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A comment on Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private server. Parent comment

Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by zanny on Thursday April 07, 2016 @01:43AM (#11444980)
You know that is an argument about expansions in the first place? Significant player dropoffs in WoW happen in the last patches before new expansions. The userbase usually spikes up on new releases, but almost always drops lower every time, predominately because new releases gate players who were on old versions against those on the new one. Friends stop being interested, unsub, and never come back because the player base is fragmented across every level cap WoW has had.

I've always thought that level caps in MMOs, particularly the WoW variety slash-and-burn where you basically make a new theme park every two years and throw the last one in the dumpster in terms of player viability, is a destructive cycle not conductive to building real living worlds.

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Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by paulmd on Thursday April 07, 2016 @09:53AM (#11447233)
On the flip side, you've got the EVE Online model. Expansions are released every 6-8 months as "super-patches". Like every MMO it's mandatory to be playing on the latest version, but everyone gets it for "free".

It's pretty simple to avoid the problem of having players scattered across multiple content sets and levelcaps: stop bleeding your players dry. What are subscription fees paying for if not ongoing development of additional content?

IMO you should either charge for expansions or charge subscription fees - but not both.

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Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by debacle on Thursday April 07, 2016 @11:41AM (#11448127)
Blizzard releases paid expansions because people will pay for them.
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Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by Falcon9 on Thursday April 07, 2016 @12:55PM (#11448736)
Yeah, it's hard to make the business case for leaving money on the table - with every expansion comes change and change much more than the expansion cost is really what is causing the gating effect.
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Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by cynoclast on Thursday April 07, 2016 @06:40PM (#11451271)
Treating your customers as customers rather than cash cows engenders positive feelings toward your company, and ensures continued subscription. There's your business case.
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Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by cLeEOGPw on Saturday April 09, 2016 @03:52AM (#11460414)
Positive feelings don't always maximize profits.
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Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by na85 on Thursday April 07, 2016 @12:23PM (#11448501)
Blizzard isn't and never has been trying to create a "living world". That dream died when Ultima Online showed us exactly what players will do in an unscripted world that's as close to living as the tech of the time would permit.

WoW was, from the outset, designed to railroad players through content theme parks and give a hit of dopamine just often enough to keep them playing.

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Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by taneq on Thursday April 14, 2016 @09:55PM (#11501568)
Wow was far more free in the early days. After about Burning Crusade they were under increasing pressure to allow players of all play styles and skill levels the ability to "see the content", which lead eventually to Raid Finder and gated progression. This ripped the last shreds of immersion away from the world and left the bare, creaking treadmill of "get tier X, farm tier X+1 tokens, get tier X+1, farm tier X+2 tokens..." exposed, which (for me) is what finally killed the game.
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Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by bitwize on Thursday April 07, 2016 @07:20AM (#11446348)
Blizzard isn't interested in "building a living world" and never has been. From its inception the purpose of WoW has been to farm the likes of you for gold.
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Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by Margh on Thursday April 07, 2016 @08:58AM (#11446834)
And how do they continue to "farm" you for gold if you unsubscribe because you no longer feel a part of the world?
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Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by zipwitch on Thursday April 07, 2016 @11:22AM (#11447954)
By getting a small subset of players to buy premium cosmetic content and in-game gold. Blizzard came up with a clever mechanism involving game time and other players for the latter, both in order to obfuscate what they were doing somewhat and to give them a little more control over their economy.

The Blizzard Warcraft Store: https://us.battle.net/shop/en/product/game/wow

Information on the "WoW Token" mechanism for turning $ into gold: http://www.tentonhammer.com/guides/guide-to-buying-and-selli...

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Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by minimaxir on Thursday April 07, 2016 @10:22AM (#11447454)
That is exactly why subscriptions had dropped sharply after the release of Warlords of Draenor. (the endgame was designed around the antisocial garrisons, a mistake which they have scaled back in the upcoming expansion)
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Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by bitwize on Thursday April 07, 2016 @01:44PM (#11449109)
Ultimately, you don't matter to them. For every subscriber like you they lose because of a change, if they get two more, more casual players to sign up, they're in the black and sacrificing your membership is rational from a financial perspective.
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Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by mfukar on Thursday April 07, 2016 @08:44AM (#11446759)
If you look hard enough, you'll realise "a living world" is used as a synonym to "a market".
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Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by Filthy_casual on Thursday April 07, 2016 @02:45AM (#11445219)
This brings up another point in favor of "why not".

If existing players who are willing to buy new expansions whenever they are available migrate to vanilla servers, they might as well opt out of buying the expansions, since adding new content in the vanilla servers will make them non-vanilla.

Huh.

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Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by Margh on Thursday April 07, 2016 @08:59AM (#11446850)
A prudent developer might make the expansions a mandatory purchase that adds the new content in cosmetic ways.
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Re:Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private se... by stcredzero on Thursday April 07, 2016 @01:21PM (#11448938)
I've always thought that level caps in MMOs, particularly the WoW variety slash-and-burn where you basically make a new theme park every two years and throw the last one in the dumpster in terms of player viability, is a destructive cycle not conductive to building real living worlds.

Theme Park/Resort Casino. Basically dazzle your senses while getting you to play a rigged game to massage you with variable schedule of reward. A real, living world is spoiler-proof.

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