Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[Jokerfiend]

I hate the service Comcast provides, so I'm going to steal their signal, and resell it the way I think it should be.

Yeah. Great business model. And they're throwing morality around talking about Blizzard. This is the best free entertainment going!

What were they actually selling, because I never bought anything and benefited from it. For sure stretching the point.

[Zoldam]

So are we ignoring all the 3d models and art and shit?

Those are not part of the core.

Those are all part of the client (Which is 100% Blizzard's)

[MoanaLisa]

No shit? The purpose of the petition isn't to oblige Blizzard to do anything, it's another indicating statistic that ellicits how high in demand these types of servers actually are.

Even 100K isn't going to interest Blizzard. They don't think like that. Couple of million would get their attention. Maybe.

[Deleted]

Imagine if Blizzard sold armchairs. They make an amazing chair called Vanilla Chair and everyone is blown away by it. Everyone loves it, it has a reclining feature, a cup holder etc but time inevitably moves on and they realise they need to make more style of chair, so they release the Burning Chair, it has a bit more flare to it, some cool colours, 2 cup holders. Yeah! People love it and are eating this new chair up!

So Blizzard keep releasing more chairs, each one changing something from the past iteration for what they think is "the better alternative". Eventually Blizzard End up with a Warlords Chair, now this chair they praise as one of their best, if not the best they've ever made. They got rid of the reclining feature from the standard chair and instead added some crazy technology to it, which seems pretty cool at first, you can shit in this chair without needing to get off the seat, no more long journey to the toilet, everything is instant! The cup holder extends directly to your mouth so you don't even need to move your arm, it even refills itself. Incredible!

Or so they thought... People start to think, "hmm this chair is cool and all but I really miss the reclining feature of the old chair" or "I quite enjoyed the old walk to the toilet, I don't even have an incentive to get out of this chair now" or "This cupholder is convenient, sure, but I miss going into the kitchen and talking to people as I'd make a glass of juice."... A few customers come to the realisation that maybe Blizzard have lost their way as to what made their first chair so great in the first place, sure it was pretty basic but it still was a major breakthrough at the time. Maybe blizzard will make some of these Vanilla Chairs again?

Blizzard responds saying that "although you thought that chair was really good, it wasn't. It was poorly fabricated, the colours were bland and the technology sorely lacking. You think you want it back, but you don't. Besides, we threw out the designs for that old chair ages ago, we simply don't have the blueprints to make that style of chair anymore". Much to the disappointment of its customers.

All is not lost however! Some crazy guy spent a lot of time rummaging through the old bins at Blizzard headquarters, they found one of these smashed up chairs and did their best to repair it as close as they possibly could to its original state. This guy gets a handful of other Vanilla Chair enthusiasts to help him out voluntarily, suddenly he has a team of 30 people repairing this chair. They spend weeks and months repairing this old neglected chair back to its former glory, they construct it, reverse engineer it, everything and finally, finalllly after so much work they say to the community "We have rebuilt your Vanilla Chair and have the means to build more". We know you loved this chair as much as we do so we aren't going to charge money for it, it wouldn't be right to take money from something Blizzard made but if you want to help keep the production up you can talk to X manufacturer to keep the conveyor belts rolling so more people can enjoy this chair.

People go wild, finally they can sit back in this old familiar chair and remember the good times, but also make some new good times in the process with other people who share their love for the Vanilla Chair. Thousands upon thousands of people started getting these Vanilla Chairs, unsatisfied with the Warlords Chair Blizzard were currently pushing from their factory. Blizzard took notice of this and thought to themselves "Hah, they will get bored eventually, that chair is so outdated and irrelevant in today's chair standards they will be back to our Warlords chair in no time....

This wasn't the case however, more and more people started taking interest in this Vanilla Chair, it was mysterious to many, not many people knew about it as Blizzard prevented anyone from mentioning its existence with threats of repossessing their old chairs if they chose to. Yet still the number of Vanilla Chairs grew, so much so that Blizzard couldn't ignore the problem any longer, their chair numbers had been suffering significantly for quite a while, they lost almost half their sales, yet this Vanilla Chair was growing at an exceptional rate. This couldn't continue, not on Blizzards watch.

Blizzard saw that people were having fun in these old chairs again, but this was Blizzards design, they might have thrown it away and said it wasn't worth recreating but it was still theirs legally! Blizzard hired a team of lawyers to scare and threaten the creators of this new Vanilla Chair to shut down their operations, it worked. Everyone who had a vanilla chair was distraught that Blizzard came into their homes and repossessed their beloved chair. Many of the Vanilla Chair enthusiasts were so angry they vowed never to buy anything from Blizzard ever again until they finally would supply their own Vanilla chairs, even if it meant paying for it again.

However, the creators of the new Vanilla chair weren't so easily defeated, weren't so easily forgotten...

They decided that they would release their blueprint to the masses, so everyone could create their own Vanilla chair, hopefully in a place were Blizzard couldn't have the legal rights to shutdown the activity of production. As a result, it's predicted more Vanilla Chairs will be made soon, Blizzard will either keep trying to destroy these new factories producing Vanilla Chairs but ultimately they will find the whole process fruitless as they can't keep wasting resources on a never ending problem. Some think that Blizzard will eventually cave in and see the market for their Vanilla Chairs once again, offering a legitimate way to buy these chairs. For now, we wait and see.

[Pwellzor]

What were they actually selling, because I never bought anything and benefited from it. For sure stretching the point.

You calling your use of a private server legitimate is what gave me a chuckle bud.

[zorkuus]

Those are not part of the core.

Those are all part of the client (Which is 100% Blizzard's)

So did they steal them or not?

[Deleted]

Even 100K isn't going to interest Blizzard. They don't think like that. Couple of million would get their attention. Maybe.

If that's the case, then why not leave private servers in peace? They are an irrelevant minority according to you.

[Jokerfiend]

It shows a bunch of people from nost had 30 seconds to spare and were bored because their server was shut down. Real no basis in reality for blizzard to assume that is 50,0000*15

It shows there is a demand for product. And the customer is always right, there is market demand, and where there is demand someone will fill the hole. Blizzard has no excuse to NOT fill the hole. Once Blizzard does, then it has a right to bitch. But not before...

Think DOTA... they ASKED to be sanctioned, Blizzard said nope, just a small subset of players nothing to see here. Now look were we are at? DOTA might be slightly different, but the reality is the same, especially when it started out.

[luccadeo]

This really seems like a desperate measure by blizz. First they refuse to post any more subscription numbers. Then the devs show how arrogant they are in claiming they know what people want. Then as they hemorrhage accounts due to putting out inferior xpacs they go after a private server that was not only maintaining a good amount of accounts but gaining them. It is clear that people prefer Pre-Cata WoW to the current state of the game. I've been playing since vanilla. I've pre-ordered every xpac up to and including Legion. I will no longer support blizzard after them doing this.

[Barkloud]

personally I think they shut it down because it was working. the game was immersive and fun. the community was great. it was everything wow currently isn't.

[Zoldam]

Cores are often kept private, but if the team is releasing it, the Streisand effect will start soon.

[Nosdrone]

We've now arrived at armchairs.

This thread has officially gone too far.

[Jokerfiend]

You calling your use of a private server legitimate is what gave me a chuckle bud.

I WANT a legitimate source. I never said Nos was a legitimate source. If I did, I apologize for misspeaking.

[Gadzooks]

As far as I am aware the core doesn't belong to Blizzard and doesn't use their scripting, not saying this as an excuse or anything, I just mean in legalese stuff like that is important. Again I could be wrong.

I'd have to look up the specifics, but reverse engineering encryption is a big no no in the DMCA. If they're decrypting BLizzard's .mpq's illegally, they could be actioned there, but I'm not current on the specifics of that, and taking cases like that outside of US jurisdiction.

What this boils down to is that their server allows infringement to occur, and there's no legal basis to do that. That they wrote it themselves, or used someone else's is irrelevant to what's being done with it.

Without seeing any case filed, and the actual charges, this is all speculation that this is what Blizzard would charge them with, anyway. You could look up the big case from 2010 where Blizzard won 88 million dollars from an illegal server, to see how they approached that case, and what the actual charges were. This one:

http://www.geek.com/games/blizzard-w...rvers-1277800/

"Blizzard have yet again managed to win a lawsuit against someone trying to circumvent security, copyright, and make a profit from World of Warcraft."

That's 3 separate issues they nailed her for - but that was a US based server, and again, not sure if they can take the security circumvention issue outside the US.

[Jokerfiend]

Even 100K isn't going to interest Blizzard. They don't think like that. Couple of million would get their attention. Maybe.

There aren't even a couple of million subscribers, not in the US at least.

[Sturmbringe]

On a side note, the petition is about 100 signatures away from 50,000

https://www.change.org/p/michael-mor...raft-community

It has now passed 50,000 signatures. Wow. When I posted it here 2 hours ago it had about 48,000 something.

No matter how you want to look at it, it is darn impressive.

[chase_the_mofo]

Imagine if Blizzard sold armchairs. They make an amazing chair called Vanilla Chair and everyone is blown away by it. Everyone loves it, it has a reclining feature, a cup holder etc but time inevitably moves on and they realise they need to make more style of chair, so they release the Burning Chair, it has a bit more flare to it, some cool colours, 2 cup holders. Yeah! People love it and are eating this new chair up!

So Blizzard keep releasing more chairs, each one changing something from the past iteration for what they think is "the better alternative". Eventually Blizzard End up with a Warlords Chair, now this chair they praise as one of their best, if not the best they've ever made. They got rid of the reclining feature from the standard chair and instead added some crazy technology to it, which seems pretty cool at first, you can shit in this chair without needing to get off the seat, no more long journey to the toilet, everything is instant! The cup holder extends directly to your mouth so you don't even need to move your arm, it even refills itself. Incredible!

Or so they thought... People start to think, "hmm this chair is cool and all but I really miss the reclining feature of the old chair" or "I quite enjoyed the old walk to the toilet, I don't even have an incentive to get out of this chair now" or "This cupholder is convenient, sure, but I miss going into the kitchen and talking to people as I'd make a glass of juice."... A few customers come to the realisation that maybe Blizzard have lost their way as to what made their first chair so great in the first place, sure it was pretty basic but it still was a major breakthrough at the time. Maybe blizzard will make some of these Vanilla Chairs again?

Blizzard responds saying that "although you thought that chair was really good, it wasn't. It was poorly fabricated, the colours were bland and the technology sorely lacking. You think you want it back, but you don't. Besides, we threw out the designs for that old chair ages ago, we simply don't have the blueprints to make that style of chair anymore". Much to the disappointment of its customers.

All is not lost however! Some crazy guy spent a lot of time rummaging through the old bins at Blizzard headquarters, they found one of these smashed up chairs and did their best to repair it as close as they possibly could to its original state. This guy gets a handful of other Vanilla Chair enthusiasts to help him out voluntarily, suddenly he has a team of 30 people repairing this chair. They spend weeks and months repairing this old neglected chair back to its former glory, they construct it, reverse engineer it, everything and finally, finalllly after so much work they say to the community "We have rebuilt your Vanilla Chair and have the means to build more". We know you loved this chair as much as we do so we aren't going to charge money for it, it wouldn't be right to take money from something Blizzard made but if you want to help keep the production up you can talk to X manufacturer to keep the conveyor belts rolling so more people can enjoy this chair.

People go wild, finally they can sit back in this old familiar chair and remember the good times, but also make some new good times in the process with other people who share their love for the Vanilla Chair. Thousands upon thousands of people started getting these Vanilla Chairs, unsatisfied with the Warlords Chair Blizzard were currently pushing from their factory. Blizzard took notice of this and thought to themselves "Hah, they will get bored eventually, that chair is so outdated and irrelevant in today's chair standards they will be back to our Warlords chair in no time....

This wasn't the case however, more and more people started taking interest in this Vanilla Chair, it was mysterious to many, not many people knew about it as Blizzard prevented anyone from mentioning its existence with threats of repossessing their old chairs if they chose to. Yet still the number of Vanilla Chairs grew, so much so that Blizzard couldn't ignore the problem any longer, their chair numbers had been suffering significantly for quite a while, they lost almost half their sales, yet this Vanilla Chair was growing at an exceptional rate. This couldn't continue, not on Blizzards watch.

Blizzard saw that people were having fun in these old chairs again, but this was Blizzards design, they might have thrown it away and said it wasn't worth recreating but it was still theirs legally! Blizzard hired a team of lawyers to scare and threaten the creators of this new Vanilla Chair to shut down their operations, it worked. Everyone who had a vanilla chair was distraught that Blizzard came into their homes and repossessed their beloved chair. Many of the Vanilla Chair enthusiasts were so angry they vowed never to buy anything from Blizzard ever again until they finally would supply their own Vanilla chairs, even if it meant paying for it again.

However, the creators of the new Vanilla chair weren't so easily defeated, weren't so easily forgotten...

They decided that they would release their blueprint to the masses, so everyone could create their own Vanilla chair, hopefully in a place were Blizzard couldn't have the legal rights to shutdown the activity of production. As a result, it's predicted more Vanilla Chairs will be made soon, Blizzard will either keep trying to destroy these new factories producing Vanilla Chairs but ultimately they will find the whole process fruitless as they can't keep wasting resources on a never ending problem. Some think that Blizzard will eventually cave in and see the market for their Vanilla Chairs once again, offering a legitimate way to buy these chairs. For now, we wait and see.

wall of text damn

WOW IS NOT A CHAIR DAMN!

[stomination]

Guess you only read the first two sentences of the post and called it a day. Which part of paying for the servers hardware do you not understand?

Donations btw isint even profit, since they were never selling ANY service.

You do understand that donation organizations pay their workers and ceo a lot of money that comes thru donations?

[Slaughty8]

I am glad they shut down this private server, hopefully they will hunt down every private server, I know a few and sometimes I would love to report them. Why? Simply because they should be punished for earning money and making living on somebody's else work and property.
I knew a guy who had a private server with 10k ppl paying monthly 5$...we showed me numbers, event proposed to work with him on that so we could earn lots and lots of money, I refused, because it's against my moral compass. Too bad many private servers are still around and their admins are making a living by stealing and doing no real work.

[Natiry427]

Even 100K isn't going to interest Blizzard. They don't think like that. Couple of million would get their attention. Maybe.

Wouldn't it be reasonable to believe that there are more people out there that want to play on legacy realms than the ones playing on Nostalrius? Fear of hacking, data phishing, server shutdowns; these are but some of the risks that deter people from playing on private servers. Despite these risks, hundreds of thousands of people decide to go for it anyway, but many don't. Imagine a sanctioned, Blizzard owned legacy server, and all of the sudden a couple of million doesn't seem so crazy.