Nostalrius Ends

[WskyDK]

Its not a theft... its more like you COPY the car and improve it. Instead of stealing it... so the manufacturer loses NOTHING.

Except potential sales to the people using your cloned car, money spent in R&D, marketing, and maintenance.

[Angel of Justice]

Isn't there already a massive thread about this? Maybe keep it there and stop spamming the forum with this Pserver nonsense

[Grimbold of Skullcrusher]

Rekt.

Good to see they got shut down.

+1000 to this and I hope they get sued for stealing Blizzard's property. Even if they claim they have not made any profit, they still damaged Blizzard by running this server and they should be charged with millions of $$$. Hopefully something happens and justice will be done.

[Deleted]

That answers why Blizzard shut them down, it doesn't answer why you care, or how it would affect you in any way, shape or form.

#TeamBlizzard, I guess. There has long been a curious relation between gamers and the corporations that make games to the point that some seem genuinely concerned about the legal affairs and shareholder relations of said corporation.

It seems to me that the important thing is that the people who played on this private server and the people who continue to play on Blizzard's servers both have a great passion for Warcraft. The former can no longer find the World of Warcraft they love on Blizzard's realms, where it has been torn up and cast aside in favour of Garrisons and Looking for Dungeon-like menus.

[Raelbo]

I am pretty sure that this site and lot of youtubers and streamers are way past of "fair use". This site pretty much publish/datamine everything there is of new expansion and sometimes content that Blizzard is reserving to use later. Difference is that this site is profiting from it where far as I understand Nost wasn't and it was run like hobby.

No, the difference is that Blizzard are fine with this site publishing what the publish. And when they aren't happy, they tell the site, and the site complies. Blizzard takes this approach because they recognise that this site helps to promote their product.

Nost on the other hand was nothing more than a parasite feeding off Blizzard's IP, stealing their revenue and harming their brand.

You can't compare the two, because on a fundamental level, the only issue that is important is how Blizzard feels about the use of their IP

[Pua]

+1000 to this and I hope they get sued for stealing Blizzard's property. Even if they claim they have not made any profit, they still damaged Blizzard by running this server and they should be charged with millions of $$$. Hopefully something happens and justice will be done.

Do you honestly believe that ruinous legal proceedings against a volunteer-community that tried to simply recreate something they loved is "justice"?

I'm genuinely curious.

[Deleted]

Perhaps you should read the pertinent portions of the EULA then. Check back a page or two, someone posted to text. (which in short states that Blizz reserves the right to allow certain people to datamine).

Not so sure about youtubers playing, bu this site has been in the clear for years.

EDIT: The verbiage Data Mining: Use third-party software that intercepts, collects, reads, or "mines" information generated or stored by the Battle.net Client or the Game(s); provided, however, that Blizzard may, at its sole and absolute discretion, allow the use of certain third-party user interfaces;

This site certainly didn't have permission always (if it even have now), because you could get banned from official site if you linked here because Blizzard didn't want players to talk about unreleased content.

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Besides which, your entire line of reasoning here is pretty silly, since you're essentially trying to argue that 2 wrongs somehow make a right.

I am not arguing that and I never even played on Nost. I just pointed out that this site and wow community in general is have lot of hypocrites that are shouting "profiting from Blizzard IP is wrong" when they are using this site that is build on making profit from Blizzard IP where Nost wasn't actually profiting from it and were in fact losing money far as I understand.

[Deleted]

You can't justify piracy with "great community" but they are right about one thing, that you should be able to play previous versions of the game. You can play diablo 2 without LoD, you can play Warcraft 3 without Frozen Throne. Noone should be forced to play the game with changes they made with expansions. It wouldn't be hard to add like 2 servers for each version of the game.

[kamuimac]

Do you honestly believe that ruinous legal proceedings against a volunteer-community that tried to simply recreate something they loved is "justice"?

I'm genuinely curious.

if they wante to "recreate " someting they "loved" then they hsould have written code from scratch not steal blizzards IP.

[Deleted]

Its not a theft... its more like you COPY the car and improve it. Instead of stealing it... so the manufacturer loses NOTHING.
And it doesnt happen from the old facility... blizzard said they dont have vanilla source code anymore so it doesnt exist in "a storage facility".
So its more like someone found a rusted old car in the woods - took it home - reconstructed it - sold it, is that stealing? it happens all the time in the world... but in this case nostalrius wasnt stolen, it was a copy of the good old classic - copy of the rusted car in the woods.

This is how the strong vanilla community works, its passionate... people want to play the golden era, it doesnt exist anymore and blizzard doesnt want it to exist, but the people WILL make it exist on their own expense.
GoG sells old games... why not MMOs? whats wrong with playing good old mmos?
If you say selling an old car is illegal then what about selling an old game you no longer play? because thats what GoG does all the time... it sells games that have been out of the "new" category for many years if not a decade.

Fyi nostalrius didnt cost anything to anyone except those who maintained it.

But vanilla is still owned by blizzard, and they still own the right to all the assets, lore, designs,... if you would change everything they have the rights for. you can do whatever you want with it. But this is not the case.

[Pua]

No, the difference is that Blizzard are fine with this site publishing what the publish. And when they aren't happy, they tell the site, and the site complies. Blizzard takes this approach because they recognise that this site helps to promote their product.

Nost on the other hand was nothing more than a parasite feeding off Blizzard's IP, stealing their revenue and harming their brand.

You can't compare the two, because on a fundamental level, the only issue that is important is how Blizzard feels about the use of their IP

1) The potentially more important point is that Boub and Chaud are pretty compliant with Blizzard requests, I'd wager. Both entities benefit the other, so an agreement (formal or informal) is beneficial to everyone.

2) I'm not sure you can claim that Nostalrius was "stealing their revenue and harming their brand". The question boils down to how many players were cancelling their subscription in order to play on Nostalrius (or any other server), and I don't personally believe it was that many. I'd imagine Nostalrius was made up of players who'd unsubscribed due to the quality of Warlords of Draenor, and aren't going to resubscribe following Nostalrius' closure.

That's speculative, of course.

Secondly, harming a brand is a pretty flaky term. I get your meaning, and accept why it might happen, but it's largely impossible to substantiate it one way or the other. Did a showcasing of the game at its best, as far as some people were concerned, harm the current live product? Looking at it in the wider context of Blizzard providing legacy/progression servers, we could argue that it's actually promoting the brand.

Again, we're speculating.

[Deleted]

THey cared enough to take them to court.

I don't think they actually took them to court. Only served their hosts with the papers and the hosts chose not to fight it.

[Deleted]

You can't justify piracy with "great community" but they are right about one thing, that you should be able to play previous versions of the game. You can play diablo 2 without LoD, you can play Warcraft 3 without Frozen Throne. Noone should be forced to play the game with changes they made with expansions. It wouldn't be hard to add like 2 servers for each version of the game.

WoW is sold as an ever changing multiplayer world.

[Pua]

if they wante to "recreate " someting they "loved" then they hsould have written code from scratch not steal blizzards IP.

Volunteers that need to make a living somehow, and aren't trying to do it via the game they've created, are extraordinarily unlikely to have the time to "write code from scratch". Equally, you're essentially talking about the creation of an entirely new game... Something that would defeat the point of having a private server, deliberately named Nostalrius.

[WskyDK]

This site certainly didn't have permission always (if it even have now), because you could get banned from official site if you linked here because Blizzard didn't want players to talk about unreleased content.

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I am not arguing that and I never even played on Nost. I just pointed out that this site and wow community in general is have lot of hypocrites that are shouting "profiting from Blizzard IP is wrong" when they are using this site that is build on making profit from Blizzard IP where Nost wasn't actually profiting from it and were in fact losing money far as I understand.

You seem to be hung up on the profiting aspect of this. Once again, using the numbers from the previous private server case that Blizzard won we can see that the actual monetary value of the decision was proportionally very small compared to the damages from circumventing security and copyright violations.

[Raiju]

I don't think they actually took them to court. Only served their hosts with the papers and the hosts chose not to fight it.

Trial proceeds were arranged, but if they settle (which they would be wise to) that wouldn't surprise anybody. This wasn't just a cease & desist.

[Raelbo]

Its not a theft... its more like you COPY the car and improve it. Instead of stealing it... so the manufacturer loses NOTHING.

Except for the customers who are now buying the copied car instead of the original....

Also worth considering: The customers who are buying the copied car are buying it based on the brand that was copied. And if they have a negative experience with the copied car, it will reflect poorly on the original from which it was copied.

[grexly75]

You can think that all you want but it's on both sides. I don't even care who's worse because it's irrelevant. The whole "Stealing is wrong" isn't the only type of moral high ground there is. There's plenty of people, hell there's a guy on the very page I'm quoting you from, trying to argue the "it's doing no harm" position among other attempts to claim the high ground.

Personally? Couldn't give less of a shit if one existed. I enjoyed Vanilla while it existed but I see no reason beg for it to come back. I have no problem with people who legit enjoyed Vanilla and want to go back. But for me personally? Sorry I remember the class I love being a second class bitch of a citizen only fit to innervate the "real healers" and barley being allowed to tank 5 mans without at least 1 random throwing a fit just as much as I remember the fun, and stress, I had questing and the friends I made. I personally liked TBC and I think you're high in the head for prefering Vanilla to TBC if you want to go back to anything but I also have no desire to return to TBC because that's not a MMO. That's a boring stagnant bigger pile of shit then what any of you claim WoD is and I'll choose not to play it if it ever comes to be and I also don't think it's worth the effort to make a TBC server. There's always going to be people that enjoy it still and would happily play the same Vanilla for 50 years with no changes, stuck in their little Naxx patch world, just like there's people who do those crazy speed runs of Zelda for their 500th play through. That's fine. I have no beef with people who enjoy and still enjoy Vanilla like yourself, but what I do have a beef with is the follows:

Keep in mind in my typing of this I may have used the wrong pronouns, but I am not specifically referring to you. DOn't feel like editing it.

All my previous statement is true with the caveat that Legacy server's are a profitable endeavor for blizzard. And with that being said I think they're not and I think most people whining for one ignore the reality of the situation that no matter how you feel that Blizzard is far more qualified to make that decision then you are. Period. There is absolutely no arguing that. You can make the claim that they are wrong(and they might be), but I irrefutably maintain that without Blizzard's vastly superior position in terms of knowledge about whether or not Vanilla would even be a money making endeavor in the first place you can never hope to truly make an accurate judgment about whether it's a good idea for them as a company. Instead what we get is whining and tantrum throwing and a horrid miss use of numbers fueled by a child like entitlement or just an outright hatred for Blizzard just as often as we get the passionate player who just misses vanilla. I see the same people saying Blizzard has become a bunch of money grubbing, nickel and diming, cheap fuck the player for profit company then claim Legacy Servers would be a gold mine and can't see the own inconsistent in their statements. But any time I point that out I'm labled a blizzard shill or blah blah blah.

And that also follows that even if it is a profitable endeavor, and as much as people clamor no one can prove it, that doesn't mean you get to steal it to play it and then get butthurt when you get caught and your clubhouse get shut down like quite a few people did for Nost. It's Blizzard's IP and as shitty as IP and copyright law can be in this country this isn't one of those times where it's in the wrong. You continue to appeal to Blizzard and if they disagree then accept that fact.


When I didn't enjoy WoW I quit, simple as that. Do I miss TBC and the experience I had? You bet. It was new and awesome and fun. But just going back to it isn't going to recapture that feeling and I'd much rather see exciting new content or find a different game to play and I see no reason why Blizzard should ever provide a legacy server if it's going to lose them money.



Please quit with your non-stop appeal to emotion. And yes you're trying to appeal to emotion with that last statement. Supercool hit it on the head.

This is the most well thought out, level headed and comprehensive post in this whole thread and that people from both sides should look at and understand.. Whether people actually do take it in and understand remains to be seen but from some of the posts I have seen I very much doubt it unfortunately..

If I could like a post this would be one of them..

[Deleted]

Am I the only one who doesn't base my moral compass strictly on what's legal or illegal? Sure, there's a lot of overlap (e.g. murder is obviously bad), but I'm actually prepared to differentiate between what's lawful and what's right.

Obviously Nostalrius was illegal and obviously Blizzard were within their legal right to have it closed down. That has been clearly established. I mean, cannabis is illegal too but not everybody believes that smoking it is immoral. It's just illegal (depending on where you live of course). I mean, in some countries, it's also illegal to be gay and it's illegal to question a religion - either of which have extremely harsh penalties. But are those laws moral? Well, depends who you ask I suppose.

So do people legitimately believe that playing on Nostalrius was immoral? Because that would be a real knee slapper.

People have always been fond of older Blizzard games. The old Warcrafts, the old Diablos, etc. However there isn't much fuss surrounding these old titles because they will always be legally obtainable. Naturally people are fond of the old WoW as well, because it doesn't resemble modern WoW. They're pretty much completely different games at this point. People weren't playing on Nostalrius because they wanted to avoid paying a subscription fee for retail WoW. In fact, plenty of them were paying the subscription fee because they wanted to pay Blizzard, but they didn't want to play Warlords of Draenor. They wanted to play classic. Those two games are pretty much like chalk and cheese.

This may sound like entitlement because fuck it - it is. But it shouldn't be impossible to play an old game that you love. You can still play Pong or Tetris or Sonic the Hedgehog or Super Mario Bros. or Crash Bandicoot or Baldur's Gate or old school Runescape or old school Everquest. Why is classic WoW the one exception, when it is clearly still in demand and still very popular? What sort of business thinks its good to deprive their fanbase of a product that is widely loved and that which many people would gladly open their wallets for? It beggars belief, to be honest.

I'm not really FOR one side or the other... Blizzard wouldn't be opening legacy servers alongside their Legion launch because obviously they want people to be playing Legion. But they should at least start planning for it. If they gave us any hint whatsoever that they are at least considering it, I think that would make people very happy. If a small group of people can run a server like Nostalrius without being paid, then surely Blizzard is capable of it too. Maybe Nostalrius was riddled with bugs for all I know, but from what I heard it was pretty decently scripted all things considered.

In any case, I'm over this "hurr durr it's illegal and you're all thieves" argument. Like calling someone a thief is going to be a magical discussion ender. Unless they're stealing purses from old women or actually shoplifting or making pirated copies of media to sell on to others, they're not doing anything immoral by accessing an older iteration of WoW, even if some people want to believe that technically falls under the "thievery" umbrella.

Shutting down Nostalrius has convinced precisely nobody to go and play retail instead (unless they were already playing it) - so it's not like Blizzard did this for a profit either and on the PR front, it's been a total disaster. I'm not sure when Blizzard decided to stop listening to its fans, but it is really saddening.

[Flurryfang]

I think it’s a real feature of this discussion, that most people want to have a reasonable debate about it; most people I converse with on social media or the blogosphere are looking at it from both sides and, in many cases, this is why they find the whole thing so disappointing. Once you look through the hyperbole from forum-goers that we have expectations of, I think the subject clearly matters to people. Even the fact that the Nostalrius petition has more signatures than active accounts suggests that the topic is more about Blizzard providing the service, rather than the continued existence of Nostalrius itself.

As for lobbying, well… The development team at Nostalrius have offered their services, on a volunteer basis, should Blizzard change their minds. Will it help? Probably not, but I think it’s a pretty mature stance to take.



Again, I don’t think anyone disputes the concept that Blizzard acted appropriately. They were well within their rights, and I despair at members of the Nostalrius community who are using the argument that they “wasted their time” – that’s part of the inherent risk you take playing on a private server.

But such a service, officially provided, is relatively easy to monetize. Standard subscriptions get access to the legacy server for free, while a half-subscription for the legacy server alone would also bring players in. If they used the Nostalrius guys as volunteer GMs or developers, they also score a big win from a community whose faith has been tested once more.

But that’s an opinion that could be largely ignorant of reasons that Blizzard haven’t communicated as to why they’re not doing this.

I don’t think anyone accepts “you think you do, but you don’t” as a reasonable argument.

Through many discussions, i have seen how important this thing is to people. Nost seems to have ment a lot to many people, and it now seems that many people are going to fight for it, which is really great If blizzard will not help these people get their own game back online, hopefully other companies can see the potential consumer base, which is in these Vanilla players. But i will disagree with you here, when you say that it is all about blizzard not providing a service. Yes, they don't provide the service, but why should they? Just because the market is there, does not mean that they are forced to provide for it. I think that people are putting too much of their need, onto Blizzard, who clearly don't want to fufill it. So people keep on bashing on their door, saying that they want something from them, which they don't have and proberly never will have. While i love the idea of Nost-servers, i also think that people should get on with their life and accept the sad fact, that Blizzard will maybe never work for pre-WoD servers.

"You think you want it, but you don't" is proberly one of the worst answers, we have gotten from a blizz dev, who was not Frasiabi. But i also think it is an answer, which says more then just what was said. I think that blizzard wanted to say "We don't remember Vanilla fondly, and we, personally, don't want to return working on that version on the game. We are working hard at making new stuff, and we know that if we return to Vanilla, we will proberly never get to work on something new agian for some time". I really do think, that if Blizz took on the Vanilla servers, the slow expansion rate, would get even slower. It might hightend the playerbase for some time, but it would be a losing battle. Without anything new, put onto the Vanilla servers, sooner or later, WoW would be dead.

WoW is ofcourse already on the decline, but i think the devs would rather have that WoW died because they did some bad work, instead because they kept themself in the past.