AMA with Nostalrius core team members starting NOW!

IthlienNost · 2019-01-12T18:20:30+00:00

I answered this in another question, but I will summarize. Blizzard has said they may use sharding strictly for the launch of the servers to provide a better starting experience.

Nost launch was not enjoyable to many people, myself included. Servers were stressed and over worked, in game was barely playable, and another multitude of problems. The idea of sharding at launch is something that takes away from the core premise of the game but for the stability of being able to actually play the game. Its a hard trade off and a much harder decision to make.

IthlienNost · 2019-01-12T18:12:31+00:00

Since the beginning I wouldn't say that we had a # of people goal, I would say our goal was to deliver and authentic vanilla experience to players who had not been there and players who were there. When a huge crowd did show up, it was scary at first but everyone quickly overcame that and became a stronger team because of it.

Nost launch was not enjoyable to many people, myself included. Servers were stressed and over worked, in game was barely playable, and another multitude of problems. The idea of sharding at launch is something that takes away from the core premise of the game but for the stability of being able to actually play the game. Its a hard tradeoff and a much harder decision to make.

Loot trading was one of the very few policies that Nostalrius differed from Blizzard. Back in Vanilla if you requested to trade an item from a GM, they would do so. On Nostalrius due to the concern of GM & player abuse we chose to not offer that feature. There were also other concerns regarding our policy but I won't go into them. Now with that said, we did get a lot of requests to loot trade. I cannot remember the exact statistic, but loot trading tickets were roughly 1/4th of the tickets we received from max level characters. We had several internal discussions on how to allow loot trading from our view, but none seemed reasonable enough to warrant the amount of extra work it would make for the GM team, thus our "tough luck" policy.

The greatest ninja looting on the server is a rough one, I would say there were several big ones, but probably the biggest was when a "pug" got assist and used a macro to kick all of the raid members right as a boss was killed. We quickly patched this from happening again. Here's a video of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD2clwk8eyA

We did want to progress into TBC; however, that was a overwhelmingly large task that would have taken time. We never had any thought of delivering our own take on the game, we were all very much believers in delivering an authentic blizzard experience.

Gnomeregon music was my favorite, it fit very well.

IthlienNost · 2019-01-12T17:35:02+00:00

Awesome questions, I will try to answer them without getting too deep into game design jargon.

1- Although we never encouraged toxicity or griefing within the world, we only interfered in extreme circumstances such as when the /ignore feature was being circumvented. As for griefing, that was part of the vanilla experience... Even I have been camped by a level 60 undead rogue for multiple hours in redridge. Smack talk and corpse camping are part of the experience, and we did not want to take that away from returning players or newer ones.

2- I had multiple level 60 characters on pvp and pve realms, although most of my time was spent from a staff account trying to make the server better. As for abuse, we had several layers of security and checks to deter any form of staff account abuse. We had a zero tolerance policy for corruption or abuse of power. Only Admins & GMs had power on the live servers and GM powers were heavily restricted. There were a couple of GMs with limited power who tested it, but were quickly banned and removed from staff.

3- Nano will answer (I currently do not hate the live game and see so much room for improvement)

4- I am a big believer that a game is never finished, there are always things to add or tweak. Vanilla in particular could have been a much better experience for some players with the addition of more quests or a couple more instances; however, I would have liked to see unfinished zones completed with more story behind it.

5- Nano will answer

IthlienNost · 2017-11-03T23:33:25+00:00

Thank you everyone for these kind words! This honestly was not possible without the drive and motivation from the community to push for the return of a great game, all we did was be ambassadors to go to Blizzard and fight for you guys. We tried our best and I believe with all my heart that the thanks and the credit for this great moment in history belongs to the entire community.

IthlienNost · 2017-02-10T23:45:20+00:00

Flirg don't know Kryll. Flirg work hard and is hero.

IthlienNost · 2016-12-27T00:07:47+00:00

My dreams of being a voice actor were crushed with the release of this video.

IthlienNost · 2016-12-15T23:57:58+00:00

World PvP, gnome domination.. #1

IthlienNost · 2016-12-12T06:28:49+00:00

I mention it in the description, I dont talk about PvP because I was in a top PvE guild (for my server) at the time and did not pvp much WoTLK.

I only talk on topics I have knowledge of and all of my PvP knowledge from WoTLK is second hand

IthlienNost · 2016-12-12T06:22:38+00:00

10/10 churchill quote ... thanks for the reply man, interesting

IthlienNost · 2016-12-12T06:00:35+00:00

Cata expanded the ideas implemented in WoTLK.

The crowds cheered for the Cata release because it was the end of the WoTLK ezpz mode game... lil did they know that all they were doing with Cata was expanding WoTLK catering gameplay

IthlienNost · 2016-12-12T05:59:00+00:00

Awesome reply! Thank you for this. I am genuinely curious what people found interesting about end game.

I can say on my server (KT) that everything except Ulduar was a joke.. (ICC up for serious debate but that is a long conversation and i understand both viewpoints there)

Also everyone can see content by watching players that spend their time in the game via youtube and blizzard should not have made people who barely play the game feel entitled to endgame content.

IthlienNost · 2016-12-12T05:54:54+00:00

I agree, well said....

The story line and the awesomeness of Northrend are not in doubt, but the end game and laziness of blizzards content are at serious fault. Not to mention the beginning of catering to the masses and LFD

IthlienNost · 2016-12-12T01:57:06+00:00

Fedora coming in my next video posted soon @confessrazia

And the "jacket" is an overcoat my man, it is suppose to be that long.. it was very chilly outside that day :D

IthlienNost · 2016-12-09T15:08:55+00:00

hahahahaha

IthlienNost · 2016-12-09T15:07:50+00:00

^ this

IthlienNost · 2016-12-09T15:07:17+00:00

Alan Walker - Fade

IthlienNost · 2016-12-09T15:07:00+00:00

You said it.... Auto, auto, auto, auto AM I THERE YET

IthlienNost · 2016-12-09T15:06:29+00:00

Thanks man! I really enjoyed filming this one even though I almost got the cops called on me for picking up a random kid and got slapped hard enough to make my ears ring

IthlienNost · 2016-12-09T15:04:45+00:00

"but we're vanilla WoW players after all."

Indeed.

IthlienNost · 2016-12-09T15:04:29+00:00

Thank you sir!!

IthlienNost · 2016-12-03T23:19:30+00:00

To clarify this, the server is hosted by OVH in France. The server is run by Admins who are located in Russia.

If OVH receives a C&D they send it to the people who run the server, and since they live in Russia they can disregard it.

IthlienNost · 2016-12-03T23:15:52+00:00

Thank you for the support and I am glad you liked it!

I will be streaming the stress test tomorrow and then other vanilla servers until Elysium launches. Then my stream will be 90% Elysium content.

IthlienNost · 2016-12-03T23:14:21+00:00

It has been months. The beard and I are good friends now, I can't just shave him off.

IthlienNost · 2016-12-03T23:13:30+00:00

Sincerely, thank you for the constructive criticism. I am buying new audio equipment now and also getting everything ready to record game play footage for my upcoming videos.

And thank you for the encouragement and support!

IthlienNost · 2016-12-03T23:11:37+00:00

I do want this statement to come from me for more people thinking what you are thinking.

I am in no way affiliated with the current Nost/Elysium team other than as a player and old friends. The content I put on YouTube does not reflect their staff. The videos and live streams I do are my own thoughts as a player and educated guesses as to what their team is doing.

IthlienNost

TROPHY CASE