Tag: Nostalrius

[Column] How Nostalrius Killed Its Credibility, Image With One Dump


draenor

A few weeks ago, Blizzard revealed that they would not be discussing legacy servers at Blizzcon this year, however the idea was not off the table and that the company was still considering such servers. In response, the folks at Nostalrius decided to make a threat upon which they have no moral or legal standing: To discuss vanilla servers or the team would release the source code for the Nostalrius private server. Blizzard didn’t discuss vanilla servers, Nostalrius dumped its code.

Still, we should not forget that Blizzard is the owner of World of Warcraft and would be for sure the most able to restore it. Until they disclose a schedule (if they do), the Legacy community will have to assume there will not be an official Blizzard release of Legacy WoW – possibly for very long time. So, it’s time for us to release our source code and additional tools to the community in the hope that it will maintain the Legacy community as much as possible until Blizzard announces an official Legacy plan – should they decide to do that.

Like an entitled child denied a much desired toy, the Nostalrius team responded to demands that they had no leverage on with the equivalent of a flailing tantrum. Let’s get a few things straight: Nostalrius has already lost this battle, they acknowledged that they didn’t have any footing when they bowed to Blizzard’s cease & desist and shut down their servers. They have no ownership of the World of Warcraft game, the brand, nor do they have the rights to operate their own private server. It doesn’t matter if Blizzard ultimately says no to a vanilla server, it doesn’t matter if they take ten years to release it, and it doesn’t matter if they say yes and never follow up on it. Nostalrius has no ground to stand on, zero, none.

And while I won’t take the route of some internet commentators and claim that this could kill Blizzard’s enthusiasm in legacy servers, something which is about as low on the totem pole as you can get in terms of priority, I will say that it has killed any potential of Blizzard working with the Nostalrius people, a killing blow to a group that feels entitled enough to demand regular progress updates from Blizzard corporate and make threats if senpai doesn’t notice them. They threw a fit when Blizzard didn’t respond in a timely manner, let’s see how they take it when the company stops acknowledging their existence entirely.

And what they’ve done by releasing this code is effectively to poison the well with a tracer, with everyone who drinks it being tagged for eventual plucking. Now that the code is out there, everyone is talking about this Elysium server like it’s the next Nostalrius. What do you expect is going to happen when Elysium launches? I’ll clue you in: Blizzard’s lawyers are going to send a cease & desist and the Elysium team are going to buckle and shut down. And none of this is going to have any effect on whether or not Blizzard launches a legacy server.

Which, I will reiterate, they still want to do.

Via IGN:

“There’s no question it’s something we want to do,” said Hazzikostas. “I am a 2004 World of Warcraft player myself. Tons of us came to work at Blizzard because we fell in love with that version of World of Warcraft. And we met with the Nostalrius developers on our campus over the summer and were really impressed by the passion they had for the game and what they’re trying to do to recreate what they see as a lost experience.

So where do we stand now? Nostalrius has burned its bridge with Blizzard, likely taking Mark Kern along with them, any servers that use the Nostalrius code and attract any respectable level of traffic will be nuked from orbit by Blizzard, and the timeline for a legacy server very likely has not moved a millimeter. Not a productive day by any sane metric.

Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.

Warcraft Legacy Server Survey To Be Presented To Blizzard


draenor

Nostalrius isn’t the first, nor will it be the last World of Warcraft private server to meet the wrath of Blizzard’s legal team, but the shuttering of this service has undoubtedly opened a can of worms that I don’t think many people anticipated. Between a petition receiving over two hundred thousand signatures, a press that finally seems bent on supporting the user call for vanilla servers, and a ridiculous amount of coverage even outside the gaming press, Blizzard has effectively been forced to respond and take the Nostalrius effect seriously.

As it turns out, the Nostalrius team has been invited to Blizzard to become the ambassadors of the vanilla-demanding community. Nothing is being promised, but the team wants you to answer a poll on what kind of server you want. The poll asks some details, whether you are currently playing WoW (legitimately or otherwise), and why you decided to use private servers if you have. It also asks quite a few questions on your favorite eras of WoW, why they were your favorite, etc.

It’s a bit of a time investment, but well worth it. Hopefully we’ll hear more when the Nostalrius team returns from their meeting.

(Source: Survey)

Jagex Product Manager Weighs In On Classic Servers


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The recent shuttering of Nostalrius, one of World of Warcraft’s biggest private servers, has been rippling throughout the gaming news and leaking into the regular press. Part of the discussion has turned to both the feasibility and potential that legacy servers can offer MMO developers.

Here at MMO Fallout, we’ve pretty heavily covered the ongoing successes of Old School RuneScape, a service that began as a snapshot of the game as it was in 2007 and has gradually expanded thanks to community feedback. The game has even incorporated Deadman Mode, a hardcore spinoff that itself spun off into a seasonal eSport event. We even had a chance to talk to Jagex about Deadman mode in its earlier stages.

You can read the entire piece at Kemp’s Linkedin here or below.

Building on the past: How RuneScape’s official legacy server avoided cannibalism and became an eSport

It’s more than three years since we had our first discussion about releasing legacy servers for RuneScape. However, we can now say that releasing Old School RuneScape was one of the best decisions we ever made. Since Old School RuneScape’s launch in February 2013 we have seen just short of seven million players log in with over two and a half million becoming members.

During that time Old School has of course faced a number of challenges, but here’s how we overcame them and how we took a version of RuneScape from 10 years ago and made it relevant for todays’ gamers.

The legacy risk

During the early discussions there were of course many concerns such as: Was it even possible? How long it would take? And, whether there was the potential for cannibalisation of the existing RuneScape player base? We knew our players wanted legacy servers, as with most MMORPG communities they were not shy in telling us what they wanted. Even though we were quite certain about the initial surge of interest these servers would get, we wanted to test this so we asked our players via a poll if they would play. When half a million of our customers said they want to play it… we kind of had to do it.

Another big question mark was whether the legacy servers would have any longevity. To manage this risk a small team of three people was put together to manage the servers and community until the initial interest had died down, at which time resources could be reallocated.

The risk seemed low, allocated resources could all be temporary, and with half a million players saying they would like to try it, the risk of cannibalisation was outweighed by the potential for new customers. At the very least, Old School RuneScape would be a quick nostalgia hit for disenfranchised players.
With legacy servers comes legacy technical debt

Once Old School RuneScape had launched it quickly became apparent that the community wanted game updates. However, initially we were very limited in what we could deliver. Since RuneScape as a game had progressed during the intervening years, so had all the tools we used to develop it. We were in the unenviable position of having to recreate all the tools we used to develop the game back in 2007 so we could update it. At no point had anyone thought, “We ought to keep all these old versions of the development tools just in case.” I mean why would they?

The lack of development tools was not our only technical debt, we had to rework anti-cheating software, optimise areas of the code, and fix some pretty major bugs for a second time.

Community tribalism

Something which should not really surprise anyone is that there was a rivalry between the communities of the Old School RuneScape and RuneScape. Over time this rivalry increased with the Old School community taking the stance of being purist, and the RuneScape community positioning themselves as progressive.

Although the Old School community saw themselves as purists they still wanted change, so to ensure the rate of change was acceptable to those players we allowed them to vote on every update that happens to the game. If 75% of those voting did not agree, the update didn’t happen. This gave a very strong sense of ownership of the game to the community; they were in control.

What was a surprise was that the tribalism shown by the community started to manifest itself among the development teams. As the small team was left to get on with things they developed their own ways of making things happen without relying on other teams. Although this self-sufficiency might be much sought over by many people, it has a hampering effect when it has to fit into companywide objectives and strategic planning across products.

It came to a point where the Old School RuneScape team needed more integration into the wider RuneScape studio. This was achieved by creating stronger relationships between staff and line managers that traversed different teams, as well as including the Old School team in more of the studio level decisions.

Game positioning

After about six months we started to see player numbers settle and we could see that very few players migrated between Old School RuneScape and RuneScape. What we were not seeing was one game cannibalising the other, so we wanted to understand why a player would play one game and not the other.

Through a series of surveys and data gathering from the game servers we saw there were some distinct reasons why people played Old School RuneScape. The three key reasons were the old combat system (which was changed in the main game in 2012) the grinding of levels, and the straightforward membership monetisation model. This made it very easy to position Old School RuneScape as complementarily to RuneScape and give us a very clear direction of where the game could go. More importantly, it identified areas we could branch into much more effectively than we could have done with
RuneScape on its own.

For example, the old combat system leant itself well to PvP combat, which in turn allowed us to take our first steps into the eSports market last month with considerable success.

When legacy becomes THE legacy

Although the initial impact of legacy servers on RuneScape was expected to be short and sweet, it has grown into a major part of Jagex’s business. The Old School team is now five times the size it was when it started and has more members than the launch period, showing it can reach out to a wider market than the initial audience.

The modernisation of RuneScape meant tensions increased between the traditionalist and progressive RuneScape player base. However, Old School RuneScape gave the traditionalists a safe home and allowed for the continued modernisation of RuneScape without alienating a key part of our player base.
There have been challenges in overcoming the technical debt that suddenly appeared, as well as, ensuring that the product sits well within a wider business. However, it offered something our existing games did not offer and has allowed us to start expanding the RuneScape franchise into new areas such as eSports and streaming.

By keeping the risk of legacy servers low and being focused on how they can grow the franchise, this adventure has just started.

Mathew Kemp is product manager for Old School RuneScape at Jagex Games Studio.

[Community] The Demand For Legacy Servers


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Free servers are the MMO equivalent of regular game piracy, they’re likely never going to fully go away and developers have different approaches on how to deal with them. The gaming community is split on how private servers should be regarded, and there are plenty of legitimate and illegitimate reasons for their existence.

If Nostalrius has proven anything, it is that vanilla World of Warcraft continues to be the holy grail of a large number of MMO gamers. It proves that there is at least heavy interest in the concept. Whether or not those players, plus the unknown quantity of gamers who want vanilla WoW but won’t play on pirate servers, will translate into a profitable venture is unknown, but that’s just it: The number is unknown.

To not misquote Blizzard, they never really talk about profitability when it comes to classic servers. Rather, the answer is generally about artistic vision and supporting the live game going forward. I have little doubt that an official classic server with the Blizzard seal of “this won’t get shut down pending a lawsuit” would be profitable, and I’m sure that their bean counters have come to the same conclusion. So the only choices are artistic vision and technical feasibility.

On the technical side, it’s hard to argue that such a venture would be impossible. It’s been done, numerous times by people working out of their house, in fact it’s been done better. Nostalrius was capable of supporting a massive number of players in a server.

I suspect, and don’t hold me to this, that a classic World of Warcraft server is and for years has been on Blizzard’s potential project list. When Jagex launched RuneScape 3 along with the Evolution of Combat update and players began leaving the game, I suspected that if the population dropped enough that they would launch a classic version of RuneScape 2. Lo and behold, I was right. I feel that World of Vanillacraft doesn’t stray too far from that theory.

Because creative vision doesn’t mean jack when your subscriber numbers are falling and your customers are badgering you to please let them give you money. Right now, Blizzard is in a place where the ebb and flow of expansions and microtransactions are keeping that ace firmly placed up Blizzard’s sleeve. Should those sales dip, I have a feeling Blizzard will come across a functioning version from 2005-2006, and all of a sudden those claims of artistic vision will have been just a prank, bro.

And just as with Old School RuneScape, I suspect that WoW Vanilla would do amazingly well within its first months, enough to fund the hiring of dedicated developers and get the content train rolling in a way that didn’t diminish from the old school style of play. You’d gradually see small tweaks and bug fixes turn into regular content updates, kind of like Old School RuneScape, and who knows? In a few more months its population could rival that of the main game.

But, like I said, we’ll never know until Blizzard tries. Jagex has Old School RuneScape, Daybreak Game Company gave its blessing to Project 99, hasn’t sued the Star Wars Galaxies emulator, Lineage II has its classic servers, etc.

I’m not saying Blizzard is obligated to provide a classic server, but never say never.

Blizzard Threatens Private Server, Refuses Demands For Classic Server


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Blizzard Entertainment is in the news today over its legal threats against one of the most popular classic server emulators available (or at least that was available). The server group, known as Nostalrius, played host to over one hundred fifty thousand active players and nearly one million accounts, shut down its servers after receiving a letter from Blizzard’s legal department, warning them of real legal action should the server remain in operation. The owners of the server have also promised to release the server code to the public to create more private servers.

The news of the server shutting down has rekindled public demand for a classic World of Warcraft official server, one that can operate without the threat of being shut down by Blizzard’s legal force. In the past, Blizzard has refused to open a private server over their devotion to the live game and belief that such a project would not bring in much in terms of revenue. Considering the number of people playing on the Nostalrius’ service, a number of gamers might disagree with that sentiment.

(Source: Massively)