Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Jestah]

So many people bash on these private servers, yet they download music,videos,movies. Even use images without the creators permission. Don't sit there and say it's against the law and bash on it. When you yourself break the law everyday when a new song comes out.

[Jestah]

Dat Thread...

It's illegal and it should have been destroyed years ago, pay for the Product or leave it.

How can you pay for the product when they don't even have it? RIP

[Deficineiron]

Writing over the code and losing it are 2 different things

off-site secure version backup willful deletion of all copies at all sites and accidently over-writing your 5 1/4's that had the server code in your garage are 2 very different thing.

The Dog Ate My Classic Wow Server Code is one of the more laughable claims on the topic.

[dusselldorf]

I don't get where all of this ire is coming from. The company was publicly using Blizzard's work without paying them for it or getting permission. That's not cool. The fact that people enjoy it is really irrelevant. I can assure you most people would enjoy the gains from robbing a bank until they were caught. That doesn't make it legitimate. If these people are really so great, why not design and build their own game? Why resort to stealing someone else's work?

[Rehok]

Wait you...you think emulators are legal?

Now I'm not saying it's morally wrong for people to want to play vanilla or to play on vanilla servers. My point is that blizzard is still justified in shutting it down because they own that code, they own that IP, they own Warcraft and everything tied to it, and if they want to have these illegal servers shut down then that's fine. People who think that stealing IP isn't 'really stealing' baffle me.

Depends how you look at it, There are emulators that basically allow devs to test things like Phone apps, they emulate a phone and test it (There was a trending video on youtube where a guy makes an app the TSA bought for 1.4million to show a left or right arrow randomly and he built it in 10 mins and used a nexus Tablet emulator to show it off and test it) and there are illegal ones that runs games

[Nokami]

How can you pay for the product when they don't even have it? RIP

True, so they should not be able to play it, simple as that!

/closed

[Viikkis]

People should let go of vanilla WoW already. It's not coming back.

[Raelbo]

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.

So you're basically saying that the existence of Nostalrius is part of what helped you to stop playing actual WoW. And yet you wonder why Blizzard has a bone to pick with them. Dude, they have basically stolen one of Blizzard's paying clients, using Blizzard's own IP to do so.

Now of course I can accept that even without Nostalrius, it's probable that you would have quit normal WoW anyway. But it seems likely that the existence of Nostalrius, in the very least, expedited that process, depriving Blizzard of at least some revenue they would have got from you. Furthermore, I am sure that among the thousands of people playing on Nostalrius, some would still have been happily playing proper WoW had it not been for Nostalrius.

It's one thing when a legitimate competitor like Rift comes along with their own IP to compete with WoW and steals a bunch of subscribers, but someone uses stolen IP to do, that is theft, plain and simple.

I can't think that anything good has come from that corruption. It has divided the community - as evidenced by this thread - and created a lot of dissent towards the game as has been evident on this forum going back years - even before Nostalrius was shut down.

You can't blame Blizzard for taking the action they did. If you want to blame someone, blame all those tools who kept on bleeting about "WoW sucks - just go look at a private server". Nostalrius got too big for its boots, drew attention for itself, and has now, together with its patrons, payed the price. Deal with it.

[Rehok]

So many people bash on these private servers, yet they download music,videos,movies. Even use images without the creators permission. Don't sit there and say it's against the law and bash on it. When you yourself break the law everyday when a new song comes out.

You are judging people on a mass scale for something not everyone does, Images are exempt from law IF its in a public area so aslong as you are on a public place its legal for anyone to use.

[Kolvarg]

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.

I agree, we can't really measure either, tbh.

For one the diferent timeframe, as you say; also with the different timeframe comes an overal different competition/videogame industry scene. There's a lot of reasons why people don't want to play retail, or reasons why people quit retail, not only "don't like" - and the same happens for private servers, who turn away a lot of people just for what they are (for being illegal, not having the same quality as blizzard, fear of gettin banned on retail, little to no marketing, etc).

But there's no doubt there are people who simply enjoy a lot of better Vanila than they do current WoW, and people who would hate Vanill but love current WoW.

It's a shame they can't support both, but that's their option. I just hope that someday, when WoW stops being supported, either Blizz does it themselves or allows private servers to slip by, as it would be a shame if this piece of art/culture/history was to be 100% lost in time and never played by anyone ever again.

[Deleted]

Finally bizzard does something good..

[Tackhisis]

How can you pay for the product when they don't even have it?

Any Vanilla CD key is still valid and can be used to setup a WoW account. You can buy it at Blizzard's site, for example.

[Bigbazz]

It is indeed harmful to blizz these private servers. Someone using thier intellectual property does hurt them. They could make money off them or worse make changes to it that give it a bad name. One cannot do whatever they like even if it "technically" doesn't hurt anyone. What are you 12 and think you can do whatever you like. It is known that private servers are illegal and can be shut down at any time. They choose to still do so. They are lucky they are t sued for damages. Which is completely within blizz's rights. Like people who got sued for downloading music and movies illegally were. Love how the people doing the illegal thing are now crying. Actions have consequences try to learn that

The users weren't doing anything illegal actually. The players were to connecting to servers hosted by a 3rd party, the code of which was developed by another 3rd party (and thus is not owned by Blizzard), the IP of Warcraft is owned by Blizzard, as is their server coding, but Nostalrius was not using Blizzards coding. The private server is not hosting any copyrighted material, since that is all on the game client side with the user, the hosting company is merely hosting code that was written from the ground up to work with the game client that is on the users side. The user is not in any way doing anything illegal, there is no law that covers what they are doing that could in any way incriminate them, at worst Blizzard could bann any BNET accounts that it can associate with a private server user, even then I'm sure they would rather keep the customer.

For sure Nostalrius can be sued for what they are doing, it would have happened had they not chose to shut down, but that doesn't mean any good would come of it from either end. You're thinking like a robot, thinking in black and white. Sorry but the world is not black and white, it's lots of shades of grey and if you were older than 12 you would understand that. Law is also not black and white, there are lots of shades of grey in law, lots of interpretation and lots of subjective situations especially when it comes to new situations with no precedent set.

But what the hell, if what I'm reading is correct the servers will be relocated to Finland where it is legal and they cannot be shut down, as is the case for private servers in other parts of the world.

[zerocarbs]

It's a losing battle. Like how shutting down Napster stopped music sharing. Blizzard only spends resources combating it because it looks bad for them when you have people playing older versions of the game. Personally there is no appeal. But it doesn't bother me if that's what others would rather do.

[Azgraal]

Except reverse engineering and then emulating isn't stealing, I think you need to go back to school and learn the difference.

With the logic I've been reading here every emulator ever made would be illegal.

Where have you learnt that?...

Emulating, by itself isn't illegal. If you've acquired the necessary parent software legally and have a license to tinker with it. A good example of that is Android emulating on PC to make apps. It is releases as open source so everyone has a license to it. on the other hand, in game systems emulators, there's a disclaimer on almost every one that says you're only "supposed" to use it on copies of games you own.

Reverse engineering is not only illegal it can range from corporate espionage to illicit usage of software to federal crime, depending on the item in question and what was done to it.

[Jestah]

True, so they should not be able to play it, simple as that!

/closed

So, I walk into a BestBuy, or even a Gamestop. Ask for a Gameboy SP. They don't have it because it longer are being made. Does that mean I should no longer play my old games on my Gameboy SP or other old consoles? I think not.

[Friendlyimmolation]

I would be interested if anyone from blizz responds to Nost's petition

[Florena]

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

You can't ?
Then eat back your crap.

I know it sucks, and I don't have anything against people playing on these servers. Doesn't change the fact the people running pirate servers do not have the right to that code or IP, so it's perfectly justified for blizz to have it shut down. Go ahead and play on a pirated server. Just know that it's against the law and could be shut down.

[Jestah]

Any Vanilla CD key is still valid and can be used to setup a WoW account. You can buy it at Blizzard's site, for example.

It comes with Cata now. You even have access to BC starting zones on a trial account. That's not vanilla. You only have to pay for MoP and WoD expansions now.

[Piplup]

So, I walk into a BestBuy, or even a Gamestop. Ask for a Gameboy SP. They don't have it because it longer are being made. Does that mean I should no longer play my old games on my Gameboy SP or other old consoles? I think not.

That does not mean you are allowed to play it on a stolen Gameboy though.