Have petitions ever changed anything (in gaming)? (RE: World of Warcraft legacy servers, 209,000 signatures)

UPDATE: IT WORKED!? This is a very exciting development. https://twitter.com/NostalBegins/status/726049479208529920

OP:

Hot off the heels of the "We want legacy World of Warcraft servers, Blizzard" petition, I have been looking at game preservation mostly relating to multiplayer games susceptible to being quickly discarded. I can't think of any other games that have had this much outcry after being shut down, so I'm going to focus on World of Warcraft...which hasn't been shut down, but it has changed to the point of being a different game.

First let's condense what the hell this is about in bullet point fashion:

1. Finally a private/illegal/pirate/something server worth your time is created for the original World of Warcraft, 2005/2006 era with content patches being rolled out, no EXP boosting, no pay to win or donation shops and no cheating server managers. It was named Nostalrius, which is French for nostalgia, I think. Maybe?

2. After around a year, Blizzard cease & desist this particular server while many more are still running.

3. Server shuts down and 800,000 accounts vanish & 150,000 active users have to say goodbye.

4. Nostalrius create a Change.org petition asking for a change in stance over legacy servers. It blows up.

5. Many YouTubers/Twitch streamers support this, ex-World of Warcraft developer jumps on board, petition flies past 200,000. A lot of popular Twitch streamers including Sodapoppin, summit1g and Lirik say they would stream legacy WoW.

6. Now the petition is being printed out, 11,000 pages to be delivered to Mike Morhaime and he will be contacted shortly via phone (by the ex-dev)

7. Petition has almost gained another 10,000 in the last 14 hours.

8. What's next? Silence from Blizzard still? A big fat no?

This is still within Blizzard's rights to remove these servers, no matter what you think of it. They can do this, they have done it. There is no legal repercussion.

That said, you cannot play 'vanilla' World of Warcraft anymore. Even if you refuse to level past 60, the entire world has been changed as of Cataclysm, the vanilla zones are gone. Most of the raids are gone, the mechanics are drastically different for every class, the capital cities have been changed, the levelling is now of zero challenge and some of the old dungeons are gone too. This version is lost to the ether, The Burning Crusade's content is more intact, but then you still run into the problem that the mechanics are very different which trivialise a lot of the content even if you capped yourself at level 70.

PCI: There is concern that vanilla servers would fragment the community. What’s your thoughts on that?

MK: What community? Cross realm, flying, LFG/LFR and garrisons have already made it into a single player game. You never see anyone anymore and the people you meet are soon forgotten in your next group. Old servers had community, we worked really hard to make sure it was a social experience. Old servers would bring back community, bring back friends, and be a far “stickier” experience that will retain players longer, because social bonds are what keep people re-subbing and playing.

http://www.pcinvasion.com/ex-world-of-warcraft-dev-explains-blizzard-vanilla

There is plenty to dislike about vanilla World of Warcraft especially for the casual player but I would ask you to watch this video and try to understand why people long for these older versions. It is absolutely true that World of Warcraft has become almost single player by adding game systems that negate the need to seek players on your own server to interact and play with.

At what point do you think old versions of MMOs like this should be declared abandonware? Or do you think Blizzard could genuinely be missing out on revenue here, as both Everquest and Runescape profit from legacy servers. Nostalrius has proven that for many, many people, it's not just nostalgia, people really do turn up to play these lost versions.

I figure this should probably be in the World of Warcraft forum but that's not popular on this site and I think this is important for the power of fan outcry and the tricky nature of preserving online games, especially ones as difficult to resurrect as an MMO. Running a private server that isn't full of bugs and broken scripts & AI is extremely difficult, that's why so many are avoided and why Nostalrius was such a titan.

I do have a pony in this race. I enjoyed vanilla a lot, but I also enjoyed some of the expansions too. I feel that if Blizzard did bring these servers online and required both a subscription and a purchase of Legion to play, they would make a lot of money. Everybody wins, if you don't like the older versions, stick to modern servers, if you don't like modern versions, stick to the old ones.

It's not going to be easy to do. Blizzard would have to essentially manage two different games (sort of, they wouldn't have to make new content at least) but I'm sure there's bugs that'd need fixing and a team would have to manage the rollout of content. Then there's the issue of what to do when the servers have been out for a while, although, it would take 4-6 years for a server to go from vanilla all the way through Wrath of the Lich King. (Vanilla, TBC, and Wrath are the fan favourites and peak of the subscriber count)

In closing, I didn't play on Nostalrius, so I am not bitter they closed it. I wish I did play there but as I'm in Asia now my ping would be problematic. I never guessed it would actually turn out to be a good server when my friends initially mentioned it last year. Anyway I hope this post is OK here, I think this is a situation that is quite interesting.

Further reading:

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36044000

http://www.polygon.com/2016/4/7/11384154/world-of-warcraft-nostalrius-shutdown-blizzard

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/04/blizzard-shuts-down-popular-fan-run-pirate-server-for-classic-wow/

http://kotaku.com/the-people-who-still-play-world-of-warcraft-like-it-s-2-1704465372

Responding to your original question - petitions are largely pointless when it comes to asking video game companies to do something. Printing out 11,000 copies of a petition and sending it the a companies president just means that his intern is going to have to organize a way to destroy 11,000 copies of that petition.

I agree that there's no community spirit in WoW anymore, but there's other solutions to that than them splitting the community across two different editions of the game.

Finally, if they give in to this and release Vanilla servers, next people will want TBC servers, WOTLK servers, etc, etc.

An ex Blizzard employee (WoW dev no less) will be delivering it who is on good enough terms to have Mike Morhaime's cell number.

What a lot of people want is a server that progresses from Vanilla to WOTLK as these are the most loved periods of the game, this will take 4-6 years to cycle through unless they speed it up.

I do miss when your server mattered, now everything is cross realm, nobody cares who is on their server and there's no rivalries. I personally don't think it will split the community as you could play on both types of servers if you wanted to, let the players decide what they want. I'm sure Legion will be more popular but I have no doubt they'd get a million+ subscribers back if they released these servers.

Having played World of Warcraft since it's alpha-launch, and having one of the most momentous milestones of my life* occur within it's universe, this whole scenario still makes me feel entirely uncomfortable. Of course I would root for the little guy when it comes to keeping this "community" up and running. However, the responsible adult in me understands that we have rules & laws that we must adhere to. This silly grey area people are creating for themselves isn't necessarily a fair tactic to try and make the World of Warcraft community feel guilty for when, for all intents and purposes, is "pirating" a video game. Not just pirating a video game, but pirating a video game that is still actively played.

It's just a weird thing to be discussing about when on one side, everyone wants to root for the guys who just want to enjoy what they remember, but for some reason they want us to just put to the side that it's against the law, which is why it was shut down. I guess what I am trying to say is that: Blizzard is well within their rights, and I guess I'm cynical/old enough to realize that I shouldn't hold something like this against them as if their some sort of dragon bent on taking down the little guy while bathing in their mountain of money cackling maniacally.

* I met my wife in Vanilla World of Warcraft and played with her until the day we got married.

This is not actively played. You cannot play vanilla World of Warcraft anymore. It's not comparable to the game in its current form at all, most of the content is gone like I said.

It isn't about bringing Nostalrius back. If you read the petition, it's aimed towards opening a conversation about making legacy servers a possibility in some form.

I don't see piracy as the argument here, you can't buy this game anymore. I'm not saying Blizzard are wrong to take them down, but it's not the same as downloading a copy of Mad Max. It's a very weird situation I agree, but that's MMO preservation for you isn't it?

The petition is full of comments such as "take my money", but Blizzard won't let people!

I get what you're trying to say, but technically you can still play "vanilla" World of Warcraft. The content is still represented within the game, but it's been updated. It's still World of Warcraft: Expansion, though. I am all for the discussion being opened for legacy servers. Would I take part in a Vanilla one? Hell no. I lived that hellish battleground, lol. However, the idea of following in the footsteps of it's forefather Everquest seems very neat, and I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't already a plan for them. Hence the reason they closed the most popular server.

And after re-reading my post, I guess most of my vitriol is coming from the constant out-cry I've been witnessing on YouTube, Reddit, etc. that just doesn't seem to stop when it comes to talking about the moral ambiguity of it all. I suppose it leaked into my response!

I see what you are saying too. It depends how you look of it, technically the zones are there, I mean, you can still go to The Barrens, right? Only it's a very different version with mostly different quests, but technically, you can still go The Barrens, you can still go to Desolace.

A lot of content is totally gone now though and even if you were to stay at 60, the updated class mechanics and new abilities make the balance very different to vanilla. For example, a group of 10 level 60s were able to easily clear Molten Core because of the class changes.

There's definitely a lot of idiots talking about this and arguing going on between the pro and anti legacy server people. I really hope something comes of it though, I think it's a win-win for everybody.

@deepcovergecko: I think if they merged servers instead of cross-severed it would help. If they also gave you less of a reason to just chill in your garrison or made garrisons guild halls instead that would've helped.

And I don't hold much weight in the fact that an ex-dev will hand deliver them. That might just mean Mike will shake his hand, ask how the wife and kids are doing and then have his intern throw the documents out. Particularly when Mark Kern left Blizzard ten years ago.

*EDIT*

Also while you can still go the The Barrens, the geography of the map has changed due to the cataclysm event.

It would help but there's still going to be a demand for these servers, I hope they finally give it a shot! Let the numbers speak, if it's not working out, they can dismantle it.

I'm not confident in it either, but it's better than just being an Internet petition with some idiots spamming Blizzard's tweets.

I think people who honestly want to go back to Vanilla WoW are kind of nuts, but from a preservation standpoint I think having it available is massively important, and the server should be brought back.

And while petitions aren't necessarily the most effective method out there, complaining in the industry has shown time and time again to work, so do whatever out you really can to get your complaining out there. Petitions, letters, forums, emails, whatever.

Except for social media, because the people who run those accounts probably have jack shit to do with the server closing.

Have petitions ever changed anything (in gaming)?

Only if involves buttocks

Not sure about petitions, but I don't think Shenmue or the FFVII remake would have happened without some consumer demand.

Although those products aren't competing with a live version like Vanilla WoW would be. And they were demanded for years.

Reading the Kotaku article and it has some absolute gems.

Two Nostalrius players:

“I remember my buddy had thrown this big party while we were in high school, and I found myself in a bed with my prom date,” said Josh, now 28. “At 3:30am, my cell phone started going nuts, and I thought ‘oh shit, my parents,’ but it was this random number from Los Angeles. I picked it up and it was one of the officers in the guild. He told me I needed to get home, get on my computer, and help kill one of the Emerald Dragons that had just spawned. He said ‘welcome to the team’ and just hung up. That was the expectation. I’m an 18-year-old dude with this girl, and I had to say ‘I’ve gotta go kill this dragon.’ We weren’t hanging out for much longer.”

“I didn’t have any history as a gamer,” 63-year-old Terry Hutchinson recently told me as he recalled first getting sucked into WoW. “I was 53 years old and worked most of my adult life as a systems analyst. I had gone back to nursing school, and had been reading various periodicals referencing World of Warcraft. It just sounded interesting to me. I installed it in February of 2005, and I just got sucked into it immediately. I think I got close to 320 days played, which is like two percent of my organic life.”

Hutchinson’s fondest memory playing World of Warcraft was a tight skirmish in Warsong Gulch, a game of player vs. player capture the flag. It went for three white-knuckle hours, before his side pulled out a victory.

“Of course, it wasn’t long after that,” he noted, “that Blizzard put a time-limit on Warsong. Sure, that prevents those long, drawn-out matches. But you’ll never again get to experience a really well-played game like that.”

Sure it is. World of Warcraft requires a monthly fee paid to Blizzard to play it. Private servers circumvent that. It's piracy.

It requires a monthly fee to play the current version. It's not the same game as what it was, so I have a hard time to simply brand it as piracy. I don't think it's a very apt description because it's complicated. So much has changed, there's now Clash Royale treasure chests in the Legion Alpha. I wish I was joking.

Not to say Blizzard aren't within their rights to take it down and I am not encouraging using these servers, it's still a truth that Blizzard are not offering a way to play this product anymore. I wouldn't say that means you should do questionable/illegal things but everyone has their justification.

By playing the game now, you are going to be using zero of the content from the original game which is what people are cobbling together on these private servers, at that point, is it really piracy when you are not playing the same game? I think it's tricky, though I'm sure the T&S make it very black and white.

Edit, thanks for allowing the thread to remain here.

@deepcovergecko: Of course it's still piracy. Blizzard invested hundreds of millions to make the game, they own it, and can control how it's played and how it is presented to people. The fact that the old version of WoW isn't available to play anymore is irrelevant. For whatever their reasons, Blizzard either doesn't want to or can't operate vanilla servers. That sucks, but circumventing their copy protection and offering that up for free to people who aren't paying Blizzard IS piracy. Not to mention copyright violation.

And would a good number of people who now play on private servers pay a montly fee to play on official legacy servers (at least enough to make it worthwhile for Blizzard)? And technically you can still play the content of vanilla and the previous expansions if you buy the game now, although in a changed form. And IMO if you want an older version of the same content it becomes the same as running an older patch. And then it becomes kinda similar to running your own free modified servers of a previous patch of lets say, Battlefield or Call of Duty.

And petitions can work if the target is not aware of the scale and arguments (of course the target can still say 'meh whatever'). I can image that Blizzard is in this case however.

That's not true really though, all the zones are very different, some of the raids are gone as well as the world bosses, there's been big battleground changes, some dungeons are gone (I need to investigate that further, they re-released some dungeons, not sure if original versions got removed) and well...there's a lot to say about what is gone and changed.

I'm really curious to see what Blizzard respond, I think at this point it is a guarantee they will break silence. This is the first large scale outcry, before it has just been brought up on forums every so often or asked at 1-2 Blizzcons.

I understand the copyright thing completely, I just have a hard time accepting it to be akin to downloading The Force Awakens. It is weird. Or maybe I am weird.

@gundogan: Call of Duty or Battlefield don't require monthly subscriptions paid to the publishers, though. I'm not sure that analogy really works.

You misunderstand what you bought from them.

@deepcovergecko: Well how about this analogy, then. Say there is an online mathematics textbook service that is updated every year or two with new features. Students of course need to subscribe to this service in order to use any of these features, and this is where the publisher gets a lot of their revenue from. A professor decides he likes the old version of this service, but it isn't sold anymore. The publisher just doesn't support it, they only support and offer their new version. Do you think it would be OK for the professor to rip all of that old data and offer it to his students for free on his own server?

I think that's pretty different because people aren't able to get what they want at all from the current expansions so many are choosing to play the private servers instead of no Warcraft at all, where as textbooks tend not to go through radical changes..subject dependant. I know I have some books that are just as relevant now as they were in 2000.

I personally don't think Blizzard are losing subscriptions to private servers of the old expansions, I have to imagine there was a good chunk of people on Nostalrius that had an active subscription to Warlords of Draenor and just as many, if not more that wouldn't want to subscribe and play that.

I'm not sure there is a great analogy to this situation, I have a passion for some of this old content so I admit to being stubborn too and not wanting to be labeled as anything. Although, I haven't actually played privates before, meaning I'm not someone who is being accused anyway.

@deepcovergecko: Someone on another forum had a quick look at the numbers.

There's somewhere between 4-5m subs for WoW right now, roughly.

The divide between the East and West is usually about 1:1, so about 2 million in Europe and NA and about 2 million in Russia/China.

Nostralrius claimed it had 150k active members and over 800k registered accounts. That registered account number close enough to 25% of the supposed current player base for WoW that you could probably make a link between the private server being active and free and people deciding to play on the active, free server - though different content still Blizzard IP - and not playing on the official servers for the game as it currently is.

By merely being an option for people, it's possibly taking subscribers from Blizzard.

One highly impactful and successful gaming petition was the one that asked Bandai Namco to port Dark Souls 1 to the PC. It caught the company's attention in a big way and was key in making the project happen. The Dark Souls PC port, despite being very bare bones, ultimately went on to sell a massive 2.4M copies on Steam. The franchise has ever since had a big presence on the PC. Porting the game to the PC also gave From Software the opportunity to create Dark Souls' excellent DLC, which was a great boon for all players of the game.

You're right it's possible. For me I would not play Warlords of Draenor, but I'd love to have been able to play on Nostalrius. It wouldn't be a lost subscription for Blizzard in my case, and I imagine many others. I can only speak for myself, everything else is speculation.

I can't believe the thing I've been most excited for in gaming in a long time (excluding VR) is the idea of playing an 11 year old version of an MMO, doing almost all the same content I did when I was in high school.

I must be crazy. Fortunately I know many others are too, all my friends have sworn to come back and none of them are subscribers at the moment.

I think it is also a question of having about 150 000 active players playing wow withouth having to pay any subscriber fees. I dont think that Blizzard is pleased in having people play a version of their game withouth those players paying anything to blizzard for it.

I can understand the nostalgia factor but it is still an illegal server despite it being offered as a free to play game for the players. There is also a question if it would be a good business for Blizzard to actually set up a vanilla server. One of the hooks has probably been that the server has been free to play. With a subscription fee introduced to the equation i wonder how many of those 150k players would actually play the game.

I also played vanilla and i really dont understand the nostalgia factor that some people seem to have for it. Molten core boss encounters were pretty simple encounters and most of the quests were pretty basic stuff. The original barrens was a horrible zone.

So this was just another excuse to argue over that WoW private sever that got shut down, then? Cool, guess you answered your own question.

Try reading instead of jumping to conclusions. I am not upset in some grand way that Nostalrius got shut down, for one, I can't play on a French server from Asia. Secondly, I am a little too paranoid of playing on private servers, that's a lot of hours to dedicate for something that could easily be shutdown.

I didn't mean to come off so assy but please at least do light reading before blasting something.

I don't think it being free was a deciding factor in people playing there, I'm certain Nostalrius would have been a lot less popular if it was a Cataclysm server!

Molten Core was fairly simple but it was also one of the first raids, AQ40 and Naxx 40 were much harder. The smaller amount of class skills available contributed to the difficulty for sure, Blizzard removed a lot of other things too, if anyone remembers defense skill and crushing blows!

A lot more than 150k would play the game. The amount of people that didn't even know about Nostalrius is huge and it's a private server which instantly puts a lot of people off. That's definitely one of the reasons I never gave it a second thought until I heard and saw how great it was after the shutdown.

I think a "petition" got a Bioshock digital artbook to happen once...

There's a difference between discussing the petition you bring up in relation to past examples in the game industry and trying to convince people that that petition represents an inherently good idea based on one private server and it's fans' reactions to being shut down. So far everything you've focused on has been about the latter. Are you trying to ask if the petition to bring legacy servers to WoW has any chance of going through based on historical examples/popular opinion or are you trying to convince people to support it because you think it'd be totally cool if it happened?

I'm interested in examples of petitions that accomplished something in gaming and I wanted to post a thread that gives people the rundown, they can decide for themselves if they would support this. I won't nag people to do it or suggest people sign it, but yes, I am really hoping this inspires a change in policy.

Having only played world of warcraft for maybe two weeks in 2010 (I kept myself far away from that game after watching a few friends get hopelessly sucked in when it came out) I don't really have any nostalgia for it. My idea would be like an expansion that has you travel back in time to the vanilla version (make it a quest or something) which takes you to another instance of the world with the old map and rules, add a few new missions to close the portal or whatever and go back to the main world. Maybe add a branch in the story that traps your character there forever if you choose the alternative option. Also, update some of the assets and textures to be more in line with what the games graphics are like currently and sell that shit for like $10 You end up making the current angry mob happy AND you make more money. I expect my check in the mail blizzard.

They'll make vanilla servers once they have less subs than would play on them (probably something like 2 million). It would only work for a few years though (like Vanilla forever would not hold most players' interest for longer than 2-3 years) so it's kind of a stopgap measure and introduces a bunch of other issues after it's over.

That's why people are asking for a progression server that goes from Vanilla to WOTLK, this would take at least 5 years to cycle, that's what Nostalrius was doing. (announced to be working on TBC which the server would change to) This solves the issue of longevity, for at least a while anyway.

It wouldn't make sense to wait until the sub count has tanked (more), strike while the iron is hot.

Not totally awful but the point of this is to give people the classic version, I think that would be an easier option and please people more.

If they ever do open vanilla servers this will be the reason, try to get some money, but they would have to be super desperate.

That being said, I don't think they ever will get that low. The team on World of Warcraft now is massively different then the team in 05/06, in both personnel and in vision for the game. They don't want to go back to anything like Vanilla WoW, because Vanilla WoW wasn't very good. Don't get me wrong, I loved it and it's some of my favorite time playing WoW, but it wasn't good if you think about what makes games today. It was sluggish, un-optimized, a lot of zones were empty of content, etc. Hardcore MMO players didn't have a problem with it, but people who identify as that are the very, very small minority today.

Warcraft is now just a thing Blizzard has that helped them build their company, so they always have the lineage, but they will just keep twisting the current version and trying to add things that mirror popular styles of other games and products of today. The game has been going south since the end of MoP, when they had a massive drought of content and seemed to have an internal shift, then Warlords came out and was the lightest on content expansion they have ever done (while being the most expensive), and Legion doesn't look better. Couple that together with an ungodly obsession with chasing the "e-sports" high structuring their pvp, and the many long time community managers that have left the company in the last calendar year, and you can see how much Blizzard really has planned for their old powerhouse.

I loved my time with WoW, but after Warlords I hate to cut my 10 year ties, and I'm glad I have. Blizzard has vastly changed how they are as a company, and the direction they want to go with their games, and it's not a way I want to go. But neither or private servers, because I don't want to go back and do the same thing I did in 2006, I did it then, have good memories of it, and that's where it should stay.

Internet petitions aren't gonna do squat, nor should they. Officially opening classic servers would add more cost, be a pain in the ass to moderate/maintain, and would garner tons of complaints from people who think they want classic WoW, but then would quit after a week. From a business perspective, nothing about private servers seems like a gain, especially since they have a steady market of F2P games going now.

The Dark Souls PC port came about by petition appeal

Evidence?

Meanwhile...

800k accounts, 150k active players.

You shouldn't think for people and state what they would do, if vanilla WoW wasn't good people wouldn't go back to it, Nostalrius has proven people will go back and have a blast.

@deepcovergecko: But 150k people is small. That is not Blizzard level numbers, that is flavor of the week Korean MMO numbers. Granted that is a lot of people in normal situations, but business isn't normal, especially business from a company whose game peaked close to 12.5 million. So they could go through the effort of setting up classic servers, which would require additional technical purchases, servers, manpower and more and maybe make 2 million a month.

Or they could just slap a few gnomes on a digital card, re-use the same sound effects found in WoW and then make upwards of 20 million a month.

To be fair, that's one server, a private server a lot of people didn't know existed and requires a specific client version, then there's the paranoia of playing on something that could vanish suddenly. Official servers would definitely get more attention and players than 150k, I have absolutely no doubts about that.

You're forgetting something here - those people were all playing WoW for free. This doesn't really prove anything.

And since you're doing it to other people - where is your "evidence" that official servers would get more attention and more players than 150,000?

I think the argument that people were only playing because it was free has no weight to it, it's a very cheap game to begin with for the return you get.

150k on a non advertised private server that most people wouldn't play for not being official is enough evidence for me. I have absolutely no doubt, I'd be shocked if they get less than 1 million.

That's one of the crazier things I've read in quite some time. Free vs. paid will always be a deciding factor for a significant number of people, that just seems like common sense.

I also agree with @mindbullet that you pretty clearly wanted to drive discussion about this specific situation. I don't think there's anything wrong with having the discussion but considering your OP it was never going to be about the petition itself or gaming petitions in general.

Seems like a silly thing to worry very much about.

@deepcovergecko: BC raiding is much too harsh for a large audience, you could reintroduce Karazhan or something but raids like Sunwell are for a tiny percentage of the population. While BC is likely their best piece of content it doesn't have the same mystical appeal that Vanilla does and it did introduce the shitty 5 man format we have now (even if the 5 man heroics themselves were good due to being challenging; the last of their kind). Wrath is too similar to the modern WoW format, it basically is the modern WoW format aside from Ulduar.

Kickstarters are the new petitions. If people want ithem, then they can put their money where their mouth is.

I think petitions might have had something to do with how Bioware caved on the Mass Effect 3 redux ending. Wasn't only that, though.

But, might say more about EA and Bioware.

You're not wrong but the wider audience can play the Legion servers and let people enjoy the classic bubble! I'm not sure what would happen if they do release legacy servers, for me I'd be happy with Vanilla to WOTLK progression. I'm really curious to see what Blizzard do or don't come up with.

There's a new q&a with Mark Kern about this:

Do you think this would be a profitable operation?

Very much so. WoW was designed for 1M accounts, or 450k active subscriptions and be profitable. If Nostalrius, with no name, no official license, and no marketing can register 850k accounts, I assure you that at least 2M will re-sub with Blizzard resources. And WoW could really use another 2M subs, that would easily be 30-50% more than what they have now since they dropped below 5M. These players would play both. They would play the new content for new WoW when it comes out, and they would go back and play the progression servers in the meantime.

http://gamertics.com/world-of-warcraft-vanilla-server-petition-hits-over-200-000-2/

I'm aware of people's thoughts about Mark Kern in some ways but he's still the most in the know person to be speaking of this stuff aside from Blizzard themselves or other ex-employees that chime in.

Oh yeah I remember that petition! I was disappointed by Mass Effect 3's ending but I never actually signed.

I know it's a deciding factor in a lot of cases but I don't think people are choosing to play vanilla WoW because it's free so I'm confident in saying most of those Nostalrius players would most certainly be on official servers.

I do feel passionate about this and I wouldn't have made this thread if this petition hadn't been blowing up, true, but I have been appreciating the responses about other gaming petitions.

I think the popularity of EQ1 and 2's official progression servers which require a paid subscription, along with the popularity of Runescape's official progression server (I don't remember if that one required a sub), kinda debunks the absurd claim that "these people play there because it's free."

Also for the argument "it's illegal, end of story," remember in general I thought we were past that argument for classic games. If you want to be so legal about it, VinnyVania wouldn't be able to happen because they were clearly playing Castlevania 1-4 on an emulator.

@belegorm: WoW is still an actively developing game. And VinnyVania would have been able to happen, they would've just had to have used different capture gear.

Fans petitioned to get Warzone 2100 released as open source back in 2004, and Eidos allowed that to happen, first in a limited capacity where the source code and art assets were open sourced, but not the music and cutscenes. Later the terms were updated to include the entire thing, including previously PlayStation exclusive parts. That was more than 5 years after the game's original release, and it never was a massive hit to begin with, so it's not comparable to any Blizzard stuff though.

I believe the MMO's Meridian 59 and Neocron 2 were open sourced and starting allowing private servers after petitions too, but neither of them were ever particularly popular, I believe that in both cases the original developers or publishers were on the verge of bankruptcy, making it a general game preservation thing rather than preserving a specific era of a long going MMO. So, yeah, petitions can change things, but that's more likely to happen with smaller titles, rather than something like WOW which is still raking in tons of money.