Not sure if much of this community cares, but Nostalrius (one of the biggest (true to Vanilla) World of Warcraft servers) has been shut down by Blizzard. You can read their announcement here.
If any of you care to sign a petition at change.org (if it will even amount to anything...) you can find their open letter to Blizzard here.
It would be one thing if they opened up their own Legacy servers and allowed players to play the way they wanted while paying the sub fee, but given the fact they refuse to open up any legacy servers and still shut down people who play the way they want (and not the game they currently have) is absurd.
I did actually enjoy playing occasionally on their servers to relive some of the nostalgia I had with Vanilla, and it is very sad to see the strong arm of Corporate Blizzard coming down on them.
If this is breaking any forum rules in any way I'm sorry, please feel free to delete the thread :P
Rachael
I only ever played vanilla WoW and it was OK. Certainly better than some of the newer MMOs. I was actually thinking about joining Nostalrius to keep me occupied for a while but it shut down soon after so I'm glad I didn't waste my time with it. If Blizzard opened a legacy server I'd probably give it a go even if they did charge a subscription fee just to keep myself occupied while I waited for Pantheon.
This news is being reported on almost every gaming website, with 4 pieces from the MMORPG staff. I would ask this community to not bash WoW in Rachael's thread - that is not what her thread is about. Rather to focus on the specific news she related as the legality affects gaming in general. SOE/Daybreak gave p1999 their blessings, Blizz is going the opposite route. Classic wow is a very different game than the game it is today. My heart goes out to those who simply want to play vanilla WoW legitimately.
This is sort of off topic, but I do not see how you all can stand those WOW cartoonish graphics. I thought it was pretty bad when i did not care what the story line was because the graphics were like watching Charlie Brown . I played halfway through the 1st starter quest. My Hunter shot a laser arrow, and I did not just want to uninstall WOW...I literally wanted to write 0's to the HDD sector where WOW was installed. Yeah...I am a hater...:)LOL!
techdude86 said:...
but I do not see how you all can stand those WOW cartoonish graphics.
...
While I do agree with you, (the cartoonish graphics were one of the biggest factors that kept me from migrating from SWG (pre NGE)) it really wasn't "SO" bad when it was vanilla (2004). At current day standards its absurdly cartoonish, but at its time it wasn't TOO (I say loosely lol) much different than "realistic" graphics. (this may be nostalgia glasses I'm/you're wearing). Granted as I defend them, like I suggested, the cartoonish graphics were what kept me away for so long while it was just starting (and SWG was dying).
I do honestly have to say I don't think the graphics were as cartoonish at the time as they are now :P while they have kept the same aesthetic, as they age they become more and more cartoony compared to games that went for a more realistic style like EQ, SWG and VG xP.
While I never tried EQ (something I regret to this day) Vanilla was a game that I did very much enjoy in its time for its gameplay :)
Rachael
Rachael said:techdude86 said:...
but I do not see how you all can stand those WOW cartoonish graphics.
...
While I do agree with you, (the cartoonish graphics were one of the biggest factors that kept me from migrating from SWG (pre NGE)) it really wasn't "SO" bad when it was vanilla (2004). At current day standards its absurdly cartoonish, but at its time it wasn't TOO (I say loosely lol) much different than "realistic" graphics. (this may be nostalgia glasses I'm/you're wearing). Granted as I defend them, like I suggested, the cartoonish graphics where what kept me away for so long while it was just starting (and SWG was dying).
I do honestly have to say I don't think the graphics were as cartoonish at the time as they are now :P while they have kept the same aesthetic, as they age they become more and more cartoony compared to games that went for a more realistic style like EQ, SWG and VG xP.
While I never tried EQ (something I regret to this day) Vanilla was a game that I did very much enjoy in its time :)
Rachael
I played on a role play player versus player server in vanilla WoW and the community was pretty great. Much more mature than the non-role play servers and I really enjoyed the player versus player. If someone could recreate that on a private server it would be pretty cool but so far I haven't found a role play private server which is a shame.
Cromulent said:I played on a role play player versus player server in vanilla WoW and the community was pretty great. Much more mature than the non-role play servers and I really enjoyed the player versus player. If someone could recreate that on a private server it would be pretty cool but so far I haven't found a role play private server which is a shame.
I played on a similar server in Vanilla, though it was just an RP server, there was a thriving PVP heart to the server, and there were always large scale world PVP fights going on. One of my fondest memories of the game occurred when I was mid lvl (around 30'ish) I nervously took part in a PVP war in Hillsbrad Foothills. I believed at the time I killed some max lvl players (though I probably missed every swing and they were killed by some max lvl people on my side) but it was so exciting to run in and out of enemies/allies trying to get some hits in on some much higher lvl players xD
VR could maybe hire the (Ex-)Nostalrius-Staff. It seems, they know how to keep a mmo-server running.
Here some funny and sad videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znobaqshbsg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuOYmqSF6OQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTxYQS1WXZU&nohtml5=False
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s2lq7QXDQo&nohtml5=False
Greetings
While I'm not bashing the thread or WoW (having played it from 2004 to 2009), I simply can't understand how Nostalrius thought they could take someone else's intellectual property without consent and not anticipate legal repercussions. It doesn't matter if people didn't like the evolution of the game, it's not theirs to recreate no matter if the game was private or public, free or paid.
I mean, if someone "took" my company's software and started hosting it for free because they didn't like the changes we'd made over the years, you can bet we'd drop the hammer on them.
Talv
Maybe I am weird but I find WoW's stylized "cartoonish" graphics to be vastly superior to the "realistic" graphics in about 90% of all non-Korean MMOs. I would take them 1000 fold over the horrific Luclin EQ models and don't get me started on the melted play dough EQ2 models covered in absurdly over textured armor that as a whole looked like animated vomit... Vanguard models were a bit better and more tolerable but I think WoW has aged better in that regard.
More on topic, the whole deal with Nostalrius is that you have a whole community (probably significantly larger than this one) who have had their desired gaming experience ripped out from under them with no real alternative provided. Blizzard could have taken the high road and made some sort of arrangement the way Daybreak did with P1999. They could have taken the middle road and said "Hey, these are our ideas and we should be the one to profit from them so we'll release some Vanilla servers for you guys to pay to play on." Instead they took the low "F you it's our game prepare to get F'ed bitches" path.
Now I don't think most people would disagree that Blizzard was perfectly within their rights to do this. I don't think anyone feels Blizzard doesn't have the legal right to their IP. It's just kinda like you throwing away an old blanket you don't really want anymore, and then calling the police on the homeless guy who sees it sticking out of your trash can and tries to take it for warmth. It's still your blanket and you can do whatever you want with it until they take it to the dump for good. But you're probably still an asshole.
*shrug*
Talvaris said:While I'm not bashing the thread or WoW (having played it from 2004 to 2009), I simply can't understand how Nostalrius thought they could take someone else's intellectual property without consent and not anticipate legal repercussions. It doesn't matter if people didn't like the evolution of the game, it's not theirs to recreate no matter if the game was private or public, free or paid.
I mean, if someone "took" my company's software and started hosting it for free because they didn't like the changes we'd made over the years, you can bet we'd drop the hammer on them.
Talv
Why would you do that? It's literally not harming anything? P99 does this for EQ and everyone with half a brain knows they're profiting big time off that server. This team wasn't even profiting. Why would Blizzard care if someone took an old version of their game that they're clearly unwilling to do themselves, even though it's in demand by hundreds of thousands of people and they could be making millions and millions off of, but they're simply unwilling to please their community. And the argument "oh Blizzard wants them to play the retail version" is asinine. It's not even the same game and people have no interest in the Facebook game that WoW has turned into nowadays. I didn't even play on this server, I just hate seeing these scum-bag companies treating their community like complete ****. This is one of the worst PR moves I've seen in quite a while.
Explain how this would harm your hypothetical company or Blizzard in any meaningful way.
Mod Edit: Copy/pasted extra text from double post into this one, so I can remove double post. :)
This is honestly not surprising at all. Blizzard lets the little private servers function since they usually dont have a large player base. Nost got too big. It was widely talked about pre launch and Blizz even had twitch start banning streamers on it. They ended up with the streams back but it took a couple days. I knew Nost wouldn't stay up for ever. Blizz isn't gonna lose that much money. If they were smart they would put up vanilla, tbc, and wotlk servers. It would bring a lot of people back to the game.
Vanilla was much harder than Warlords of Draenor. It was basically an other game. Here a comparison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4JQje3NGe4
That's the reason why Nost was so successful.
Greetings
I wish I would have had a chance to play it, never was my favorite game but was much better back then. I think that if eq was still a monthly fee game, p99 might not have been endorsed either. Everyone playing on that server was taking 15 dollars a month from blizzard. I think that is the difference. Not saying I like it but it is what it is.
Reeses007 said:Talvaris said:While I'm not bashing the thread or WoW (having played it from 2004 to 2009), I simply can't understand how Nostalrius thought they could take someone else's intellectual property without consent and not anticipate legal repercussions. It doesn't matter if people didn't like the evolution of the game, it's not theirs to recreate no matter if the game was private or public, free or paid.
I mean, if someone "took" my company's software and started hosting it for free because they didn't like the changes we'd made over the years, you can bet we'd drop the hammer on them.
Talv
Why would you do that? It's literally not harming anything? P99 does this for EQ and everyone with half a brain knows they're profiting big time off that server. This team wasn't even profiting. Why would Blizzard care if someone took an old version of their game that they're clearly unwilling to do themselves, even though it's in demand by hundreds of thousands of people and they could be making millions and millions off of, but they're simply unwilling to please their community. And the argument "oh Blizzard wants them to play the retail version" is asinine. It's not even the same game and people have no interest in the Facebook game that WoW has turned into nowadays. I didn't even play on this server, I just hate seeing these scum-bag companies treating their community like complete ****. This is one of the worst PR moves I've seen in quite a while.
Explain how this would harm your hypothetical company or Blizzard in any meaningful way.
Mod Edit: Copy/pasted extra text from double post into this one, so I can remove double post. :)
I liked @jezebel's analogy with the blanket. If you threw out a blanket, you don't really have a right to police the next person who manages to recover it once it's been discarded. The problem, in this case, is that the "blanket" was never discarded. It's no one's right to take it, which is exactly why Nostalrius didn't put up a fight when they were served papers.
Blizzard does want us to play the retail version, and they want their sub fee. That's the only decision you get to make as a consumer - you buy into the game in its current form or you don't. Personally, I would hate to live in a world where people could rip each other off whenever dissenting opinions appear. Blizzard has jobs to protect, shareholders to consider, and yes, money to make. Regardless of your personal opinions, that's the whole point. Blizzard is a business and a business protects its assets or it eventually unravels.
Again, I won't argue that their game became unplayable. There's a reason I unsubscribed all those years ago. I also won't argue that vanilla WoW was some of the best gaming I've had the pleasure of experiencing... I'm simply emphasizing the fact that we don't get to negotiate "how" we play their game.
Talv
Zarriya said:The petition hit 200,000 signatures! - which means Mark Kern (former Team Lead of vanilla WoW) will attempt to personally deliver it to Mike Morhaime (Blizz).
'knock knock Knock'
Who is it ?
It's Mark
Mark ?
Yeah Mark
Mark's not here man
Zandil said:Zarriya said:The petition hit 200,000 signatures! - which means Mark Kern (former Team Lead of vanilla WoW) will attempt to personally deliver it to Mike Morhaime (Blizz).
'knock knock Knock'
Who is it ?
It's Mark
Mark ?
Yeah Mark
Mark's not here man
Thant's funny I was thinking that could happen. Looks like it did not: https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/726049458471870464
I played WoW from beta to Cata. Could not do the Panda gig. I enjoyed WoW back then and still think it was the best the game had to offer. I think that is why I played on Nost from time to time. It was fun. Graphics were odd but that kept system requirements down for the masses and the infrastructure. It also worked. They were not so bad people laughed but it was the opposite.
I can see why Blizz has done what they did. They have come off several release blunders and the last release of WoW was not a good one. WotLK was a great storyline and people were invested to play. In my opinion that was the last good expac. I think people felt that way about VWoW. It was a fun time and people rally around that. I think Blizz could have rallied around that and maybe pulled Nost into the fold as an alternative but now they have a real mess on their hands. It’s a PR nightmare and I don’t think they have learned their lesson as of yet.
Blizz owns that content but lack of vision can be worse than trying to protect your IP.
After watching VG get shutdown and EQN get cut and now this there is an uneasy felling out there and people do not like that. I know I don’t.
Nost was good thing. It was hard to watch the shutdown video’s and experience it.
Ox
This explains why Buzzard and Daybreak still ignore customers, in there target demographic and that pay subscriptions with no problems, from classic AKA Vanilla servers.