on the situation is pretty much the same as Lewis': I don't see
>them offering vanilla servers (though I am hedging my bets by being less
>certain about it :-)
>
>I suspect they just shut down the private servers for two reasons:
>- those servers were violating their IP (even if it was an old version of
>  their IP)

Understandable, yes, although somewhat harsh, given it's a no longer
accessible version. I'd consider it entirely fair if there was a way
of accessing that content, but there simply isn't any more, much of it
was outright removed with Cataclysm. Don't get me wrong; I totally
understand the legality side of things, though.

>- they might have feared that they were losing paying customers fed up with
>  current content to those private servers (and I think they probably were;
>  I just don't think those customers will come back as paying customers now
>  that the private servers are gone)

As with other forms of piracy, I doubt the removal of the illegal
option will make people pay for the legal one if they don't consider
it worth the money; they'll just do without or find an alternative. Of
the people I know who played on Nostalrius, I (and several others) am
*still* subbed and have remained so throughout. Some others had
already quit retail after running out of stuff to do in Draenor and
were waiting for Legion; they'd have most likely been playing other
games entirely in the absence of Nostalrius. And some others quit
retail years back and hate what it now is, saying they will never play
it again. 

It's only the 2nd of the three categories who *might* be lost subs to
Blizzard, and I suspect free to play MMOs would have won those people
instead, from what I know of them.