Blizzard responds to Nostalrius discussion

[MiRai]

I would most certainly love to multibox the rougher, more tedious content (e.g. 5/10-man dungeons), but it'd also be very easy for a multiboxer to actually raid with 30-35 other people (and include other multiboxers!) if we could go back to those days.

Arguably, you can still do this in LFR, but... eh...

However, I have no desire for a "pristine" realm.

I read the wiki on it and says they have between 8000 and 15000 online. Is that alot? For Blizzard to do something like that it seems like it will cost millions and millions just to earn them thousands and thousands.

But at least they're discussing it.

24/7 or just peak prime-time?

A few months ago, after its 1-year anniversary and prior to any C&D letters, Nostalrius released an infographic showing their numbers - http://i.imgur.com/jxtOQlu.jpg

Whether the information in that graphic is true or not is not something anyone outside of their team could possibly know, but if you've watched any of the "good-bye" videos over the past few weeks I would say that it's probably accurate. At the time of shutdown the numbers were apparently 800,000+ registered accounts and 150,000+ active—at least according to the Change.org petition that is currently running.

However, what I've read over the past few weeks (since I've been trying to keep up with it all as best as I could), retail servers back in vanilla had about a 2500 player cap according to Mark Kern—who is the ex-lead WoW developer for vanilla/classic—but I've also heard other people post this information randomly on the internet throughout the years before I had ever heard it from Mark Kern. So, 8,000-15,000 players on a single realm would be incredibly overpopulated, and this was what Ironforge looked like during its final minutes on the PvE realm, which was an additional realm opened after the original PvP realm to help offload those only looking for PvE.

Others have also pointed out that Nostalrius's numbers only account for a 10-day window, whereas any company reporting a subscriber base does it over a 30-day window, so it's likely a lot higher than that infographic shows (again, assuming it's true).

As for 150k active, my understanding is that was measured over a 10 day window. The industry standard for measuring active is 30 days. I bet the 30 day number is higher, but even at 150k, during vanilla WoW we only expected around 450k active subscribers, and it would have been a huge success.

Source

Did anyone here box during Vanilla? I two boxed until Wrath.. but I did it old school way until I discovered this forum during BC and the joy of 5 boxing! I would definitely make a group for that! What sucks though.. You wouldn't be able to make a paly+shaman team if it were a true vanilla realm. Were Bears tanks good in vanilla?

I didn't start multiboxing until TBC, and it was me just running two accounts and moving between them so that I could power level a second Warrior to avoid having to constantly respec my main Warrior.

I don't think any tanks were viable for any serious progression beside Warriors, but I remember playing with a Ret Paladin back in the early days and he tanked all of the instances. So... /shrug

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I don't think any tanks were viable for any serious progression beside Warriors, but I remember playing with a Ret Paladin back in the early days and he tanked all of the instances. So... /shrug

I remember running LBRS with a shaman tank back in vanilla...

[Kruschpakx4]

i doubt that this will have success, remember that the best gear was only obtainable by 40 man raids or playing pvp 24/7 with pocket healers or account sharing. Ok oneshotting cloth as enhance with random windfury proccs was fun and the world was more dangerous because everyone had shit gear except the few in top raid guilds. Other than that i would prefer bc/wotlk servers anytime.

without lfr/new honor system not a single casual (90% of todays wow population) is gonna play this

[Svpernova09]

i doubt that this will have success, remember that the best gear was only obtainable by 40 man raids or playing pvp 24/7 with pocket healers or account sharing. Ok oneshotting cloth as enhance with random windfury proccs was fun and the world was more dangerous because everyone had shit gear except the few in top raid guilds. Other than that i would prefer bc/wotlk servers anytime.

without lfr/new honor system not a single casual (90% of todays wow population) is gonna play this

wait until they see how useful meeting stones were in vanilla!

[Ughmahedhurtz]

wait until they see how useful meeting stones were in vanilla!

LOL! +1 internets to you, sir.

[Kruschpakx4]

Casuals wont be able to use the meeting stone because if you click more than once the summon aborts, I don't know if that has ever been fixed but if not it's absolutely impossible for todays casuals to execute a teleport via meeting stone

[emitchell109]

Casuals wont be able to use the meeting stone because if you click more than once the summon aborts, I don't know if that has ever been fixed but if not it's absolutely impossible for todays casuals to execute a teleport via meeting stone

He has a point...
Sadly

[EaTCarbS]

i doubt that this will have success, remember that the best gear was only obtainable by 40 man raids or playing pvp 24/7 with pocket healers or account sharing. Ok oneshotting cloth as enhance with random windfury proccs was fun and the world was more dangerous because everyone had shit gear except the few in top raid guilds. Other than that i would prefer bc/wotlk servers anytime.

without lfr/new honor system not a single casual (90% of todays wow population) is gonna play this

Appealing to the lowest common denominator is probably a reason most original players left the game. I remember when getting gear was actually an accomplishment, compared to getting a full set in a week with WOD.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Appealing to the lowest common denominator is probably a reason most original players left the game. I remember when getting gear was actually an accomplishment, compared to getting a full set in a week with WOD.

A fair point. The most fun I had in-game was WotLK doing justice points in heroics on my 5x prot paladin team and getting those achievements. I had to grind the easy ones first to get the JPs so my gear was up to the point of being useful, which took me a few months, but I never felt like I was being gimmick-bombed by "we're too lazy to balance difficulty anymore so we're just gonna make everyone jump around like chimpanzees on a OD of snickers bars and red bull" crap that started in Cataclysm.

[Bigfish]

Appealing to the lowest common denominator is probably a reason most original players left the game. I remember when getting gear was actually an accomplishment, compared to getting a full set in a week with WOD.

I don't think appealing to the commons was the issue. Heck, part of the reason WoW took off was because they dropped the "you must group to level" aspect that was common place in MMOs before that. Even Raidfinder is just entry level "you saw the boss of the expansion die, now quit or run the real raids". I'd blame the general decline on 2 aspects: long content droughts and the inability to pick up where you left off. Content droughts are pretty self explanatory. Going more than a year with no new content while paying 15$ a month is unacceptable. The big one for me though is that I can't pick up where I left off. Quit during cataclysm before downing Deathwing? Well you're not going to kill him at a level appropriate point now. Go level through the current content and grab your welfare epics from the catch up zone? Suddenly handling the last raid boss feels like a chore you forgot to do than the climax of an expansion.

Want to just level a new character and see the world again? Well 1-60 got replaced with chronologically disjointed mess that makes no sense, and was pushed to make even less sense as you out level and out power zones halfway through them, requiring players to pace themselves and do grey quests if they want to see the world, heirloom their way through dungeons if they want to skip it, or pay 60$ for a level boost.

The appeal of Vanilla is that convenience didn't kill conflict. I would say that's the number 1 lesson the current dev team needs to consider, although at this point I kind of wonder if they even have that much of an interest in the game. Really feels like they're developing the game because that's their job and they're not going to stop developing for their former flagship series, but no one has a clear vision of how to go forward. I mean we didn't have this problem until after wrath, when Outland and Northrend had been explored and we'd dealt with the remaining conflict of Warcraft 3.