Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Tart]

But you can just play it, with absolutely no difference to the experience, for free at any time. So why would you pay for it then?

Now you are adding things. If it was risk free I would happily pay nost rather then blizzard because I'm getting what I want.

[Boathouse]

WOTLK was the grand end of the lore hype, the entire culmination of the warcraft universe as we knew it. For a vast number of players, the defeat of the Lich King was the end for them. It was time to move on in life.

When Burning Crusade came out people bitched that it was shit and they wanted vanilla back, when WotLK came out people bitched and said they wanted BC back, when Cata came out people bitched and said they wanted WotLK back. Humans by nature oppose change.

For sometime i wanted ask one question, but i was affraid. Now i got the chance?

Few years ago i readed on some Poland forums, that private servers are legit, until people who work on them they don't get any money from that, or stolen Blizz files? Can someone explain it?

That's up to the company that owns it. It's like that fighting game for League of Legends that someone wanted to make. Riot told them so long as they make ZERO money off it and don't ask for money to make/run it, they're 100% cool with it. Hell they even advertised it.

Not a bad idea, but I disagree with your assertion that it's fun for a small period of time to relive those days , but it will fade. Nost has been out for over a year, the pvp server hadn't even released AQ yet and thousands were enjoying it on many different levels. And that just one server, the most popular, in a sea of private servers people have already been enjoying for years. It might be that way for you but it isn't that way for everyone else. I didn't have atiesh, but I have glad mounts and all the old titles as well, and have cleared all pve content in wow outside of the last couple bosses in naxx on retail and I still enjoy playing that version of the game over the current iteration. I'm still subbed and cleared all current content months ago, only log in to do garrisons occasionally. I've been having a blast for months playing lower level characters, leveling classes and playing the other faction, exploring areas I never really checked out back then, but its not really even about all that for me. The original game is a better MMO in my opinion that I can testify to with the amount of people I've met and friends I've made in my short time there. That is just currently not the case when I start a new character on a retail server.

Right, but they emulated the vanilla release schedule. Do you think that would work for long though after they finished the content for the game? That's where it becomes too much of a gamble. Part of Nosts charm was living the days of the game as they released it, I just don't see it lasting long after they finished the content cycle. I'm not saying living thru those days wouldn't be fun again, as if they did something like I said I would for sure roll on them every time with groups for the titles/mounts. I just could never see myself, being someone who's cleared everything in game while current, ever finishing the last raid and saying "You know what, I'll just stay here forever". There's too many good games on the market for me to ever consider doing that. Hell I've been bouncing between FFXIV, WoW, and a few other games based on how caught up in current content I am. I love WoW, current and old, I have fond memories of every expansion, even during the times when people claimed it was "at it's worst". I and many others (including Blizzard) just don't see the long term appeal in it.

[Thoughtsinchaos]

https://www.change.org/p/michael-mor...raft-community

Petition at 15k and climbing



This message is written in hopes that changes may be made possible in the link between Blizzard and volunteer based legacy servers.

We never saw our community as a threat for Blizzard. It sounds more like a transverse place where players can continue to enjoy old World of Warcraft's games no longer available, maybe until a new expansion appears; a huge and powerful community of fans that remains attached to future Blizzard games, as we have in no other gaming company.
We don’t have the pretention to come up with a complete solution regarding legacy servers that you and your company didn't already think about, but we'd be glad and honored to share it with you if you're interested, still on a volunteer basis.

I signed it. I'm a loyal retail WoW subscriber, but I also enjoyed playing on the vanilla server. This petition might not do much, but hey, what the heck

[Stormspark]

For sometime i wanted ask one question, but i was affraid. Now i got the chance?

Few years ago i readed on some Poland forums, that private servers are legit, until people who work on them they don't get any money from that, or stolen Blizz files? Can someone explain it?

Nope, under current laws they are illegal (barring hosting in a place like China that doesn't care about copyright laws). That's not just "against Blizzard's terms of use". Actually illegal as in "if this is hosted in the US or somewhere with an extradition treaty with the US, it can be raided by police, hardware seized, and people sent to jail" illegal. Now, modifying your client to connect to a private server isn't illegal in that way, but even that part is against Blizzard's ToU and they can ban you for it. The running the server part is illegal though.

The only way it could ever be legal is if Blizzard had given them permission to do so. I'm not saying I agree with the laws, just stating what they are.

[Theoris]

It's true, tho.

There are laws that are made out of nessecity and times ; Not out of moral bakrupcy or the likes.

And it is true ; The people did not gain money on it. If anything, if i was Blizzard, i'd sanction this as terms of Fair Use.

No, it's not. In fact, it was wrong on all accounts in all three statements (in terms of IP and copyright, anyway).

Anyway, that aside, I'm kind of confused. Are you saying Nostralius was fair use? Because that doesn't qualify here - at all.

[barackohmama]

Ahh do want to reply to this because this one is easy. There are no outright unintelligent ideas that ever then go on to be massively successful enough to be trademarked, all rights reserved etc etc etc, so that other people don't steal it. So, if you use any logic what so ever you'd see i'm right. I hope you are no longer "no sure" because then you'd put the nail in the coffin i've been saying. Also I addressed your contributions to the disscussion thing long ago, but the stupid as fuck thing strikes again. I wasted nobody else's time but yours, nobody else gives a rats ass to my replies of yours.

Technically you're incorrect. And what does success has to do with anything? This is getting amusing. You never adressed my contributions other than saying one of my statement was stupid. Which I later proved it wasn't. All this only makes you look childish and stupid yourself. You are wasting everyones time because they have to scroll through all your crap. So please go to bed already.

[ttak82]

People still like private servers? They are buggy and laggy as hell. So many other FTP games that are better value for money these days than private servers. (If you don't want to pay the sub for WoW but still play a good game)

[arcaneshot]

And it is true ; The people did not gain money on it. If anything, if i was Blizzard, i'd sanction this as terms of Fair Use.

If Blizzard let that happen they wouldn't be able to shut down anyone doing that for any of their games in the future. Even if they wanted to look the other way they have to at least enforce their copyright on somebody in order for it to mean anything when it really matters.

[TS26]

this is a trick by blizzard to stop people from arguing whether its beta or alpha.

wake up sheeple!!

[Eroginous]

That's something only a person who's never had something stolen from them that makes a lot of money would think. Anyone with real world business sense would laugh you out of the building if you said that to them.

Your previous post about piracy is ridiculous. This post is absurd. A small business owner who has a lot of capital tied up in assets is going to have a hard time recovering from serious theft (even with insurance). Blizzard isn't a small business owner, and none of the entities pushing for DRM or prosecution against IP infringements are small business owners either. If Joe Schmoe pours thousands of hours into an indie game on his own, and it gets pirated (I won't use the word stolen, because you can't steal intangible stuff, it's not physically possible), he's screwed because now he doesn't have the financial power to win out despite his game being pirated. When a big company develops a game, it's entirely different because no matter how many people pirate it, they will still rake in hundreds of millions of dollars on a AAA release and come out way ahead in terms of profitability and forward momentum on future titles. If Joe Schmoe sold his indie game, he's lucky to get a fraction of decimal of what Blizzard rakes in for a game release.

The two scenarios are not equivalent, so the effects of piracy on are not universally equivalent. Ironic how it's the little guy who suffers despite all these big bad wolves who bellow on and on about piracy this and IP that. I'm okay with people having IP rights. I'm okay with people being prosecuted for pirating people's IPs. Corporations are not people. No one is directly harmed when I download a straight to DVD movie just to see how bad Nicolas Cages career has gotten. He's not in porn yet, so I guess that's a plus for everyone else. I'm sorry if you have a hard time understanding my unwillingness to support an industry that takes intangibles and then duplicates them at no cost for doing so, only to turn around and charge you or me $20-30 for said duplication.

That Katy Perry CD you bought? It's a copy of a copy of a copy. If I broke into Capitol Records and physically took the hard drive containing her fresh tracks from that CD, that's theft (and probably half a dozen other offenses). Something worth prosecuting over. Please explain to me how it's worth anyone's time to ruin a person's life because they wanted to listen to Katy Perry's newest CD before buying it?

I'm waiting.

[ls-]

For sometime i wanted ask one question, but i was affraid. Now i got the chance?

Few years ago i readed on some Poland forums, that private servers are legit, until people who work on them they don't get any money from that, or stolen Blizz files? Can someone explain it?

Can't say anything about present private servers, but I was contributing to MaNGOS long time ago, we had to do few things to make server actually run, we had to extract data from WoW client, i.e. dbc files, map data and so on, and "feed" it to a server, servers and all needed tools are written by us, open source community, we also had to mod client a bit, to make it connect to a private server.

Writing server and tools code isn't an issue and can't be forbidden, originally MaNGOS was branded as an educational project, however, final "product", compiled server that uses extracted data from game client to run, and client modifications might be and usually are an issue. That's why open source projects like MaNGOS never had any binary data from client (no dbc, no maps, anything you had to extract from client) in their repository.

And yeah, you can make profit either directly by asking for donations/payment/etc, or indirectly via generated traffic and things.

[Boathouse]

Your previous post about piracy is ridiculous. This post is absurd. A small business owner who has a lot of capital tied up in assets is going to have a hard time recovering from serious theft (even with insurance). Blizzard isn't a small business owner, and none of the entities pushing for DRM or prosecution against IP infringements are small business owners either. If Joe Schmoe pours thousands of hours into an indie game on his own, and it gets pirated (I won't use the word stolen, because you can't steal intangible stuff, it's not physically possible), he's screwed because now he doesn't have the financial power to win out despite his game being pirated. When a big company develops a game, it's entirely different because no matter how many people pirate it, they will still rake in hundreds of millions of dollars on a AAA release and come out way ahead in terms of profitability and forward momentum on future titles. If Joe Schmoe sold his indie game, he's lucky to get a fraction of decimal of what Blizzard rakes in for a game release.

The two scenarios are not equivalent, so the effects of piracy on are not universally equivalent. Ironic how it's the little guy who suffers despite all these big bad wolves who bellow on and on about piracy this and IP that. I'm okay with people having IP rights. I'm okay with people being prosecuted for pirating people's IPs. Corporations are not people. No one is directly harmed when I download a straight to DVD movie just to see how bad Nicolas Cages career has gotten. He's not in porn yet, so I guess that's a plus for everyone else. I'm sorry if you have a hard time understanding my unwillingness to support an industry that takes intangibles and then duplicates them at no cost for doing so, only to turn around and charge you or me $20-30 for said duplication.

That Katy Perry CD you bought? It's a copy of a copy of a copy. If I broke into Capitol Records and physically took the hard drive containing her fresh tracks from that CD, that's theft (and probably half a dozen other offenses). Something worth prosecuting over. Please explain to me how it's worth anyone's time to ruin a person's life because they wanted to listen to Katy Perry's newest CD before buying it?

I'm waiting.

If Blizzard wasn't currently making money off World of Warcraft I'd be (personally, yet still legally wrong) completely okay with it and probably on your side. The difference is that no matter what version of the game you're enjoying, it's still World of Warcraft. It's still a game that is owned and protected by law. It doesn't change depending on our moral views on it.

[thilicen]

https://en.nostalrius.org/

Well I will not be joining everyone in legion. This was a move by Blizzard to get people from when the game used to actually feel like an MMO to their piece of shit game they have now. Fuck I am angry.

You're angry that people were stealing an IP, setting it up on their own and taking paying customers and focus away from the actual game, and they wouldn't let them? Seriously, fuck you and your morals. If you think for ONE second that you would be fine with someone stealing a product you own and giving it away for free then you need a fucking realitycheck.

[lordbaldric]

I hate people here demonizing Nost players. I probably paid Blizz $1000+ over the years, and I started playing Nost because it was way more fun for me. Blizz lost that fun factor a long time ago. So I wish well to all you liking WoD, but please stop demonizing us who like how it was in the old days...

[arcaneshot]

All i see is the people getting screwed while the few in a company benefit, yet thats ok for some people.

Things look different when you're the one getting ripped off.

[Deleted]

No, it's not. In fact, it was wrong on all terms in all three statements.

Anyway, that aside, I'm kind of confused. Are you saying Nostralius was fair use? Because that doesn't qualify here - at all.

Your post aside, did you respond to any argument? Because you didn't.

If Blizzard let that happen they wouldn't be able to shut down anyone doing that for any of their games in the future. Even if they wanted to look the other way they have to at least enforce their copyright on somebody in order for it to mean anything when it really matters.

Yeah, adopt the Nostralrius crew into Blizz and have them work as volunteers in holding it under Blizzard sanctions, having it be a F2P version of Legacy, it's basically semantics on ownshiper that you are arguing.

[Tygor]

It's crazy to me that people try to justify an illegal action (illegal in however you want to describe it) just because they liked doing it. For those that think there's nothing illegal with the servers, I'd argue that the individual users are more at fault for misusing the client. It reminds me of when the RIAA sued random people for obscene amounts of money in the early 2000s for using Napster for a couple of songs. Blizzard won't go after single users, but I think they probably could.

I don't want to turn this into a millennials argument, but man am i sick of the whole "this is really fun so I should be able to do it" routine for many things. Looking at this from the outside many people can see it's wrong and illegal, but those inside try to justify how they can keep doing it. Just an observation I see nearly every day.

Now get off my lawn and turn down your music!

[arcaneshot]

Yeah, adopt the Nostralrius crew into Blizz and have them work as volunteers in holding it under Blizzard sanctions, having it be a F2P version of Legacy, it's basically semantics on ownshiper that you are arguing.

You only wish it was semantics. The trick about copyright law is you really can't be selective about how you enforce it. Or rather, you can't appear to look that way.

[Boathouse]

It's crazy to me that people try to justify an illegal action (illegal in however you want to describe it) just because they liked doing it. For those that think there's nothing illegal with the servers, I'd argue that the individual users are more at fault for misusing the client. It reminds me of when the RIAA sued random people for obscene amounts of money in the early 2000s for using Napster for a couple of songs. Blizzard won't go after single users, but I think they probably could.

I don't want to turn this into a millennials argument, but man am i sick of the whole "this is really fun so I should be able to do it" routine for many things. Looking at this from the outside many people can see it's wrong and illegal, but those inside try to justify how they can keep doing it. Just an observation I see nearly every day.

Now get off my lawn and turn down your music!

en·ti·tle·ment
inˈtīdlmənt,enˈtīdlmənt/
noun
the fact of having a right to something.
"full entitlement to fees and maintenance should be offered"
synonyms: right, prerogative, claim; More
the amount to which a person has a right.
"annual leave entitlement"
synonyms: right, prerogative, claim; More
the belief that one is inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment.
"no wonder your kids have a sense of entitlement"

This is all it really boils down to, you're not wrong at all.

[Deleted]

It's crazy to me that people try to justify an illegal action (illegal in however you want to describe it) just because they liked doing it. For those that think there's nothing illegal with the servers, I'd argue that the individual users are more at fault for misusing the client. It reminds me of when the RIAA sued random people for obscene amounts of money in the early 2000s for using Napster for a couple of songs. Blizzard won't go after single users, but I think they probably could.

I don't want to turn this into a millennials argument, but man am i sick of the whole "this is really fun so I should be able to do it" routine for many things. Looking at this from the outside many people can see it's wrong and illegal, but those inside try to justify how they can keep doing it. Just an observation I see nearly every day.

Now get off my lawn and turn down your music!

The difference between what they are doing being Illegal, is merely them being affiliated with Blizz or not.

That difference is very small. And how is it millenial to defend having fun? Do you LIKE being misreable?