Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Deleted]

So you gave no proof at all. Got it.

Truth hurts sometimes. You dont need to be so salty about it.
*sunglasses on*
As much as you want to believe the Nost team are big scummy awful pirate scum it doesn't make it true.
Just accept they did it out of love for the game and not for money. Accept the salt and take some water for the love of god ^^

[Mahourai]

What did you expect a report of finances and a screen shot of receipts?

Sure, this wouldn't be unreasonable at all. Nost's team actually did promise a "report" on their charity donation, which of course never materialized.

Its a fact they only accepted 360$ per month in donation and they explained it was for the hardware to prevent lag on the servers.

You are confused on the timeline of events. You linked a post from March 26th 2016 explaining what future costs would be, and who to contact to get the money to the hosting company. This hardware purchase was likely never made as Nostalrius was served with a C&D on April 6th.

Nostalrius began soliciting open-ended donations directly to the administration's Paypal on March 15th 2015, a year before. They did not stop taking donations to this Paypal account until March 8th 2016. At no point during the almost calendar year between publicly linking their Paypal and disabling it a year later did they ever give any specific information regarding their current hardware costs. At no point did they establish a maximum limit on donations. At no point during the year was it ever disabled due to reaching a funding limit.

Servers of comparable size such as a certain major Wrath/Cataclysm/MoP private server operation earn over a million dollars a year in donations, but Nostalrius's team claims they couldn't even keep the lights on with donor money and had to provide matching funds. Hmm.

Note also that the initial reason for accepting donations was to reduce the lag and performance issues, which were never solved at any point. I don't really blame the Nostalrius team for this, as even if they really did put all the money towards new hardware, the problems stem from software and can likely never be solved in the current engine, and reworking cmangos or creating a new core from scratch is not remotely feasible even for a full-time development team.

EDIT:

The operator of Scapegaming had over three million dollars in her Paypal when Blizzard sued her and Scapegaming was a little over half the size of Nostalrius, if you assume their self-reported account total is correct. The 3 million figure likely doesn't account for a significant amount of the revenues as presumably Alyson Reeves withdrew or spent a significant amount of money from the account during Scapegaming's lifetime operation for both personal and business expenditures. So, again - an operation half the size of Nostalrius was bringing in untold millions of dollars, but Nost was begging for change on the street corner because they were so scrupulous.

[Kyanion]

Truth hurts sometimes. You dont need to be so salty about it.
*sunglasses on*
As much as you want to believe the Nost team are big scummy awful pirate scum it doesn't make it true.
Just accept they did it out of love for the game and not for money. Accept the salt and take some water for the love of god ^^

Truth? You showed us no truth at all. Put the sunglasses on if you want but everyone in this thread can see how full of it you are. The links you provided show no concrete evidence at all of how much money they got or where it went. All you are linking is their 'claims' and YOU are the one nutty enough to accept that as proof.

You know what does more harm to this Legacy cause than anything? Shit like that. Keep fighting the good fight, you are doing a great job of making Legacy look really awesome!

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Just accept they did it out of love for the game and not for money.

Love of the game.... just make sure you donate to pay for the servers because we love it so much!

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Nostalrius began soliciting open-ended donations directly to the administration's Paypal on March 15th 2015, a year before. They did not stop taking donations to this Paypal account until March 8th 2016. At no point during the almost calendar year between publicly linking their Paypal and disabling it a year later did they ever give any specific information regarding their current hardware costs. At no point did they establish a maximum limit on donations. At no point during the year was it ever disabled due to reaching a funding limit.

Oooh that really blows your claims out of the water Shadowpunkz. lolz

[Ielenia]

Truth hurts sometimes. You dont need to be so salty about it.

Projection, I see. You simply posted their claims as "proof" that their claims are true. You have nothing but claims. No proof, just claims that haven't yet been backed with tangible proof.

[Kyanion]

Projection, I see. You simply posted their claims as "proof" that their claims are true. You have nothing but claims. No proof, just claims that haven't yet been backed with tangible proof.

Then turns to typical twitch level insults and calls people salty. They act like they got us or something.

[Deleted]

You are confused on the timeline of events. You linked a post from March 26th 2016 explaining what future costs would be, and who to contact to get the money to the hosting company. This hardware purchase was likely never made as Nostalrius was served with a C&D on April 6th.

Nostalrius began soliciting open-ended donations directly to the administration's Paypal on March 15th 2015, a year before. They did not stop taking donations to this Paypal account until March 8th 2016. At no point during the almost calendar year between publicly linking their Paypal and disabling it a year later did they ever give any specific information regarding their current hardware costs. At no point did they establish a maximum limit on donations. At no point during the year was it ever disabled due to reaching a funding limit.

It seems like the "secret society of donators" theory was true.
There was a secret link not in Nostalrius official site for some people to help them maintain the servers.
But after that they provided a direct link to the server providor paypal account.

Before the server got as popular as it now is - and has been for months - we used part of our money to maintain it, resulting in a no-donation and no-shop server. Because of the increasing popularity and influx of the thousands of new players, we've had to loan new hardware that was much more expensive than our original one. This led to the server upkeep becoming too expensive for us alone. As a consequence, we provided you with a donation link, allowing players to donate to the project if they wished so, with the implicit knowledge that they would not receive any advantage nor rewards for doing so, merely the knowledge of supporting Nostalrius. We were ashamed of this situation even though it was necessary, because it was against what we wanted in the beginning. This explains why the link wasn't promoted on the website or in any of our public media venues.

This is going to change now.

We are going to provide you with the direct link to our hosting provider, so you can support all of the infrastructure that the Nostalrius Begins project needs, putting the staff officially outside the loop of upkeep, allowing us to once again become independent of the financial constraints.

http://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=37403

[Kyanion]

Haha reading some of the comments in the thread that had the paypal open really early on. My favorite one was "Not even a month in and there is a donation button? Released 28/02/15 - Donations Open 16/03/2015! Ouch guys."

[Stormdash]

So they claim.

Unless they prove that claims to us, I'll remain skeptical.

Also worth noting, you don't have to be profiting, to be infringing. It's one prong of a multiprong test. Don't think anybody could credibly argue fair use.

That said, I want legacy servers to. Blizzard could actually outsource the damn thing as a form of player-created content, just require operators to enforce certain specific community standards to be under their umbrella and turn 'em loose.

[Kyanion]

snip

So in the thing you linked Nost said "Before the server got as popular as it now is - and has been for months - we used part of our money to maintain it, resulting in a no-donation and no-shop server." yet in the thread that was provided a few posts ago there are donations being accepted within the first MONTH. So right away they were taking money and then lying about donations not being given later on down the road? Wut!?

[Deleted]

Haha reading some of the comments in the thread that had the paypal open really early on. My favorite one was "Not even a month in and there is a donation button? Released 28/02/15 - Donations Open 16/03/2015! Ouch guys."

There was a donate button only for a limited ammount of time.
Outside that there was in fact a secret society of donators. There wasnt even a donate button on the site.

[Kyanion]

There was a donate button only for a limited ammount of time.
Outside that there was in fact a secret society of donators. There wasnt even a donate button on the site.

Well that thread still has posts going to August with people talking about donating. I don't know at what point they switched to directly sending the money to the server but yeahhhhh they were taking donations early and often. So the posts you provided as 'proof' have already been debunked.

[Deleted]

Well that thread still has posts going to August with people talking about donating. I don't know at what point they switched to directly sending the money to the server but yeahhhhh they were taking donations early and often. So the posts you provided as 'proof' have already been debunked.

You are really fixated in making the Nost team the big bad guys.
If they were bad and scummy pirates aiming for the booty Blizzard wouldn't have been so polite to the point of admiting playing in their private servers and saying it was fun. It would have been insanely bad for PR.
Blizzard assumed such a polite stance because of Nost reputation of not being profitable.
And Blizzard was able to see exactly how much money the hosting server had in the paypal account and wasn't able to see if Nost team was making money when on the site says "A status of the donation will be available on the website." for everyone to see?

[Mahourai]

It seems like the "secret society of donators" theory was true.
There was a secret link not in Nostalrius official site for some people to help them maintain the servers.
But after that they provided a direct link to the server providor paypal account.


http://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=37403

I was actually mistaken - Nostalrius never secretly solicited donations, they simply openly took them on their forums within weeks of launch and concealed it only from their press releases and homepage. I myself didn't look back at the release timeline before posting earlier and had misremembered how people characterized their donations scheme. It was a donor-enabled operation almost from the very beginning. So it's even worse than I made out.

You claim that this is somehow mitigated by them providing a link to their host so you can send money directly. Without arguing with you about whether that follows, they simply did not do it. Here's the relevant quote from the post you linked:

The price of this new hardware would be 360€ per month. Please contact Viper or Daemon in PM if you can afford it, and we will provide the OVH payment link.

Using their administrators as a go-between and avoiding linking things in public is the opposite of a "direct" link to their host.

Nostalrius said their donations would be "limited time". In fact they were up for almost a year. They claimed they were for server upgrades when not only is it questionable that any upgrades were made in this period, but questionable whether upgrades would even address the problem. They claimed they would be "limited cost", when in fact this never occurred during the year their donation link was operational. They never linked directly to their host to donate money without using Nostalrius admins as a contact middleman, so who knows what people were being told if they contacted them at this juncture.

[Deleted]

Blizzard completely destroyed Nos by inviting them. They will never do legacy realms but they bought unlimited time by just talking with Nos guys.

[Deleted]

@Mahourai

They also said "A status of the donation will be available on the website."
https://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3903

Only a person who was actively participating on the Nost society can shed some light to us.
At this point we are just throwing stones at every direction without knowing anything.

[Gadzooks]

Like I said, I can totally understand this viewpoint. But then what's to keep warriors from transmogging to cloth if it's just more customization?

I think that it takes some value away from the gear you're actually wearing. Don't get me wrong, I have my gear transmogged and I really like how it looks. I just think the game was healthier without it.

Okay, just for s&g, how is the game "healthier" without transmog? I'd like to hear this.

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The operator of Scapegaming had over three million dollars in her Paypal when Blizzard sued her and Scapegaming was a little over half the size of Nostalrius, if you assume their self-reported account total is correct. The 3 million figure likely doesn't account for a significant amount of the revenues as presumably Alyson Reeves withdrew or spent a significant amount of money from the account during Scapegaming's lifetime operation for both personal and business expenditures. So, again - an operation half the size of Nostalrius was bringing in untold millions of dollars, but Nost was begging for change on the street corner because they were so scrupulous.

Yeah, I prefer my burglars to wear shoes they paid for from a job, not from stolen money.

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Also worth noting, you don't have to be profiting, to be infringing. It's one prong of a multiprong test. Don't think anybody could credibly argue fair use.

Don't confuse them with reality, they think they're actually accomplishing something here. This is why the thread is as big as it is.

[Truculentt]

this thread has been derailed.

nost was invited to blizz, paid for by blizz, and shook hands.

they won the battle.


all of which is water under the bridge right now anyway. if blizz doesnt do legacy, they will.

[Kyanion]

You are really fixated in making the Nost team the big bad guys.

Because you are trying to paint them s totally innocent Vanilla lovers who can do no wrong. The truth is on their own fucking forums that they were taking money soon after opening.

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this thread has been derailed.

nost was invited to blizz, paid for by blizz, and shook hands.

they won the battle.


all of which is water under the bridge right now anyway. if blizz doesnt do legacy, they will.

LOL they didn't win shit. I HOPE they fucking try and do something because Blizz knows who they are and will easily take them down with lawsuits.

[Ielenia]

this thread has been derailed.

nost was invited to blizz, paid for by blizz, and shook hands.

they won the battle.

Yeah. That 'Cease and Desist' order and Nost closing really showed how Nostalrius totally won. Remind me which game is still running and which one has been closed? And remind me which version of the game is live, at the moment, and which isn't?

if blizz doesnt do legacy, they will.

And they'll likely get in worse trouble than a simple 'cease-and-desist' order if they do. The chances that they're more 'legal savvy' than Blizzard's own legal team are very unlikely.

[Deleted]

Apparently Blizzard didn't care enough about whether they were making money with it or not, so why should we? Blizzard wanting to meet Nost people (PR-stunt or not) made it seem like they have great admiration for what the people at Nost had done. If they really cared about the "lost money", don't you think they had done something more when they had the chance?

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Yeah. That 'Cease and Desist' order and Nost closing really showed how Nostalrius totally won. Remind me which game is still running and which one has been closed? And remind me which version of the game is live, at the moment, and which isn't?


And they'll likely get in worse trouble than a simple 'cease-and-desist' order if they do. The chances that they're more 'legal savvy' than Blizzard's own legal team are very unlikely.

They only let the server die because they thought they could have a bigger impact on the legacy front. They could've kept the server running if they wanted to, but they chose to take the martyr route and I'm pretty sure it started a movement so big that Blizzard can't just shrug it off like some QQ about class balance.