Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[kamuimac]

Yes it is. Any use of their product or IP without their permission is piracy

I will say this again:

PRIVATE SERVERS ARE AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN AND ALWAYS WILL BE ILLEGAL

Theft of copyright
Theft of IP
Theft of property

....and when these "martyrs to Vanilla": get into court, a judge wont give a toss about your outraged morals. The people who ran this place will not have a legal leg to stand on.





Illegal in the US

Illegal in Europe

Software piracy is a crime for which you can be prosecuted, convicted and punished.

and this topic should have ended here now that all "free the pirate servers" know what awaits them in future if they keep fighing lost battles

[Utinil]

This is very simple. Is hosting these servers technically illegal? Yes. Does it suck that Blizzard refuses to acknowledge that a large number of people actually want vanilla servers? Yes. Do I wish Blizzard would have left Nostralius up (despite that I have never played on it)? Yes. On the other hand, there is a legal precedent that if you fail to actively defend your trademark you can lose it to public domain, so it could be argued that Nostralius became so popular that Blizzard didn't have a choice.

To those who are trying to compare it to someone distributing new copies of a movie, book, or art, the key thing to remember is, it is a copy of something that is no longer available through any legal means. While according to the letter of the law, this doesn't matter, many people view this as acceptable. It is the reason there are sites on the internet dedicated to "Abandonware".

To those who are extremely happy that people are upset by it going down, you need to look in the mirrors and reflect on your lives. People enjoying Nostralius didn't affect you, so you are just enjoying the general fact that others are upset, that is very twisted. To those who were going out of their way to report everyone who used Nostralius particularly those who "dared" to stream it, please quit saying you did it just because it was illegal for people to do so. Do you call the police every time you see someone, litter, jaywalk, speed, every time you see an illegal immigrant, etc? Those things are illegal to, but I will bet the answer is no. The fact is you just found some way of making life miserable for others, and you enjoy doing that. The claim that you think this was pulling people away from retail gets completely shat on, by the amount of people making a point to report the streams after it was announced that the server was going down permanently. At that point they weren't pulling people away from anything.

[zorkuus]

People getting and enjoying what they want elsewhere when Blizzard stubbornly refuses to provide it for them? Can't have that, shut it down!

Why doesn't Blizzard provide me with 3.3?! My human rights are violated!!!

[Deleted]

I'd really like to read what's Blizzard latest stance on the chance of an official legacy server happening in the future. They have to be on radar concerning the amount of people playing on private vanilla servers, so they do realize the demand is there. And it seems to me the demand is much larger than few years ago. It's a topic that creates alot of buzz right now so it would be weird if Blizz just discarded the topic without revisiting their opinions publicly.

[Deleted]

I just hope the whole thing will finally teach blizz what they need to . I'm very certain that specially at this point of expansion there are more people playing private servers then life . 1mil accounts registered on nostalrius and thats just one of the more major servers . Will blizzard finally get it that people want to have fun and those people even 70% of them are playing there for the fun and enjoyment if blizzard provided they would even pay your monthly .
Blizzard have their rights over the game and can close any server , the issue here is that they just don't get that for probably already half of their population the game don't change in the direction they want and they just want to play what they enjoy - provided by private servers .
We all know they try to stop some servers to hope to return players to their servers , but we all know where that will go ... maybe 10% will try back and maybe , just maybe they will somehow like it

[RobertMugabe]

Even FREE vanilla server has less than 200k players. That's nothing. And it will be even less if there will be subscription.

Official legacy Servers from Blizzard would have many many more Players than all private Servers combined. That's a pretty dumb comparison.

- - - Updated - - -

Honestly, Blizzard should do a poll about legacy Servers!

[esmifra]

Even FREE vanilla server has less than 200k players. That's nothing. And it will be even less if there will be subscription.

Disagree on 2 things:

As I said i didn't knew these servers existed, If an obscure private server that exists for less than an year has 800K people trying it and 150K active players I bet if people knew about it the number would be much higher. I think that if blizz opened Legacy servers the brand advertisement and spread of news alone would make a lot more re-subscribe.

Second, people got used to see several millions of users associated with WoW and forgot that most considered successful MMOs have 200K or less users and turn quite a profit. 200k active subscribers would mean 3M$ more every month. 36M$ more every year. That is money on top of what they are making. I would say it's even more considering that these server would reduce the leakage they have in users leaving.

And to finish, of all my post that's the only thing you care? Why?

[QuiksLE]

Whats the point of Blizzard doing legacy servers, if you can do the same content in retail?

Face it, people are playing private servers because they are free.

[Deleted]

Whats the point of Blizzard doing legacy servers, if you can do the same content in retail?

Face it, people are playing private servers because they are free.

just LOL. hahaha LOL

[Jewsco]

Of course Blizzard isn't wrong to close private servers, its their product and private servers are pirating it.
However I would like Blizzard to learn something from this.

Nostalrius was huge, 1 MILLION players made an account, obviously there are a lot of people out there who want to experience Vanilla WoW again.
These people have no other place to turn to than private servers because Blizzard simply does not provide this product anymore.
Why won't Blizzard swallow their pride for once and set up a legacy server?
They still have servers for Diablo 2, Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 3 up. games which very few people still play.

I would be prepared to pay a subscription for Legacy WoW servers and not expect anything other than just server maintenance and GMs which can easily be supported by the same people they have working on their other games right now.
Its not like we have been getting much more for our Subcription to WoD for the last year either.
I bet most of the people interested in Classic WoW are long time players who are now 25-40 years old, people who can afford 12 dollars a month but simply don't want to play WoD because its simply a completely different game.
Why would it matter if these people were playing a Legacy version of WoW instead of the latest expansion if they are all just paying their sub? I don't understand what Blizzard is so afraid of.

These people from the Nostalrius team clearly have the knowledge, software and tools to make classic WoW run and I don't see how Blizzard can have 'lost' all of this.
I would like Blizzard to just take this knowledge and set up their own legacy server so these private realms are not necessary any more.

Are you just going to keep adding to the real numbers? The server it self claims 800k but now you made it a million. The server itself even admits to having only 150k active subs. Those are people who have logged in during the last month so how "active" is debatable. But what thise numbers show that even on a free server 80% or more stop playing. How would that work out for blizz were the players have to pay for it? Those numbers show that legacy realms would fail as blizz has said they would. So what is your point again?

[Deleted]

Whats the point of Blizzard doing legacy servers, if you can do the same content in retail?

Face it, people are playing private servers because they are free.

I played there and got active sub on WoD. So you point is null

[Jewsco]

just LOL. hahaha LOL

What is funny you think people would pay for it and stay at it? Because they don't stay at it for free as the numbers show so why do you think hey would if they had to pay?

[Mahcake]

[pallyken]

and this topic should have ended here now that all "free the pirate servers" know what awaits them in future if they keep fighing lost battles

It never will because the Nostalrius players are clearly the victims for wanting old content.

[esmifra]

This is very simple. Is hosting these servers technically illegal? Yes. Does it suck that Blizzard refuses to acknowledge that a large number of people actually want vanilla servers? Yes. Do I wish Blizzard would have left Nostralius up (despite that I have never played on it)? Yes. On the other hand, there is a legal precedent that if you fail to actively defend your trademark you can lose it to public domain, so it could be argued that Nostralius became so popular that Blizzard didn't have a choice.

To those who are trying to compare it to someone distributing new copies of a movie, book, or art, the key thing to remember is, it is a copy of something that is no longer available through any legal means. While according to the letter of the law, this doesn't matter, many people view this as acceptable. It is the reason there are sites on the internet dedicated to "Abandonware".

To those who are extremely happy that people are upset by it going down, you need to look in the mirrors and reflect on your lives. People enjoying Nostralius didn't affect you, so you are just enjoying the general fact that others are upset, that is very twisted. To those who were going out of their way to report everyone who used Nostralius particularly those who "dared" to stream it, please quit saying you did it just because it was illegal for people to do so. Do you call the police every time you see someone, litter, jaywalk, speed, every time you see an illegal immigrant, etc? Those things are illegal to, but I will bet the answer is no. The fact is you just found some way of making life miserable for others, and you enjoy doing that. The claim that you think this was pulling people away from retail gets completely shat on, by the amount of people making a point to report the streams after it was announced that the server was going down permanently. At that point they weren't pulling people away from anything.

Completely on point.

People should be comparing this to trying to preserve the original star wars trilogy. It's basically the same.

[Deleted]

And another point remains that people are willing to PAY monies to play on legacy server.

[xomniversex]

Shrug. It happens. Another one will take its place and will improve on things. Where there is demand, there is supply. Illegal or not. What people want they will get. Prohibition never works when you turn a lot of people into law breakers by consuming that which is prohibited. Be it something abstract like copyright infringement, or something physical like a substance. That will always be the case. Even in countries where such prohibition involves torture and death as punishments if there is enough demand for something illegal then someone will always supply it. You can pass a thousand laws further prohibiting something that is popular, but each law will be just as futile as the last at having a meaningful impact longterm.

Not to mention the fact that not all countries have laws that prohibit copyright infringement. And different countries define it in different ways. In some countries, a private server for a proprietary MMORPG might not constitute infringement. In others it does. And in others there are no statutes at all even recognizing copyrighted works as protected. Laws such as the DMCA only apply if the country the server is physically located has statutes against copyright infringement AND has agreed by treaty or otherwise to honor DMCA cease and desists.

See: Streisand Effect, Hydra.

Personally, I hated the vanilla experience. But I respect that a lot of people want it for the community and other reasons. So I wish them every success in migrating to the new big haven. Just like Bittorrent trackers, one falls another one rises that is bigger and better (because its creator has the benefit of hindsight by not repeating the mistakes of its predecessor).

[RobertMugabe]

Whats the point of Blizzard doing legacy servers, if you can do the same content in retail?

Face it, people are playing private servers because they are free.

That's true, but Nostalrius is an exception.

Most of the Nostalrius palyerbase were subscribers on retail.
People who just want to play WoW for free join a WoD, MoP, Cata or Wotlk server (usually with high xp rates), not a 1x Vanilla server

[Deleted]

To be honest i have never seen so many people with DISABILITIES in one place, WTF

[Deleted]

They had no rights to Blizzard's property. It was theft and illegal, so yes, shut it down. How you feel is irrelevant.

Actually its the other way around. They were having fun and werent really bothering anyone and Blizzard went herp derp this is illegal even though they had nothing to gain from shutting them down. Also piracy (not even that in this case) != theft.