The Nostalrius Vanilla WoW Servers Are Returning on December 17

[Janaschi]

That's the problem, though - why would they be looking for that perfect out? I had pointed it out earlier in this thread, but Blizzard has stated before that they were never interested in vanilla servers; especially after they made the claim that they lost a lot of the code that they'd need.

And since they sent out the C&D, it has been about half a year now, and all of that cooperation they were talking about doing with the Nostalrius team, has turned out to be a lot of smoke.

So if they really are looking for that perfect out, then they never intended to do anything with the vanilla servers, anyways. At least, not in any sort of meaningful way.

I could be wrong - don't get me wrong. But this whole deal has reeked of complacency.

I don't think that Blizzard ever bought into the idea that vanilla servers could be worthwhile. I can't blame them, because I don't think they'd be worthwhile from a monetary standpoint either. But they were willing to talk about it for one of a few reasons. They either wanted to PR/community boost from them, they wanted to gauge interest in other offerings, or they were just blowing smoke. No matter which one of those three ideas you buy into, it's hard to conjure up a scenario where Blizzard would want to invest much in vanilla servers.

But let's assume that what they told the Nostalrius team was accurate, and they wanted to investigate the idea of official vanilla servers. They would have had about six months to do so. That's nowhere near enough time for them to evaluate the entire scope of what the offering would entail. So this leads to one of two conclusions: Either the Blizzard folks were just humoring the vanilla server requests with no intention of ever coming through, or the Nostalrius folks just screwed the pooch on the idea. Either can be true, but neither is a good outcome for the community that wanted these servers. The best thing for the Nostalrius team to do would have been to wait and see what happened, not to get upset and sabotage the idea when it didn't happen on the schedule they wanted it to.

That's not to say they couldn't have released the source code later, but to do so this soon seems like a really bad decision.

That's a point - and I should elaborate on my position more:

I understand exactly why they would not be interested in vanilla servers. They are a niche market for a reason, and nostalgia does not necessarily mean an avenue of profit. If this would have been their reason alone, then their position would have been easily justifiable, although they could have just left the matter alone, too.

The problem, is that they made this grand-show of future cooperate with the Nostalrius team, when it's clear that they're not really interested, suggesting duplicity on the matter.

As for the second scenario that you suggested, I do have to disagree with it - cooperation means being in consistent contact. It means that the two parties are trying to establish a foundation to work off of. There doesn't have to be results immediately - but cooperation does dictate that the other party is not left in the dark entirely until Blizzard/ActiVision decides that the matter is finally worth their time.

 

[mythgraven]

I think I can safely say that Elysium has my respect.

They knew what happened. They know what will happen. Yet, they have the balls to stand up to ActiVision's legal team, and provide a niche service at the same time, for free.

You're... you're kidding me, right?

I guess I will have to respectfully disagree. Balls, they got. Respect, is another story. I'm not going to even begin to climb the mountain of "It's Blizzards legal property", but instead will focus on the notion that after a multi-billion dollar company tells you "No, you may not use our I.P. in this manner", not only did Nostalrius go up, and stay up, only to be shut down by Blizzard in the end...

But now Act Two is going to give it a go?

I don't deny your statement that it's ballsy... I just feel it's awfully stupid as well. Specifically with the super public announcement of the whole thing. It's ballsy to announce that you plan to kick a mother bear in her face while holding one of her cubs in your arms, and you don't even have to be actually legally allowed to do that...

But that doesn't make it a smart idea. Or one I see as respectable.

 

[Janaschi]

I think I can safely say that Elysium has my respect.

They knew what happened. They know what will happen. Yet, they have the balls to stand up to ActiVision's legal team, and provide a niche service at the same time, for free.

You're... you're kidding me, right?

I guess I will have to respectfully disagree. Balls, they got. Respect, is another story. I'm not going to even begin to climb the mountain of "It's Blizzards legal property", but instead will focus on the notion that after a multi-billion dollar company tells you "No, you may not use our I.P. in this manner", not only did Nostalrius go up, and stay up, only to be shut down by Blizzard in the end...

But now Act Two is going to give it a go?

I don't deny your statement that it's ballsy... I just feel it's awfully stupid as well. Specifically with the super public announcement of the whole thing. It's ballsy to announce that you plan to kick a mother bear in her face while holding one of her cubs in your arms, and you don't even have to be actually legally allowed to do that...

But that doesn't make it a smart idea. Or one I see as respectable.

No, you're right - they have balls, but it's too little from an unknown party to suggest that what they did really deserves outright respect.

And I also agree that what they did is stupid - I mentioned earlier that I wonder how long it will take for them to get shut down.

Always good to be reminded to use proper wording.

 

[Janaschi]

A little research will never hurt you

Indeed.

So do some research and fix this:

Ah. I get it. You read a story or two about the recent developments, and now you think you know everything that's been going on. Not the same thing as being a part of the Nostalrius community, and following the updates near religiously.

The vanilla WoW experience, under Nostalrius, has been around for quite a bit of time. Before this legal debacle ever happened, the Blizzard development team for WoW has been asked in interviews, numerous times, if they ever planned on releasing vanilla servers of their own.

Their initial response, is that the concept is literally not worth their time, that the servers would cost poor them too much money to cater to a niche market, and that the WoW community should never expect such a thing to ever happen.

Then this mess happened, and they... 'sort-of' back-tracked a bit, saying that they 'might' work with the Nostalrius team to get a vanilla experience placed back into the community's hands.

And since then, they have literally said nothing, publicly. Nothing. It has been months now, and Blizzard/ActiVision have made absolutely no attempts at working with the Nostalrius team, which is why they got so frustrated and released their work to another team, instead.

So, yes, it absolutely 'has' been made abundantly clear that Blizzard/ActiVision are either taking their sweet ass time, or have absolutely no plans on ever releasing vanilla servers, as was their original stance on the matter.

We'll just have to see what happens from here-on-out.

Let me rephrase myself: A little relevant research will never hurt you.

Which is being emphasized more and more by how our discussion is becoming more and more irrelevant, all because I offended you or something. Sure, I was being rude - but that's because I am not going to ignore the implication of your OP wording. Similar to how someone corrected me on my wording just a bit ago, and I admitted to fault. But being rude isn't a great excuse to detract from the original discussion.

 

[Janaschi]

But being rude isn't a great excuse to detract from the original discussion.

Contradicts

Ah. I get it. You read a story or two about the recent developments, and now you think you know everything that's been going on. Not the same thing as being a part of the Nostalrius community, and following the updates near religiously.

I keep noticing how you're cherry-picking my words. And the cherry-picking that you do, for instance here, is nonsensical. What you quoted is entirely in-line with the original discussion that we were having - even more so in the paragraph after that - the one that, you know, you failed to quote, too.

At this point, I might end up doing what you claimed you were doing, yet you immediately back-tracked on: Stop entertaining this discussion. But not because you are being rude, but because you keep using red herrings to derail the original conversation.

Get back to the original discussion about the vanilla servers, and we can continue talking. Or don't. Either one, really.

 

[Seishisha]

Just speaking as someone who used to play wow every single day, to someone who hates how the game has changed and can no longer play it. The idea of legacy servers has always interested me, but i've never gone ahead with trying out the fan run ones simply because of what happened to nostalrius. I dont want to invest hundreds of hours into a character and then have a blizzard lawsuit smash the server into the ground.

With that in mind i do wonder how many like myself would actualy come back to wow with a legitmate/official legacy server, either ran by blizzard or endorsed by them, with a guarentee* they wouldnt just shut it down later.

(*not an unlimited guarentee obviously that would be obsurd, but maybe something on the lines of retaining a certain sub number for 6 months and if it couldnt then server could be terminated)


Calling it niche is probably true but there is very little data on how many players would actualy return if given an offical legacy server. Wow's player base has litteraly lost millions of subs over the years, i think nostalrius had somthing like 800,000 registered accounts before the axe fell, how many more people could be realy be out there, would an offical legacy server reach multiple millions of players? If so i'd hardly call it niche then.

Pure speculation on that last part obviously still worth pondering i feel.

 

[Vahir]

Vanilla WoW is a brilliant game that you can't play short of private servers. It's not immoral to use them, given that you can't play that game otherwise, and I'm guessing most people using them have actually bought the game.

I refuse to believe that with all of Blizzard's legal resources they can't come up with a solution that both supports a legacy server and their own IP rights. That's no excuse.

Blizzard only has itself to blame if it thinks people are "stealing" its content.

Calling it niche is probably true but there is very little data on how many players would actualy return if given an offical legacy server. Wow's player base has litteraly lost millions of subs over the years, i think nostalrius had somthing like 800,000 registered accounts before the axe fell, how many more people could be realy be out there, would an offical legacy server reach multiple millions of players? If so i'd hardly call it niche then.

Nostalrius was almost at the million mark; Elysium is building on that, AND an almost mainstream hype. I imagine the population could very well pass the million in the first few months of launch. I know many people who use private servers in real life. It's really not niche.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Joy. Now people can go back to waiting around hours to herd enough cats to do 40man AQ so maybe one more of your guild wont' be called a scrub for not having all purples. Again.

I seriously don't see the appeal of these servers.

 

[Vahir]

Joy. Now people can go back to waiting around hours to herd enough cats to do 40man AQ so maybe one more of your guild wont' be called a scrub for not having all purples. Again.

I seriously don't see the appeal of these servers.

Well, good for you. Some of us love them.