Feasibility and Monetization. A treatise on Legacy servers owned by Blizzard

Hello everyone,

Yesterday, Global chat was held hostage to a large discussion about the feasibility of Blizzard opening Legacy servers. A majority of the discourse was focused on the following arguments:

1. No one would want to pay for Legacy content. (I.e. the reason Private Servers can be successful is because there is no requirement for payment to play)
2. The impact of Legacy servers could negatively affect current Retail versions of WoW.
3. Nostalgia alone is worth the attempt to make the servers. (Subjective argument that I won’t really talk about because it’s been beat to death at this point.)

Instead of thinking about all the reasons why Blizzard wouldn't want to create a legacy server, I brainstormed on how it could be possible. What would Blizzard need to do in order to make this a reality?

I came up with four arguments that would likely need to be considered:
1. Cost. How much will it cost to implement legacy servers? How much staff will need to be transferred? How much for new UI/UX that may be required? How much for overhead?
2. Estimated ROI.
3. What's the impact on the current version of World of Warcraft? How will legacy servers promote the growth of retail versions? How may they detract from retail versions?
4. Implementation. How do we implement legacy? What's the UI/UX for it? What's the flow? How do we include legacy with the launcher?
My comments for cost come from the recent Nostalrius AMA. They claimed that server cost was $500-$1000 USD per month. They did not include the cost of their workers (since they were volunteers) and they did not include an estimate of what those workers may have cost if they were paid a competitive rate in the U.S. market. I’m sure programmers could weigh in on what type of effort would be needed to update the old code to play nice with the new code.

Comments about estimated ROI can come from various sources based on the proof of concept provided by Nostalrius. Blizzard has access to a population of current WoW players that sits around six million (as of last WoD update last year). A market penetration of six million, with suggestions from other private server collections of population being at least near 100k users total, could easily be enough to give an investment toward the project of a Legacy server, but how would it be monetized?

The impact of Legacy servers on retail servers is difficult to provide data for. We can make assumptions and speculations, but most of it is anecdotal and lacks any real empirical data. What can be said about private servers though in relation to retail WoW?
- It’s Free
- It provides access to content that cannot be revisited in the current WoW model
- Leveling experience, lack of Dungeon Finder, talent tree differences, class imbalance, the world over all is regressed, etc.
So why do people play on these servers? Based off of the Nostalrius AMA, a lot of evidence can be provided that players are playing because they miss the sense of community. Does the retail version lack this? Would players actively leave retail WoW servers to join a regressed version simply because of the community difference? Apparently that is an argument for it.

So how do we implement current WoW to retrieve the players that don’t like retail, but still want a quality version of Legacy data?

I have a few suggestions here:

Pay for access - One-time payment of X amount of money gets you a pass for the Legacy server(s). This is now open to your account, so you’ll have the ability to make characters on Legacy servers.

Tie in with current subscription – An account with an active subscription will have access to Legacy servers.

Smaller subscription for Legacy only – This would be a subscription price that is inexpensive compared to the current model for WoW and would give access only for Legacy servers.

With the above models, there are some arguments for them:

Pay for access – Pay for access would give the users an ability to pay upfront, cash-in-hand model, to gain unlimited access to their Legacy server. This would not require an active subscription. Consider this model similar to Guild Wars or The Secret World. Players pay for the game access, and then they can play it from there as long as they like. Since Legacy servers don’t require large amounts of creative updates, only implementation of already existing scripts or existing updates, then this cost would be much smaller and not require a consistent subscription.

Tie in with current subscription – Players who wish to play retail WoW already pay a subscription. A popular reason why players cancel their accounts is because of lack of content. Players clear the content, they get their fill, and they cancel until the next update. With a reprieve from this, Legacy servers offer the player a small vacation. They can keep their accounts active and in the meantime, stay within the World of Warcraft universe while playing Legacy servers. This is especially appealing to me, since I like to keep up-to-date with the retail version while also waxing nostalgia in Legacy servers.

Smaller subscription for Legacy only – This is a cheaper option to keep playing WoW. For X cost, you could keep your Legacy status and get your nostalgia fix, but you only have access to whatever Legacy version is currently being ran by Blizzard.


All in all, Legacy servers represent a unique situation for Blizzard. We understand that Blizzard wants to allow users to have access to older games (updated Startcraft, Warcraft 3, and Diablo 2 recently), so the precedent is set. I feel that if Blizzard implemented unique draws to keep players interested in the retail version, while still allowing old players to come back and relieve their nostalgia, that it would be successful. So how could they do it? What would it take to make you want to pay for Blizzard to open Legacy servers?

For me, I thought that if they had unique achievements / cosmetics / pets that only came from Legacy servers, but reflected in retail WoW. An example would be, if a Legacy server for Vanilla was opened, and you made it to max level. Boom you have an achievement that shows up in retail. You cleared X raid on the Legacy server? “RelytGG cleared Molten Core on Vanilla Legacy server”. Let’s say you clear all content available within Vanilla, well now you get a unique pet and cosmetic for retail version. These ideas allow Blizzard to make the Legacy server appealing to players who don’t care about them, because it benefits the retail version that they do care about. At the same time, it allows a unique experience that may gravitate Legacy players to retail WoW to see how their new unlocks look in game.

Blizzard has many times through its history linked its games to each other. You get banners in Diablo 3, you get avatars in StarCraft 2, you get cards in Hearth Stone, and the list goes on. Certainly they would be able to draw new users to Legacy servers for nostalgia, but with proper brainstorming they could actually bring new players to it who have never experienced it before. With real analysis, they could even bring Legacy players into current retail with the right incentives.

Thanks for reading and I hope constructive dialogue comes from this post. 

If you are talking about hosting old exp on servers,yes they will do it at one point or they are total dumb... To let that huuuuuge income of payerbase and money. Old and new players would be interested. Also they wont put game f2p if its get boring etc. i would already do it...it will strecth players but would be good move at some point

I was having a discussion about this with a friend of mine yesterday. My opinion on this is if you really think about all that would be involved, there is really no way blizzard would do this, and here's why:

1) They would have to have a server for every expansion. You can't just make a vanilla server or a wotlk server and be like "Here you go. If you wanted Cata/MoP/WoD (once legion is released) you're sh!t out of luck sorry bro" This means that there is a potentially infinite amount of work involved, relative to the amount of future expansions.

2) I know some of the content from past expansions is really great, and I agree with that wholeheartedly. But, and this is a big one, in some cases the balancing and technical mechanics of those expansions were really terrible. Blizzard, being the company they are, would have to go and fix all of this, which means a fair bit of rescripting. You're also talking about going back before a lot of huge QoL fixes. Item stacking, hunter pet revamp, dual spec, etc. This right here goes against Blizzard's ethics and ideology. You're literally asking them to give you (solely in terms of QoL and mechanical aspects) a ****tier version of the game.

3) Blizzard has made a lot of great changes to their graphical engines, and I'm pretty sure most people would agree that a lot of the phasing technology and even UI fixes/improvements/additions have been really great. Revamped guild system, achievement system etc etc. They don't implement these features to turn around and put out a version of the game that doesn't have them. It's like building a skyscraper and then using a wrecking ball to punch holes in it, and then presenting the building as a finished product.

TLDR; The amount of effort involved in polishing old expansions to the level of technical quality (not content) that is seen in current expansions is something that not many of us can really fathom. Opening Legacy servers is not as simple as 'put version of game onto server, put it online' and you really have to think of anything that could possibly be entailed in order to understand why Blizzard has literally no reason to do this other than because people want it.

When watching videos about this yesterday, I found myself asking a few questions. What if Blizzard opened legacy servers and they were successful? What if those legacy servers were more popular than the "main game"? What sort of image would that project?

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Originally Posted by Mercy

When watching videos about this yesterday, I found myself asking a few questions. What if Blizzard opened legacy servers and they were successful? What if those legacy servers were more popular than the "main game"? What sort of image would that project?

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I've followed the current Blizzard dev team closely as I watched them destroy this game. From that, I've concluded that their staff has reached a critical mass of people of modest talents (e.g. Celestalon and Holinka) who just want to show up each day and do as little as they can and still draw a paycheck. And when they do actually do something, it's usually not very good, given their meager talents.

Don't get me wrong- that's nothing unusual, you see tons of people like that in the working world. But it really contrasts to the original WoW staff, which was made up of highly talented people with a passion for what they were doing and who would stay up all night working on great content.

That's why I play private servers. I get to experience the content made by the highly talented and energetic people, and I don't have to expose myself to the far worse version of that game.

I think the current staff realizes their limitations, and the last thing they want is having WOTLK and the current game side by side for everyone to compare.

(i) Retail code was probably quite horrible, certainly performing worse than the current emulator cores we have currently, which have been polished over and over again over the years
(ii) the same code was quite possibly custom-written for specific (custom) hardware which doesn`t exist anymore thus requiring an update, but
(iii) about certainly none on the current Blizz team left has half a flying clue about any of the code written by developers 10 years ago which have long since quit
(iv) so they most probably don`t even have the means to open up 'Legacy Realms', even if they`d wish to do so

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Originally Posted by Laethea

I've followed the current Blizzard dev team closely as I watched them destroy this game. From that, I've concluded that their staff has reached a critical mass of people of modest talents (e.g. Celestalon and Holinka) who just want to show up each day and do as little as they can and still draw a paycheck. And when they do actually do something, it's usually not very good, given their meager talents.

Don't get me wrong- that's nothing unusual, you see tons of people like that in the working world. But it really contrasts to the original WoW staff, which was made up of highly talented people with a passion for what they were doing and who would stay up all night working on great content.

That's why I play private servers. I get to experience the content made by the highly talented and energetic people, and I don't have to expose myself to the far worse version of that game.

I think the current staff realizes their limitations, and the last thing they want is having WOTLK and the current game side by side for everyone to compare.

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This is a very interesting view that I hadn't considered before, at least the difference of staffing and how that relates to the concept of Legacy servers. This is another really great point as to why the Blizzard of today will not touch this idea with a ten foot pole, outside of their new 'Timewalking' content.

Also, the discussion going on here is great so far. Really glad to see people coming together to logically discuss this regardless of who is for or against it. Let's hope we can keep it this way, and avoid "BLIZZ IS STOOPIT DO WHAT I WANT" posts lol.

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Originally Posted by Mercy

When watching videos about this yesterday, I found myself asking a few questions. What if Blizzard opened legacy servers and they were successful? What if those legacy servers were more popular than the "main game"? What sort of image would that project?

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This is actually what myself and a good portion of people I have seen believe to be the real reason; it would be Blizzard admitting that their current game design is wrong, or at least less liked than the "inferior" and older versions of the game.

My main question would be to them, how much of the core would they have to recode in order to do these old expansions. Using their current WOD core could bring in a lot of difficulties in terms of scaling, graphic visuals, API, interface and such.

honestly, cataclysm is the last expansion where guides were still a thing and skill was important, tho it is also where things are already going downhill
check tauri-veins (cata) and you'll see "this is the most commonly used build for <spec> <class> and the following are alternative talent choices with occasional utility"
but mop-veins (mop) you'll see "There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents are now viable."
which makes the game faceroll easy, no thinking involved, clearly outlined pvp talents which can be opted into or out of in previous expansions too, but there is virtually no difference between talent A and talent B anymore, one may be passive and weak-ish, other may be activated and slightly more potent, but that's it

something pvp players may have actually enjoyed in mop, is the fact you now needed to be in a certain spec to obtain their utility, no more elemental and enha shamans using greater healing wave when low on hp but forced to use a more expensive lower healing surge as 'greater healing wave' is now locked in resto
copy-paste and edit above to druid/priest/paladin classes

the above continues in Legion with most utility spells being removed, which most older players feel is basically, insane... blurring the line between a pro player and their "250k dps" and a noob with gear with "240k dps", basically letting people come and play without needing to check what abilities/talents benefit them most and learning to use them all correctly, just mash your 2 button rotations, use your offensive cooldown and that's it, oh, and don't stand in anything please, or at least use your defensive cooldown when you do so

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Originally Posted by Selaya

(i) Retail code was probably quite horrible, certainly performing worse than the current emulator cores we have currently, which have been polished over and over again over the years
(ii) the same code was quite possibly custom-written for specific (custom) hardware which doesn`t exist anymore thus requiring an update, but
(iii) about certainly none on the current Blizz team left has half a flying clue about any of the code written by developers 10 years ago which have long since quit
(iv) so they most probably don`t even have the means to open up 'Legacy Realms', even if they`d wish to do so

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If they realize that they can make a lot of money out of it, then its worth that time and effort. In the end, they can buy cores from best server of each expansion. They have money so they can do it. And they have manpower to tweak those cores even more better

Yeah, if blizz Put Legacy servers It will slow progression guilds. on Heroic/Mythic. When few Cores Heals/Tanks go there, and say to the others, cya in half a year, i wanna bis in Vanilla legacy. I Really Dislike those Legacy server, Because they are Ancient already, specially Vanilla.

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Originally Posted by toniplavna

If they realize that they can make a lot of money out of it, then its worth that time and effort. In the end, they can buy cores from best server of each expansion. They have money so they can do it. And they have manpower to tweak those cores even more better

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That`s quite true, but I don`t think they came to this conclusion

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Originally Posted by relytgg

I came up with four arguments that would likely need to be considered:

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Lets consider them.

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1. Cost. How much will it cost to implement legacy servers? How much staff will need to be transferred? How much for new UI/UX that may be required? How much for overhead?

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If a group of individuals can develope and run a private server for absolutely no charge (other than unpredictable assets from individual donations), then you would expect a multimillion dollar company should be able to pull through. Blizzard also sits on a vast library of data, archives and analyses from the time of the expansions in question, so they would certainly be better equipted to deal with it than private servers can.

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2. Estimated ROI.

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Same as any other expansions. In fact, it would be even less of a gamble than to develope a whole new game because statistics from pirvate servers has already proven that the market does exists, and that there is an unquestionable high demand from potentional customers. It also wouldnt cost the company much as they already sit on the archives necessary, not to mention the millions of dollars ready to fund this relatively light project.

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3. What's the impact on the current version of World of Warcraft? How will legacy servers promote the growth of retail versions? How may they detract from retail versions?

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Right now the retail version is suffering from a steady decrease of subscriptions, that fact alone should be alarming enough and promote ideas of changes and radical decisions to be made. Warlords of Draenor saw a suddent surge of sales, but subscriptions soon continued to fall, and ever more drastically.
If the upcoming Legion expansions pack shows the same pattern, then Blizzard should seriously start considering other alternatives.

One fact is true, players do choose private servers because they are free of charge, but players tend to also show very little reluctance to pay for something if it comes in good value. The main reason why subscriptions in WoW retail is dropping isnt primarly because of a tough economic situation from individual players, but because players feel that the value of the game doesnt hold up to the money it demands.
Private servers are often buggy, or has some sort of customization (donation for better gear etc), or unrelyable connection and database. If Blizzard would make a legacy server, one that is completely in blizz standards, bug free, little connection/server issues, and completely true to its retail standards and settings (not to mention safe), then I think even players from Private servers would certainly feel tempted to join.

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4. Implementation. How do we implement legacy? What's the UI/UX for it? What's the flow? How do we include legacy with the launcher?

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A Legacy pack could be released in the same fashion as an expansion pack, and sold in the store. This would increase profit likewise a new expansion would, and could definetly help bringing up subscriptions, and prevent the spreading of private servers.

I envision the game to be held in seperate discs, but sold in a collective expansion pack.
Example:

World of Warcraft Legacy: Legends of Lore
Release date: 2017,
This expansion pack features 3 discs: Vanilla WoW. The Burning Crusade. The Wrath Of The Lich King.

World of Warcraft Legacy: Legends of War
Release date: 2019
This expansion pack features 2 discs: Cataclysm. Mists of Pandaria.

Each game from the 5 discs has been completely remastered, featuring better class balances, added some in-game content to enhance the experience, but being 95% completely original content from the time of the game.
Each disc will be required to be installed seperately, they all have seperate servers.

Well someone doesn't know what UI/UX actually is