Top 5: Arguments Against Vanilla Servers Discussed

Vanilla servers are still the big topic being discussed here and on other gaming websites and forums, so for this week’s Top 5 I decided to compile a list of popular arguments against such servers and discuss them. As always, the list is in no particular order.

If you’d like to add your two cents or explain why I’m wrong, feel free to drop a comment in the box below or contact us via email or on Twitter (@mmofallout).

5. It Will Pull Resources From The Main Game

A half-truth, based entirely on how the developer handles it. Jagex managed to avoid this problem with Old School RuneScape by starting out with a shell team dedicated to bringing the game online. Once the game proved successful, they hired on additional members without cutting resources from the main RuneScape game.

If Blizzard were to pull developers from the main World of Warcraft and therefore cause delays and hinder content on the live service, that would be entirely the fault of poor planning or low confidence rather than the result of an inherent flaw in private servers.

4. Players Will Eventually Get Bored And Leave

This argument I tend to agree with more than anything, and it is true that any MMO will eventually lose players if content stagnates and development ceases. A classic server that exists as a snapshot of its time will bring in players to relive their slice of nostalgia, players who will eventually get bored and leave. That’s the argument, classic server purists would disagree.

Which is why the best course of action would be to take Jagex’s approach with Old School RuneScape, by allowing the players to vote on whether or not new content should be added, the will of the people is irrefutably listened to. By putting up new content to the approval of a high majority, Blizzard can keep the game fresh while maintaining the vision that the community has demanded.

3. Players Don’t Really Want A Vanilla Server

I understand where this is coming from, but it is false and a bit condescending. Effectively it downplays the demands of a consumer on the allegation that they are clouded by rose-tinted glasses and that you, the objective bystander, know what they want more than they do. It also ignores the popularity of vanilla pirate servers.

But, like I said, conceptually you are not wrong in this line of thinking. Customers, in many cases, genuinely don’t know what they want or aren’t willing to admit it. Electronic Arts gave a talk back when Battlefield Heroes was in its prime that the people giving the loudest criticism of paid-for weapons not only bought weapons in greater numbers but spent exponentially more than the average. Similarly, as a famous example, New Coke failed in the market despite doing very well in focus testing.

Again, it isn’t completely wrong. There is a perpetuated myth among subscription purists that the $15/month model is not only objectively better for the industry, but is more popular among consumers, a theory that fails when put to the market.

2. Blizzard Has No Obligation To Provide Vanilla Servers

What can you say about this one? It is 100% correct, Blizzard has no obligation to create a vanilla server just because the community asks for it. If Blizzard has looked into the idea of launching classic servers and has decided that the negatives outweigh the positives, that is their decision. It won’t make private servers any more legitimate.

A lot of business decisions are made simply because the creator folded his/her arms and said “I don’t want to.” CVS was making a killing off of selling cigarettes, and decided that it didn’t want to. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes because, in spite of his commercial success, he wanted to bring the series to a conclusion.

The people claiming that Blizzard has an obligation to provide vanilla servers are fringe at best.

1. It Isn’t Profitable

This myth would hold more credibility if it wasn’t almost ritualistically proven wrong on so many angles. Forgetting the number of Vanilla servers that have been shut down over the years whose small teams were raking in a nominal fortune of ill-gotten gains, classic servers have steadily become more popular in the legitimate space. As with virtual console games, the response to demands for classic servers grew fundamentally out of its popularity in the grey/black market.

Old School RuneScape is currently in its fourth year of operation, with a massive population that rivals that of RuneScape 3 and occasionally supersedes it with concurrent users. Lineage II has a classic server in a couple of regions that is reportedly successful.

Incidentally, the people scrambling to complain that “if it was profitable, Blizzard would have done it already” are missing two key points. First, that they can’t name any instances of a company launching a private server only to have it fail while the main product succeeded. Second, that Blizzard doesn’t lean much on profit as its reason for not considering a vanilla server.

Rather, they talk about technical issues and artistic vision. Despite what armchair technicians will tell me, reviving a game from 2004, built by people who may no longer be working with the company, and on hardware that they don’t have anymore, is a massive feat. When Jagex wanted to create Old School, they faced a major problem that nobody in the company was familiar with the old systems.

So yes, Vanilla World of Warcraft might be financially unfeasible for Blizzard, or at least a massive risk, because unlike a group of private server operators tinkering with code, their employees need to be paid a salary.

Top: Can’t Miss Old School Exclusive Content

Old School RuneScape, or Oldscape, or ’07Scape as some have taken to calling it, has become a lot more than just an imprint of RuneScape as it was in 2007. Since its launch two years ago, Old School has ventured off in its own direction, with content developed exclusively for this version.

So in no particular order, here is a list of the top exclusive content.

1. Exclusive Bosses/Drops

As development transitioned from simple bug fixes, tweaks, and interface updates, to larger content updates, Old School has seen the introduction of several exclusive bosses. Several of the bosses, like Scorpia, reside in the wilderness where other players are a threat. Others, like the Cave Kraken, require the player to be on a slayer task to kill. Some are just plain weird. Regardless, almost all of the bosses something worth killing them over, be it a powerful weapon or a modifier to existing items.

The most recent boss to be developed for Old School is Zulrah, a solo-only snake creature.

2. Motherlode Mine

The Motherlode Mine is a must visit for players seeking mining experience and easy cash. Located in the Falador mine, players go around mining pay-dirt which is processed in the center of the area. In return, the pay-dirt is converted randomly into coal (most common), gold (less common), as well as mithril, adamant, and rune at higher levels (least common). In addition to ore, the player also randomly receives gold nuggets.

The nuggets can be traded in for a prospector outfit which boosts mining experience by a small percentage. Gold nuggets can also be used to purchase a coal bag and a gem bag, which hold a substantial amount of their respective items.

3. Agility Rooftop Courses

Training agility in Old School RuneScape is necessary if you don’t want to be walking constantly, and the training process is dreadful. Thankfully Jagex implemented a user-created suggestion for new agility courses, located on the roofs of various cities. To keep the player semi-conscious as they grind through agility, marks of grace randomly drop on the play-field and can be picked up to buy the graceful outfit.

The graceful outfit decreases the player’s weight, and additional marks of grace can be used to buy reagents for stamina potions.

4. Looting Bag

One of the more interesting items in Old School. The Looting Bag is a sack offering 28 additional inventory spaces, with a few stipulations on when and where it can be used. Designed specifically for player vs player combat, items can only be put inside the bag while inside the wilderness, and can only be withdrawn at the bank interface. The looting bag does not contribute to player weight, however everything in it is dropped upon death.

5. PvP Worlds

An old relic from 2001-era RuneScape. PvP worlds allow player vs player combat virtually anywhere except for designated safe zones like banks. There are two servers designated as PvP on Old School, and if you only use specific worlds or always use the suggested server, you may not even know that they exist. They offer the opportunity for all out warfare of the highest honor.

Or you can stick around and loot the corpses, like your old Uncle Omali.

2014 In Review: “Needed To Happen” Moments

Let’s look at the year with rose tinted glasses, or perhaps a rose-tinted glass of hard liquor. As with any year, we had a lot of bad and a lot of good, but whether good or bad some of these just had to happen for the good of us all.

1. Goodbye Mythic Entertainment

This one is a bit cruel, but one of the best trends of 2014 was that those business practices that so many of us revile, in a lot of cases, didn’t work. In a world where many of these anti-consumer decisions are smashing successes, at least in the short term, the notion that this year saw a lot of those practices crash and burn says a lot about the evolution of consumer common sense.

And I can hardly come up with a better example than the final closure of Mythic Entertainment, a company that spent the last years of its life burning whatever remaining bridges it hadn’t yet touched. Yes, this is where I bring up that time Mythic referred to MMO mechanics as “boring crap” while happily revealing that assets from the poorly-launched, severely downsized, and rather quickly abandoned MMO Warhammer Online, had been lifted and used for the developer’s expensive and ultimately failed MOBA Wrath of Heroes.

Add in two mobile games that attempted to exploit classic games to draw in franchise fans only to repulse them with exploitative cash shops, and this is where Mythic is today. Warhammer Online is dead, Wrath of Heroes is dead, Ultima Forever is dead, Dungeon Keeper has fallen in the mobile charts, was critically panned and called a “shame” by EA, and even saw an ad banned for false advertising.

2. The Offloading and Revival Of MMOs

While we’re talking about the death of Mythic Entertainment, I’d like to take a moment to thank Electronic Arts personally for offloading Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot onto Broadsword Entertainment rather than allowing the classics to go down with the self-sinking ship. Asheron’s Call and Asheron’s Call 2 (which was also revived years after its death) dropped their subscription fees and will eventually be spun off with players allowed to operate their own servers.

Similarly, we learned that there are deals in the works to bring back City of Heroes as a legacy server with the possibility that the IP might get a sequel or other spinoffs. Pirates of the Caribbean Online is being revived by a dedicated community. Dungeon Fighter Online is returning in English. Also Glitch has multiple projects to bring the game back with new servers and new content.

3. Free To Play Gets Slammed

Speaking of schadenfreude, free to play took a big blow this year in the form of several rulings against mobile publishers Apple and Google. Over in the UK, Google was forced to remove an ad for Dungeon Keeper on the grounds that calling it free was misleading. Apple settled with the FTC back in January and agreed to refund $32.5 million for inadvertent purchases made by children, while Google followed in September with $19 million.

Both companies have altered their stores to require a password always by default when downloading apps or making in-app purchases, and no longer label games as “free” if they have in-app purchases. Korea blanket-banned all Facebook games until they could be individually approved to ensure that they were complying with gambling laws.

We’ve been waiting for a few years now to get some results on what many consider to be predatory tactics, and it looks like our wish has been granted.

4. Classic Servers

Nostalgia is a great thing. If you’ve read MMO Fallout, you know about my fascination with the Old School RuneScape servers, and how Jagex managed to not only revive a great era from RuneScape’s past, but actually develop it in a direction away from RuneScape 3, based entirely off of player polls, with a dedicated team and community. Old School RuneScape continues to go strong, raising the possibility that other developers will take notice.

Lineage II is in the process of testing out a classic server, one that will hopefully come westward, and there has been some talk behind the scenes of other MMOs following.

5. MMOs On Consoles

2014 saw the announcement and release of multiple MMOs coming to the Xbox One and Playstation 4. Over on the Sony side, the PS4 added Final Fantasy XIV, Blacklight Retribution, and DC Universe Online, with the upcoming releases of Planetside 2, H1Z1, and Everquest Next. Xbox One saw the launch of State of Decay, with Neverwinter and SMITE coming eventually.

Both consoles can or will eventually be able to enjoy The Crew, The Division, Warframe, The Elder Scrolls Online, Warhammer 40k: Eternal Crusade, All Points Bulletin, and more. If you’ve been spending the past few years waiting to play an MMO on your console that isn’t Final Fantasy, you’re in luck.

2014 In Review: Best Moments Of The Year

Let’s look at the year with rose tinted glasses, or perhaps a glass of hard liquor. As with any year, we had a lot of bad and a lot of good, so let’s take a minute to focus on the good stuff.

1. Goodbye Mythic Entertainment

This one is a bit cruel, but perhaps the best trend of 2014 was that those business practices that so many of us revile, in a lot of cases, didn’t work. In a world where many of these anti-consumer decisions are smashing successes, in the sense that they make enough money in the short term for the developer/publisher to simply not care about the long term ramifications or damages to their public image, the idea that so many of these blew up does a lot for consumers and sets a precedent for 2015 and beyond.

Just to name a few examples, Mythic Entertainment’s attempt to revive two classic games with the clear impression that free to play mobile was easy access to a lot of money, that being Ultima IV and Dungeon Runners, went down in flames and took the developer with it, along with what remaining goodwill the Mythic community had left.

Trion Worlds has been hit hard over their handling of Defiance as well as the launch and continued mishaps of ArcheAge, and at the beginning of the year cancelled its End of Nations MOBA. Wildstar advertised itself as a hardcore MMO for hardcore raiders, and subsequently only brought in the hardcore raiders. The game hasn’t been doing so well, with layoffs at Carbine Studios, delaying content and seeing a heavy drop in revenue in its second quarter.

Then there are the hundreds of cookie cutter free to play MMOs imported from Korea and China that shut down without any of us knowing that they existed.

There are a lot more examples to throw up, but I think I’ve made my point. It was good to see that, in 2014, the good guys actually made out pretty well while the ones with underhanded intentions just ended up stepping on rakes and getting hit in the face.

2. The Offloading and Revival Of MMOs

3. Free To Play Gets Slammed

We’ve been waiting for a few years now to get some results on what many consider to be predatory tactics, and it looks like our wish has been granted.

4. Classic Servers

Lineage II is in the process of testing out a classic server, one that will hopefully come westward, and there has been some talk behind the scenes of other MMOs following.

5. MMOs On Consoles

Top 5: Obnoxious Gamers Who Eventually Get Banned

The number one article request I get here at MMO Fallout is when someone gets banned from an MMO and wants me to write a scathing piece about how the developer wronged them. I don’t follow through with them, but that doesn’t mean I am not paying attention. Years of wrongful ban claims and actively engaging with communities has lead to my list of the top five obnoxious gamers who will eventually find their access to a game/forum revoked.

This list is mostly derived from my experience running several game servers (Counter Strike, Medal of Honor, Battlefield, etc) and GM’ing an MMO. I didn’t want to call this a list of trolls as it would imply that they are self-aware. Many remain blissfully ignorant of their own culpability.

5. The Loudmouth

The loudmouth refers to the kind of person who inevitably gets banned or suspended from a large portion of the servers that he plays on. You’ll often find him on forums complaining about his forum/game suspensions, claiming innocence while using liberal amounts of expletives and comparing the customer support to Nazis. He doesn’t know why he was suspended for misbehaving, after all he didn’t do anything out of line unless you’re referring to the explicit and likely racist comment he made in chat in response to someone calling him a “noob.”

A short fuse grants this person with the ability to type and press enter before the reasoning center of their brain has time to act, and will be the root cause of much of their problems keeping out of trouble with customer service and in life for that matter. While some are aware of their position in this category and are actively working toward better behavior, others merely shift the blame for their actions (“people asking obvious questions make me angry”) or deny it completely (“they banned me because I’m too good at PvP”). Depending on their severity, this group also fits the gamers who send death threats to players and developers, or stalk people off-game after a loss.

One of the benefits of the loudmouth is their lack of subtlety. If you want to find them, just head into any game with global chat or forum of any topic and wait less than thirty seconds.

4. The Metal Ninja Fanboy

One consistency among each of the gamers on this list is that they have a habit of thinking that their work is more subtle than it really is. The metal ninja fanboy is the term I’ve given to the kind of person who hangs around on the forums or in chat to talk about how great the game he’s playing is. Not the one he’s talking in, mind you, a different one. One that has better graphics, controls, a more mature community, servers with less lag, and a better developer who provides more content, faster.

Yes, this gamer has fourteen days left on his subscription and he is going to log in every day to remind the people in [world] of this fact and how relieved he is and how awesome it will be when that day comes, and how he can’t wait to move on to his awesome new game. Really, he should have done it earlier. This idea of developer expecting people to pay money for this game? What kind of moron would enjoy it, he wonders out loud to himself in world chat.

This person won’t be banned from the game, but in all likelihood they will find their posting privileges revoked after the tenth time they create a thread asking why you mouth-breathing sheep continue to subscribe to this crap like the tools you are. If you happen to be in chat with one of these players, they are best left ignored. Responding will only feed their need for attention.

3. The “Loyal customer.”

The self-proclaimed “loyal customer” is my favorite kind, because I see them a lot. This is the person who you will find posting a thread about how they are quitting a game or want a refund because the company has performed a cardinal sin and gone against their wishes. As a loyal customer, you can understand that their quitting isn’t a decision that they came to lightly, and that they would never take such action if it wasn’t completely necessary, but that it is indeed still possible to win their favor back.

You will recognize this person because they posted the same thread two months ago following a previous set of patch notes, as well as two months before that and again in two months when they post another goodbye. The final straw was apparently lain nearly a year ago, but the camel’s back is taking longer than anticipated to break.

This person will inevitably be banned in a sea of expletives when someone digs up their previous quitting posts and responds them to the latest “I quit” thread with “why aren’t you gone yet?”

2. Edgeville’s Finest

I won’t try to deny that I was a horrible little bastard around the early teenage years, when kids are little more than short sociopaths. I do know that teens, and in many cases adults, often try to be as edgy as possible either to show off to their friends, feed a lack of self esteem, or because they watch Daniel Tosh and want to be a comedian. One thing all great comedians know is that comedy equals tragedy plus time, with a dash of comedic timing. In short, the time for your racist joke isn’t in world chat in a video game, or really anywhere else in public for that matter.

This person can most often be found post-ban showing their complete misunderstanding of what freedom of speech applies to.

1. The Frustrated Cheater

My personal favorite, as a former GM for several game servers and as customer support for an MMO. The question I get asked the most is why I don’t trust when someone posts an “I was banned” thread claiming not just innocence, but ignorance. I’ve heard every excuse in the book, many from blatant cheaters, some of whom we even caught boasting in chat about how their cheat was “undetectable.”

Believe it or not, but quite a few of these people are deluded enough to pay monthly subscriptions for the assurance that these cheats are “undetectable.” True story: One kid emailed us an invoice demanding that we pay his last month’s subscription for a cheat tool because he was guaranteed by the creator that he wouldn’t get banned, so in his claim we were violating the EULA.

Which isn’t to say that everyone who creates such a post is lying, mind you. I would be willing to put my money down, however, that most bans are due to account theft, which itself can be traced to poor security on the part of the user.

Whether their pleas are out of desperation or true ignorance is up for debate, but to make a list within a list, here are my favorite excuses.

“I don’t even know how to cheat.”
“The developer sold my account.”
“My cat probably walked on the keyboard.”
“My friend stole my account.”

Top 5: MMOs That We Can’t Have

Being a somewhat impatient person is rather incompatible with writing about the MMO genre, an industry where waiting is merely half the battle. Between games announced half a decade before their intended release and those launched in Korea, China, or Japan only to take a further few years to make it over to the west, it’s enough to pull your hair out over. It is especially aggravating when you figure games like Phantasy Star Online 2, who we recently found out may never release in the west at all. Then you have games like Hellgate: London, Lineage, and Dungeon Fighter Online who, despite shutting down in west, continued operation overseas.

So with that in mind, let’s look at the top five MMOs we can’t have, and by we I mean people in the Americas and Europe.

5. ArcheAge

Despite what some of my readers may believe, I don’t talk about ArcheAge’s content updates to tease you, but I agree with the frustration that I see in many of these articles. ArcheAge, unlike its brothers and sisters, gets so much coverage from western outfits that you’d think the game had already been launched here. Every mention of patch notes and content updates is another reminder of the game’s continued delay and unclear future for westward expansion.

The “why we don’t have ArcheAge” coverage also instills a constant chilling reminder as to the recent business issues surrounding the game’s would-be western publisher, Trion Worlds, between several rounds of layoffs, server mergers, the poor reception of Defiance, allegations of neglecting overseas publishers leading to Rift being shut down in several foreign territories, and the continued difficulties surrounding End of Nations. ArcheAge will eventually release in the west…hopefully. Maybe.

4. Phantasy Star Online 2

I decided to stick Phantasy Star Online 2 as number four on this list because it is technically playable. While Phantasy Star Online 2 is likely to not hit western markets, due to an alleged lack of faith in the game’s ability to be profitable, many gamers have already signed on to the Japanese servers using an English patch. This process should be made easier when the game releases a localized version for English speaking Asian regions.

3. Blade & Soul

NCSoft has refused to censor Blade & Soul for the west, but if an uncensored MMO falls in the woods and no one is able to play it, does it make a sound? Blade & Soul has the backing of NCSoft, but the game has quickly dropped down in sales to the levels of Lineage II and “other” and is likely to continue dropping. If the game continues to do poorly, it is possible that the game could be shut down before it ever has the chance to be localized.

But NCSoft isn’t the kind of company that cuts an MMO loose just because it hit some hard times, right?

2. Lineage

Lineage is particularly painful not just because the game continues to operate in its native Korea after being shut down in the west, but it is outperforming every single one of NCSoft’s other games. Lineage has been NCSoft’s #1 top selling game for the past year and has grown exponentially over the past several quarters. Despite its healthy population in Korea, however, the game was not performing well in America and Europe to continue supporting the localized version.

The good news at least is that while Lineage I is over aside from private servers, Lineage Eternal will probably release before the world ends.

1. Black Gold Online

Black Gold Online is likely to release before any of the other games on this list, but it is the most interesting concept so I decided to put it at number one. If you don’t know, Black Gold Online is by the creatively brilliant minds at Snail Games who brought us Age of Wushu, and carries one of the more interesting monetization models of recent titles. It is difficult to understand, and I am not entirely sure that I have explained it properly, but the game has no cash shop or subscription, but instead monetizes drops in some fashion.

So far all we have seen is this concept in theory, and it could go either way in terms of its reception. Assuming we ever get it.

Top 5: MMOs That We Can't Have

So with that in mind, let’s look at the top five MMOs we can’t have, and by we I mean people in the Americas and Europe.

5. ArcheAge

4. Phantasy Star Online 2

3. Blade & Soul

But NCSoft isn’t the kind of company that cuts an MMO loose just because it hit some hard times, right?

2. Lineage

The good news at least is that while Lineage I is over aside from private servers, Lineage Eternal will probably release before the world ends.

1. Black Gold Online

So far all we have seen is this concept in theory, and it could go either way in terms of its reception. Assuming we ever get it.

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5. The Loudmouth

4. The Metal Ninja Fanboy

3. The “Loyal customer.”

2. Edgeville’s Finest

1. The Frustrated Cheater

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5. ArcheAge

4. Phantasy Star Online 2

3. Blade & Soul

2. Lineage

1. Black Gold Online

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5. ArcheAge

4. Phantasy Star Online 2

3. Blade & Soul

2. Lineage

1. Black Gold Online

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