I think the average person back then probably had at least 4-5 characters leveled to mid 30s before they realized “this isn’t it” or they just decided to pause them for a bit before leveling them again when they weren’t busy raiding on their main.
Keep in mind that boosting and raid pugs weren’t really a thing so of course you didn’t see a bunch of 60 alts in bis gear back then.
I have no idea what was the actual number of players who had multiple level capped alts. But everyone I knew from vanilla to Wrath had more than one.
The flip side of this is that you don’t need half of it to do an adequate job and clear content. My Mage alt is in a smattering of blues, T1, and T2 gear, but can do just fine in AQ40 pugs. I’m not smashing any charts by any stretch of the imagination, but you don’t need to in order to kill bosses.
Thankfully there are enough solid items you can craft, get from 5-mans, or get from AQ20 and ZG, to keep your alts relevant for other content. I probably won’t take my Mage into any Naxx pugs anytime soon, but my Druid and Paladin are more than set to go, and my Paladin has zero drops from AQ40 (but also every drop from BWL/MC/ZG she needs).
Gear just doesn’t matter that much.
clearly classic is infested with retail players
where is the pserv community i wonder - prob still on pserv?
never had this boost and buff bullsheet in pservs
you’re posting with a retail character… just stick to that. This isn’t for you.
…uhhh most of the theft servers had pay-to-win boosts in them. Instant 60, Tier gear of choice, PvP ranks, money, etc.
LOL?
I played private vanilla servers for 5 years waiting on classic. You think private servers were virgin territory with no fraud? Are you one of those people that think there is no lying, cheating or stealing in this world?
This is true but I wouldn’t call them theft servers as they are the reason why you even have classic.
Maybe so. I only spent 1-2 years in them. It never effected the game at all for me or anyone i played with. Groups were very easy to find, zones were full of people of all level ranges. It was the first time i ever went into Molten Core. The game was very alive and well even if they existed on their small scales.
I never saw any boosting, nor any buff spams, and the game was tuned harder in those.
Ive been in classic wow for 3 weeks now and its pretty much dead. Soon ill probably be finding out exactly what the limit is on ignoring people if there is one.
For 3 weeks all i have seen is
WTB boost
WTS boost
WTB buff
WTS buff
LFG RFC
A bit more LFG WC but see the same people looking for like an hour lol
Or
Free boost to fill group
Everything else ive seen is for 50-55+ which ill soon be in that crowd myself so hopefully it picks up. Then ill have to weed out all the reserved scum of the earth.
Im on sulfuras server, i can still count on my hands how many Alliance i have seen. Ive only been ganked like 2x. Which is odd since once i enter a zone i do not leave without finishing every quest i possibly can.
They’re theft servers because they used stolen IP, and no, we have Mark Kern to thank for it. All theft servers earned themselves were devastating defeats in federal court.
lvling and alt with epic boe and max lv enchant is pretty nice my dude
So no recognition to Nostalrius, private server, petition with 200k signatures that Mark Kern delivered to Mike Morhaime?
No, because that server in particular lost in a rather hilarious and expensive fashion in federal court.
The support people showed in wanting to play Classic was nice, but Kern and Morhaime get the credit for actually doing something, more specifically Mike since he was still working at Blizzard. The reality is that Blizzard can churn out anything and people will play.
How would they know people would want classic if there were no people playing vanilla private servers? Vanilla no longer existed without private servers.
What a silly question… the great forum copypasta known as the “Wall Of No” included several mentions of prior expansion replays. Since TBC, people have bounced around the idea that giving folks a chance to go through old content would be fun/cool/interesting.
Theft server players are a very small minority of folks compared to Retail players, but the idea was always there. It isn’t much coincidence that what got Kern’s interest piqued was the slew of rehash/reforge/remaster games coming out that got people super excited. Why not apply it to a game he worked on himself?
Theft server players deserve no credit.
Right I remember Blizzard response to a vanilla server:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Wrw3c2NjeE
Also the Nostalrius team were invited to Blizzard to talk to them about classic and they were not arrested and thrown in jail. Plus the subscriber numbers doubled when classic launched meaning it was more popular than retail. Since new subs were most likely for classic and then current retail players could move classic I would say classic is more popular.
They weren’t wrong, as the complaints and problems and issues they anticipated all surfaced. What they were wrong about was whether or not players would stick around in sufficient numbers to justify the resources. This was also a response in 2016. We had only just gotten our first teaser of the FF7 Remake less than a year prior, and the reforging/remaking games hadn’t yet really kicked into high gear.
LOL why would they? Also the “meet up” was with Kern, and primarily with Kern. The Nostalrius “team” had nothing to really add other than “people think this is popular”.
If they doubled, that would mean Classic (if we can even assume all the new subscriptions were for Classic and Classic alone) was merely as popular, not more.
None of this gives them any credit.
Illegal servers is probably a better term.
Uhmm ok…
Forgot you were at that meeting. Thanks for the front row seat analysis.
Right, no one from retail played classic. I understand now.
If you can’t read the industry just take a look at the bevvy of remakes/reforges/remasters made in the last 3 years, Blizzard included. Had Blizzard clamped down on Nost 2 years prior, I seriously doubt it would have made any progress until much later, like we got.
You can read what happened at that meeting, what was discussed, and with whom the focus relied. /facepalm
LOL and you assume no one on Classic played Retail?
While you’re gazing into a crystal ball by all means let us know what next weeks’ lottery winners will be…
Blizzard Meeting with Nostalrius Team.
We went through the following topics:
When Blizzard initially proposed this discussion several weeks ago, we were anxious that it would be a simple PR / damage mitigation move. It is now clear to us that this wasn’t the case.
First of all, people at key positions inside Blizzard attended the meeting. They were also all very interested, curious, attentive, and asked a lot of questions about all of the topics we mentioned: the presentation was meant to last less than 2 hours, and we finished after more than 5 hours! Finally, we were very surprised about the deep respect and admiration they all had for what we had accomplished and what the community has built around legacy WoW servers.
I’m sure that whole 5 hour transcript is somewhere out there and you read the whole thing right?
Also Private Emulated Servers for different games have been around for ages. Ultimate Online, Everquest, Ragnarok Online, etc. Do you know what happened to the most popular Everquest Vanilla Server? It was endorsed by the company and allowed to stay running.