Originally Posted by
kensim
There is no audit or accounting for anything these folks did. There is no compliance or regulatory system either, so we have no idea if they made money, used donations only for servers costs (which btw would save the NOST guys from spending their own money and thus could be considered a profit, it is not like they are incorporated or anything).
Also did anyone sell gold or items, raids etc for real money on the server? Did one player pay for those services with real money? If so profits were made outside of Blizzards control of their IP. It would be EASY for Blizzard to prove that NOST or persons using the illegal implementation could be profiting outside of Blizzard's own control and space. It would be impossible for NOST to prove otherwise.
It is good to have huge financial departments, it makes sure you can prove things with your HUGE legal teams.
This discussion boils down to two things.
1.) Was what NOST did allowed? Nope. Reality of the world thing. It is just how this all works.
2.) Should their be vanilla servers? From an individual perspective it is a matter of opinion. From Blizzard's perspective they do not believe it is something that should be implemented.
Discussion over.