Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[PenguinChan]

~ Snip (Subscription payments) ~

People don't like to pay subscription fees for MMORPG as much anymore, that is also why WoW has a falling rate of subscribers. Naturally, of course.

F2P games attract too many individuals right now because of it being a no barred entrance, but I'm sure a lot of people try out WoW trials just as much.

[thilicen]

Learn to read perhaps? Thats what I said.. as in Blizzard was legally within their rights to shut it down, however it was a scumbag move.

How the fuck is defending your IP a dick move? Seriously, just consider for a moment you yourself making a game that people were paying for, then less people began paying for it because some shithead overseas was giving YOUR product away for free. Honest answer: Would you be fine with it? Would you do nothing because doing so would be a "dick move"?

[Paula Deen]

You can't possibly believe what you're saying. Every person paying with gold for tokens is giving Blizzard even more money. Tokens cost more to purchase than just paying for a sub. Somewhere someone is paying your sub fee and then some. That's not playing for free.

I am playing for free. Some dumb/poor idiot is paying. Not me.

[Raleina]

Goes to show blizz cant handle any competition

So they resort to this cowardly move instead of making WoW great again

What competition? IT'S THEIR GAME IN THE FIRST PLACE FFS! maybe you should read up what competition actually is before you use that as a arguement. Blizzard OWNS WORLD OF WARCRAFT and you have no right what so ever to use it outside their own servers. They should demand all the damn IP's aswel that connected to the server and punish people accordingly for illegal use of THEIR CONTENT

[Boathouse]

A single server that people have to use verses over 200 separate ones for the US alone.

But please go on as if you're making any actual point.

Not even just that, a central hub that hasn't been used since Burning Crusade isn't even on the same level. Combine all the players across all Blizzard servers that are sitting in Warspear / whatever the alliance city is called and it would make that look like a ghost town.

I am playing for free. Some dumb/poor idiot is paying. Not me.

It doesn't change that Blizzard is indirectly making MORE money off you playing the game.

People don't like to pay subscription fees for MMORPG as much anymore, that is also why WoW has a falling rate of subscribers. Naturally, of course.

F2P games attract too many individuals right now because of it being a no barred entrance, but I'm sure a lot of people try out WoW trials just as much.

FFXIV's sub numbers in Japan were reported rising. Not sure about the NA/EU scene. People do still pay for sub games, and still want them. World of Warcraft is however is old. I was 16? ish? When WoW came out. I'm almost 30 now. I finished school, uni, had children. The playerbase that was attracted and fell in love with the Warcraft universe are just old now. Most people who started playing WoW weren't playing it because it was an MMO, the game rode off the success of Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2. They don't have that momentum anymore

[Deleted]

All the freeloaders are whining now. You played a mmorpg you didn't pay for. The guys providing it also had no licence to do that. No matter how much you like something. You can not use copyrighted material without licence for your projects. That's why Super Mario based jump and runs also get shot down all the time.

You do realize that real WoW is even more free? I made around 2mil/month from just normally playing the game before I took a break. Im guessing 50k or whatever those tokens cost now is affordable for most players who want to play it for free.

[KrazyK923]

Not even just that, a central hub that hasn't been used since Burning Crusade isn't even on the same level. Combine all the players across all Blizzard servers that are sitting in Warspear / whatever the alliance city is called and it would make that look like a ghost town.

That gif was also taken after the announcement happened when the maximum number of people would be online to pretend that a point is being made.

In short it's a fallacy argument in literally anyway you can look at it.

[Deleted]

Do you genuinely think that they were able to just magically make a backend server, with, what I imagine to be a large database, and all the necessary protocols to chat to the client/change data in the database etc with no prior knowledge and somehow getting it right almost immediately, with a STABLE/bugish free enviroment?

Just does not sound plausible at all.

Guess what? It is plausible.
Except they didnt get it right almost immediately.
Do you have any idea how old WoW emulation is?
I vaguely remember playing on a server called "Envenom WoW" decade ago when they tried to emulate AQ on its release.
Do you think that through those 10 years people didnt spent time on constatly improving WoW emulation?

[Jaelian]

Pulled this out of the Blizzard TOS - it makes their stance pretty clear

All rights and title in and to the Service (including without limitation any user accounts, titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialogue, catch phrases, locations, concepts, artwork, animations, sounds, musical compositions, audio-visual effects, methods of operation, moral rights, any related documentation, “applets,” transcripts of the chat rooms, character profile information, recordings of games) are owned by Blizzard or its licensors. The Game and the Service are protected by United States and international laws, and may contain certain licensed materials in which Blizzard’s licensors may enforce their rights in the event of any violation of this Agreement.

The "opensource" argument is null, the code still used the art, sounds, characters and music from the retail game - which as stated in the above paragraph, is owned by Blizzard and therefore is their IP which fully gives them the right to go after the servers like this - especially those that are gaining a good number of users, its pulling away their possible profit stream even if its not a paid-for service, therefore they issued a takedown notice, they where lucky that Blizzard didnt opt to take the litigation route to reclaim that loss - the Nost owners didnt challenge or ignore the notice, they knew they would have no defense if it ended up in a court.

I don't currently actively play retail, although I hold an active subscription due to the disappointment of WoD and the lack of content, and I never played on Nost although I have a good friend who did, and she enjoyed it, and obviously there is a community who do enjoy that content, and there is a large portion of players who do not, each to their own.

I get that community is angry, however you have to see it from Blizzards point of view, if you owned a game which had been running for a substancial amount of time, and someone decides to use some of the elements to that game (the characters, the sounds, music etc) which starts to gain a massive level of popularity which threatens your revenue stream as people start to go play that because its free while you are struggling with a really below par release (WoD currently) - you are going to take action in order to protect that revenue.

Lets try from another point of view - say you take a train to work, and your station has automatic ticket barriers which means you have to pay for a ticket, but the station further down the line does not, so you decide to go to that station - board the train there and dont pay for your journey, the company just lost revenue from that and you commited a criminal act (theft).

What can the operator do? they either A. put barriers at that other station, or B. put revenue protection officers on their trains to challenge people who dont buy tickets but are using their service.

Companies are there to make a profit by offering goods and services to consumers, you have every right not to pay for that service if you dont want it, but you cant just go into a store and steal a pair of jeans, the concept is the same with Wow - you dont have to pay for the retail version, and I dont blame anyone who has unsubbed currently - but you cant run your own servers using Blizzard's IP - they will eventualy notice and hammer you for it.

[Paula Deen]

It doesn't change that Blizzard is indirectly making MORE money off you playing the game.

But that post wasn't about that, it was about how if you can waste your life on Nost you can farm up enough gold to play Live for free.

[M1r4g3]

"I only took half a banana, so I didn't steal anything."

No actually, you bought a banana and then used a seed from it to grow another banana and then gave them out for free.

[thilicen]

You do realize that real WoW is even more free? I made around 2mil/month from just normally playing the game before I took a break. Im guessing 50k or whatever those tokens cost now is affordable for most players who want to play it for free.

Still not free, that gold is exchanged into money someone else put into the game, moreso than a regular month's cost even. So while you pay nothing yourself they are still making even more money of it. So it's still not free, you are just not the one paying.

[KrazyK923]

No actually, you bought a banana and then used a seed from it to grow another banana and then gave them out for free.

No, it's nothing like this.

[Deleted]

How the fuck is defending your IP a dick move? Seriously, just consider for a moment you yourself making a game that people were paying for, then less people began paying for it because some shithead overseas was giving YOUR product away for free. Honest answer: Would you be fine with it? Would you do nothing because doing so would be a "dick move"?

Because they themselves arent providing that service and have no intention to do so.

Besides how is this any different from people making mods for Fallout? Or frikin Warcraft 3 remake as a SC2 mod? They should just allow that legally and make fan servers accessible with the default client instead of shutting it down.

[Deleted]

Her/His point flew over your head. Your resort to piracy before play is no excuse for new players today who have access to a free to play to lvl 20.

It's not piracy. And I think it's you who didn't get the point.

He said that people play on private servers cause it's free, If that were the case, then apparently these people don't know you can play WoD for free too, all of it. Not just to level 20.

[Boathouse]

You do realize that real WoW is even more free? I made around 2mil/month from just normally playing the game before I took a break. Im guessing 50k or whatever those tokens cost now is affordable for most players who want to play it for free.

Every time someone pays gold for a WoW token, someone paid Blizzard 20 dollars for it instead of you paying 15. That isn't free.

It's not piracy. And I think it's you who didn't get the point.

He said that people play on private servers cause it's free, If that were the case, then apparently these people don't know you can play WoD for free too, all of it. Not just to level 20.

Wrong. You got to play for "free", sure. Blizzard however made 20 dollars a month off you instead of 15. That isn't free. Plus hell, you can't even get the gold to pay for a token unless you're an established player. Shit you can't even make gold anywhere near that until you purchased the game.

[thilicen]

Because they themselves arent providing that service and have no intention to do so.

Besides how is this any different from people making mods for Fallout? Or frikin Warcraft 3 remake as a SC2 mod? They should just allow that legally and make fan servers accessible with the default client instead of shutting it down.

So what, would you be fine with someone taking your product, adding a feature and then re-destribute it, knowing that 95% of the job was already done by you? And mods for fallout is a freaking feature that comes from the developer themselves, it's not even remotely comparable.

WC3/SC2, I'm actually surprised about that one.

[D3athsting]

Ppl are almost happier for nost shutdown than having to pay15$/month for a year and half of no content

[Deleted]

I used to play on private servers before I eventually started playing officially. Don't know what they're trying to achieve though. There are plenty of other private servers that are not shut down so it seems like Nostralius' success was eventually also the cause for its downfall. A shame, in my opinion. It's not as if the people who played on it will now start playing on retail servers - it's simply not the experience they seek, otherwise they would have picked a TBC or WotLK one.

[Kolvarg]

Games like FFXI, Everquest, Vanilla WoW are just too time consuming for the instant gratification players, which is the majority by a lot.

Sure. Doesn't mean there's no interest from the other type of players, or that MMORPG is simply not a genre intended for instant gratification players. The majority of gamers aren't even into MMORPGs, should we just cut them all together? Let's all just play CoD, PES and GTA cause that's what the majority likes! No thanks.

Yes the games you mentioned tried to "be" WoW, but WoW was simply better than them at being WoW. Especially because a lot of those games came out in a time where WoW not only was much closer to Vanilla than now, but also after WoW was already steadily solidified. The "success" isn't comparable solely by the quality and design choices of the game because of just how many other outside factors are in place.

Yes, to be fair Vanilla only got so successful because it was the first MMORPG to be so accessible and forgiving at the time. But a lot of other factors still chip in. And we can speculate all we want wether or not WoW would be more or less successful had it stick to design choices closer to their original vision (likely less), but that doesn't change the plain and simple fact that they essentially discarded their original fans and destroyed essential parts and experiences of the game (for many people) just for the sake of trying to hit a broader audience.

And the result is what you see now: Yes, a lot of people play. But more and more people play cyclically like any other game and less like a MMORPG. More and more people play it like a singleplayer experience than the continuous world experience it used to be. And I'm not saying one is better than the other it isn't; just different tastes. Again chances are it would be far less popular if it was more like Vanilla - maybe yes, maybe not. Arguably it was inevitable as expansions rolled in (probably not). But it still doesn't change the fact that the original fans, the ones that made WoW rise to be the giant it became, had Blizzard turn their backs on them.

And for that I really can't blame people that enjoy Vanilla to want to play Vanilla, even if by illegal means. Just like I don't blame people who emulate SNES, or GameBoy or DOS games that you can't really obtain through normal means anymore, despite for the most part being an illegal activity. I'd much rather these pieces of culture and art stay experiencable by emulation methods than have them wither into oblivion without anyone ever experiencing them again for the sake of staying within the law.