Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Deleted]

Well, to be fair, from that point of view, over 100M+ people tried retail, but currently (likely) only under 6M are playing. Thats under 10%.
Yes, I know retail isn't free. Doesn't change the fact their retention rate isn't great either, despite being a completly legit and legal product with a lot more manpower and marketing power behind.

Well, you have to take into account that we look at a timeframe of 10 years here. People who have started the game with an age of 15 in school are now starting working or work already, probably even have children. Priorities change. If anything, you can only compare the success of a single expansion to that, and there, the original retail WoW, TBC and Wrath both do much better than this server, which is mostly powered by nostalgia and a niche community.

[Akka]

I think the laws protecting IP are perfectly fair. What exactly is immoral about a law preventing people from stealing blizz's code and IP? Or do you think IP should just go out the window and all your electronic entertainment should be free?

I'm ready to pay for a Blizzard-owned Vanilla/TBC server.
Show me the way.

You can't ?
Then eat back your crap.

[SoulSoBreezy]

With the amount of activity over this issue it just proves one thing that the Blizz fanboys have been denying for years.

People want a Vanilla server, and it's more than just nostalgia. Nostalgia doesn't keep a continuous peak of 10-13k players online every single day, it doesn't keep a peak of 125,000 accounts active. Blizzard has had years to capitalize on this and they refuse to, which is fine as it's their choice, but they're damn foolish if they think that shutting down Nost is going to get people to go to retail. They'll just go to another vanilla realm.

Paying nothing for it helps.

[americandavey]

But it wasn't free. People paid for a product that got shutdown. Is it really morally wrong if they wish to continue to use what they bought on their own effort?
It's more sensible that people are in control of the stuff they buy than being at the mercy of the seller.

Paid a License to use World of Warcraft. People do not own the assets on the disk. People do not own client. People do not own the network code to create the world and populate said world. You HAVE a choice to continue your subscription to World of Warcraft or you can cancel.

[Azgraal]

Or they could have made a partnership with NostWoW and make it act like a live server and link in with bnet and require an active sub,. By link in i mean you login to your bnet and it can check if an active sub is there. thoughts?

I don't think that would be a good solution. For one Blizzard would want to use their own server code instead of the homebrew they did, on the other hand they'd want to ensure the server would have a high level of stability and accessibility, and however good a commercial server is, they're not amazing. If my minecraft experience on rented servers is anything to go by, there's bound to be problems.

[Deleted]

Nor did I say that

My issue is with extremes, from both sides:

- People rejoicing in the "righteousness" that fell on all the filthy unworthy "thieves" and playing the "moral highground" game like they've never done anything remotely illegal

- People demonizing Blizz for protecting their IP


It's illegal, it's in their right to shut it down, yes. IP protection is a good thing. Doesn't mean everything about it and its players is bad and evil, and all it does is harm, just because "it's agaisn't the law".

Thank you. I wish more people were reasonable like you.

[Monstercloud]

WITAF?! How is this hitting 160 pages now?

Except reverse engineering and then emulating isn't stealing

Because arguing semantics is a thing... while completely ignoring the fact you're still using someone else's IP.

[Jestah]

People that steal might very well affect my life in a very negative way. This kind of practice is something I and most people in the civilized world would not want to see becoming acceptable.

Also, taking away revenue from Blizzard will hurt the games I love.

Yeap, I'm still happy it's gone.

If the people refuse to play their own product of retail. Then how's it hurting them right now? It doesn't. I grew bored of retail and had a active account since 2004. Which I ended before I even found Nostalrius and never looked back. Because of how watered down Retail became and how the communities, were no longer as real community.

[SoulSoBreezy]

Over 100 million WoW accounts have been created yet less than 5 million are subscribed... which kind of sinks your argument completely.

Millions. It's important to note scale.
Nost hosted thousands. Whoopie.

[Azgraal]

Paid a License to use World of Warcraft. People do not own the assets on the disk. People do not own client. People do not own the network code to create the world and populate said world. You HAVE a choice to continue your subscription to World of Warcraft or you can cancel.

A bit tyrannical but people don't even own their accounts. They merely rent them (that's the case with any online game) and that's why companies are allowed to stop providing you the server at anytime they want.

[Nosdrone]

Azgraal has a fan.

[Raelbo]

Right.. So it is a stolen IP. No matter what way you look at it, it is a stolen IP for whatever reason anyone could ever mention. It all comes down to that it is a stolen IP, and frankly. People who complain and say it should be fine to steal an IP, disgusts me.

I do agree with you btw (just in case you think I am arguing the opposite). Just saying that they take action on it when it hurts them. In other words I am refuting the BS argument that this stolen IP never hurt anyone. It is not a victimless crime. If it were Blizzard wouldn't care to try and stop it.

[satimy]

WITAF?! How is this hitting 160 pages now?

Multiple people on this forum get paid by the post by blizzard

[G3 Ghost]

Blizzard stole from themselves when they released crap expansions and took away what the game once was. Why else would they go after a Private server that made no money off their product? Because, they're salty of how disgusting the game has become. I've had Alpha Legion for 2 months. It's a joke. Want proof? I can send screenshots with your name on my toon on there right now. Or even stream it for you saying whatever you please.

What even....Are you serious, man? We get it, you don't like current WoW. That has absolutely NOTHING to do with the topic at hand. Whether or not Blizzard has run WoW into the ground has zero implications on the legality of the private server. None! Are you actually sitting here trying to make a..what..moral parallel?

You seem to be responding to everything from a purely emotional place and that's fine, but stop saying that your opinion (which saying Legion sucks is, btw) is enough justification for theft, cause no.

[Deleted]

That's the thing, though. Those emulators are illegal.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Emulation is not illegal and only distribution of IP (think ROMs and games themselves) is illegal. As long as you are not using their code directly what you are doing is perfectly 100% legal and there are precedents about this in US where Blizzard is located.

[Xandrigity]

Ha ha ha ha, so funny. This gave me smile today. Nothing better than snarky little shits stealing property and getting caught. Good for blizzard I hope they keep it up.


No different than all the cheaters using bots that have been getting banned.

[Deleted]

Paid a License to use World of Warcraft. People do not own the assets on the disk. People do not own client. People do not own the network code to create the world and populate said world. You HAVE a choice to continue your subscription to World of Warcraft or you can cancel.

the op asked if the laws are sensible, repeating the current state does not add anything to the discussion.

[Rehok]

I don't think that would be a good solution. For one Blizzard would want to use their own server code instead of the homebrew they did, on the other hand they'd want to ensure the server would have a high level of stability and accessibility, and however good a commercial server is, they're not amazing. If my minecraft experience on rented servers is anything to go by, there's bound to be problems.

Mm, True, Would probably also be a nightmare to do maintenance on it aswell if its setup like that. Actually just thought of this, Blizzard have their "Classic Games Team" that make the old games run on newer hardware better. Possibly get them to work on Vanillia WoW and then that could run on new hardware and the code could be revamped because i'm pretty sure they said the code is a disgrace compared to what current code is like.

[RickJamesLich]

This is the sort of logical disconnect I'm talking about. You're trying to argue that Blizzard wants more money, so they took away something that belonged solely to their company, in the name of punishing players who wouldn't be giving them more money anyways? Seems like a lot of overthinking on your part. Maybe Blizzard just wants to be the sole developer and publisher of World of Warcraft (in any version). I honestly don't think there's anything wrong with that. Everyone else is free to do whatever they want, including making their own 'wow-like' MMO complete with legacy servers. You just can't call it World of Warcraft or use any elements which could be deemed as 'similar' to things found in World of Warcraft.

Which is funny. Everyone seems to have forgotten where Blizzard got their IP from in the first place: games workshop. Warhammer 40k = Starcraft. Warhammer Fantasy = Warcraft. If you consider for a moment, the early Blizzard games most players don't even know about (everything before Diablo), Blizzard has never released an original IP and had it be successful. You can't call Overwatch an original IP because it's a TF2 clone. You can't call Diablo an original IP because it's basically Mordheim in isometric 2.5D. Hearthstone was ripped directly from MTG and the Wow TCG (which was MTG with everything changed just enough to avoid a lawsuit). I honestly can't even say that heroes of the storm was original IP, the game it's based on was a fan creation made from a map editor in another Blizzard game... the one that ripped off Warhammer Fantasy. Blizzard is really good at stealing, since that's what you kids want to call it.

Where is the logical disconnect? I'm saying I can 100% understand why blizzard would try to shut the server down due to copy right issues.

That being said a lot of us WoW fans are disappointed here because Nostalrius did a better job running WoW then blizzard's own team has. Besides offering aspects of the game that retail lacked such as an actual world where you see players, travel to destinations instead of queue'ing up, no flying mounts which killed off world pvp, there were a lot of other things. For example on retail for years you could bot in battlegrounds or with mining or herbing with almost no chance of getting banned. From what I've read PvP is pointless on retail because of win trading and people using programs which automatically interrupt spellcasters without the player actually having to hit a button to do so. On Nostalrius if you cheat you get banned, often extremely quick. In fact even going afk for a prolonged period would mean a GM would talk to you and ask what's going on, with retail, I've seen bots literally get exalted with battlegrounds like WSG, as far back as Wotlk, which shows that blizzard has declined in the services a long time ago.

Ditto with gold buying, blizzard pretty much does nothing about it and has engaged in that activity themselves now. One of the best features of nostalrius was no blizzard shop - if you wanted to get to max level, you don't just shell out cash, rather you do it the old fashion way. So yeah, I can understand that they want to be the sole developer, but when they are doing worse than the private servers at handling their own game, and don't use this sort of thing as a lesson to try to give players what they want, of course a shit load of people are going to be disappointed.

[Deleted]

Same concept as movies. Streaming sites don’t make money off movies but it’s still not legal.

Blizzard does not offer Vanilla servers because they want people to buy and play the latest content, not 10 year old content. They could just charge subs and let you do it but that also requires them to hire people just for this.