I've yet to see what they stole, other than people claiming they used Blizzard's code, there's been no proof shown.
lol what? Seriously your definition of steal and mine are polar opposites. If they used any asset from Blizzard's game they stole something. Pretty sure they didn't do their own artwork, etc, etc.....
People don't seem to get it, Blizzard leave the private servers alone on purpose so that you get your vanilla wow experience. They could close these down right away if they wanted to, you think they don't know these things exist?
The problem was it was getting too big and was actually leading to people ceasing their subs to go play wow for free, it wasn't vanilla wow that was the appeal it was free wow.
The reason people usually don't play private servers is because they are small, this server was big and so was a direct threat. They were also taking money (even though they were using a hidden donation system.
At a point the people in charge, said stop being nice and close it down because now it's hurting us.
i tried to find their donate button once and couldn't find it, only because i was curious. you are right though, they felt it was bleeding their subs due to the popularity of it but i don't see it as stealing that many because it's just a different game.
it's funny because of their claims that their players "think they do but don't" want to play on a server like that yet they cry foul when a private server like that gets so popular?
hopefully this is a wake up call for them and they are more open to the possibility of classic vanilla type servers. one thing is for sure, if they had the option i would pay the sub for it and i know many others that would as well.
that's considering i have not paid a sub for wow in years. there is an online petition to get blizz to open a wow vanilla server (or allow private servers) with almost 60k signatures, nuff said!
You even say yourself that it wasn't vanilla because they added stuff and when you do that it's not vanilla anymore. What they did was steal rule sets and code from Blizzard and then ran their own servers under that ruleset.
They didn't add anything that wasn't in the original Vanilla. He said they added the original raids progressively, not that they added anything custom.
Also, they stole rule sets now? Holy shit, you guys are desperate to bash something you barely understand.
Yes, they stole the game and the rule set. That's what we're calling vanilla here, as opposed to the rule set/mechanics in BC, WotLK, etc. If none of you cared about the rule set you would just play the live client now wouldn't you.
Holy shit, you guys are desperate to defend and justify theft and entitlement. See it works both ways.
i see a lot of misinformation from your side of the fense as well, does that make you desperate to defend blizz? i say again, how come we did not see this uproar about "stealing" when DBG publicly endorsed the illegal p99 EQ server?
blizz could have done the right thing like DBG did and let this server continue because they do not offer the service and claimed they never will.
IMO it's kind of a dick move on their part (compared to another similar company) even though it was their legal right to take action.
My guess is they're about to announce an honest to god actual progression type server (due to the massive amount of bleeding subs, etc) and if they allowed this to continue it would cut into what would likely be massive profits from an influx of subs.
If they don't, then yes, it was just a pure dick move and served no purpose.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
My guess is they're about to announce an honest to god actual progression type server (due to the massive amount of bleeding subs, etc) and if they allowed this to continue it would cut into what would likely be massive profits from an influx of subs.
If they don't, then yes, it was just a pure dick move and served no purpose.
Everything the CM's and Dev's have stated is they have zero interest in trying to bring a progression type server. Having to maintain two different code bases would split the team up even more and slow down the amount of content created for the game. The time between content additions is already insane. Imagine double / tripple that amount of time it takes to add some new content. They would bleed subs at a even faster rate.
I believe is really trying hard to kill off World of Warcraft. The amount of money it makes verse the cost per addition is way higher then there other games like Overwatch and Hearthstone. Both games that pull in as much if not more money then World of Warcraft with a very small fraction of operating cost.
If they really gave two craps about World of Warcraft they would stop saying they would to produce and release content faster and then turning around and taking longer each time to get that content out. Fact is that World of Warcraft is very low on Blizzards priority list at this point in time. Just look at the amount of content addition and the rate of that content addition and then compare it to the quality of said content when its released. Its been going down hill for many many years.
My guess is they're about to announce an honest to god actual progression type server (due to the massive amount of bleeding subs, etc) and if they allowed this to continue it would cut into what would likely be massive profits from an influx of subs.
If they don't, then yes, it was just a pure dick move and served no purpose.
Right before Legion...I don't think so.
They probably think those 150k active players will buy legion.
Maybe they would once the Legion content is over in the lull for the next xpac. (if there is another)
@Thomas2006 Wait, you're saying it's possible for blizzard to make content *slower*??!!!
Sarcasm aside, I still think it's a BS excuse if that's what they've said.
BTW I spend as few brain cells as possible reading about anything blizzard does, in particular WoW. So, I was just basing my post off of what I saw here, and knew of the current sub situation. I have to agree with @Rich84 that they probably have this delusion that those players will go out and buy Legion... and that is one hell of a delusion.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I dont understand why game companies do not offer this as an alternative... I'm with Blizzard taking action against people who try and profit from their IP's but I would think they would see the opportunity here.
What bothers me the most about this is that I read comments on the official forums about how people are happy that it's shutting down. Stuff like "Good riddance" and "Glad blizz is finally doing something about this". LIKE WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU. Why would you be happy that people are having something they enjoy taken away. It's just an old version of the game. It has no effect on you! I don't understand this mentality and honestly it makes me feel very uneasy. I don't think I want to play blizzard games again because of people like that.
To play devil's advocate did you ever think they don't want to play with people like you who don't respect another's work as well as their rights to completely control what they have wrought with their own effort and funds?
That a group who capitalizes on the work of another without permission "just because they can" might make them feel just as disgusted/uneasy? And maybe they are exclaiming "wtf is wrong with you!?!?!"
Except there was no capitalization by those at Nostalrius. They were completely non-profit, providing the server only due to wanting to provide a vanilla wow environment in a way that was more-professional than any other "private" server out there. There was no donating, no item buying, no server voting, i.e, any other of the "normal" private server services normally available.
Also, there were several people that I know that played BOTH the vanilla and paid subscription.
I also saw where some of those decided to cancel their subs after this move. More than likely a knee-jerk reaction that will result in them coming back some day, but it still leaves a bad taste in one's mouth seeing Blizzard react so harshly in a completely NON-PROFIT situation. Especially when there are other servers that do use Blizzard's WoW to make money through the private servers.
The weird thing is that the vanilla code (for the most part) doesn't even exist anymore in the "normal" game what with the graphical updates, the cataclysm changes, and the patch changes.
I still think this was a bad move on Blizzard's part. Just because they can, should they? The "should vs should not" is debatable, not the rights of Blizzard to do so. It's totally within their legal right to do this, but still seems like a crap-thing to do...
Oh, and I paid at the beginning of the year for 4 copies of Legion and four 6 month subs for the entire family and those playing Nostalrius for free didn't bother me one bit. I am glad they got to relive the good days of vanilla. I know I enjoyed my time at Nostalrius, and I'm sorry to see it go. It was definitely a tighter community and amazing to see how Dungeon Finder and cross-server really squashed community interaction. Don't get me wrong, Dungeon Finder definitely works, but in my opinion the cost was just too high.
I never comment here, but the moral ambiguity of this subject brought me out of lurking. As a small business owner I see where Blizzard is coming from, I would hate for someone else to misrepresent my product and make money off of my work. But by the same token if they offered a service using my product that I did not, credited me as the creator, and didn't make any profit doing it then I wouldn't see the issue. But I'm not a huge company like them, with an army of lawyers on speed dial, so there's that.
I'm not advocating piracy either. I just find it hilarious that some people here couldn't see passed their high horses enough to see that this wasn't as big a deal as it seems. And I have a business I depend on to live, so don't sell me that line either.
That being said, it's best to move on when a game becomes something you no longer enjoy. Private servers are never worth the risk.
Except there was no capitalization by those at Nostalrius. They were completely non-profit, providing the server only due to wanting to provide a vanilla wow environment in a way that was more-professional than any other "private" server out there. There was no donating, no item buying, no server voting, i.e, any other of the "normal" private server services normally available.
Actually, according to their own forum and this post from one of the admins, there was donating going on to the tune of at least $360/month for server hosting.
They are stealing .. potential customer and falsley representing a product ... let me guess if it was your business and product you would be ok with that ?
Potential customer? What? You do know that WoW offers free trial up to level 20, right? If a person wants to play the "real" WoW they can check it out themselves through this service without jumping through the hoops of getting the private client installed.
Falsely representing a product? Now you're just throwing out random sentence structure. Nostalrius was transparent on what it was and what it provided, and who initially provided it (Blizzard). They never stated that they created World of Warcraft, but only that they missed Vanilla (which no longer exists), knew that many like-minded individuals missed it, and thought it would be awesome to provide that experience for those people, and people that had never experienced it before.
If my business was bringing in Billions...BILLIONS of dollars from a product that generated monthly income on a scale this large and someone liked the obsolete product that I no longer produce, and they made no money off of it, I would have absolutely NO problem with them providing it.
Want to know why I wouldn't have a problem with it? Because I'm not greedy. Seriously. I would think that the ungodly amount of currency I'd be raking in each month would abate my desire to hunt down and destroy those enjoying and sharing an obsolete product that I once made.
I would bet if you wanted a Vanilla server they would want more commitment from people than a monthly sub for its development and upkeep. What if they wanted a year sub that is $180?
Again I am willing to pay $20 to $30 a month for a Vanilla\TBC Sub As long as I could do both times Vanilla and TBC servers and no cash shop. The only other catch is making sure they do fix bugs and keep it up dated. I am fine with paying a sub. Right now I am paying one for myself in FFXIV and my wife is paying for her FFXIV sub. Now if they put a cash shop in I would had a problem with a more expensive sub, well outside of the Charity Mounts deal, if they want to add in the $20 mount where $19 go to cancer research or something I am cool with that.
your 40 or 60 for 2 months of nostalgia does not a server deserve.
Sorry but I would likely be playing for a few years. I been playing FFXIV again Since Dec 2014 because its a hell of a lot better game than WOW is today. Wrong again. You are just throwing darts at a dart board because you THINK you know something, I am telling you I know because I truly do. I been playing MMOs for a long time, I made many friends over the years, still talk to many a few times a year, I understand why they liked Vanilla TBC WOW so much even if somethings would need to change today. I spent so many hours on forums and talking to people there, I talk to people who dont talk on the forums. You are listening to a business who puts stockholders before the customer. That's bad business and which is what is wrong with our economy.
then fork over the years sub to show loyalty to the product....
What is wrong with our economy is that people want everything for free not understanding the cost that goes into making, sustaining, or employing people.
Blizzard already got their money from the game. I would not call $49.99 or what ever vanilla used to cost for the initial game, when it first came out, free. Blizzard said they were not going to release a vanilla server so the private servers took over where Blizzard refused to. The private servers have proven that people were willing to play old content and people have donated to those servers for upkeep and running costs. There is a community that does want vanilla content not the updated garbage Blizzard has given us. They are the ones who dropped the ball not us.
they did not "drop the ball". The actively choose not to go down that road. If you do not like it you leave. If they want they can make one. Nothing gives you the right to break the law in this case.
People did leave. Several million people had already left.
And what evidence do you (armchair police/ armchair lawyer) have to accuse me of breaking any law?
Comments
i tried to find their donate button once and couldn't find it, only because i was curious. you are right though, they felt it was bleeding their subs due to the popularity of it but i don't see it as stealing that many because it's just a different game.
it's funny because of their claims that their players "think they do but don't" want to play on a server like that yet they cry foul when a private server like that gets so popular?
hopefully this is a wake up call for them and they are more open to the possibility of classic vanilla type servers. one thing is for sure, if they had the option i would pay the sub for it and i know many others that would as well.
that's considering i have not paid a sub for wow in years. there is an online petition to get blizz to open a wow vanilla server (or allow private servers) with almost 60k signatures, nuff said!
https://www.change.org/p/mike-morhaime-legacy-server-among-world-of-warcraft-community
My guess is they're about to announce an honest to god actual progression type server (due to the massive amount of bleeding subs, etc) and if they allowed this to continue it would cut into what would likely be massive profits from an influx of subs.
If they don't, then yes, it was just a pure dick move and served no purpose.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I believe is really trying hard to kill off World of Warcraft. The amount of money it makes verse the cost per addition is way higher then there other games like Overwatch and Hearthstone. Both games that pull in as much if not more money then World of Warcraft with a very small fraction of operating cost.
If they really gave two craps about World of Warcraft they would stop saying they would to produce and release content faster and then turning around and taking longer each time to get that content out. Fact is that World of Warcraft is very low on Blizzards priority list at this point in time. Just look at the amount of content addition and the rate of that content addition and then compare it to the quality of said content when its released. Its been going down hill for many many years.
They probably think those 150k active players will buy legion.
Maybe they would once the Legion content is over in the lull for the next xpac. (if there is another)
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
@Thomas2006 Wait, you're saying it's possible for blizzard to make content *slower*??!!!
Sarcasm aside, I still think it's a BS excuse if that's what they've said.
BTW I spend as few brain cells as possible reading about anything blizzard does, in particular WoW. So, I was just basing my post off of what I saw here, and knew of the current sub situation. I have to agree with @Rich84 that they probably have this delusion that those players will go out and buy Legion... and that is one hell of a delusion.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
SS from the nos "funeral". blizz ruined a great community of wow players that think they want wow vanilla but really don't apparently, imagine that?
There was no profit gained by their team.
"I am handicapped...I'm psychotic."
Except there was no capitalization by those at Nostalrius. They were completely non-profit, providing the server only due to wanting to provide a vanilla wow environment in a way that was more-professional than any other "private" server out there. There was no donating, no item buying, no server voting, i.e, any other of the "normal" private server services normally available.
Also, there were several people that I know that played BOTH the vanilla and paid subscription.
I also saw where some of those decided to cancel their subs after this move. More than likely a knee-jerk reaction that will result in them coming back some day, but it still leaves a bad taste in one's mouth seeing Blizzard react so harshly in a completely NON-PROFIT situation. Especially when there are other servers that do use Blizzard's WoW to make money through the private servers.
The weird thing is that the vanilla code (for the most part) doesn't even exist anymore in the "normal" game what with the graphical updates, the cataclysm changes, and the patch changes.
I still think this was a bad move on Blizzard's part. Just because they can, should they? The "should vs should not" is debatable, not the rights of Blizzard to do so. It's totally within their legal right to do this, but still seems like a crap-thing to do...
Oh, and I paid at the beginning of the year for 4 copies of Legion and four 6 month subs for the entire family and those playing Nostalrius for free didn't bother me one bit. I am glad they got to relive the good days of vanilla. I know I enjoyed my time at Nostalrius, and I'm sorry to see it go. It was definitely a tighter community and amazing to see how Dungeon Finder and cross-server really squashed community interaction. Don't get me wrong, Dungeon Finder definitely works, but in my opinion the cost was just too high.
C'est la vie.
"I am handicapped...I'm psychotic."
I'm not advocating piracy either. I just find it hilarious that some people here couldn't see passed their high horses enough to see that this wasn't as big a deal as it seems. And I have a business I depend on to live, so don't sell me that line either.
That being said, it's best to move on when a game becomes something you no longer enjoy. Private servers are never worth the risk.
http://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=37403
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If not... they stole a shit-ton of stuff.
This have been a good conversation
Potential customer? What? You do know that WoW offers free trial up to level 20, right? If a person wants to play the "real" WoW they can check it out themselves through this service without jumping through the hoops of getting the private client installed.
Falsely representing a product? Now you're just throwing out random sentence structure. Nostalrius was transparent on what it was and what it provided, and who initially provided it (Blizzard). They never stated that they created World of Warcraft, but only that they missed Vanilla (which no longer exists), knew that many like-minded individuals missed it, and thought it would be awesome to provide that experience for those people, and people that had never experienced it before.
If my business was bringing in Billions...BILLIONS of dollars from a product that generated monthly income on a scale this large and someone liked the obsolete product that I no longer produce, and they made no money off of it, I would have absolutely NO problem with them providing it.
Want to know why I wouldn't have a problem with it? Because I'm not greedy. Seriously. I would think that the ungodly amount of currency I'd be raking in each month would abate my desire to hunt down and destroy those enjoying and sharing an obsolete product that I once made.
"I am handicapped...I'm psychotic."
I was there as well..
And what evidence do you (armchair police/ armchair lawyer) have to accuse me of breaking any law?