Crowdfunded Servers for Old Leagues

Private leagues are cool, but they don't go far enough. You know there's players out there who wish they were still playing Blight, or Harvest, or whatever.

I know that there are significant technical issues and costs associated with running old leagues. That just means you can ask alot for them.

Go back as far as you possibly can. Whatever you've still got the code for. Have a store-points donation meter on the front page for every old league you can possibly support. Whenever a meter fills up, that league gets a server in every region, running concurrently with the present beta t-*coughcoughcough* challenge league. That meter can be as big as you want. Hell, if a particular league is so old that you'd have to actually reconstruct it, the number could be so high that it's unlikely to be met until that league's 20th anniversary. Literal millions of bucks, here. You could run a donation-matching promo when it actually gets that old, go nuts.

This wouldn't just be a big hug for all your oldest and most monetizable players, and an amazing show of dedication to historical preservation, it would provide a really strong metric for whether the current league is actually busted or if people are just whining. If enough people are actually laying down cash to go play the old game, enough to make the legacy server have queues, you know you definitely goofed hard. Meanwhile, if a particular league stays popular long after it's gone, you know you did something right back then that you need to take another look at. People will be paying you to collect this information. Really seems like a no-brainer to me.

PS: I shouldn't need to explain why, but it would probably be a really good idea for you to take a crack at this before PoE 2 drops.
Furthermore, the Trade Manifesto delenda est.

Bone Mommy did nothing wrong. I want to join the Syndicate.
Last edited by 007Bistromath#2026 on Sep 28, 2022, 6:32:10 PM
Last bumped on Sep 30, 2022, 8:02:34 PM
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007Bistromath wrote:
I know that there are significant technical issues and costs associated with running old leagues. That just means you can ask alot for them.

If you had even the slightest idea about how much cost you're talking about, you wouldn't have posted...

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Cyzax wrote:

If you had even the slightest idea about how much cost you're talking about, you wouldn't have posted...

I realize "literal millions of bucks" is kind of ambiguous, but
Furthermore, the Trade Manifesto delenda est.

Bone Mommy did nothing wrong. I want to join the Syndicate.
"
Cyzax wrote:
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007Bistromath wrote:
I know that there are significant technical issues and costs associated with running old leagues. That just means you can ask alot for them.

If you had even the slightest idea about how much cost you're talking about, you wouldn't have posted...

Please elaborate.

I think it should be possible to run previous versions at basically no extra cost. The server space is presumably elastic, meaning that players on old version servers are simply shifting the load from the current version servers. The only thing that really needs to changed in the old version is the new location of servers and then make the new old client available in a discreet place on the website.

They could offer the old servers completely severed from the current ones. Basically a blank slate with no users until people sign up for them. No account transfer possible. Every old version is basically its own game and as-is with no patches or updates ever (except what's needed to work with the underlying server platform).

Players would need to buy points all over again unless GGG in fairness grandfathers some points for returning/existing players (perhaps in recognition that the game has changed dramatically), in which case it would make sense to create functionality to automate that transfer.

I don't see any huge extra costs associated with something like this and the elastic server space keeps costs minimised. It simply means more active (and happy) players/customers for GGG.
Let each player choose which version of PoE to play:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-post/24770192
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StarTraveller_DK wrote:
Please elaborate.

Lots of issues:
- The current leagues all run on the same database and schema. They'd have to upgrade their database usage which is usually a pretty extensive software change.
- They'd have to support multiple versions of software, and provide support for it. This is NOT something any sane software company want to do unless absolutely necessary as it suck up resources like a sponge. It is not just a matter of starting the old SW and just leaving it.
- They'd have to support it with customer service, which is very expensive.
- They'd suffer an impact on their 'everyone plays together' vision, and a fracturing of the customer base. There'd suddenly be a multitude of game economies.
- Older versions will sometime run on a different base OS, so they'd now have to support old OS versions.
- The PoE game IS the temporary leagues, with people being allowed to play standard. That's where the investment goes... and there is a limit to resources. Supporting old versions would mean less new content that is what is drawing new players in. The players wanting to play old versions are a tiny minority.
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Cyzax wrote:
- The current leagues all run on the same database and schema. They'd have to upgrade their database usage which is usually a pretty extensive software change.


Well, they already have separate databases for HC and SC, and probably SSF, no? As for databases with the old unique item data (and other item, skill, game data), yes, they would have to set up a new database for that, but it would be completely separate. Basically an image of whatever the database was back then (I would assume they have a version control system).

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Cyzax wrote:
- They'd have to support multiple versions of software, and provide support for it. This is NOT something any sane software company want to do unless absolutely necessary as it suck up resources like a sponge. It is not just a matter of starting the old SW and just leaving it.
- They'd have to support it with customer service, which is very expensive.


True, though I'd be happy with the old Harvest version (3.13 or 3.15) and literally zero support. Also, it would bring in money as well.

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Cyzax wrote:
- They'd suffer an impact on their 'everyone plays together' vision, and a fracturing of the customer base. There'd suddenly be a multitude of game economies.


True, but I am not sure how clever that vision is anymore. There are lots of players anyway, and they are already fractured across HC, SC, and SSF, league, standard, etc. - all the SSF people are essentially their own league (lots of 1-person-leagues).

Besides, they currently fracture me into the "doesn't play at all" league, and I guess I am not alone.

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Cyzax wrote:
- Older versions will sometime run on a different base OS, so they'd now have to support old OS versions.


That could indeed be a potential issue, not sure how good their software stack is. If it is a good software stack, this might be a relatively minor issue (just run the current version of the software with an old game data database), but yeah, can't judge that.

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Cyzax wrote:
- The PoE game IS the temporary leagues, with people being allowed to play standard. That's where the investment goes... and there is a limit to resources. Supporting old versions would mean less new content that is what is drawing new players in. The players wanting to play old versions are a tiny minority.


Well, for some people. For some people it is standard league. For some people it is the forums. That's kind of the problem: GGG wants to control how people play their game (you are having fun the wrong way!), instead of accepting that different people enjoy different things.

And I kind of doubt that the players wanting to play old leagues is a tiny minority. Then again, maybe lots of players that got annoyed by recent developments have already left.

For Blizzard, WoW Classic seems to have been a success story at least, and they must have faced the same issues you are describing.
Remove Horticrafting station storage limit.
nowadays, ggg seem to be to unable to maintain separate code bases for absolute incompatible systems like console and pc implementations.

i don't think there is a way for old versions of the game.
age and treachery will triumph over youth and skill!
Last edited by vio#1992 on Sep 29, 2022, 4:30:46 PM
Pretty sure they mentioned that they arent keeping older versions around.
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Cyzax wrote:

Lots of issues:

Just to be clear: none of these things are issues preventing them from doing it. They are obstacles which they could work past, but won't because all modern devs are dogmatically convinced, without even asking the public, that preserving history can never have a favorable opportunity cost vs. a new content treadmill. "Literal millions of bucks." They wouldn't get it in a week, but for some of the old leagues, every few months or so, they'd get it. There are players who spend lavishly on thaumaturgical Nikes. Games you can just buy often cost $60 a pop, and this one is "free." The only thing actually preventing this from happening is busted, anti-user GaaS business logic, and the fact that the playerbase is thoroughly GaaSlit. Nothing about what I've suggested is impossible, it is merely expensive, and even that is only in comparison to their current ultra-high margin business model.

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- The current leagues all run on the same database and schema. They'd have to upgrade their database usage which is usually a pretty extensive software change.
Any given throwback season could expect to have a user count less than a tenth that of the current state of the game. This would only change in the event of a new league being such a disaster that this alternative offering starts to function as a metric of their failure as I described. What makes online games expensive to run is scaling them. Rack space. For old leagues, you could probably run one (1) server in each region, and it wouldn't even have queues most of the time.

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- They'd have to support multiple versions of software, and provide support for it. This is NOT something any sane software company want to do unless absolutely necessary as it suck up resources like a sponge. It is not just a matter of starting the old SW and just leaving it.

For anything within about two years of current build, yes it is. (Obvious exception here being PoE2, in which we're sadly relying on GGG to not immediately delete the old game like they're the fucking BBC.) For the actual old stuff, true, dependencies rot away, you start really missing security and performance patches, it can be a bother. When hardware changes too much, that can often make legacy software actually dead. I know why devs don't want to do it. That still doesn't make it impossible. That makes it expensive. I'm telling them to post an asking price.

Also, it should be noted that saying this requires them to support "multiple versions" of software is... kind of a stretch. This isn't like an office suite where you have to maintain backward compatibility with three b2b clients who still have mission critical shit running COBOL. There is a way to deliver old leagues that, despite requiring more up-front effort, leaves you in a way better position in the long term, and it works especially well considering what a massive break from the status quo PoE 2 is going to be.

What they can do, instead of just running the old versions and complaining about how hard that is to keep around, is to make one final, canonical version of PoE 1's core, and lay the old league mechanics on top of it. This means they'd be on solid ground with the stuff under the hood that makes supporting legacy software so scary. It wouldn't play exactly like the old leagues did, because it wouldn't perfectly replicate what damage calculations and layers of defense and stuff like that were doing back then, but the important part, the way the actual league mechanics worked, would be preserved. The main (and if they decide so, only) mechanical changes you have to make to core to run an old league is just turn off everything that wasn't invented yet.

So, now they can run old leagues going back as far as that approach will actually work, but they really only have to worry about two versions of software: PoE 2 and PoE 1, with the latter getting only security patches and anything for hardware and OS compatibility that is miraculously trivial.

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- They'd have to support it with customer service, which is very expensive.
hahahaha no it's not, that's why it sucks

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- They'd suffer an impact on their 'everyone plays together' vision, and a fracturing of the customer base. There'd suddenly be a multitude of game economies.
We all love their Vision around here, don't we? (looks at any other thread) oh no

If your vision includes gleeful disregard for art preservation, you can blow it out your ass, I don't want to hear about it.

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- Older versions will sometime run on a different base OS, so they'd now have to support old OS versions.
No, they don't. It's completely normal to say "this is legacy software, you gotta figure it out yourself if your Alienware can't run it." Do you think id "supports" DOSBox?

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- The PoE game IS the temporary leagues, with people being allowed to play standard. That's where the investment goes... and there is a limit to resources. Supporting old versions would mean less new content that is what is drawing new players in. The players wanting to play old versions are a tiny minority.
You've just described the delusion underlying their business model, congrats. Growing forever is completely impossible. For anything. As it currently stands, this delusion persists mainly because churn looks like growth if you plug your ears when anyone talks about anything but the quarterly earnings. The entire reason we're getting PoE 2 is that GGG is aware on some level that their "growth" focused dev cycle has harmed the game to the point that they have to start from scratch to fix it in the long term.

People played D2 for more than a decade without new content. Small player count, but we're talking about a multi-billion dollar company well known for being extremely shitty that was still making enough money off the long tail of that quaint little club, for years, to keep the servers lit and eventually do a whole-ass modern remake.

GGG's model of perpetual hype promised the impossible to Tencent, and it's now about to kill something that, for all the damage it's accrued in recent years, is beautiful. They're going to do that because they have sold players like you the myth that preserving it isn't merely expensive, but impossible. It is only "impossible" because they refuse to seriously investigate the actual opportunity cost of doing it. You should be pissed about this.
Furthermore, the Trade Manifesto delenda est.

Bone Mommy did nothing wrong. I want to join the Syndicate.
New post because I know that other one's already too damn long for most people to actually read, and this is pretty much a separate idea.

Let's go ahead and concede that it would be just too damn expensive to maintain. Fine. I don't believe that, but I don't need to be right about it.

If they're only going to run PoE 2, why not turn that donation meter from "we will run old league servers" into "we will release the old code and assets?" Let the people who will pay for it figure out how to run it. Commit to the preservation of art and add something amazing to the public domain.

Of course, I know that's also "impossible." Millions of dollars just isn't enough to make modern businesses stop destroying things.
Furthermore, the Trade Manifesto delenda est.

Bone Mommy did nothing wrong. I want to join the Syndicate.

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