wow Legacy Server Meeting with Blizzard!

[Valks 2,373]

Mark Kern recently had his meeting with Blizzard regarding legacy servers. Check out what he had to say afterwards!

While this isn't the official meeting between Blizzard and the team of Nostalrius, Mark Kern has been a huge presence in the push for legacy servers. As a former employee, he worked on WoW as the team lead and helped to complete many other titles for Blizzard. 

Some of you might remember his open letter to Blizzard, in which he openly asked for a meeting with Mike Morhaime. This has finally come true and, while Mark is bound to an NDA, he gave a huge recount of some of the points on Twitter. You can check out his tweets directly on his Twitter, or read a transcript of everything he wrote below:

Quote

First, Blizzard and Mike can make NO PROMISES about legacy servers. But, the amount they have been paying attention is incredible.

But first, how about some pictures of the @NostalBegins petition that YOU GUYS SIGNED, being delivered to Blizzard?

 

I promised you that if the petition hit 200k sigs that I would go to the CEO of Blizzard and deliver the petition. I'm proud to say its done

I was very happy to be able to fulfill my part...the meeting was an extra bonus, and I can say I'm happy. No promises, but we talked about everything you guys brought up. We talked about how there are two fandoms in WoW, classic and new, and both vital.

We talked about how you guys wanted vanilla servers, as they were, with few or little changes, esp no LFR stuff etc. We talked about the surveys and how you guys would absolutely support a vanilla CE with physical and digital goods. We talked about how I felt bringing a core "first-gen" audience of WoW players would help even the current-gen WoW.

We talked about each and every point you guys brought up. And heres the kicker... They KNEW EVERYTHING ALREADY. Mike and the WoW team has been paying HUGE attention to this issue.
Mike has read all the posts. He's watched all the videos (even mine, lol). He wanted to tell you HE AND WOW TEAM ARE LISTENING SERIOUSLY.

It was a bigger meeting than expected, I was met by SaraLyn Smith, the Gobal Director cf Community Development who joined us, she took copious notes during the meeting as Mike and I talked about you guys, the passion for vanilla, etc.

The WoW Team and Mike are paying extremely close attention to this and wanted to let you guys know they are paying a lot of attention.

Also, they were very enthusiastic about meeting the @NostalBegins team. Mike was super impressed with what they and MaNGOS have accomplished

Mke and the WoW team are eager to meet with @NostalBegins and to learn about how they overcame technical issues and got things running.

I can confirm: They have NOT LOST THE SOURCE CODE. But the technical issues are more complicated than that.

Mike and I talked about the technical challenges and I agree that for Blizzard, the challenge is greater than just throwing up a server.

Mike and WoW are committed to a very high level of qualty and polish. That makes everything more complicated when considering legacy.

Mike and the WoW team want to LISTEN to @NostalBegins perspective on vanilla and the technical issues they faced.

Mike says there are no easy solutions to this, but that they are listening very intently and following everything you guys say.

Mike and WoW team are also eager to meet with @NostalBegins and recognized they are GOOD GUYS with PASSION and they love that.

So to sum up, while they can make no promises, they are going to continue to think and regroup and be in LISTEN mode to you guys.

Finally, I'd like to share a pic that shows Mike and I still have a sense of humor after all these years...

Look, Blizzard made no promises, but my personal belief is that the level of attention they gave this is incredible and I'm more hopeful. Blizzard is going to have an extensive meeting with @NostalBegins to go over technical details and their perpsective

Now that you know they are listening so closely. Don't stop asking for it, don't stop making suggestions. @NostalBegins

You need to show Blizzard that this isn't just nostagia a one time thing. Get organized, have a Blizzcon group with T-shirts. @NostalBegins

Before, I put our changes at 50/50. My personal belief, is that our chances are higher now. Again, PERSONAL belief. @NostalBegins

So, while he can't give us specific details, it seems he is coming out of this meeting feeling extremely positive. Much more will be discussed with the Nostalrius team, but this is still a huge step forward. For those of you supporting the legacy movement, I'm sure you'll be feeling much happier after this!

[Zabian 3]

It's all very exciting, I'd personally love to see them. Although I'd end up so addicted to WoW my real life would probably suffer. RiP IRL.

[Valks 2,373]

12 minutes ago, Zabian said:

It's all very exciting, I'd personally love to see them. Although I'd end up so addicted to WoW my real life would probably suffer. RiP IRL.

I remember being a young kid and being so happy that I managed to level from 34-36 in one school night. I feel like RL would probably suffer if I could do it again :p

[gurupak 21]

Why can't we move forward and play the Legion.... Please!

[Plaguestorm 43]

mabye putting #youthinkyoudobutyoudont to laugh at them is not a good idea <_< come on

[Cerune 0]

2 hours ago, gurupak said:

Why can't we move forward and play the Legion.... Please!

We can, and we are. Legion and vanilla servers are not mutually exclusive. We will still have Legion, and a lot of people (including myself) will play them. But at the same time, we would have vanilla servers for the people that DON'T like the current game, and I'm sure there are a lot of people like myself that will play both.

[Valks 2,373]

2 hours ago, Plaguestorm said:

mabye putting #youthinkyoudobutyoudont to laugh at them is not a good idea <_< come on

Mike actually commented that he didn't mind the hashtag, so maybe it wasn't that bad :p

1 hour ago, Cerune said:

We can, and we are. Legion and vanilla servers are not mutually exclusive. We will still have Legion, and a lot of people (including myself) will play them. But at the same time, we would have vanilla servers for the people that DON'T like the current game, and I'm sure there are a lot of people like myself that will play both.

I do wonder what the actual costs to Legion would be for Legacy. It would be interesting to see if introducing legacy, for example, would push back content patches by a few months to allow proper work on both projects. We'll see in time!

[Darkjester79 47]

I like that Blizzard seems to be taking the idea of legacy servers seriously.  Personally, I like the game where it is now but I do remember the excitement of vanilla.  I can see how people would want to play that way and it would be awesome if blizzard would allow to have servers set to vanilla and then some for each expac. 

[Cerune 0]

2 hours ago, Blainie said:

I do wonder what the actual costs to Legion would be for Legacy. It would be interesting to see if introducing legacy, for example, would push back content patches by a few months to allow proper work on both projects. We'll see in time!

I don't think the implementation of legacy servers will affect the development of Legion in any way, as once the servers are up and running and the game is stable, that's it. You don't need to pour manpower into development for legacy servers because it's content that has already been developed.

[Valks 2,373]

2 minutes ago, Cerune said:

I don't think the implementation of legacy servers will affect the development of Legion in any way, as once the servers are up and running and the game is stable, that's it. You don't need to pour manpower into development for legacy servers because it's content that has already been developed.

True, but how long will it to take to actually implement them? How much work will it require? Obviously only they know, I just think it would be interesting to see how much of the Legion team they would sacrifice. It would most likely be more on the side of the framework development and bug fixing teams, rather than the designers.

[Venkx 1]

On 5/27/2016 at 8:46 PM, Darkjester79 said:

I like that Blizzard seems to be taking the idea of legacy servers seriously.  Personally, I like the game where it is now but I do remember the excitement of vanilla.  I can see how people would want to play that way and it would be awesome if blizzard would allow to have servers set to vanilla and then some for each expac. 

That is the main problem, where does it stop? if they give the players this vanilla server, it won't take long before everyone cries out that they want a burning crusade server, and what possible reason could they have to deny this? it would be the same argument as for the vanilla servers right now. And why stop there? Again there will be people who desperately want a wotlk server, but 50% of those only want a wotlk server with patch 3.1 (or whatever patch ulduar was)

What i would like is, if they were doing cycles.

Lets say a server goes online, patch 1.0, 3 months after that they deploy patch 1.1 and so on. Maybe adjust the patch duration if there is more ore less raid content, so that at the latest, the final patch goes "live" 1 year after the opening of the server. Shortly after that a new server opens with patch 1.0 and the cycle continues.

But the biggest problem i see with all of this is: "why is this mechanic buggy? they fixed it years ago, i demand a fully BUG FREE vanilla experience!" - and if they start doing that, we won't get new content anymore :D

[Valks 2,373]

1 hour ago, Venkx said:

That is the main problem, where does it stop? if they give the players this vanilla server, it won't take long before everyone cries out that they want a burning crusade server, and what possible reason could they have to deny this? it would be the same argument as for the vanilla servers right now. And why stop there? Again there will be people who desperately want a wotlk server, but 50% of those only want a wotlk server with patch 3.1 (or whatever patch ulduar was)

What i would like is, if they were doing cycles.

Lets say a server goes online, patch 1.0, 3 months after that they deploy patch 1.1 and so on. Maybe adjust the patch duration if there is more ore less raid content, so that at the latest, the final patch goes "live" 1 year after the opening of the server. Shortly after that a new server opens with patch 1.0 and the cycle continues.

But the biggest problem i see with all of this is: "why is this mechanic buggy? they fixed it years ago, i demand a fully BUG FREE vanilla experience!" - and if they start doing that, we won't get new content anymore :D

This was one of the options that Mark said he was going to propose to Mike, so who knows? Maybe this will be the model we will see :p

[Darkjester79 47]

On ‎6‎/‎2‎/‎2016 at 3:03 PM, Venkx said:

That is the main problem, where does it stop? if they give the players this vanilla server, it won't take long before everyone cries out that they want a burning crusade server, and what possible reason could they have to deny this? it would be the same argument as for the vanilla servers right now. And why stop there? Again there will be people who desperately want a wotlk server, but 50% of those only want a wotlk server with patch 3.1 (or whatever patch ulduar was)

What i would like is, if they were doing cycles.

Lets say a server goes online, patch 1.0, 3 months after that they deploy patch 1.1 and so on. Maybe adjust the patch duration if there is more ore less raid content, so that at the latest, the final patch goes "live" 1 year after the opening of the server. Shortly after that a new server opens with patch 1.0 and the cycle continues.

But the biggest problem i see with all of this is: "why is this mechanic buggy? they fixed it years ago, i demand a fully BUG FREE vanilla experience!" - and if they start doing that, we won't get new content anymore :D

I don't see how this will impact production in any way.  Most players are not the "I want a specific patch" player.  You are overthinking it.  There are a lot of players who enjoyed Vanillia as clearly shown by the petition and response Blizzard has received.  I don't see where this would be very hard for them to implement various x pac servers.  Most of them have the data and ability to and it would require only a small team to do it.