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Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private server

en.nostalrius.org

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Re: Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private server

#91

Post by paulmd »

zanny wrote: post #36
kibwen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal intuition is that splitting your userbase like this is disastrous for a game in the long-term (to say nothing of my intuition that 90% of people longing for "the old days" are just looking for a quick hit of nostalgia, with no intent to pay long-term). However, it's worth mentioning that Runescape now officially offers a "classic" version of the game alongside (and separate from) the modern version, which…

You know that is an argument about expansions in the first place? Significant player dropoffs in WoW happen in the last patches before new expansions. The userbase usually spikes up on new releases, but almost always drops lower every time, predominately because new releases gate players who were on old versions against those on the new one. Friends stop being interested, unsub, and never come back because the player…

On the flip side, you've got the EVE Online model. Expansions are released every 6-8 months as "super-patches". Like every MMO it's mandatory to be playing on the latest version, but everyone gets it for "free".

It's pretty simple to avoid the problem of having players scattered across multiple content sets and levelcaps: stop bleeding your players dry. What are subscription fees paying for if not ongoing development of additional content?

IMO you should either charge for expansions or charge subscription fees - but not both.

Re: Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private server

#92

Post by JackdawX »

goda90 wrote: post #80

My friend logged on last night to see the response to the decision and found a huge number of players online. They were gathering together and mourning, doing things together one last time. It's kinda sad to think about a community destroyed.

Here is a gif of the action from the reddit thread:

https://gyazo.com/945aa97382bd4a2f4e49a662b5ff6399

This is more populated than any live server event since the dark portal opened (the first time).

Re: Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private server

#93

Post by Shivetya »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #16
kibwen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal intuition is that splitting your userbase like this is disastrous for a game in the long-term (to say nothing of my intuition that 90% of people longing for "the old days" are just looking for a quick hit of nostalgia, with no intent to pay long-term). However, it's worth mentioning that Runescape now officially offers a "classic" version of the game alongside (and separate from) the modern version, which…

If done at least semi-officially it could equally be a way to bring back lapsed players as much as any splitting of user base. Many leave in major updates or exciting new releases. WoW lost loads since LK. In other games LotRO horse riding update lost 30% of the users. GW2 redesigned for the intellectually challenged. I'm sure some would want to come back to the game before it was wrecked. Maybe not so much GW2 - it…

Still to put WOW in perspective with other games you list, WOW's population loss and gains around expansions tends to be higher in number than other games ever achieve.

Games age and taste change too. Blizzard has done an amazing job to see so many millions of players interested. The one surprise to me is how low of level their free play is limited to.

Re: Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private server

#94

Post by ewzimm »

eterm wrote: post #59
venomsnake wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last good patch was Ulduar for me. ICC was big disappointment. Ulduar was the game at its peak. All downhill from there. I still hate how they crippled the hard modes afterwards.

Everyone has a patch they loved and was a peak for them. There are people who joined during cataclysm and think that was the best before "Panda" ruined the game. Plenty of people think BC was the peak and LK ruined everything. I personally think ICC was amazing and the peak, because that's when I played. MMO experiences are always the best when they are novel, there is something really special about the first time yo…

Maybe it's because my first MMO was Neverwinter Nights, a 1991 game that took the Gold Box DnD experience online, but I think WoW has only gotten better with every expansion. When it came out, most people I knew disliked it for being too simple but agreed that it had better atmosphere and polish than any other MMO. It felt like MMO Disneyland. The initial mechanics for raids and PvP were limited, but as the designers gained experience, they kept coming up with new and interesting mechanics, and the art and atmosphere maintained their high standards throughout the years. I haven't had time in the last few years to spend on high-end raiding, but I've heard nothing but praise for the raids from the top players.

The only place I see it failing is figuring out a way to keep communities together over the years. Most people's main experience with the game is social, and if your group can't stay cohesive, and few can for 12 years, you're going to get a diminished experience. It's simply an impossible task to figure out a way to keep gamers together for that long.

Other people will complain about parts of the game being too easy, but I always dismiss those out of hand. The high end parts are more challenging than ever, and the existence of diverse content is nothing against the game design. I love that I can log on for a few minutes here and there and even only play Pokemon if that's what I want in the moment. As an old-school MMO person who never saw WoW through the eyes of novelty, my perspective is that no game has managed to maintain such high quality and consistency while continually reinventing itself over such a long time. The fact that it's still the number one MMO by far and maintains a subscription model while everyone else is going free-to-play is testament to its quality. I think it's a piece of software that any developer should look at for inspiration on how to keep people engaged for a very long time.

Re: Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private server

#95

Post by minimaxir »

Margh wrote: post #81
bitwize wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blizzard isn't interested in "building a living world" and never has been. From its inception the purpose of WoW has been to farm the likes of you for gold.

And how do they continue to "farm" you for gold if you unsubscribe because you no longer feel a part of the world?

That is exactly why subscriptions had dropped sharply after the release of Warlords of Draenor. (the endgame was designed around the antisocial garrisons, a mistake which they have scaled back in the upcoming expansion)

Re: Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private server

#96

Post by byuu »

speeder wrote: post #88
Meekro wrote: post #4

I used to be involved with this sort of thing, and it's actually pretty interesting stuff. There are enormous open source projects, operating largely out of public sight, that have recreated the WoW server backend in most of its glory. The lower-level content works quite well these days, though a lot of complex raid scripts are missing or broken. This one is probably the most popular: https://github.com/TrinityCore/T…

I was involved in the Ultima Online scene. I submitted RunUO patches to our local forks (I then had no idea how to help with "upstream" stuff), and I also was fan of Sphere based servers. Also I GMed a couple servers, made maps, scripts, RPG Scenes, researched lore of the series to teach to people... One thing that happened interestingly, is that several servers over time ended rolling back expansions, even if they a…

Yeah, Ultima Online should be a case study into how to completely destroy a game.

I loved T2A so much that I tried all the way up to Samurai Empire to stay with it, but it was hopeless. By that point, they turned what I still believe was the most original MMO out there into a tepid World of Warcraft clone. Only it could never compete on graphics, and everyone just played the same five boss "Doom Gauntlet" on auto-repeat for months on end to get psychotically overpowered gear that lasted forever and couldn't be stolen or lost.

It was so great back in the day. Some of my best memories were playing that game. I get really weird nostalgia in the truest sense just listening to the old MIDI files from the game. The classic servers just don't capture the mood with ~800 people on at most. That world is so huge that even pre-T2A, 800 people would mean maybe you'd see three people at the Britannia bank and that's it.

Re: Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private server

#97

Post by zipwitch »

Margh wrote: post #81
bitwize wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blizzard isn't interested in "building a living world" and never has been. From its inception the purpose of WoW has been to farm the likes of you for gold.

And how do they continue to "farm" you for gold if you unsubscribe because you no longer feel a part of the world?

By getting a small subset of players to buy premium cosmetic content and in-game gold. Blizzard came up with a clever mechanism involving game time and other players for the latter, both in order to obfuscate what they were doing somewhat and to give them a little more control over their economy.

The Blizzard Warcraft Store: https://us.battle.net/shop/en/product/game/wow

Information on the "WoW Token" mechanism for turning $ into gold: http://www.tentonhammer.com/guides/guide-to-buying-and-selli...

Re: Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private server

#98

Post by bpicolo »

kibwen wrote: post #11
ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue that the Lich King was the last "good" patch for WoW. What I've never understood though was there is clearly some residual demand for "down rev" versions of the game where the mechanics favored a more engaged play style, why not facilitate it? How much does it really cost to run a single realm at the Vanilla, TBC, and LK levels? So many new players where their first experience with Onxyia was soloing…

My personal intuition is that splitting your userbase like this is disastrous for a game in the long-term (to say nothing of my intuition that 90% of people longing for "the old days" are just looking for a quick hit of nostalgia, with no intent to pay long-term). However, it's worth mentioning that Runescape now officially offers a "classic" version of the game alongside (and separate from) the modern version, which…

Everquest started doing this long ago (~2006 I believe?), where people could progress starting at the first expansion. They would slowly move a server through the expansions. EQ2 looks to have it now as well. It's pretty successful in context, if I remember right, though naturally much of the original Everquest magic wasn't quite there

Re: Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private server

#99

Post by marodox »

fabulist wrote: post #52
yarou wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate on your reasoning? The people playing on Nostalrius aren't suddenly going to switch to the latest expansion, so there's literally zero incentive for them to go after it.

It seems likely to me that they executed this maneuver for similar reasons to the kik/azer fiasco that happened on NPM; if they didn't sue, they would lose their trademarks. I think a better response would've been to purchase Nostalrius (the organization), and offer it as a value-add for their players. But it seems clear Blizzard is extracting whatever value it can from WoW before it dies, rather than truly serving t…

Why can't Blizzard just license the older versions for some minimal fee then?

Re: Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private server

#100

Post by debacle »

Meekro wrote: post #4

I used to be involved with this sort of thing, and it's actually pretty interesting stuff. There are enormous open source projects, operating largely out of public sight, that have recreated the WoW server backend in most of its glory. The lower-level content works quite well these days, though a lot of complex raid scripts are missing or broken. This one is probably the most popular: https://github.com/TrinityCore/T…

> It's pretty rare for Blizzard to go after these companies in court

Blizzard is actually the company that set the precedent of going after these companies in court (bnetd [1]), and I can't think of a single company that has gone after these types of projects (private servers) more than Blizzard.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd

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