Its not a challenge to do, the only hiccup you will face is trying to run old software on modern equipment and systems.
See you thunderfuryless in tbc 
Well, why don’t you start by telling us which version control system they used and what their release process looked like?
And maybe detail the process you would use to recreate each patch-level version of Vanilla.
I’d be curious, because WoW was a pretty early offering of SaaS, and game developers don’t seem to follow some industry practices common in other software areas.
Naxx and BWL have trinkets that are BiS for a good chunk of TBC….
Are you trying to grant them room to wiggle on excuses? They have already declared they lied when they revealed the reference client.
Why give them more excuses to fall back on?
Until T5 sure, but after that you are fully departed with Vanilla gear excluding scarab, and WHh and for pala the SM axe for trash is all I can think of.
cry me a river 
a price must be paid if you wanna have a BiS character on era.
1 Like
You seem to be deflecting here.
You’re saying a couple of things:
And
But you’re not bringing receipts. These claims are a very easy, hand-wavy way for you to pretend to have some information and/or understanding that it is becoming evident you do not.
Regardless of whether Blizzard is a big bad liar (which actually has nothing to do with this conversation), your claims have not been supported at all. I’d be interested in continuing this conversation if it leads to something of value (i.e. you actually know something and can share it), and so I’m asking questions to help flush out this “knowledge” in hopes that there may be some here.
Oh have they? Please provide a link both for my own knowledge, and posterity.
Now, with regards to the questions:
I can assume that they will have some compiled binaries that were releases, and maybe they even have each of them at patch-level sitting around somewhere. Maybe archived, and maybe someone would even have a way to track this down (these are a lot of assumptions that you seem to be considering given, but they are not).
And so assuming that, what about the actual source code? Not attempting to recreate by using some decompiling sofware on the binaries, but actual source code. Note: This is Blizzard, not a private server, and there may be some expectation for the game’s underlying codebase to be more or less true to form (of course this is no longer the case, but it may have been considered higher priority for the launch of Classic 2019).
You keep suggesting that it is no major feat to recreate the patch-level codebase that made up the initial iteration of Vanilla. I’d like you to put your money where your mouth is here. How (exactly — be detailed — try to be as technical as you can be) would you go about doing this?
They did mention something about data (and also the source code) in the post Restoring History: Creating WoW Classic Panel Recap:
“the source code, for which Blizzard had archives for multiple branches of the game that could be worked on and developed as separate pieces, early database data was overwritten with each commensurate update. Thankfully, that problem was fixed very quickly after launch, and when we looked, we found data going back to version 1.12—and even earlier.”
This is some interesting information, and it does suggest that there would be some sort of version control history to peruse. Cool. It would be interesting to see how neatly organized that may (or may not) be, and how useful it is. Not to mention, it would be very interesting to know what they were using, since development on WoW started in the late 90s, I believe.
Another thing though is which DBMS were they using? And was any of that in version control? I would venture that it would be unlikely that it was at the time… there has been a lot of development in software since then, particularly the entire DevOps movement, including infrastructure-as-code, which one might take as a given for some operations these days, but even that still isn’t. It really depends on the organization. And even if it was set up great at some time, whether that has been lost over time due to management and departmental changes, re-organizations, etc. Keeping in mind that Blizzard went through multiple changes during this period, Vivendi → ActivisionBlizzard, etc. and likely a bunch more at lower levels.
Actually, let’s just start with this question: Which DBMS were they using for development from the late 90s until Vanilla in say '04/'05? A fairly significant question if we’re going to make claims on its capabilities.
In any case, I’d be very curious if you could expand on this. And if you are merely unable to, maybe someone else could, as I think these are some interesting questions that I don’t have answers to. I can Google, and as far as I can tell, WoW was originally written using C++, though I’m not sure which DB they used (I have some vague memory of maybe seeing some job advertisement for a db engineer with deep MySQL experience and familiarity with how the WoW Auction House works, so maybe it was that, but maybe I’m misremembering).
1 Like
no, I am asking if you are trying to grant them room to avoid a service I know they can.
I am not saying its the best $$$$ path going forward, because the path they selected by forcing a choice actually is a high $$$$ path since they know that players who want to preserve progress will likely either take the move and level new in TBC ensuring themselves a sub for roughly the same as the boost OR they are getting $$$$ from the 58 boost pack.
That is the core of this whole thing..
Well that and that we asked years ago for clones to return and blizz basically said NO for exactly the same reason as NO now, because they know that if they sell the clones / copies its less money than if they force interested players into leveling fresh on Era OR buying a TBC boost.
I was trying to tell the clone askers “it is not happening” in a really nice way, becuse its certainly not happening when they have like what 50 people asking?
You and I both know they can sell clones, that is what this thread is about, we also both know they are a for profit company, and clones are obviously less $$$$$ otherwise they would be selling them. Its the only thing that makes sense.
You my friend are so easily off in the weeds nit picking for details that distract from the mission.
I am not going fishing on he bug forums to find where Zy told us about the reference client. He stated clearly they are using an authentic 1.12 reference client. The only way to accurately give us 1.13 is by doing so, and he also has been so kind as to check bugs we listed VS that reference build on 1.12 that obviously runs either on an emulated environment or on old gear.. There is no other point in discussing that because this clearly says blizzard lied when they falsely said the lost the code.
Later ill dredge the forums for you if you are not willing to do some reading.
I don’t care what they do, and that has nothing to do with this conversation at all. I am not defending Blizzard, I am asking you to expand on what you are saying. It seems to me that you are pretending to have information or understanding that you simply do not, which is unfortunate, because I am genuinely interested in it.
Then explain the process. Use technical detail.
You don’t know. I would appreciate it if in the future, you stop pretending to have technical understanding that you simply don’t when you reply to me.
I know you dont.
I expanded on the logic of how i gave you the answer but you want to know exacting things for example what version of Oracle DBMS are they using in 2004.. Dont know man, clould have been up to date, could have been 10 years old.. I literally do not know, but I do know you can emulate now days on virtual hardware and run old systems (possiblly) what they are doing to host a reference client.
You always do this man, you go searching for obsticals to find reasons why things cant be done..
Oracle; I should have more fully read your post and glazed over it quickly.
My expertise is not in Oracle, insteas in what is coming to blizz eventually if it has not already (Azure) and even tho they are differnet in many ways the core concepts of database management are similar enough you can get an understanding of what is going on without exacting knowlege of Oracle. Who knows man, maybe they are already on Azure, this would explain some
of the wacky lag we see now in BG’s despite the small latency displayed.
But none of that matters… what matters is not these grains of sand but the actual choices blizz studio makes. Right here, they dont seem to like clones, potentially because its more $$$$ in quarterly earnings to not supply them.
so you chose anniversary that started 1 year ago over starting on era and now you want a bail out option? that’s not how wow works you don’t make a choice then say hey i need you to give everyone this option because i messed up..
1 Like
Not likely happening anyway. Blizz is money hungry. If clones were profitable they would sell them.
You always do this, too (say things that suggest a deeper technical knowledge than you are able to follow up with). And that is frustrating, because I am genuinely interested in the technical specifics.
This is fair, and actually if they did use Oracle and not something like MySQL, then your point about them being able to recreate the patch-level codebase, including the database seems a lot more likely.
Note: I was able to find this job posting on the wayback time machine that has “Experience with Oracle” as a plus, so that supports what you’re saying here.
Well it might, but it wouldn’t really matter for the historical recordkeeping of the state of the code back in 2004–>2006.
And look, something else to keep in mind, because we are clearly not wanting to have the same conversation. I’m interested in the technical details, as I am a bit of a code history aficionado. And you seem to want to attack Blizzard for not offering clones now.
If they do/did offer clones now, I would suggest that they would do what they did last time and take a snapshot during the maintenance downtime window when TBC prepatch comes out.
What I have stated above is more that offering a service of cloning individual characters based on a restore at any given point in time is not something that I think any sane business process would deem to be worthwhile.
These are different things.
And of course the conversation that we are currently having is about how recreating a patch-perfect Vanilla WoW re-release is:
Which I’d love to dive into from a purely technical point of view, and verify its accuracy.
1 Like
I think you misinterpreted me a bit, and that is my fault for failing to make it clear.
I am not upset with the choice, I am sad that they cant just say “NO” clearly to the players. Instead they always give lip service on what they think will be a plausible way to dodge what is really a profit motive.
This is the core point I am making and like yourself I too am guilty AF about gettting into the weeds.
much an oversimplification, but so long as they werent total fools and I dont think OG blizz was so foolish.. They have backups of near all things..
You mentioned above how organized it may be… Now that is a serious problem in potential and could lend credibility to “we lost it” in terms of vanilla.
1 Like
Don’t you know that you’re supposed to stop showing up to raids after getting a Thundefury? It’s like a social contract or something.
You did know that this server was a fast moving one and would be almost guaranteed to progress to TBC. If you really wanted to keep a toon locked at 60 then you should have rolled on a Era server. You want to have it both ways, which is OK, but that was always a huge gamble with this Anni server.
1 Like
- “the source code, for which Blizzard had archives for multiple branches of the game that could be worked on and developed as separate pieces, early database data was overwritten with each commensurate update. Thankfully, that problem was fixed very quickly after launch, and when we looked, we found data going back to version 1.12—and even earlier.”
This is some interesting information, and it does suggest that there would be some sort of version control history to peruse. Cool. It would be interesting to see how neatly organized that may (or may not) be, and how useful it is. Not to mention, it would be very interesting to know what they were using, since development on WoW started in the late 90s, I believe.
Who really knows…but this is Blizzard and they were making excellent games in the 1990s as well. They had Diablo 1 and 2 out, and Warcraft 1 to 3, SNES games etc. before WoW was ever released. Considering that they claimed the code was “lost” for years and then they magically found it again, it’s a good bet that they have every single patch backed up and never lost or overwrote anything. They already had a huge triple A backlog and WoW wasn’t their first hit. They also had pre nerf patches for TBC as we all saw a few years ago.
I don’t think speculating on Blizzard’s technical is a part of this conversation.
I just want a blue post explaining why, or walking it back.
1 Like
My fault, I know I’m breaking the cycle or whatever. I got a lot of nice items…the problem is all this time it was a guild effort for me to get zooted out. Now, since I’m practically being forced to move to Era with it, it feels far more selfish.
I was so excited to help our guild prog more, go faster each week, improve threat, positioning, trash strategies, all with the help of funneled gear to the tank. I’ve done it for my MT’s since OG Vanilla, and throughout.
It just feels horrible to be forced to move this character away from the guild who helped earn it.