MasterQuaster wrote:Blizzard will not launch Vanilla Servers as long they work on new Addons. It would be too much risk for them. They can't risk that an old game is more successful than an expensive new game.
Yet that is exactly the risk Jagex took with Runescape and it worked out for them. Their "vanilla" Runescape is roughly equally popular as their current version of Runescape and the two versions, based on what I've read, happily co-exist together.
Don't pretend that you have inside knowledge or that you know exactly how investors and shareholders react. It is far more likely that they will applaud any initiative that A) brings more value to the portfolie, ie raising Blizzard share price and B) increases Blizzard profits, ie raising the amount of dividends they get. Everything else is just conjecture and random noise.
killshot wrote:No, they aren't going for any vanilla server, maybe they wanna make the game harder and more challenging but they have officially declined going back to vanilla or TBC which means their CEO and council thought of this idea LOOONG ago before Nostalrius, as many private servers (FEENIX ones had 8k on peak @2011) had raised.
"they" this and "they" that. The lead developer said that people do not want vanilla. Nostalrius proved them wrong. Any claims that Feenix had 8k players is also bullshit - they maybe had 2k at their peak if even that. What's your source for that claim anyway? The only other time that a Blizz staff member commented was that community manager years ago who said that it's not possible since the source code is lost. Thanks to Mark Kern, we now know what loads of people always suspected - that community manager either lied or, more likely, was blowing smoke and didn't really know. As far as I know, Mike Morhaime never issued a statement on vanilla servers before and neither has Blizzard ever given an official press release about them.
Now, there is no guarantee that Blizzard is going to introduce vanilla/legacy servers - but neither is there any guarantee they will not introduce them. It's entirely possible that the senior management at Blizzard haven't made up their minds about the issue.