Now there's a piece of news I didn't expect to see in my newsfeed this morning: Blizzard is getting Nostalrius shut down. Of course they have every right to do so and I do think that everyone who makes the decision to roll on a private server has to be prepared for that kind of thing to happen sooner or later, but it's still kind of surprising to see it happen at this precise moment and to Nostalrius in particular, mostly because unlike other private server projects that don't hide the fact that they enjoy making money off their work by integrating cash shops into the game and the like, Nost prided itself in being a non-profit work of love.
On the other hand, in some ways I'm not surprised at all. Nostalrius was increasingly becoming bad PR for Blizzard. When you've previously claimed that nobody really wants Vanilla servers, a single one of such servers boasting 800,000 accounts and 150,000 active players looks kind of awkward. That's the population of an entire niche MMO right there, on a single private server! Plus, Nostalrius players were absolute zealots. They were everywhere and they were passionate. If I had a penny for every YouTube comment I've seen that urged people to start playing on Nostalrius... I would have a not insignificant amount of money. They were genuine too, not just advertising for the sake of it. I remember the commenter who said that in five days of playing on Nostalrius he had made more friends than he's made in retail WoW in the past five years, or the one who compared all the achievements of his level hundred character to his poor Vanilla alt, whose bags were always full and who couldn't afford a mount, and who elaborated on why he loved the latter so much more.
"Nostalrius" had become shorthand for "playing classic WoW on a private server". The other day I even saw someone link to an article in a print magazine that referenced it. A YouTuber I follow and who played on Nostalrius commented that before his Twitch stream got shut down the other day, his Nost stream had risen to fourth place among the most popular World of Warcraft streams. Basically, Nostalrius and its community were really good at promoting their cause - in fact, they were too good at it. I don't think Blizzard decided to issue them with a shutdown notice because of financial concerns. They know that those players won't love them for it. But Nostalrius was making a point of making live WoW look bad and the mainstream was starting to take notice. I can see why they couldn't let that stand.
For all the forum wars and "my server is better than yours" sniping I've seen over time (even in my own comment section!), I genuinely feel for all the Nostalrius players who lost their home today. We are united in our love for the game that once was and is no more. Here's hoping that they may find a new home, whether it's on Kronos, a different private realm or in a different game altogether.
The Nost team, ever so optimistic and proving themselves to be fans to the end, actually started a petition for official classic server support to submit to Mike Morhaine. I'm fairly certain that it will be completely ignored. Blizzard pride themselves in their polish and in their expertise when it comes to what's (supposedly) fun and what isn't. Lending any sort of credence to the idea of classic servers would mean admitting that - just maybe - not everything they've done with World of Warcraft over the past ten years was a good idea and that actually, they did make it worse in some respects. That would be unacceptable. Those of us who loved previous iterations of the game and have felt lost in the last few expansions are just like a clingy ex to Blizzard that can't let go, long after the company has got over us and moved on to new pastures/customers.
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May It Please the Court
2 hours ago
I think you hit the nail on the head in regards to why they did this, it's pretty much Blizz being butthurt their official gospel was so blatantly shown to be...questionable.
ReplyDeleteFor me personally the big question is how long Blizz can go on to ignore the way the MMORPG market is going.
It seems to be shrinking, and most older titles of note have some sort of 'nostalgia' program, as trying to regain (and retain) past players is probably more effective than to try to convince people to play timesinks like MMORPG's in a world of MOBA's and mobile games.
Yet Blizzard essentially goes 'lalalalalala', despite subs plummetting since The Shattering (with some resemblance of stability with MoP, only to blow it on the unbelievably bad WoD again).
But good to see mainstream press is starting to take notice, in general the whole matter fits right into the discussions regarding (the abuse of) copyright, abandonware, and Big Business pressuring people into submission.
The thing is, I'm on board with those that say that Blizzard just doesn't care that much anymore. Obviously they care about making money, but I think that on a personal level at least, the people in charge have fallen out of love with MMOs (like a lot of their audience) and are happy to move their focus towards things like mobile games, MOBAs and shooters instead.
DeleteI just wish that Blizz would swallow their pride and admit that there are people who want to experience the original WoW or a pre-Cataclysm environment and give them what they want. They don't need any new expacs, just some random tweaks to prevent crashes.
ReplyDeleteIt'd be printing money, really, even more so than WoW was at its height.
But yeah, Blizz' pride has gotten in the way.
I'm not necessarily convinced that it would print money. While the case of Nostalrius shows that a single server can attract significant attention while being run by a relatively small team, I think that doing it "the Blizzard way" would probably require a lot more resources.
DeleteI'd consider it a "printing money" venture when Blizz doesn't have to invest in much more than simply keeping the server running. No new development --it's all put on the current expac and future expacs-- and not much in the realm of server maintenance.
DeleteIf a labor of love server can attract 150k active players, just imagine how many players an officially sanctioned Vanilla or BC or Wrath server would attract? The number of subs could make such a venture very profitable for Blizzard. I know I'd jump on an official Wrath or BC server without much thought at all.
It wouldn't be as simple as just keeping the server running though. People are very forgiving when it comes to things like crashes and bugs when it comes to a free labour of love; they would be much less so on a paid service. Customer service would need to be trained to deal with a different setup. And let's not forget Blizzard's general tendency to only want to put out highly polished products.
DeleteBut the difference is that the bugs and glitches were (supposedly) ironed out by the time that the product was originally released.
DeleteThe customer service issue is a bit different, I'll admit, but the big kicker is likely to be that Blizz never kept gold copies of the Vanilla/BC/Wrath environments. In a nod to George Lucas, who claimed that the old original copies of Star Wars Episode IV no longer exist, I can see Blizz claiming the same thing. Unlike a business who may be required by law to maintain data records for (potentially) decades, Blizz as a game company is under no such compunction. If they have to rebuild Vanilla/BC/Wrath servers from scratch, yeah, it's more than just a minor undertaking.
Talking about flying too close to the sun...they should have kept it low profile instead of making such noise about it. Then maybe Nostalrius would still be a thing. Pretty dumb?
ReplyDeleteYet the server wouldn't have been nearly as popular and lively if they hadn't been spreading the word everywhere - bit of a catch-22.
DeleteEven if Blizz had left the server alone, sooner or later interest would have dropped off.
ReplyDeleteI did play vanilla wow, and the big big problem was, once you got to end-game there was only raiding or alting, and that's it. I'm not sure that would sustain people's interest for more than a year or two.
What then, a BC expansion?
Well, they were working on a BC server...
DeleteWhile I agree that it would get stale eventually, I'm not sure how that is really an argument against the concept. MMOs that constantly keep adding content eventually start to feel stale to most long-time players too, updates or no updates.
I think the reason is the movie. The movie will bring in millions of player interested in WoW either for the first time or for nostalgia. Most of them won't stay, but some probably will.
ReplyDeleteWith Nostalrius and its zealots it would have been very likely that a large portion of these people interested in WoW because of the movie would choose the "free to play" option. That's where it would start to cost Blizzard money.