The Nostalrius Vanilla WoW Servers Are Returning on December 17

[ffronw]

The Nostalrius Vanilla WoW Servers Are Returning on December 17

The vanilla WoW servers originally run by the Nostalrius team will be returning on December 17.

If you were a fan of the Nostalrius vanilla World of Warcraft, you're going to be very happy in a couple of weeks. The popular server had around 800,000 registered users met with the Nostralius team [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/167113-Blizzard-Sends-Cease-and-Desist-to-Nostalrius-Vanilla-WoW-Private-Server].

//cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/1365/1365643.jpg
Check out this Tarren Mill battle from the recent stress test

After Blizzard failed to discuss anything about legacy servers server source code [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/168691-Blizzard-Says-No-Legacy-Server-Information-This-Year] to the folks at the Elysium private server, and then to the public. Apparently, Elysium has the code, and they're bringing the Nostalrius server back on December 17.

There was a stress test last weekend that had more than 10,000 concurrent people participate. Now that that's behind them, the Elysium team plans to bring both the PvE and PvP Nostalrius servers back next Saturday, December 17. This will include the player database, so if you had a character on the servers before, your character should be sitting there waiting on you. Once those servers are up, they plan to launch a fresh-start server for those who want to begin all over again.

Of course, all of this could be short-lived, as Blizzard isn't likely to look kindly on the return of a server that it already took down through legal means. I expect that we'll see the Elysium team staring down the barrel of some sort of action from Blizzard fairly soon.


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[Combustion Kevin]

Here's the big question, though, will it be worth it for Blizzard to pursue legal action against a non-profit fan project over a matter the law is inconclusive about?

A lawsuit that will no doubt bring about bad publicity for them without any real gains, besides, European laws are quite a bit different than American laws when it comes to copyright, these things have never really gone to court over here which is understandable, I would shit bricks too when faced with Blizzard's legal team.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Here's the big question, though, will it be worth it for Blizzard to pursue legal action against a non-profit fan project over a matter the law is inconclusive about?

Yes, because Activision.

 

[Janaschi]

I think I can safely say that Elysium has my respect.

They knew what happened. They know what will happen. Yet, they have the balls to stand up to ActiVision's legal team, and provide a niche service at the same time, for free. Hope the server(s) stay up for at least a decent amount of time, since it's been made apparent that Blizzard vanilla servers are either on the backburners, or they are just pretending to have an interest.

 

[InflatableHippo]

Remind me when we get WotLK or MoP legacy servers.

 

[Recusant]

Here's the big question, though, will it be worth it for Blizzard to pursue legal action against a non-profit fan project over a matter the law is inconclusive about?

The old-for-the-industry joke went "When you make a mod for the popular game, and it begins to gain traction, Activision sends you a C&D letter, EA sends you a pack of carnivorous lawyers, and Valve sends you a job offer". Could capitalizing on this earn Blizzard a lot of goodwill (and, if they play their cards right, money)? Yes. Will they do that? Not a chance. Especially now- those five months between the meeting with Nostralius team and Blizzcon probably wouldn't be enough to run all the necessary numbers, given that the task likely fell to a small team, and now demonstrating that "we don't care if you don't want to let us do this" by handing the source code off to someone else has probably killed any chance of seeing it happen legitimately.

I don't see this ending well.

 

[Janaschi]

it's been made apparent that Blizzard vanilla servers are either on the backburners, or they are just pretending to have an interest.

Literally neither of these things have been made apparent.

It was such a stupidly small amount of time between the Nostalrius talks and Blizzcon, that even if Blizzard had plans in the works, it definitely wouldn't have been announced by that point.

And that's ignoring how the Warcraft team has a finite number of employees. Who were working on Legion and its patches between both of those dates.

We have no idea what's happening with Private servers. Except for the fact that Nostalrius are being impatient brats about it. This won't end well..

Ah. I get it. You read a story or two about the recent developments, and now you think you know everything that's been going on. Not the same thing as being a part of the Nostalrius community, and following the updates near religiously.

The vanilla WoW experience, under Nostalrius, has been around for quite a bit of time. Before this legal debacle ever happened, the Blizzard development team for WoW has been asked in interviews, numerous times, if they ever planned on releasing vanilla servers of their own.

Their initial response, is that the concept is literally not worth their time, that the servers would cost poor them too much money to cater to a niche market, and that the WoW community should never expect such a thing to ever happen.

Then this mess happened, and they... 'sort-of' back-tracked a bit, saying that they 'might' work with the Nostalrius team to get a vanilla experience placed back into the community's hands.

And since then, they have literally said nothing, publicly. Nothing. It has been months now, and Blizzard/ActiVision have made absolutely no attempts at working with the Nostalrius team, which is why they got so frustrated and released their work to another team, instead.

So, yes, it absolutely 'has' been made abundantly clear that Blizzard/ActiVision are either taking their sweet ass time, or have absolutely no plans on ever releasing vanilla servers, as was their original stance on the matter.

We'll just have to see what happens from here-on-out.

 

[Otaku World Order]

Here's the big question, though, will it be worth it for Blizzard to pursue legal action against a non-profit fan project over a matter the law is inconclusive about?

A lawsuit that will no doubt bring about bad publicity for them without any real gains, besides, European laws are quite a bit different than American laws when it comes to copyright, these things have never really gone to court over here which is understandable, I would shit bricks too when faced with Blizzard's legal team.

Considering that Nintendo very effectively stomped on AM2R and Pokemon: Uranium, which were also fan-made and non-profit, I don't think there's much "inconclusive" when it comes to the law.

And let's face it, free or not, they are distributing Blizzard's property without permission.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Once the source code goes public, all the C&D letters in the world won't matter. Blizzard lost their chance to give the players what they wanted.

 

[ffronw]

Once the source code goes public, all the C&D letters in the world won't matter. Blizzard lost their chance to give the players what they wanted.

At this point, I would not be surprised if Blizzard went with a pre-emptive legal strike to prevent the release of the source code. Odds are that they could win a suit like that, and it's in its best interests not to have the code out there. The fact that the Nostalrius team has taken this step could be the most counter-productive thing I have ever seen. Whatever goodwill they had generated among the folks at Blizzard will be trashed by this, and for what? To thumb their nose at the company they profess to love and have great respect for? Got it.

 

[MonsterCrit]

Once the source code goes public, all the C&D letters in the world won't matter. Blizzard lost their chance to give the players what they wanted.

Did they ever have a chance?
The loss of that one server did not slow down the dozens of other private servers out there. If anything it made things ebtter. For quite a few, membership went up aft Nostr closed. Partially migration and partially because it made other people 2aware of the whole thing.

Whyen Blizzard give the team the finger. The team basically doubled down.

Blizzard had a chance. They could have simply offered the idea of old servers because well. why not ,. there is clearly a demand for it. Buut since they want eevryone playing the new latest and greatest (hahahaha), they don't want to. THe BS excuses that (they can't find the code) is utter garbage. over a 100 private serveers seemed to have figured out how to not need whatever code blizzard lost.

IN short. Blizzard had the chance to offer a legal alternative to something that people are demanding. they did not.

 

[Janaschi]

Ah. I get it. You read a story or two about the recent developments, and now you think you know everything that's been going on. Not the same thing as being a part of the Nostalrius community, and following the updates near religiously.

Incredibly rude and presumptuous to a point where the only thing that's apparent is that there's no point in talking to you. I've no patience for people who think they're superior. They're the worst.

Pot, meet kettle.

Red herrings aside, hopefully you at least understand where your own presumptions were at fault. A little research will never hurt you before deciding to kickstart an argument/debate with someone.

 

[Janaschi]

Once the source code goes public, all the C&D letters in the world won't matter. Blizzard lost their chance to give the players what they wanted.

At this point, I would not be surprised if Blizzard went with a pre-emptive legal strike to prevent the release of the source code. Odds are that they could win a suit like that, and it's in its best interests not to have the code out there. The fact that the Nostalrius team has taken this step could be the most counter-productive thing I have ever seen. Whatever goodwill they had generated among the folks at Blizzard will be trashed by this, and for what? To thumb their nose at the company they profess to love and have great respect for? Got it.

To be fair, there is a huge difference between their love for the I.P. and the development team(s) behind it, and their (lack of) love for the publicists and legal team also behind the game and the development team(s).

And I can perfectly understand the frustration that Nostalrius has, as Blizzard has been known to screw over fan projects that are beneficial towards Blizzard, not the other way around, even long before ActiVision took over.

-cough- DotA -cough-

Anyways, it might not have been the best decision that they could have made. But it does help set an example, throwing Blizzard's wishy-washiness into the light for a bit.

 

[ffronw]

*snip*
Anyways, it might not have been the best decision that they could have made. But it does help set an example, throwing Blizzard's wishy-washiness into the light for a bit.

See, I think it's just the opposite. What it does is give Blizzard a perfect out. They can now just say something like, "Well, we were planning internally to work with the Nostalrius team to make vanilla servers a reality, but now that they've released their source code and approved making the project live again, we can't work with them anymore."

Sure, a small number of people will get mad, but it won't be enough to hurt Blizzard's bottom line, which is all they're focused on anyway.

 

[Aeshi]

Once the source code goes public, all the C&D letters in the world won't matter. Blizzard lost their chance to give the players what they wanted.

Official vanilla servers that nobody would've used because all their items & friends are on the already existing private servers which, let's not forget, are also completely free?

Yeah, I'm sure the higher ups at Blizzard are weeping right now.

 

[Janaschi]

*snip*
Anyways, it might not have been the best decision that they could have made. But it does help set an example, throwing Blizzard's wishy-washiness into the light for a bit.

See, I think it's just the opposite. What it does is give Blizzard a perfect out. They can now just say something like, "Well, we were planning internally to work with the Nostalrius team to make vanilla servers a reality, but now that they've released their source code and approved making the project live again, we can't work with them anymore."

Sure, a small number of people will get mad, but it won't be enough to hurt Blizzard's bottom line, which is all they're focused on anyway.

That's the problem, though - why would they be looking for that perfect out? I had pointed it out earlier in this thread, but Blizzard has stated before that they were never interested in vanilla servers; especially after they made the claim that they lost a lot of the code that they'd need.

And since they sent out the C&D, it has been about half a year now, and all of that cooperation they were talking about doing with the Nostalrius team, has turned out to be a lot of smoke.

So if they really are looking for that perfect out, then they never intended to do anything with the vanilla servers, anyways. At least, not in any sort of meaningful way.

I could be wrong - don't get me wrong. But this whole deal has reeked of complacency.

 

[ffronw]

That's the problem, though - why would they be looking for that perfect out? I had pointed it out earlier in this thread, but Blizzard has stated before that they were never interested in vanilla servers; especially after they made the claim that they lost a lot of the code that they'd need.

And since they sent out the C&D, it has been about half a year now, and all of that cooperation they were talking about doing with the Nostalrius team, has turned out to be a lot of smoke.

So if they really are looking for that perfect out, then they never intended to do anything with the vanilla servers, anyways. At least, not in any sort of meaningful way.

I could be wrong - don't get me wrong. But this whole deal has reeked of complacency.

I don't think that Blizzard ever bought into the idea that vanilla servers could be worthwhile. I can't blame them, because I don't think they'd be worthwhile from a monetary standpoint either. But they were willing to talk about it for one of a few reasons. They either wanted to PR/community boost from them, they wanted to gauge interest in other offerings, or they were just blowing smoke. No matter which one of those three ideas you buy into, it's hard to conjure up a scenario where Blizzard would want to invest much in vanilla servers.

But let's assume that what they told the Nostalrius team was accurate, and they wanted to investigate the idea of official vanilla servers. They would have had about six months to do so. That's nowhere near enough time for them to evaluate the entire scope of what the offering would entail. So this leads to one of two conclusions: Either the Blizzard folks were just humoring the vanilla server requests with no intention of ever coming through, or the Nostalrius folks just screwed the pooch on the idea. Either can be true, but neither is a good outcome for the community that wanted these servers. The best thing for the Nostalrius team to do would have been to wait and see what happened, not to get upset and sabotage the idea when it didn't happen on the schedule they wanted it to.

That's not to say they couldn't have released the source code later, but to do so this soon seems like a really bad decision.