Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Doomchicken]

My God, that subreddit may actually be the only thing on the internet more unintentionally offensive than /r/The_Donald.

Actually, I love the nost subreddit already. Filled with fucking delusional weirdos like LargeEgret (reddit member, not our member, before anyone complains) who said this: "Subtle bluff against blizzard maybe? I think they just want a vanilla server up no matter who runs it, if blizzard doesn't announce it soon then russia server goes up and they hold blizzard's own game ransom against them".

FUCKING LOL.

[Kyanion]

Actually, I love the nost subreddit already. Filled with fucking delusional weirdos like LargeEgret (reddit member, not our member, before anyone complains) who said this: "Subtle bluff against blizzard maybe? I think they just want a vanilla server up no matter who runs it, if blizzard doesn't announce it soon then russia server goes up and they hold blizzard's own game ransom against them".

FUCKING LOL.

hahah holy shit that post is pure gold!

[rda]

I am not sure whether you mean you doubt they signed a contract or that it would be unenforceable.

I doubt that all of them signed it. In fact I am nearly sure not all of them did, simply because they had too many people and they were all over the world (read their PDF). I am completely sure not all of them (not even half) flew to Blizzard offices.

[Pann]

I doubt that all of them signed it. In fact I am nearly sure not all of them did, simply because they had too many people and they were all over the world (read their PDF). I am completely sure not all of them (not even half) flew to Blizzard offices.

According to the post mortem there was around 40 staff before being shut down, I would hardly call that too many people. However the likelihood of Blizzard suing staff such as the GM team (who made up the bulk of the staff) for copyright infringement is slim thus there would be no need for any of them to sign anything with Blizzard. It will be the development team and the those involved in setting up the server (the people who actually infringed on Blizzard's copyrights) who would have signed an agreement with Blizzard.

Also, if you read the post mortem is states that the development team consisted of 6 members, most of whom "...did not have access to the complete source code." [source; post mortem 4.1.3.2] Therefore I think it is safe to say that the code has been securely kept by a small number of people and if it was to be released it would be relatively easy to track this back to a handful of individuals.

[rda]

According to the post mortem there was around 40 staff before being shut down, I would hardly call that too many people. However the likelihood of Blizzard suing staff such as the GM team (who made up the bulk of the staff) for copyright infringement is slim thus there would be no need for any of them to sign anything with Blizzard. It will be the development team and the those involved in setting up the server (the people who actually infringed on Blizzard's copyrights) who would have signed an agreement with Blizzard.

Also, if you read the post mortem is states that the development team consisted of 6 members, most of whom "...did not have access to the complete source code." [source; post mortem 4.1.3.2] Therefore I think it is safe to say that the code has been securely kept by a small number of people and if it was to be released it would be relatively easy to track this back to a handful of individuals.

I saw it and that's great, but you are much too fast to generalize to "I think it is safe to say that the code has been securely kept by a small number of people".

Note these complications:

(a) they had an open-source fork for TBC to which they no doubt backported their vanilla fixes - that's in their 4.1.3.2 - that code was available to tons of people,

(b) they had tons of people rotating, like all community projects - their 4.1.3.1 talks about that - those people have some version of the code as well.

Finally, we don't even know if all of the devs on the team that was actual by the time they signed things with Blizzard managed to sign the contract / are in the locations where Blizzard can sue them successfully. We don't even know what countries these last devs are from. If just one of the devs was in Russia (and it could easily have been the case), it's end of story.

PS: There's no such thing as "and if it was to be released it would be relatively easy to track this back to a handful of individuals". The code doesn't have fingerprints. Any dev, even of those who signed the contract, can release the code today and if he takes a couple of simple precautions, it will be impossible to say that it was him (or the Nost team) that released the code. All of that is based entirely on goodwill, it's untrackable.

PPS: Since I have a couple of minutes, I will provide an example scenario of a completely untrackable release by a disgruntled dev: let's say I am such a dev. I have the source code that I want to release and I want it impossible to prove that it was me who released that code. I go on a trip to a different city (preferrably in a different country, we are talking about EU, so that's piece of cake and provides a lot of added security). I go to an Internet cafe and set up a new account on a file sharing service. I upload the code as an archive to that service from a disposable flash drive. Then I post links to the archive to forums of other emulators and to sites like ownedcore. (If I am feeling fancy, I can set up a whole github repository, upload the code there, and link that instead of the archive.) Then I get back to where I live and live a happy life. There are no traces back to me, I won't ever use the account on the file sharing service / github and accounts used to post links on the forums again. And Blizzard will die trying to even begin tracing that, chances are, they won't even get to the country / city of the release. (Even government agencies will have a hard time figuring things out unless they were watching from the beginning.)

[Kolvarg]

In vanilla raids, you could have half the raid die and still kill the boss.

Whereas today, if like 3-4 people die, especially healers, it's a wipe. Either to lack of healing or enrage timer.

just saying

That also happens today.

The thing is you're comparing legacy's only difficulty mode, to current optional harder modes.

If Dark Souls was an easy game, and was only very hard in an optional high difficulty setting, it wouldn't be famous for being a hard game. It's hard mode would be famous for being hard.

Current WoW isn't a hard game per se. It's a fairly easy game with a pretty hard optional high difficulty settings. But that's optional - You don't need to do it to complete the majority of the content.
Even though legacy raid fights were much mechanically easier and in many cases more forgiving, they required an insane ammount of people to commit an insane ammount of time not only during the raid but to prepare for the raids, if anything through the process of attuning and aquiring necessary gear for the raid / fight. Wiping always meant going all the way back to the start of the instance, sometimes having to clear a bunch of trash again because the respawn timer was very low. There was no way around it, if you wanted to complete the content you had to go through it.

... Um, sure,

I think it boils down to this: Vanilla was challenging in the way that your character was very limiting in what you were able to do. The toolkit was fairly limited, the power was limited (compared to the enemies) and gear required a fairly longer ammount of time (and therefore effort) to come by. The challenge was much more geared on the RPG side (invest in your character to improve it, long-term) and on the MMO side (join or host a big guild and coordinate an effort to have more than 40 people raid-ready, which was not easy).

Today's WoW (in the higher difficulty settings) is vastly mechanically harder, with most people having to "perform" a rotatiion of sorts while dealing with sometimes intricate tactics to deal with mechanics. Most people have a more varied kit, but in higher difficulties you *need* to make use of that kit, at least to some extent. With mythic specifically there's still some of that social challenge (maintaining a 20-man+ roster with replacements benched and whatnot). The character preparation is still there, but much lighter - gear is fairly easy to come by, you don't need special sets of armor for different bosses, for the most part you can go without consumables or sub-optimal stats in gear and still perform fairly decently. The focus is changed to individual performance and execution more often than not (one person mistake's can wipe the entire group, in many bosses).

So if compared in a vaccum, today's harder settings are unquestionably harder than legacy. They require a lot more individual mastery and practice and sometimes (not that often imo) communication. But that difficulty is optional, and certainly not that many people care to do it. Legacy's difficulty is there but is more about character investment and progression, social and learning related (was, because everything was new, add-ons were limited, knowledge sites were limited. This wouldn't happen that way on legacy realms).

[Pann]

I saw it and that's great, but you are much too fast to generalize to "I think it is safe to say that the code has been securely kept by a small number of people".

Note these complications:

(a) they had an open-source fork for TBC to which they no doubt backported their vanilla fixes - that's in their 4.1.3.2 - that code was available to tons of people,

(b) they had tons of people rotating, like all community projects - their 4.1.3.1 talks about that - those people have some version of the code as well.

Finally, we don't even know if all of the devs on the team that was actual by the time they signed things with Blizzard managed to sign the contract / are in the locations where Blizzard can sue them successfully. We don't even know what countries these last devs are from. If just one of the devs was in Russia (and it could easily have been the case), it's end of story.

PS: There's no such thing as "and if it was to be released it would be relatively easy to track this back to a handful of individuals". The code doesn't have fingerprints. Any dev, even of those who signed the contract, can release the code today and if he takes a couple of simple precautions, it will be impossible to say that it was him (or the Nost team) that released the code.

We don't know what code was released for the open source TBC project. Although I would guess form the fact that they implemented and enforced strict security controls for the Classic code that they did not just throw all of these security procedures out of the window and give every Tom, Dick and Harry access to the complete code they had spent so much effort keeping secure.

Some people have some of the code.

More what-ifs. The fact of the matter is not all, if any, of the devs live in Russia and Blizzard can sue them successfully.

Ah, the Vanilla Ice defence.

The situation you've proposed is reliant on everyone at Blizzard, their legal team and the courts being idiots as well as the people at Nost being willing to risk a great deal for no gain.

[rda]

We don't know what code was released for the open source TBC project. Although I would guess form the fact that they implemented and enforced strict security controls for the Classic code that they did not just throw all of these security procedures out of the window and give every Tom, Dick and Harry access to the complete code they had spent so much effort keeping secure.

Look at the half of a sentence from the post-mortem that you quoted, I don't know how you can quote it without paying attention to the other half of the same sentence, and to the next sentence.

What you quoted: [most of the dev team] "...did not have access to the complete source code"

The complete sentence and the next sentence: "Most of the developers did not have access to complete source code, which had the drawback of making development even more difficult. To give an idea of the impact of this constraint, this was one of the main reasons why our next project became open source (Nostalrius TBC)."

You are awfully quick to jump to conclusions with your "I think it is safe to say" regarding various non-sequiturs, but somehow you ignore things like "it was hard to develop when not everyone had full access so our next project became open source <my addition: with people generally having full access>".

The situation you've proposed is reliant on everyone at Blizzard, their legal team and the courts being idiots as well as the people at Nost being willing to risk a great deal for no gain.

???

What should the non-idiots do in the situation I described? Please elaborate.

It increasingly seems like you don't know the answer and just assume Blizzard can do something. Well, in this case it is probably just wishful thinking.

Gain to Nost: money to whoever opens the servers, "doing the right thing" by taking a go at Blizzard for lost trust or whatever. Loss: some time and some disposable hardware.

[Pann]

Look at the half of a sentence from the post-mortem that you quoted, I don't know how you can quote it without paying attention to the other half of the same sentence, and to the next sentence.

What you quoted: [most of the dev team] "...did not have access to the complete source code"

The complete sentence and the next sentence: "Most of the developers did not have access to complete source code, which had the drawback of making development even more difficult. To give an idea of the impact of this constraint, this was one of the main reasons why our next project became open source (Nostalrius TBC)."

You are awfully quick to jump to conclusions with your "I think it is safe to say" regarding various non-sequiturs, but somehow you ignore things like "it was hard to develop when not everyone had full access so our next project became open source <my addition: with people generally having full access>".



???

What should the non-idiots do in the situation I described? Please elaborate.

It increasingly seems like you don't know the answer and just assume Blizzard can do something. Well, in this case it is probably just wishful thinking.

Gain to Nost: money to whoever opens the servers, "doing the right thing" by taking a go at Blizzard for lost trust or whatever. Loss: some time and some disposable hardware.

I am fully aware what the whole sentence said. However nothing in it says that they released the code for classic Nost.

The purpose of the whole Nost/Blizzard saga was to protect Blizzard's IP, a non-idiot would require that they given access to all of the code and logs of who accessed it and that Nost inform them of anyone who has/had access to the code who is not mentioned in the logs. They would then require those who have accessed or had access to the code sign an agreement that they would not use or distribute it. In the case of a Nost clone being released it would then be up to those individuals to prove that they were responsible for the the new server, they had not distributed it or that they taken all reasonable steps to stop it from being distributed, no doubt they would have to inform Blizzard of any unauthorised access in the case of a potential hack.

Why do you believe that Blizzard would be powerless? Why do you think that people who are employed to deal with such cases are unable to think of the same situations as you and that they are unable to formulate a course of action that would minimise the risk of such a situation?

Seeing as many of the Nost team are based in France, unless they plan to leave the country and live in another that does not respect US/EU copyrights, then the money is a moot point as Blizzard would be able to recover that as well as damages and costs through legal proceedings. Sticking it to the man is an incredibly stupid reason when your future is on the line. The loss would be potential legal action, which could result in bankruptcy.

[rda]

Good, let's talk specifics:

The purpose of the whole Nost/Blizzard saga was to protect Blizzard's IP, a non-idiot would require that they given access to all of the code and logs of who accessed it ...

For non-current members of the team, these logs contain just their nicknames.

...and that Nost inform them of anyone who has/had access to the code who is not mentioned in the logs.

Done.

They would then require those who have accessed or had access to the code sign an agreement that they would not use or distribute it.

Excluding former team members because nobody even knows who they are and where they are now. If some of the then-current team members didn't go to Blizzard - which is entirely possible - excluding those guys as well.

In the case of a Nost clone being released it would then be up to those individuals to prove that they were responsible for the the new server, they had not distributed it or that they taken all reasonable steps to stop it from being distributed, no doubt they would have to inform Blizzard of any unauthorised access in the case of a potential hack.

They swear they are innocent. They turn over their laptops, say they've been busy at work / whatever. What else do you suggest they do? I get that you want to say that it's up to them, but no, it's not, the code is really outside of their ability to control. Because it was just a community project, not a classified CIA operation.

Why do you believe that Blizzard would be powerless? Why do you think that people who are employed to deal with such cases are unable to think of the same situations as you and that they are unable to formulate a course of action that would minimise the risk of such a situation?

Blizzard are powerless for the same reason everybody would be powerless - because it was a community project, people come and go, and the code leaks. During development, code gets copied to the machines of developers, and these developers were NOT in a controlled environment. Worse, in projects like this (an emulator), developers sometimes migrate from one project to the other, taking all the fixes with them entirely wilfully. The Nost guys could not guarantee anything even if they wanted to (and you can see what kind of notes they are hosting on their twitter / site now, I am not sure they want to guarantee anything all that much).

People at Blizzard who are employed to deal with such cases can not deal with all possible cases in this area. They can't do anything about leaks like I describe, for example. They just can't, nobody can. Welcome to the Internet and the connected world. They can close Nost, right, great, they did that. They could have sued Nost devs, decided not to do that for some reason, good. But they can't stop the code from getting leaked. They can't stop a new Nost from appearing in a country like Russia. There are limits to what they can do, don't see what's so difficult about it.

[Deleted]

This always baffles me. Vanilla WoW was made precisely for casuals, for mass appeal. To capture the "visitors" who logged on to EQ and couldn't handle it. It was known for being the "kidde-game" at the time of Vanilla release. The hard-core people in EQ1/UO communities laughed at it. That is - until everyone and their cousins went to play WoW.

WoW was made for casuals. One can argue that over the years it moved to serve more and more the hardcore raiding audience - WoD being the crown-jewel release, with little to no other content than raids.

With Legion they seem to have taken a step towards more diverse design again.
Vanilla WoW is extremely casual friendly game - much more than the current version.

This. I don't understand the casual myth around modern wow. So many people were shit players in vanilla, myself included. I actually only started raiding competitively once different difficulties were introduced. beforehand, wow was just a massive timesink with occasional raids and attempts.

[Pann]

Good, let's talk specifics:



For non-current members of the team, these logs contain just their nicknames.

Do they? This seems rather amateurish and not at all in line with their recruitment policy detailed in the post mortem.

Excluding former team members because nobody even knows who they are and where they are now. If some of the then-current team members didn't go to Blizzard - which is entirely possible - excluding those guys as well.

According to you. No doubt the server logs would include things such as IP addresses and possibly computer names.

They swear they are innocent. They turn over their laptops, say they've been busy at work / whatever. What else do you suggest they do? I get that you want to say that it's up to them, but no, it's not, the code is really outside of their ability to control. Because it was just a community project, not a classified CIA operation.

It would be up to them to convince a court that were not responsible. The fact that Nost detail how they controlled code suggests that it is within control. The fact that it is a community project changes nothing about its legalities.

Blizzard are powerless for the same reason everybody would be powerless - because it was a community project, people come and go, and the code leaks. During development, code gets copied to the machines of developers, and these developers were NOT in a controlled environment. Worse, in projects like this (an emulator), developers sometimes migrate from one project to the other, taking all the fixes with them entirely wilfully. The Nost guys could not guarantee anything even if they wanted to (and you can see what kind of notes they are hosting on their twitter / site now, I am not sure they want to guarantee anything all that much).

People at Blizzard who are employed to deal with such cases can not really deal with such cases. They just can't. Nobody can. Welcome to the Internet and the connected world. They can close Nost, right, great, they did that. They could have sued Nost devs, decided not to do that for some reason, good. But they can't stop the code getting leaked. They can't stop new Nost from appearing in a country like Russia. There are limits to what they can do, don't see what's so difficult about it.

The post mortem shows that Nost was run in a professional manner, it details how no-one has access to more than they need.

Whilst they cannot stop Nost re-opening in certain countries they can take legal action against those who allow it do so therefore it is in their best interests to ensure that the code does not leak.

[rda]

Do they? This seems rather amateurish and not at all in line with their recruitment policy detailed in the post mortem.

You ever been to open source projects? Real names are frequently fakes, and nicknames are more recognizeable anyway. Heck, when a software company hires someone and he says he's "greenfrog" on github because he wants to show off what projects he contributed to and in what way, it's entirely normal, no matter how amateurish it might look to the outsiders.

According to you. No doubt the server logs would include things such as IP addresses and possibly computer names.

Erm. I doubt you'd be able to get server logs, they usually get auto-erased in a rolling fashion, but even if you did, the IP addresses would give you nothing. (What the heck are "computer names"?? DNS names the IP addresses resolve to? These are even more useless.)

It would be up to them to convince a court that were not responsible.

The court will find out pretty fast that the code could have been posted by people other than them, and that would be the end of it.

The fact that Nost detail how they controlled code suggests that it is within control. ... The post mortem shows that Nost was run in a professional manner, it details how no-one has access to more than they need.

Look, the guys wrote a PDF with some numbers. From that you somehow conclude the project "has been run professionally". You are just a master of jumping to conclusions, it must be 3rd or 4th entirely unwarranted jump. The reality is, this PDF, while interesting, does not indicate anything regarding the development. I get that you might be impressed by a team writing a PDF, but that's an easy thing to do. The PDF does not talk about the code and processes except in very vague terms. How you can conclude from it that the Nost guys have complete control over the code, I don't know... The PDF even specifically talks about things like big turnover, etc, but you ignore it like it doesn't matter - and why? because you think that if there were some kind of issues with control, Blizzard wouldn't have let them go free.

Whilst they cannot stop Nost re-opening in certain countries they can take legal action against those who allow it do so therefore it is in their best interests to ensure that the code does not leak.

That's like killing your dog because some guy on the TV has been badly bitten by a dog of the same color.

Yeah, yeah, Blizzard could sue Nost guys in France. Sure, it's in the interest of those Nost guys in France that the code does not get leaked. But other guys outside of France who might have the code don't care about the guys in France and can leak it. And even the guys in France might easily leak it whenever they want, because it would be impossible to track it back to them.

[Kolvarg]

This. I don't understand the casual myth around modern wow. So many people were shit players in vanilla, myself included. I actually only started raiding competitively once different difficulties were introduced. beforehand, wow was just a massive timesink with occasional raids and attempts.

It's simple. WoW was always casual, and still is. The difference is the definition/notion of casual is a lot different now than it was in 2004. Gaming as a whole is much more mainstream; both the industry and the audience changed a lot.

Strictly looking at it through commitement required, WoW is more casual (or at least, accomodates much more casual playstyles even for people who want to see "complete" all the content) now than it was then. Vanilla was seen as casual then mainly because the major comparison was Everquest, which was absolutely far from any definition of casual.

TL;DR: Vanilla was casual for its time. The meaning of casual has changed. WoW is casual today, but more so than it used to be.

[Deleted]

There wasn't much casual about it from what I remember and re experienced on Nost.. The PvP grind was still just as tough. I was a week from Rank 10 before Nost died. How I got to Rank 12 in classic retail is beyond me, all because the gloves were bis for a while. Consumables were far from easy to obtain. Lotus being camped out etc.

It depends what you wanted from the game. I think it's far easier to progress and see content as well as most other aspects of the game with minimal effort now.

[Traveler Voltin]

I would say poor balancing and scaling is why classic seemed are.

[Pann]

You ever been to open source projects? Real names are frequently fakes, and nicknames are more recognizeable anyway. Heck, when a software company hires someone and he says he's "greenfrog" on github because he wants to show off what projects he contributed to and in what way, it's entirely normal, no matter how amateurish it might look to the outsiders.

And? This has nothing to do with the topic. Besides plenty of people have been caught and ended up before a court even though they hid their activities behind an nickname.

Erm. I doubt you'd be able to get server logs, they usually get auto-erased in a rolling fashion, but even if you did, the IP addresses would give you nothing. (What the heck are "computer names"?? DNS names the IP addresses resolve to? These are even more useless.)

You don't know what logs they did or did not keep. Why would IP addresses give you nothing?

The court will find out pretty fast that the code could have been posted by people other than them, and that would be the end of it.

Being a civil case the claimant would only have to prove their case on the balance of probability rather than beyond reasonable doubt.

Look, the guys wrote a PDF with some numbers. From that you somehow conclude the project "has been run professionally". You are just a master of jumping to conclusions, it must be 3rd or 4th entirely unwarranted jump. The reality is, this PDF, while interesting, does not indicate anything regarding the development. I get that you might be impressed by a team writing a PDF, but that's an easy thing to do. The PDF does not talk about the code and processes except in very vague terms. How you can conclude from it that the Nost guys have complete control over the code, I don't know... The PDF even specifically talks about things like big turnover, etc, but you ignore it like it doesn't matter - and why? because you think that if there were some kind of issues with control, Blizzard wouldn't have let them go free.

Wow. I am basing what I say from what is in front of me from Nost whereas you're claiming they did this, that and the other without any shred of evidence and I'm the one jumping to conclusions?!?

The contents of the PDF prove that Nost was run in a professional manner. The PDF talks about how they handled security regarding the code. I conclude from the fact they mention staff had to pass a back ground check, then had to under go a training period, they were managed by trusted members of management, had no access to unnecessary information, the development team was kept at a small size and the majority of them did not have access to the complete code that it is within their ability to control whether it is distributed or not. Whereas you're saying that it was not because... you say so.

I have ignored the aspect of turnover because it does not mention whether it is within the dev staff, it is likely (like most companies) that turn over is greatest in the lower positions and the sections which highlight the issue and how they dealt with staff turnover specifically mention the GM and IsVV staff and their career progression paths but not he dev team. It even goes on to mention that people move up from GM to IsVV before going on to become a dev this would imply that those who do become devs have been with Nost for a significant amount of time.

Blizzard "let them go free" because the course of action they took gives either the same amount or more control over their IP as they would have gained with court action.

That's like killing your dog because some guy on the TV has been badly bitten by a dog of the same color.

Yeah, yeah, Blizzard could sue Nost guys in France. Sure, it's in the interest of those Nost guys in France that the code does not get leaked. But other guys outside of France who might have the code don't care about the guys in France and can leak it. And even the guys in France might easily leak it whenever they want, because it would be impossible to track it back to them.

Again you're inventing hypothetical situations to fit your argument. There is no evidence that more than a handful of people have access to the full code.

Why would it be impossible to trace back to Nost? Unless they removed every bit of code that is specific to Nost, in which case it would be easier to start from scratch, then it is quite possible to say that on the balance of probability (the standard of proof for civil cases) the code came from Nost.

[Saucerian]

If I had to make an honest point against Classic, it would be that without the newness, the game would just feel grindy more than anything else.

That said I would still play one. As a certain other site described it once, the journey would be more a spiritual than exploratory one.

If I may change the subject again, how much would a theoretical Classic Token go for? (I would be for this, since gold selling would definitely arise again.) Given the illegitimate gold rate I remember, and inflation, it would be shockingly low. Probably 200G or so. Gold was valuable in Classic, heh.

[rda]

...

I could continue but I get a sense that you are mostly being bored (half of your statements are throwaway crap to which the answer is "No, this is not the case, why the hell are you saying this"), so I won't.

[Pann]

I could continue but I get a sense that you are mostly being bored (half of your statements are throwaway crap to which the answer is "No, this is not the case, why the hell are you saying this"), so I won't.

My answers are "No, that is not case" because you ignore all the facts that we know and then construct an alternative that fits your argument, so, yes, I am extremely bored.