Every time the subject of Legacy Servers comes up, the same crap gets rehashed again and again. People (like me) who want legacy servers keep being told we haven't thought it through, or we don't REALLY want them, etc. Additionally, lies told by Blizzard (such as the two previous) keep being repeated, mostly by people who just don't know any better.
First off, let's get the "You don't want it" crap out of the way because this is the easiest. You don't know other people's thoughts/feelings, so shut up. You are NOT qualified to determine what someone does or doesn't want, nor are you qualified to tell them their assessment of their own thoughts/feelings is incorrect.
Moving on...
-----------------------------The Lie ------------------------------
My hope with this post is to dispel what I consider to be the biggest lie told by Blizzard.
That being of course, that they don't have the old stuff. That there's no way for them to recover it.
This is complete and utter bollocks. Ask anyone who knows anything about software development. Version control and build archiving is absolutely fundamental to competent software development, ESPECIALLY in a large company.
Blizzard has been developing software, and doing an absolutely PHENOMINAL job of it, for what, like 30 years?
I find it absolutely incredible (as in, without credibility) that Blizzard would be so incompetent in the area of software development that they would not have old builds archived. I'm not just talking about the client here either. EVERYTHING gets archived, and I mean EVERYTHING. It must.
Everything connected to this, the server services, clients, data packages, images, textures, artwork, maps, EVERYTHING would be archived and saved.
So that leaves 2 possibilities:
Blizzard is incompetent.
Blizzard is lying.
Now it's possible that the people who keep giving these answers are simply repeating information they've been given. But someone along the line is lying. Whether it's the devs who answer the question or someone higher than them feeding them lies, SOMEONE is lying. It's either that, or one of the best software development companies on the planet is utterly incapable of competent software development.
----------------------------Make Them Practical-----------------------------
"There is not enough interest"
The success of private servers would suggest otherwise. Yes unscrupulous people might be running them, Blizzard hosting them could largely prevent that.
Regardless, there is a simple solution to this, SERIOUSLY simple solution.
Require anyone interested in legacy servers purchase/agree to a 12 month subscription to them before they even launch. Numerous people (myself included) have indicated we would be happy to pay a premium over and above the normal subscription we already pay. Hell I'd happily drop an extra $20/account.
Let's say 9,000 people do that. I'm using this number because it often gets thrown around concerning active accounts on private servers. The real number may be higher or lower given some people who don't want to risk playing on a private server, some who would never pay, etc. But we have to have something to go on.
9,000 * $20 (assuming 1 account per person which is a terrible assumption, but it makes for easy math). That's $180,000 *PER MONTH*. That's 2.1 *million* dollars per annum.
Blizzard should figure what the cost would be to actually implement it (this is not hard, companies do this ALL the time) and set a bar slightly higher than that. That bar must be met before they begin working on implementation.
That will determine if the demand exists to launch legacy servers, and Blizzard doesn't have to risk ANYTHING.
Ongoing cost will be easily covered for the first year. I know how much servers cost to run and maintain. I've managed $6,000,000 budgets for hardware and services. Our cost for data center space was roughly (including personnel costs) $20 per U of rack space per month. This covered everything. Let's assume that just these legacy servers required 10 full racks of equipment (it wouldn't but let's say it did). If the racks are 42U that's 420 total @ $20 comes out to $8,400 per month. That also happens to mean that a mere 420 people would be required to actually pay for the servers in an ongoing fashion.
Somehow I don't think having 420 people actively subscribed to legacy servers will be difficult.
----------------------------------Avoiding Stagnation--------------------------
This is another extremely easy one. I swear it's like the people putting forth some of these arguments don't even bother thinking about them.
Simply progress the servers when certain conditions are met. What's that? Current raid tier has been completed by X% of the playerbase? Cool, next content patch. What's that? The next content patch is the expansion after what the server is running? Cool, this is now a Y expansion server.
Rinse, repeat.
---------------------------TL;DR----------------------------
Blizzard is either lying or incompetent as anyone familiar with how software development works can tell you.
Every excuse Blizzard has put forth has an easy solution.
You don't know what someone else may or may not enjoy, so shut the Helheim up.
Go back and read you lazy bum!
First off, let's get the "You don't want it" crap out of the way because this is the easiest. You don't know other people's thoughts/feelings, so shut up. You are NOT qualified to determine what someone does or doesn't want, nor are you qualified to tell them their assessment of their own thoughts/feelings is incorrect.
Moving on...
-----------------------------The Lie ------------------------------
My hope with this post is to dispel what I consider to be the biggest lie told by Blizzard.
That being of course, that they don't have the old stuff. That there's no way for them to recover it.
This is complete and utter bollocks. Ask anyone who knows anything about software development. Version control and build archiving is absolutely fundamental to competent software development, ESPECIALLY in a large company.
Blizzard has been developing software, and doing an absolutely PHENOMINAL job of it, for what, like 30 years?
I find it absolutely incredible (as in, without credibility) that Blizzard would be so incompetent in the area of software development that they would not have old builds archived. I'm not just talking about the client here either. EVERYTHING gets archived, and I mean EVERYTHING. It must.
Everything connected to this, the server services, clients, data packages, images, textures, artwork, maps, EVERYTHING would be archived and saved.
So that leaves 2 possibilities:
Blizzard is incompetent.
Blizzard is lying.
Now it's possible that the people who keep giving these answers are simply repeating information they've been given. But someone along the line is lying. Whether it's the devs who answer the question or someone higher than them feeding them lies, SOMEONE is lying. It's either that, or one of the best software development companies on the planet is utterly incapable of competent software development.
----------------------------Make Them Practical-----------------------------
"There is not enough interest"
The success of private servers would suggest otherwise. Yes unscrupulous people might be running them, Blizzard hosting them could largely prevent that.
Regardless, there is a simple solution to this, SERIOUSLY simple solution.
Require anyone interested in legacy servers purchase/agree to a 12 month subscription to them before they even launch. Numerous people (myself included) have indicated we would be happy to pay a premium over and above the normal subscription we already pay. Hell I'd happily drop an extra $20/account.
Let's say 9,000 people do that. I'm using this number because it often gets thrown around concerning active accounts on private servers. The real number may be higher or lower given some people who don't want to risk playing on a private server, some who would never pay, etc. But we have to have something to go on.
9,000 * $20 (assuming 1 account per person which is a terrible assumption, but it makes for easy math). That's $180,000 *PER MONTH*. That's 2.1 *million* dollars per annum.
Blizzard should figure what the cost would be to actually implement it (this is not hard, companies do this ALL the time) and set a bar slightly higher than that. That bar must be met before they begin working on implementation.
That will determine if the demand exists to launch legacy servers, and Blizzard doesn't have to risk ANYTHING.
Ongoing cost will be easily covered for the first year. I know how much servers cost to run and maintain. I've managed $6,000,000 budgets for hardware and services. Our cost for data center space was roughly (including personnel costs) $20 per U of rack space per month. This covered everything. Let's assume that just these legacy servers required 10 full racks of equipment (it wouldn't but let's say it did). If the racks are 42U that's 420 total @ $20 comes out to $8,400 per month. That also happens to mean that a mere 420 people would be required to actually pay for the servers in an ongoing fashion.
Somehow I don't think having 420 people actively subscribed to legacy servers will be difficult.
----------------------------------Avoiding Stagnation--------------------------
This is another extremely easy one. I swear it's like the people putting forth some of these arguments don't even bother thinking about them.
Simply progress the servers when certain conditions are met. What's that? Current raid tier has been completed by X% of the playerbase? Cool, next content patch. What's that? The next content patch is the expansion after what the server is running? Cool, this is now a Y expansion server.
Rinse, repeat.
---------------------------TL;DR----------------------------
Blizzard is either lying or incompetent as anyone familiar with how software development works can tell you.
Every excuse Blizzard has put forth has an easy solution.
You don't know what someone else may or may not enjoy, so shut the Helheim up.
Go back and read you lazy bum!
