Open Letter to Blizzard Entertainment from Mark Kern

[Deficineiron]

I think he is doing it for that reason, but also to give players something we deserve. And noone actually knows for certain, if he is truly doing it solely for his own PR. Of course the anti legacy server crowd will say he is, even though they actually don't know for certain.

This sounds like a possible corollary to another member's Helpful Unprovability Quandry - I would call it the Ultimately Unknowable Motivation Paradox - essentially, no one can ever claim to know for certain what motivates another person to do anything.

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That tweet barely had any likes lol. He may as well promote his projects at the same time. It doesn't necessarily mean, him fighting for legacy servers is not genuine.

However, it is important to point out that no one knows for certain that he is genuinely fighting for legacy servers for real.

Kern has been quiet on wow since an article some years ago ("we killed a genre", which i actually agreed with despite his horrid record at red5). That article did try to promote fireball iirc. that said, he may well sincerely believe everything he says about classic wow. It doesn't prevent him having self-serving motives for throwing his hat in the ring here.

I had just remember that article. The thought I take away from it is he can write up and talk a very decently convincing argument no matter what kind of disorderly events take place once he is in charge (bus, videos, codewords to calm down?? etc)

[Mosotti]

Don't know man how you feel about 4 difficulty for the same raid?

I feel pretty good, I get to play what I want and can, instead of not playing at all.

They have very good reasons not to release that code and its embarrassing how many people have cried about them not doing it.
Just like Blizzard were entitled to close Nost down, they're entitled to hold onto their code.

It gives them more bargaining power with Blizzard to deliver what they really want which is Blizzard supported Legacy servers. Anyone who writes them off immediately from this is obviously just selfishly wanting what THEY think is best for them.

First of all, they said THEMSELVES they will release the code and the database, that's because so many people will not fucking lose 1 year of their life. And some of them pretty much had this happened before, because there were other private servers that went down, not necessarily because of Blizzard.

Secondly, and most important, there's no bargain here, so there's no bargaining power. The whole "talking" crap is just PR. The fact that they don't release the source code and the database, the ONLY way that this "phenomenon" has a chance to continue, because Blizzard pretended to care about them, is just fucking ridiculous. Even the fact that they shut down that shit so fast is pretty fucking suspicious.

They made that promise prior to the opportunity to meet with and discuss Legacy with Blizzard. Releasing the code costs them that opportunity.
Get off your high horse and go back to your mountain dew and doritios guys. They did ALL the work.

They, like Blizzard, owe you NOTHING.

They DID NOT DO ALL THE WORK. Stop spreading this retarded piece of shit. They used an OPEN SOURCE project called MANGOS, which has been in development for MANY YEARS. Without the work of countless people that DID RELEASE THEIR WORK TO THE PUBLIC, Nostalrius would have never existed. So yeah, they refusing to release their work for a useless trip to Blizzard is pretty fucking retarded, obviously not from their point of view, but from the community point of view.

[Vichan]

I dislike Kerns role in the Nost debacle because he abuses the whole situation for his own PR.

He is, at the end, just a freeloader.

At the end i think Kern deserves punishment. Way more than the guys at Nostralgius.. even if they actually violated copyrights and dealt damage to blizzard.

agree, I believe Kern is gonna end up doing more harm than good for the pro-legacy/nost people

[Uurdz]

I feel pretty good, I get to play what I want and can, instead of not playing at all.



First of all, they said THEMSELVES they will release the code and the database, that's because so many people will not fucking lose 1 year of their life. And some of them pretty much had this happened before, because there were other private servers that went down, not necessarily because of Blizzard.

Secondly, and most important, there's no bargain here, so there's no bargaining power. The whole "talking" crap is just PR. The fact that they don't release the source code and the database, the ONLY way that this "phenomenon" has a chance to continue, because Blizzard pretended to care about them, is just fucking ridiculous. Even the fact that they shut down that shit so fast is pretty fucking suspicious.



They DID NOT DO ALL THE WORK. Stop spreading this retarded piece of shit. They used an OPEN SOURCE project called MANGOS, which has been in development for MANY YEARS. Without the work of countless people that DID RELEASE THEIR WORK TO THE PUBLIC, Nostalrius would have never existed. So yeah, they refusing to release their work for a useless trip to Blizzard is pretty fucking retarded, obviously not from their point of view, but from the community point of view.

Mate firstly take your damn tinfoil hat off.
Secondly, I'm surprised that so many people who actively violate IP law have such a passionate hatred of someone not playing by the sharing rules. Pirates code?

I get that you/others are mad nost got shut down but that was always a risk.
They did all the work on the code that you want them to release. Whatever community you're coming from need to harden the f up. Feels bad when someone "steals" from you? Ha. Irony.

[Deja Thoris]

That tweet barely had any likes lol. He may as well promote his projects at the same time. It doesn't necessarily mean, him fighting for legacy servers is not genuine.

Keep clinging onto that belief. I'll keep facepalming at what a hopelessly naive person you are.

He has no history of championing anything but himself.

[Mosotti]

Mate firstly take your damn tinfoil hat off.
Secondly, I'm surprised that so many people who actively violate IP law have such a passionate hatred of someone not playing by the sharing rules. Pirates code?

I get that you/others are mad nost got shut down but that was always a risk.
They did all the work on the code that you want them to release. Whatever community you're coming from need to harden the f up. Feels bad when someone "steals" from you? Ha. Irony.

Dude, first of all I don't give a flying fuck about Nost and that it got shut down. In fact, I always said it's absolutely normal that it was shut down, I even wondered if those fuckers are asleep or something. I only casually played on private servers, out of curiosity, and always knew that it could go to hell at any time.

What you don't understand is what the fuck open source means and how Nost dudes used it to make their server and now, when their server is KAPUTT, don't want to pass it on to others that might work on it AS THEY ALSO WORKED on top of other people's shit. In fact, that's also why all the private servers are SHIT, because there are dozens of them and each fucker kept their improvements for themselves.

As for the obligation of Nost to release their shit, there's no obligation of course, but we're talking principles here. They said they will, now they said they won't. These kind of people are SHIT people, that's all. If they actually cared about the "vanilla community" they would have released the code and the database instead of taking a trip to Blizzard which will result in nothing really. I feel sorry for those idiots that signed yet another useless online petition and found a loser to "champion" their cause

[Deleted]

What you don't understand is what the fuck open source means

It is you who doesn't understand what open source means.

Open source doesn't mean that everyone must share their code. Its a common misconception among people who are not familiar with how open source actually works and assume things incorrectly. License only affects distribution of project files. It doesn't obligate Nost developers to release their modifications. It only prevents developers from releasing their modifications using different licenses (though some open source licenses allow changing license, so sometimes its not true either).

Short version:
- Developers want to release their code? Release as open source (unless license allows changing license).
- Developers don't want to release? Its their choice. Open source does not force developers to release anything.

[Uurdz]

Dude, first of all I don't give a flying fuck about Nost and that it got shut down. In fact, I always said it's absolutely normal that it was shut down, I even wondered if those fuckers are asleep or something. I only casually played on private servers, out of curiosity, and always knew that it could go to hell at any time.

What you don't understand is what the fuck open source means and how Nost dudes used it to make their server and now, when their server is KAPUTT, don't want to pass it on to others that might work on it AS THEY ALSO WORKED on top of other people's shit. In fact, that's also why all the private servers are SHIT, because there are dozens of them and each fucker kept their improvements for themselves.

As for the obligation of Nost to release their shit, there's no obligation of course, but we're talking principles here. They said they will, now they said they won't. These kind of people are SHIT people, that's all. If they actually cared about the "vanilla community" they would have released the code and the database instead of taking a trip to Blizzard which will result in nothing really. I feel sorry for those idiots that signed yet another useless online petition and found a loser to "champion" their cause

Ok cool. You really post like a cool calm collected guy, not some hyped up crazy child who keyboard warriors TF out of these forums.

Lol, you the guy who thinks girls getting raped while drunk is due to them dressing like whores, thinks they can talk about principles.

They GENUINELY care about the community which is why they're not releasing the code because I bet 100% that is one of the conditions of their FUCKING MEETING WITH BLIZZARD. You do realise if Blizzard shaft the vanilla community and do nothing that Nost. can just release the code and BOOM Blizzard will have to wade through a shitstorm of Private Servers with the quality that Nost. provided.

You summarize that taking a trip to Blizzard with result in nothing really. Lol cause you've got some credible idea how business meetings work? You think Blizzard as a company would make a public statement, then allow these guys to say they're gonna come chat and then NOT PRODUCE ANYTHING FROM THAT MEETING.

Lol fuck what bad PR that would be if they did that.

You're going zero to nowhere fast with your attitude and chat vitriol. I feel bad for you man, but the only person who can help you is yourself.

[Chemii]

Its almost like the dude is a nutso and doesn't realize people can pick and choose what games to play and not play.

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Maybe if the vast majority of arguments for a legacy server is "the game sucks now muh nostalgia," then more people would be open to the actual idea.

But since you have yet to made a single specific point I have no clue what you're even referring to.

You want to point out the 200k petition? Sure. I'll just point out that there's no requirement that you've had to play WoW in the past to sign it, or I'll bring up the fact that a 2.5 million subscribed to Youtuber (JonTron) has made a video deliberately telling people to go sign it. And mention that the 2nd highest upvoted comment on his video is from a guy who has never played the game in his life but signing the petition anyway, with hundreds of comments below that one saying the same thing. Or point to the fact that Change.org doesn't take petitions based on your IP, but just you have an email address.

I approve.

I said this before but I really don't think the interest in these servers is legitimate. I guessed that most of the people who want these Vanilla servers never even played back then. That's a good enough reason to want to try it, sure but the state of the current game isn't a reason for or against legacy servers in my opinion.

[Deleted]

That tweet barely had any likes lol. He may as well promote his projects at the same time. It doesn't necessarily mean, him fighting for legacy servers is not genuine.

Ofc not he has been doing that (fighting for legacy) the last 10 years, right? right?
No, he hasnt.....

[zmp]

What a stupid, moronic video from an ex-Blizzard employee who should be thoroughly embarrassed. Dear God. Does this clown ever want to work in the industry again? This is like a police officer participating in COPS. They get to be on TV but usually get fired or laughed at so hard they quit.

This video gives me douche-chills to the fucking core.

Of course its suicide in the industry for him. Gone are the days where developers would actually care about the product they ship out. Blizzard and EU being prime examples.

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You dont get the point that the number 250k is as fake as the numbers the nost crew spills do you?

Maybe there weren't 9m playing at the beginning of WoD either (Best expansion evur since WoD), its just a number and could come out of Clinton's lying ass for all we know..

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It's absolutely borderline ridiculous to believe that every single person who created an account on a F2P private realm would be willing to pay a subscription for the same service.

Did they have any choice at all of it being F2P or not? In case its a financial thing, they could just put in a token system, because it seems to be the only compromise to fix current WoW degrading sub numbers..

[Deleted]

They GENUINELY care about the community which is why they're not releasing the code because I bet 100% that is one of the conditions of their FUCKING MEETING WITH BLIZZARD. You do realise if Blizzard shaft the vanilla community and do nothing that Nost. can just release the code and BOOM Blizzard will have to wade through a shitstorm of Private Servers with the quality that Nost. provided.

the fact is more like nost can NEVER release ANY of their code because
#1 if they release the source code so other people can do private servers Blizzard will sue them for all they have and destroy their lives forever
#2 they dont release the player data cause then everyone would see the REAL numbers.

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Did they have any choice at all of it being F2P or not?

In fact yes they had! Its called donation

[Pann]

the fact is more like nost can NEVER destroy ANY of their code because
#1 if they release the source code so other people can do private servers Blizzard will sue them for all they have and destroy their lives forever
#2 they dont release the player data cause then everyone would see the REAL numbers.

I don't see why either of your points would mean that Nost can never destroy any of their code.

At present #1 is mutually beneficial to both Blizzard and the Nost team. It is clearly in Nost's best interests to avoid a court battle with Blizzard and in Blizzard's for the source code to remain private so I am not sure what you are trying to prove.

You seem convinced that somehow Nost are inflating their numbers. What would be the point of this? Their numbers were announced before any sort dialogue with Blizzard had happened if anything it would have been in their interests to down play them as it is entirely possible that a court could decide that each registered/active account is a lost customer for Blizzard and award damages accordingly.

[Thimagryn]

You want to point out the 200k petition? Sure. I'll just point out that there's no requirement that you've had to play WoW in the past to sign it, or I'll bring up the fact that a 2.5 million subscribed to Youtuber (JonTron) has made a video deliberately telling people to go sign it. And mention that the 2nd highest upvoted comment on his video is from a guy who has never played the game in his life but signing the petition anyway, with hundreds of comments below that one saying the same thing. Or point to the fact that Change.org doesn't take petitions based on your IP, but just you have an email address.

This.

Hell, I signed the petition and have no personal interest in investing time into Legacy. I support them for the benefit of everyone. I'm not even subbed to current WoW, so Blizz won't be seeing any money from my petition sig.

[Bapestar]

Keep clinging onto that belief. I'll keep facepalming at what a hopelessly naive person you are.

He has no history of championing anything but himself.

At the end of the day you don't actually know if kern is being genuine or not.

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Ofc not he has been doing that (fighting for legacy) the last 10 years, right? right?
No, he hasnt.....

So fucking what? Noone needs to fight for 10 years, to genuinely want or be an advocate for legacy servers.

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This.

Hell, I signed the petition and have no personal interest in investing time into Legacy. I support them for the benefit of everyone. I'm not even subbed to current WoW, so Blizz won't be seeing any money from my petition sig.

Who cares? You just debunked your own argument and krazyk's lol.

[Mosotti]

It is you who doesn't understand what open source means.

Open source doesn't mean that everyone must share their code. Its a common misconception among people who are not familiar with how open source actually works and assume things incorrectly. License only affects distribution of project files. It doesn't obligate Nost developers to release their modifications. It only prevents developers from releasing their modifications using different licenses (though some open source licenses allow changing license, so sometimes its not true either).

Short version:
- Developers want to release their code? Release as open source (unless license allows changing license).
- Developers don't want to release? Its their choice. Open source does not force developers to release anything.

I never said they MUST release anything, as being forced by something, like a law of open source. I said that they SHOULD release it because that's the only REAL way they can ever help the "community" and not themselves (although I'm not sure wtf they are expecting out of it). I said that they were pieces of shit, because they said they will release it and now they are saying they won't, because Blizzard simply "got to them". Blizzard has some smart people there, first they've sent the dogs, then they've said "meh, we had to do it, but we still love you, let's have friendly conversations". Brilliant

Ok cool. You really post like a cool calm collected guy, not some hyped up crazy child who keyboard warriors TF out of these forums.

Lol, you the guy who thinks girls getting raped while drunk is due to them dressing like whores, thinks they can talk about principles.

They GENUINELY care about the community which is why they're not releasing the code because I bet 100% that is one of the conditions of their FUCKING MEETING WITH BLIZZARD. You do realise if Blizzard shaft the vanilla community and do nothing that Nost. can just release the code and BOOM Blizzard will have to wade through a shitstorm of Private Servers with the quality that Nost. provided.

You summarize that taking a trip to Blizzard with result in nothing really. Lol cause you've got some credible idea how business meetings work? You think Blizzard as a company would make a public statement, then allow these guys to say they're gonna come chat and then NOT PRODUCE ANYTHING FROM THAT MEETING.

Lol fuck what bad PR that would be if they did that.

You're going zero to nowhere fast with your attitude and chat vitriol. I feel bad for you man, but the only person who can help you is yourself.

Well, since you're a cuckoo that looks up other people's post in completely different areas, just to try to counter them in some other unrelated shit, yeah, many women get raped because they dress like some fucking whores, that's a FACT. Obviously I never said ALL rapes are connected to the dress code, or even that mose rapes are related to it. But it's really the same thing as those hit by a truck on a green light. They think that because there's a law that says drivers must stop, they should never make sure there's no driver that might ignore that law. Similarily, obviously there's a law that states you can't rape anyone, regardless of how they dress, but the reality is that there are people out there that will get this signal "fuck me in the ass" if they see a woman with her ass exposed. I hope that makes some light in your little head about my "principles".

It's not me raping those women, I was just stating what's a fucking FACT. This also applies to other sexual harassment types that take place at work or in other places. Before expecting the law to protect you, you must protect yourself, that's all. Don't get yourself into situations that might end up badly. You can say afterwards they had no right to rape you and shit like that, they might even go to prison for several years if you choose to go through a painful trial, where their lawyers will try to picture you as a complete whore, but in the end you were still gangbanged by a bunch of drunkards, simply for not using the BRAIN.

Now going back to Nost devs, they don't give a shit about the "vanilla community", not to mention "genuinely". Simply because if they did, they would have help the community to get a vanilla server, which Blizzard will NEVER do. EVER. And again, I'm so fucking happy I'm not one of those vanilla weirdos, because this shit would have been really sad for me. Now it's just funny.

You will see that indeed NOTHING will come up from any "meeting". That PR bullshit was pretty funny, not to mention it was signed by the "you think you want it, but you don't" dude. Of course, sometimes I'm wrong, I think it happened once or twice in my life, so there's a chance Blizzard will indeed make legacy servers. Which reminds me of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFTRwD85AQ4

[Marakesh]

Ofc not he has been doing that (fighting for legacy) the last 10 years, right? right?
No, he hasnt.....

As usual, you guys make arguments in such a over-the-top, hero / villain, black and white kind of way. Even before he got canned at Red 5, he was active in this issue. Right out of wikipedia -

League For Gamers[edit]
In 2012, Kern started the League For Gamers in response to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act.[4][5] Kern said that the League For Gamers would stand as an advocacy group for the gaming community. He intended it to rival the Entertainment Software Association which focused more on publisher rights, in light of its support of SOPA. Red 5 Studios' website went offline on the 18th of January to draw attention to the legislation.[6]

Then, a few years later, the very game he is most famous for, ends up in the middle of this debate? Of course, he's going to weigh in. The fact that he isn't employed in the video game industry is what allows him to comment on it freely. If we only listen to people who's financial interests are still tied to it, obviously there will be heavy bias. If he want's to mention a pnp rpg (without even naming it btw) when questioned about what he's doing now, I have less issue with that than only getting opinions on this from one side of the debate.

As for the bus, hey, you are all still talking about it. That's a marketing success, considering the game wasn't, you still have to give him credit for selling it well. After just taking it for granted he was evil, you know because, I looked through that reddit veryone kept linking. A few comments down was by a guy who had worked on that side of the company. He talked about how hard it is to get attention and hype when you aren't Blizzard and don't have the $$$'s to buy all that advertising.

As for the rest of the accusations, I could easily see it as being sour grapes by a few employees, or more likely, relatively smaller character flaws that get blown up when a situation turns bad. But its just like the bus / video debate mentioned above - some people are going to take the stuff they read on the internet to mean a guy is the devil and some of us are going to believe the real world is more complex than that.

He did a fine job on the video. He stated the case in a straightforward manner and if you don't like that case then argue against it, not him.

[Deleted]

What did Mark Kern do after leaving blizzard? What kind of content and game-play did he develop? I mean... Firefall isn't popular. He must have spend his capital somewhere else!

[Eleccybubb]

What did Mark Kern do after leaving blizzard? What kind of content and game-play did he develop? I mean... Firefall isn't popular. He must have spend his capital somewhere else!

I think that he might have spent it on an 1980's futuristic reject bus. Cost around 3 million dollars

[Uurdz]

the fact is more like nost can NEVER destroy ANY of their code because
#1 if they release the source code so other people can do private servers Blizzard will sue them for all they have and destroy their lives forever
#2 they dont release the player data cause then everyone would see the REAL numbers.

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In fact yes they had! Its called donation

Sue then under what laws? Stop being melodramatic

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I never said they MUST release anything, as being forced by something, like a law of open source. I said that they SHOULD release it because that's the only REAL way they can ever help the "community" and not themselves (although I'm not sure wtf they are expecting out of it). I said that they were pieces of shit, because they said they will release it and now they are saying they won't, because Blizzard simply "got to them". Blizzard has some smart people there, first they've sent the dogs, then they've said "meh, we had to do it, but we still love you, let's have friendly conversations". Brilliant



Well, since you're a cuckoo that looks up other people's post in completely different areas, just to try to counter them in some other unrelated shit, yeah, many women get raped because they dress like some fucking whores, that's a FACT. Obviously I never said ALL rapes are connected to the dress code, or even that mose rapes are related to it. But it's really the same thing as those hit by a truck on a green light. They think that because there's a law that says drivers must stop, they should never make sure there's no driver that might ignore that law. Similarily, obviously there's a law that states you can't rape anyone, regardless of how they dress, but the reality is that there are people out there that will get this signal "fuck me in the ass" if they see a woman with her ass exposed. I hope that makes some light in your little head about my "principles".

It's not me raping those women, I was just stating what's a fucking FACT. This also applies to other sexual harassment types that take place at work or in other places. Before expecting the law to protect you, you must protect yourself, that's all. Don't get yourself into situations that might end up badly. You can say afterwards they had no right to rape you and shit like that, they might even go to prison for several years if you choose to go through a painful trial, where their lawyers will try to picture you as a complete whore, but in the end you were still gangbanged by a bunch of drunkards, simply for not using the BRAIN.

Now going back to Nost devs, they don't give a shit about the "vanilla community", not to mention "genuinely". Simply because if they did, they would have help the community to get a vanilla server, which Blizzard will NEVER do. EVER. And again, I'm so fucking happy I'm not one of those vanilla weirdos, because this shit would have been really sad for me. Now it's just funny.

You will see that indeed NOTHING will come up from any "meeting". That PR bullshit was pretty funny, not to mention it was signed by the "you think you want it, but you don't" dude. Of course, sometimes I'm wrong, I think it happened once or twice in my life, so there's a chance Blizzard will indeed make legacy servers. Which reminds me of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFTRwD85AQ4

I looked up your posts because I expected to find exactly what I find. You try to use a moral or principle high ground yet have an attitude that shows a great contempt for others.

I only had to look through a few posts before finding your putrid victim blaming thought process.

Regarding nost, you can think everyone in the world is as hateful selfish and arrogant as you but you're wrong.