BlizzGate 2016

[Victor-933]

I'm surprised there hasn't been a topic made about this yet considering how much it seems to be blowing up.

In short, a week ago Blizzard sent a Cease ad Desist order to a private World of Warcraft server named Nostalrius, and the server accordingly shut down. At the time Nost had something like 800,000 registered accounts and 150,000 active players. Well, it's blowing up in Blizzard's face now, with significant numbers of people cancelling subscriptions and preorders, and "heavy hitter" YouTube personalities like JonTron and Boogie2988 making rant videos. There's even been mentions of it in Forbes and the BBC. A petition on change.org asking for legacy server support recently reached over 100,000 signatures. Most of all, it's been over a week since this started, and Blizzard STILL has not responded.

I understand Blizzard are legally in the right here, but the thing is people have been asking for legacy servers for close to a decade. It's obviously something with significant consumer demand, and Blizzard are smugly and stubbornly refusing to meet that demand. It seems like things are reaching a tipping point regarding customer relations here. Blizzard's apparent attitude can be best summed up by the video at the end of this post, and now people are finally waking up and getting mad, it seems.

Considering the successes of Runescape '07 and Project1999 it just seems completely ignorant and pigheaded for Blizzard to respond to a decade of consumer demand with "You think you do, but you don't."

 

[Tsuujou]

Everyone giving Blizzard guff doesn't know what they're talking about. I actually spoke to a game dev about this because something didn't seem right. 

http://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/142634550945/hello-im-super-frequent-and-im-here-to-bother

(Before anyone tries to discredit the link because it's Tumblr or the dev is anonymous, I do know WHO the dev is, but I won't be giving up his name. He values his anonymity and the content of the blog speaks for itself anyway. I've talked to him a number times and he has made some extremely important games of gen 6.)

[Victor-933]

7 minutes ago, XoPachi said:

Everyone giving Blizzard guff doesn't know what they're talking about. I actually spoke to a game dev about this because something didn't seem right. 

http://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/142634550945/hello-im-super-frequent-and-im-here-to-bother

(Before anyone tries to discredit the link because it's Tumblr or the dev is anonymous, I do know WHO the dev is, but I won't be giving up his name. He values his anonymity and the content of the blog speaks for itself anyway. I've talked to him a number times and he has made some extremely important games of gen 6.)

This just sounds like a bunch of bullshit foot-dragging excuses to me.

Runescape's Old School servers still have active development but it's tailored to staying in line with the old version. Security holes are still patched. New content is still created. RS07 caused a resurgence in subscriptions and even has close to the population as the newer RS3.

Project1999 started as a fan-operated, nonprofit Everquest private server, exactly the same thing Nostalrius was for WoW. But what separates P99 and its rightsholders from Nost and Blizzard is Daybreak Games struck up a legal agreement with Project1999 that officially recognizes them as a fan-based nonprofit project and allows a legal basis to continue operating independent of retail infrastructure, provided Project1999 obeys a set of guidelines established by DBG. DBG own the copyright and even operate their own retail progression server, but they allow P99 to continue operate with their blessing.

 

Meanwhile Blizzard are over here sneering down their noses like they're addressing shit-covered peasants, telling us they know better than we do what consumers want, and throwing angry lawyers at their fans. This whole fiasco could've been avoided if they had taken a page from P99 or even monetized similarly but they're too damn smug and egotistical to accept that maybe people enjoy their older products more than the newest shitshow.

[Tsuujou]

Just now, Victor-933 said:

This just sounds like a bunch of bullshit foot-dragging excuses to me.

Ah. 

Gamers...

[Victor-933]

4 minutes ago, XoPachi said:

Ah. 

Gamers...

Look, smartass. The point I'm making, and the point you seem to be consistently ignoring, is that Blizzard does not have to run any of these legacy servers on Blizzard infrastructure, and they also don't have to risk letting their IP lapse. There's plenty of fan-operated projects willing to do it themselves -- hell there's already a new one slated for launch to take up the slack from Nostalrius.

All Blizzard has to do is pick one, draw up a legal framework to allow them to officially exist, and let the problem take care of itself. It's obviously something possible considering Daybreak Games and P99 are already doing it.

[TrishaCat]

36 minutes ago, XoPachi said:

Everyone giving Blizzard guff doesn't know what they're talking about. I actually spoke to a game dev about this because something didn't seem right. 

http://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/142634550945/hello-im-super-frequent-and-im-here-to-bother

(Before anyone tries to discredit the link because it's Tumblr or the dev is anonymous, I do know WHO the dev is, but I won't be giving up his name. He values his anonymity and the content of the blog speaks for itself anyway. I've talked to him a number times and he has made some extremely important games of gen 6.)

Oh my, that's a fantastically informative blog in general. Not just that post, but a whole slew of them. Thanks for linking that, its really interesting!

[willow]

at first it sounded kind of dickish but I can actually see where they're coming from on this. I don't really know a hell of a lot about code, but I at least understand that not all versions of WoW are the same. and definitely not 2004 vanilla and 2016 Draenor/Legion. it'd be like trying to play a PS1 game on a PS4 console (or at least that's how I figure it'd work). so yeah, it sounds like something people think they want. until they realize how much effort it's gonna actually take to do that.

honestly, I don't get why people are vilifying Blizzard for this since the servers technically were illegal and they were in their legal right to take them down. like they've made some kind of shitty business decisions but this one's pretty understandable.

maybe in the future they'll allow some to exist legally, but they really don't have to even if people feel they're entitled to it because they've been playing for a really long time..

[Tsuujou]

1 minute ago, Battlechili said:

Oh my, that's a fantastically informative blog in general. Not just that post, but a whole slew of them. Thanks for linking that, its really interesting!

This person has given me a lot of insight that I've really been trying to understand. Honestly, when you talk to experienced game developers, big or small, you start to get some perspective and suddenly realize that what you THOUGHT you knew about game development/management is false. Most of us onlookers don't know shit and I've certainly learned that. I shut my fucking uninformed mouth about a lot of things and think carefully about things before making a serious judgement. 

It was almost like therapy.

[Endless/Nameless]

Blizzard really should be the ones explaining this to their userbase, not some dude on the internet.

If you upset people that like you, no matter how much you were in the right, you should at least explain yourself and maybe apologize.

There's no reason these companies can't be a little more personable. 

i don't even play this stuff why should i care lol

[Tsuujou]

2 minutes ago, Endless/Nameless said:

Blizzard really should be the ones explaining this to their userbase, not some dude on the internet.

If you upset people that like you, no matter how much you were in the right, you should at least explain yourself and maybe apologize.

There's no reason these companies can't be a little more personable. 

i don't even play this stuff why should i care lol

The problem is that anything a game dev says openly can and WILL be misconstrued by gamers. They'd be fucked no matter what they say. And even if they did, how many gamers will understand or even believe them? I mean look at what Victor just said in response to that post I made. 

[Victor-933]

1 minute ago, Endless/Nameless said:

Blizzard really should be the ones explaining this to their userbase, not some dude on the internet.

If you upset people that like you, no matter how much you were in the right, you should at least explain yourself and maybe apologize.

There's no reason these companies can't be a little more personable. 

i don't even play this stuff why should i care lol

This is what has me pissed off the most. There are a lot of upset people because of this. It's been going on for over a week, and Blizzard STILL has not made any kind of statement or even officially acknowledged it outside of purging it from the WoW forums. It's like they just want to ignore it and hope it goes away.

[Endless/Nameless]

Just now, XoPachi said:

The problem is that anything a game dev says openly can and WILL be misconstrued by gamers. They'd be fucked no matter what they say. And even if they did, how many gamers will understand or even believe them? I mean look at what Victor just said in response to that post I made. 

Oh yeah, but it would be nice to see them make an effort at least.

[Victor-933]

1 minute ago, XoPachi said:

The problem is that anything a game dev says openly can and WILL be misconstrued by gamers. They'd be fucked no matter what they say. And even if they did, how many gamers will understand or even believe them? I mean look at what Victor just said in response to that post I made. 

Listen here you arrogant little fuckstick. Just because you're cherry picking my argument and refusing to acknowledge certain parts doesn't mean I don't understand what's going on. You still haven't addressed P99's situation, and until you do you have no right to claim anyone else is misconstruing anything.

[Tsuujou]

Just now, Endless/Nameless said:

Oh yeah, but it would be nice to see them make an effort at least.

I suppose. They probably just assume it's best to not release a statement publicly. I can agree that the person speaking at that event did have a needlessly smug attitude. Granted he doesn't speak on behalf of all of Blizzard. He's a representative, sure. But I doubt that's what they told him to say. Honestly, if I were Blizzard, he'd be packing his bags.

[Endless/Nameless]

1 minute ago, Victor-933 said:

Listen here you arrogant little fuckstick

[TrishaCat]

5 minutes ago, Victor-933 said:

Listen here you arrogant little fuckstick. Just because you're cherry picking my argument and refusing to acknowledge certain parts doesn't mean I don't understand what's going on. You still haven't addressed P99's situation, and until you do you have no right to claim anyone else is misconstruing anything.

Calm down

Its possible to talk about something without err...well, without being a dick about it.

[Victor-933]

4 minutes ago, Battlechili said:

Calm down

Its possible to talk about something without err...well, without being a dick about it.

It's not really possible to have a discussion when the other party childishly refuses to even acknowledge the existence of your posts while continuing to still refer to you while addressing other people, however. If he wants to come in and have a discussion that's fine but if he wants to throw the cold shoulder like a spoiled brat I'm gonna call him out on it.

[Tsuujou]

Naw, he's got a bit of a point. I did come off a bit high and mighty. But at the risk of sounding even more so, his posts sort of demonstrate what I said in response to Endless; why Blizzard probably didn't feel it was worth the time to make a statement since that would probably be the majority of responses they got. Very very angry messages regardless.

[willow]

Coincidentally enough, someone did bring up Runescape's legacy version on that blog.

http://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/142796844074/i-have-a-couple-of-follow-up-questions-regarding

I think that comparing the two is a bit dangerous anyway though seeing as how Runescape is free and WoW is not

14 minutes ago, Victor-933 said:

Listen here you arrogant little fuckstick.

Be civil.

[Zeke]

1 hour ago, Endless/Nameless said:

Blizzard really should be the ones explaining this to their userbase, not some dude on the internet.

If you upset people that like you, no matter how much you were in the right, you should at least explain yourself and maybe apologize.

There's no reason these companies can't be a little more personable. 

i don't even play this stuff why should i care lol

Blizzard did explain it on their forums many times, but no one listens and repeats the same rhetoric.

I can understand the big gripe with the CaD order. It sucks that people who never played vanilla cannot experience it on a free server, but it is what it is. Would it be ideal for Blizzard to do a legacy server and maybe open it on their 2+ month anniversary? Perhaps, and it sounds like a good idea in theory to do to appeal to the rose colored glasses crowd. Will they do it? No.

 

[PastryOfApathy]

lol nerds getting mad

Someone will probably end up making a new one anyways so whatever. 

[Clove Darkwave]

1 hour ago, willow said:

Coincidentally enough, someone did bring up Runescape's legacy version on that blog.

http://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/142796844074/i-have-a-couple-of-follow-up-questions-regarding

I think that comparing the two is a bit dangerous anyway though seeing as how Runescape is free and WoW is not

Be civil.

Calling Runescape free is a bit of a farce. It's as pushy about subs as the worst of them.

[PastryOfApathy]

9 minutes ago, 6tails said:

Offering a regression server is about as simple as making it an option to connect to a vanilla server via an IP address:port number and utilize that engine or whatever engine your chosen expansion utilizes. It adds a lot of code and assets to download, but changing the client to retrieve all of that is absolutely and utterly trivial, and all the code and assets already exist.

I assume you work at Blizzard.

[Mikazuki Marazhu]

Eh... So long as warmane wow still stands.. I'm cool.

[Summercat]

As things go, this isn't a -gate. This is a -ghazi; a fake scandal that has no real substance to it.

 

 

[PastryOfApathy]

2 hours ago, 6tails said:

No, I've hacked WoW back in Vanilla, and I also do game development on the side. What do you do, exactly?

Nothing to do with Blizzard, meaning I don't pretend to know shit I'd only know by actually working for Blizzard. 

[Toshabi]

23 hours ago, XoPachi said:

The problem is that anything a game dev says openly can and WILL be misconstrued by gamers. They'd be fucked no matter what they say. And even if they did, how many gamers will understand or even believe them? I mean look at what Victor just said in response to that post I made. 

Dragoneer.

[Zeke]

22 hours ago, 6tails said:

No, I've hacked WoW back in Vanilla, and I also do game development on the side. What do you do, exactly?

To be fair, Vanilla WoW's code can be compared to FA's current code.

[Summercat]

Either way, looks like Blizz was in it's right to shut down a server. Just be glad that they're only going after the ones that are "notable", and thus pose a threat to their IP.

[weirdfox]

To be brutally honest, it's fine that it got shut down. It was about time it did. Other private servers get shut down all the time, but suddenly "gamers" want blizzard to leave this one alone. What's next? Just ignore all private servers?

Seriously, the server was being run illegally, against the EULA of WoW, against any form of rules with the game. But nope, blizzard is the big mean monster here. Obviously not the people who broke rules and laws (in case you didn't know, blizzard could've started a lawsuit and easily won that without even trying, but they just requested a shutdown)

Alas, it's the way of the WoW community today. Blizzard is the devil in everything, can't do anything right, yet the complainers keep paying for the game. There is a certain sense of irony in that.

And the runescape comparison.. Are you seriously compairing a F2P game that overhauled his engine completely several times to this? Runescape old servers have a point, because it is in essence a completely different game.

Also, the article pointed out something important that people need to remember:
 

Whenever somebody takes anything that relates to Warcraft without their permission, they must legally challenge it. If they do not defend their trademark, they lose the right to that trademark.

For the rest, I fully agree with the tumblr post. Sadly, the people who rage against it have no clue on how actual software development works, and how you can't just say "let's roll back to 6 years ago!"

 

[Mikazuki Marazhu]

2 hours ago, weirdfox said:

To be brutally honest, it's fine that it got shut down. It was about time it did. Other private servers get shut down all the time, but suddenly "gamers" want blizzard to leave this one alone. What's next? Just ignore all private servers?

Seriously, the server was being run illegally, against the EULA of WoW, against any form of rules with the game. But nope, blizzard is the big mean monster here. Obviously not the people who broke rules and laws (in case you didn't know, blizzard could've started a lawsuit and easily won that without even trying, but they just requested a shutdown)

Alas, it's the way of the WoW community today. Blizzard is the devil in everything, can't do anything right, yet the complainers keep paying for the game. There is a certain sense of irony in that.

And the runescape comparison.. Are you seriously compairing a F2P game that overhauled his engine completely several times to this? Runescape old servers have a point, because it is in essence a completely different game.

Also, the article pointed out something important that people need to remember:
 

Whenever somebody takes anything that relates to Warcraft without their permission, they must legally challenge it. If they do not defend their trademark, they lose the right to that trademark.

For the rest, I fully agree with the tumblr post. Sadly, the people who rage against it have no clue on how actual software development works, and how you can't just say "let's roll back to 6 years ago!"

 

There has been talks about blizz creating a legacy server to accommodate the small demands but the thing is.. who would pay to play a server that will never see the divine lights of updates again.

Comments about estimated ROI can come from various sources based on the proof of concept provided by Nostalrius. Blizzard has access to a population of current WoW players that sits around six million (as of last WoD update last year). A market penetration of six million, with suggestions from other private server collections of population being at least near 100k users total, could easily be enough to give an investment toward the project of a Legacy server, but how would it be monetized?

 

[weirdfox]

1 hour ago, Mikazuki Marazhu said:

There has been talks about blizz creating a legacy server to accommodate the small demands but the thing is.. who would pay to play a server that will never see the divine lights of updates again.

Comments about estimated ROI can come from various sources based on the proof of concept provided by Nostalrius. Blizzard has access to a population of current WoW players that sits around six million (as of last WoD update last year). A market penetration of six million, with suggestions from other private server collections of population being at least near 100k users total, could easily be enough to give an investment toward the project of a Legacy server, but how would it be monetized?

 

Blizzard has never stated they were looking at it. All they have said so far is that there are no current plans for it. And why would there be? Just look at how much it would cost to run a server for this, and how much extra players it would give. Remember, Nostalgus (or somesuch) was F2P, Blizzard won't do it.
People won't pay for it, it'll be dead within a year.

[Mikazuki Marazhu]

1 hour ago, weirdfox said:

Blizzard has never stated they were looking at it. All they have said so far is that there are no current plans for it. And why would there be? Just look at how much it would cost to run a server for this, and how much extra players it would give. Remember, Nostalgus (or somesuch) was F2P, Blizzard won't do it.
People won't pay for it, it'll be dead within a year.

Exactly which is why it makes zero sense for blizz to shut down the server. What will they gain in doing so? 

This either shows they're trying to sqeeze the player base of their money or they're just being assholes

[weirdfox]

45 minutes ago, Mikazuki Marazhu said:

Exactly which is why it makes zero sense for blizz to shut down the server. What will they gain in doing so? 

This either shows they're trying to sqeeze the player base of their money or they're just being assholes

Or, you read the part from the article I quoted, it has to do with the rights to your brand;

Whenever somebody takes anything that relates to Warcraft without their permission, they must legally challenge it. If they do not defend their trademark, they lose the right to that trademark.

It's that simple. If you want to feel blizzard is a bunch of evil terrorists, go right ahead, but there is a reason companies are suing others for look-alikes or fakes. This is just another case of that.
 

 

[weirdfox]

Here we go, official post from Blizzard;

Short: They were looking at a way to keep Nostalrius up, but legally there was no path in which their IP would be protected.
They are looking at Pristine Realms, but wondering if that would be the solution.
They are talking to the admins of Nostalrius for an unknown reason, and hoping to talk to them again in the coming weeks.
 

Quote

We wanted to let you know that we’ve been closely following the Nostalrius discussion and we appreciate your constructive thoughts and suggestions.

Our silence on this subject definitely doesn’t reflect our level of engagement and passion around this topic. We hear you. Many of us across Blizzard and the WoW Dev team have been passionate players ever since classic WoW. In fact, I personally work at Blizzard because of my love for classic WoW.

We have been discussing classic servers for years - it’s a topic every BlizzCon - and especially over the past few weeks. From active internal team discussions to after-hours meetings with leadership, this subject has been highly debated. Some of our current thoughts:

Why not just let Nostalrius continue the way it was? The honest answer is, failure to protect against intellectual property infringement would damage Blizzard’s rights. This applies to anything that uses WoW’s IP, including unofficial servers. And while we’ve looked into the possibility – there is not a clear legal path to protect Blizzard’s IP and grant an operating license to a pirate server.

We explored options for developing classic servers and none could be executed without great difficulty. If we could push a button and all of this would be created, we would. However, there are tremendous operational challenges to integrating classic servers, not to mention the ongoing support of multiple live versions for every aspect of WoW.

So what can we do to capture that nostalgia of when WoW first launched? Over the years we have talked about a “pristine realm”. In essence that would turn off all leveling acceleration including character transfers, heirloom gear, character boosts, Recruit-A-Friend bonuses, WoW Token, and access to cross realm zones, as well as group finder. We aren’t sure whether this version of a clean slate is something that would appeal to the community and it’s still an open topic of discussion.

One other note - we’ve recently been in contact with some of the folks who operated Nostalrius. They obviously care deeply about the game, and we look forward to more conversations with them in the coming weeks.

You, the Blizzard community, are the most dedicated, passionate players out there. We thank you for your constructive thoughts and suggestions. We are listening.

J. Allen Brack

So, there is no evil satanic monster called Blizzard, they handled it in a legal fashion.

 

 

[Deskai]

Its like why PSO servers still exist, PSO no longer exist online so those servers get a pass over by Sega, and why PSU servers are now sorta popping up cause again even that game is no longer online. For WoW...WoW is still around, just people want to play old classic wow and theres no real option other than private servers.