Blizzard Responds to Nostalrius Server Closure Complaints

[Slenn]

And we all know why they won't; fear. They're afraid if they cater to a specific niche crowd that only wants an old game that doesn't sell anymore they'll lose more people from their new products and those will sell less. Its all marketing business crap. They want big bucks and catering to the people that want old wow support would mean admitting they've failed to properly evolve the game and keep it highly successful. Which they absolutely have. WoW could have lived for forever and after countless idiotic decisions whether they be gameplay or even writing related, people are just sick of what they've been doing. Lich was the peak of the game, and its only gotten worse ever since and the insane drop in subscribers showcases that perfectly.

The claim that WoW could have lived forever does not sound realistic by any means. Nothing lasts forever, not even interest in a game. Regardless of content, or even if the quality of the story was on par with what WC 3 set up in the first place, the subscriber base would decay still. Wasn't it King Terenas that said that no king rules forever? People's lives and interests change. People get married, get new jobs, have kids, new interests. The vanilla servers came out when I was 14 years old. I'm 26 now, and in grad school getting payed to do physics research. And whatever leftover money is being used for cosplay and food. I don't have that much of an interest in playing WoW that much any more. Heck I had friends in high school that left soon after BC because of waining interest in the game.

Same goes for any game out there. The online servers for PS2 just shut down, over a decade after the console launched. It's a long time, and PS2 was an awesome console, but it doesn't make it immortal.

 

[chadachada123]

I really don't believe Blizzard when they suggest that it isn't possible to license the guys for basically nothing, with the condition that it remain both vanilla WoW and completely non-profit. It's by far the best option for all parties.

As others have pointed out, it'd cost Blizzard a lot more to run their own vanilla servers, but telling players "fuck you, either latest release or the DMCA" isn't exactly an adult reaction.

It's possible that the reaction is genuine albeit misinformed, and their lawyers have merely *convinced* them that licensing isn't an option. Hard to say.

Completely non-profit? The project was about to go bankrupt as it was, how would you expect them to go on if they aren't allowed to make money from it?

In case it wasn't clear, by "non-profit", I meant "makes no profit." Making the money to pay for the servers AND THE SERVERS ALONE (and similar associated costs) would be perfectly fine, so long as the group running it doesn't make a single cent from it (unless that cent is immediately given to the server gods).

 

[MHR]

If the game was generally beloved on most levels and some shitty custom servers got shut down, Many would say it was rightfully so. I went to look at a few of those custom servers near BC, they were all shit, full of obnoxious mods that ruined the gameplay, or wanting to charge their own subscriptions for that garbage. It's like bootlegging low-quality handbags and charging almost as much for them as the real deal; both supplier and buyer in this situation are dumb.

But now it was different. Current WoW is now dogshit levels of cynicism and betrayal, and apparently Nostalrius wasn't bad. This wouldn't be near as much an outrage if it didn't highlight what was already a terrible situation with WoW as it is now.

A small operation infringing on IP get shut down; that's life. It affects fewer people than millions that play WoW currently and I'm not sure it's worth saving. The current iteration of WoW is garbage for a large variety of reasons that were conscious decisions at the time. I'm also not sure that's worth saving -- the whole situation is fucked.

The point? The World of Warcraft situation is aging. It's never going to be what it once was, and patches trying to fix it or calls to rally toward a better beginning are thin blinders to the inevitable. Nothing matters, we're all going to die. Eat Arby's.

 

[Iwantstuff]

I'm consistently surprised at how many people know PRECISELY how Blizzard could implement a vanilla server, and how successful it would be. Come on, guys. You've spend what, probably fifteen minutes thinking about and somehow think Blizzard hasn't already crunched the numbers half a decade ago? Mean ol' Blizzard's just being an asshole by not giving us vanilla servers?

Blizzard had to shut down Nostalrius. Maybe not right this second, but at some point, they would HAVE to take action. Because you can believe that if they don't, somebody down the line is going to jump on it and stir up a lot of crap Blizzard would have to deal with. But as it stands, you guys don't have a decade of data and analysis on your side to back up your claims that it would be simple and profitable. Pretty sure Blizzard does, because despite many claims, the company isn't full of idiots. Would have been dead twenty years ago if it were.

Bottom line, I'd wager 99% of us on the internet haven't even the SLIGHTEST clue what goes on in the background of Blizzard. And somehow asserting that we do because we play video games more than most people just makes us look like dickheads.

 

[Dragonbums]

"We explored options for developing classic servers and none could be executed without great difficulty," Brack wrote.

Y'see, I don't buy this. Hobbyists could do this and they didn't even have access to Blizzard's actual IP, no first-hand access to their code, their financial resources and amount of technical expertise and familiarity with WoW's systems.

But this guy says it's too hard for Blizzard? I call bullshit.

Hobbyists are nowhere near held up to the same standards as Blizzard official. Blizzard isn't saying they COULDNT do it. But they have multiple live games running they have to maintain and taking the effort to re launch pure vanilla, integrate dusty old code to work with their new infrastructure, pray to fuck it works, fix any bugs pertaining to that ON TOP of whatever bugs vanilla had all for some odd 100 k users who may or may not pay for this service and may or may not play on those servers long enough to even justify the work in the first place is a whole different beast.

 

[Strazdas]

Brack says that while Blizzard has "looked into the possibility" of working with private servers, there is no "clear legal path to protect Blizzard's IP and grant an operating license to a pirate server."

But there is - simply leave Nostalrius alone. There is 0, none, abosulutely no consequences on your IP if you do this.

"We explored options for developing classic servers and none could be executed without great difficulty," Brack wrote. "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."

Well since your programmers were morons that deleted the old version and simply owerwriten the new release on top without any backups, yes, it would be quite expensive to do what would be very easy for people that actually know what they are doing developing software.

"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."

I don't believe this for a minute. They let Nostralrius exist for an entire year and it didn't cause Blizzard to implode. They could have just ignored it completely and we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Hell, I worked on Elder Scrolls digital roleplaying content and not only did we not get a C&D from Zenimax, they told us they approved of our efforts. Blizzard's excuse is lame and almost certainly a lie.

You dont believe it because it is not true. [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not-require-companies-tirelessly-censor-internet] This is literally flat out lie from their lawyers. Either that or incompetence, and given how blizzard acted in the past (legally) im leaning towards incompetence. Zenimax used same false excuse to sue Scrolls and it was just as laughable back then.

http://www.blackweb20.com/2009/11/25/the-consequences-of-not-protecting-and-defending-your-trademarks/
"...failure to prosecute infringers usually is evidence of a weak mark.? As a result, challengers can petition the USPTO to cancel your trademark registration."

Shift the blame to your convoluted legal system, if anything.

This is incorrect [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not-require-companies-tirelessly-censor-internet].

IP law being what it is, if a company doesn't take clear steps on a regular basis to protect their ownership, they risk losing legal control of it. If Nostralrius had gone on long enough, and someone could prove Blizzard knew about it and had not taken steps to shut it down, they could argue that Blizzard had allowed Warcraft to lapse into the public domain.

No they dont. how many times is this going to be perpetuated? There are only 2 legal ways to loose a trademark: Commonification and abandonment. Abandonment is simple, you simply have to not use the trademark for a long time (i think current is 25 years). Commonification is when the trademark becomes a common dictionary word instead, for example Refrigerator or Elevator that were once Trademarks. Google is at risk here since Google = all search engines in common language. WoW however is nowhere near being at risk.

It boils down to copyright law. Blizzard owns the Warcraft IP and in order to maintain the copyright err...rights on that IP, they must aggressively prevent other entities from using it. Thus they had to order the shut down of this private server, even if they personally didn't care that much. The reason behind it is that if they let this server exist for several years, then they run the risk of losing any right to claim their IP. Meaning that someone could, later on, remake and resell World of Warcraft Vanilla, and Blizzard couldn't stop it, because they hadn't defended the IP over such a length of time that legally it becomes "open source" and other people can then copy and sell it as if it was their own...to a certain extent.

False: see above replies for explanation.

Unlike Nostralius, who if question could just go "Well, we're doing this for fun and out of the goodness of our hearts" and be done with it, Blizzard would have legal obligations for these servers. Namely, they would have to be on-par with functionality and service to current live servers, meaning;

- You need a server for each region - NA, LAN, WEU, EEU, AF, ME, CN, KR, JP, OCE
- A PvP version of each server - so 2x
- Tech support for these servers
- Integration and functionality with Battle.net App
- Where to draw the line? Is an OL server? An AQ40 server?

Not really. Ive seen other MMOs open classic servers only on one region with only one PVP version (normal PVP, the regular mode had Non-PVP, regular PVP and PVP-Enforced server types)

 

[Stewie Plisken]

I appreciate this answer, honestly. It seems fairly genuine for what it is. I mean, if it was NCSoft, not only wouldn't they have issued a response at all, they would probably not even speak with the creators of the private server, instead hiring Batman Inc. to break some bones and make a statement "don't mess with our shit".

I do admit I don't care about WoW enough, vanilla or otherwise, though.

 

[Gatlank]

"We explored options for developing classic servers and none could be executed without great difficulty," Brack wrote.

Fans can do it but developers and a big company can't? That's a big pile of bullshit.
Just be honest and say Blizzard can't be arsed to do it.

 

[Politrukk]

Just like how every new Warcraft expansion sees a surge of subscriptions.

Very few people actually WANT a vanilla server. Vanilla Warcraft is a terrible game by today's standards. And when you replay a game, the nostalgia value dissipates after a short period of time.

In short, there's not actually as much demand for a private server as there appears to be. A vanilla server wouldn't be financially sustainable when compared with the amount of time, effort and funds required to actually create and maintain a vanilla server.

Translation:

"Blah Blah PR PR Spin Spin Spin Fuck you it's our game."

At least that's what I got out of that statement. :3

I knew something along those lines would be the first comment. Their response was actually quite a good one. What do you actually want them to say? They announced that they have consideration for a "Pristine server", which is mostly what people want.

Nostalrius was pretty much the equivalent of having World of Warcraft on Pirate Bay. They were allowing people to play the game for free. Everything about it was always breaching WoW's ToS. The creators always knew that they were at risk of being shut down.

This is just a blatant lie, a playerbase ranging from 100 to 200 thousand is absolutely not an amount one should neglect.

You're apparently thinking in some ludicrous EA kind of standard where you have to sell 5 million copies for your game to even compete.

If Nostalrius wasn't this popular it wouldn't have had to be shut down, this isn't even taking other private servers into acount.

 

[kekkres]

Brack says that while Blizzard has "looked into the possibility" of working with private servers, there is no "clear legal path to protect Blizzard's IP and grant an operating license to a pirate server."

But there is - simply leave Nostalrius alone. There is 0, none, abosulutely no consequences on your IP if you do this.

Ok the problem isnt that they lose the copyright if they do this, they dont. The problem is, if they do this, they are making a knowing exception to their copyright and aaaaanyone else who starts up a pirate server and is pulled into court can point to that knowing exception and say that it would apply to them as well. You cannot be pick and chose with copyright laws

 

[Wrex Brogan]

Sounds like a load of bullshit to me. The mere fact a "pirate" server was able to operate as it did literally proves all the claims blizzard has made of it being difficult to be complete and utter nonsense. Difficult for a small group with limited funds sure, but for a multi-billion company with nigh infinite resources? yeah they're full of shit if they're claiming they can't do it too.

And we all know why they won't; fear. They're afraid if they cater to a specific niche crowd that only wants an old game that doesn't sell anymore they'll lose more people from their new products and those will sell less. Its all marketing business crap. They want big bucks and catering to the people that want old wow support would mean admitting they've failed to properly evolve the game and keep it highly successful. Which they absolutely have. WoW could have lived for forever and after countless idiotic decisions whether they be gameplay or even writing related, people are just sick of what they've been doing. Lich was the peak of the game, and its only gotten worse ever since and the insane drop in subscribers showcases that perfectly.

Money doesn't grow on trees for companies. Having access to resources like Blizzard does doesn't mean that investing those resources in a project will magically make that project work out. This small project that the fans put together was not only hemorrhaging funds, but it was doing so after being worked on roughly for free by the people in question.

Yes, this privately setup server was so far in the red that it was about to be shut down anyway. People love to say how much they'd like to play vanilla again, but when it comes to actually paying money for that...people aren't interested. For Blizzard to do the same would not only require paying all the server fees and maintenance costs that these guys were paying, but also the time spent for their people. Payroll for employees is a massive expense, and if the private server couldn't do it with free employees, why do we expect Blizzard to do better?

Plus, it'd compete with the current WoW development. These new vanilla servers need to not only have players playing them in order to meet costs, but they need to do so in a way that doesn't reduce how many people currently pay for WoW. There's zero point in developing a system that competes for money you're already making.

Do people really, honestly, expect these servers to make their money back? All the information I've seen so far points out that it would be such a colossal waste of money for Blizzard that it's no surprise they haven't done these servers yet.

I think that's the thing everyone's forgetting - Nostalrius was not a successful business venture. It's... really not a good example for anyone to point to and go 'yeah, these guys did it, why can't this giant corporation that's focused on making money?'. While I haven't a clue to the internal workings of Blizzard, but I imagine they'd have all the necessary data and projections that say 'Yeah no this is a terrible idea you'll lose all the money and subscribers'.

As an idea, a time-locked server for older expansions is pretty neat (though niche as hell) - as a business idea, it's fucking terrible. I imagine that's why the guy said they're having so many internal discussions about it, probably along the lines of 'Yes, it's a bad idea, but is there any way we can actually make it profitable without ruining our other shit?'.

 

[LetalisK]

1 million subs to that vanilla only server proves you wrong.

It was actually 150,000 active. And how much were the subscribers paying to play on the server?

 

[Strazdas]

Brack says that while Blizzard has "looked into the possibility" of working with private servers, there is no "clear legal path to protect Blizzard's IP and grant an operating license to a pirate server."

But there is - simply leave Nostalrius alone. There is 0, none, abosulutely no consequences on your IP if you do this.

Ok the problem isnt that they lose the copyright if they do this, they dont. The problem is, if they do this, they are making a knowing exception to their copyright and aaaaanyone else who starts up a pirate server and is pulled into court can point to that knowing exception and say that it would apply to them as well. You cannot be pick and chose with copyright laws

No. If Blizzard did nothing then they would still have the ability to close down any server they didnt like. Them not closing one server down would not open up the games for other servers. The only way that would be true is if blizzard would issue a statement that they support private servers. So by them "Doing nothing" they loose nothing.

Oh and yes you can most definitely be pick and choose with copyright laws. See: youtube.

 

[Slenn]

"We explored options for developing classic servers and none could be executed without great difficulty," Brack wrote. "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."

Well since your programmers were morons that deleted the old version and simply overwritten the new release on top without any backups, yes, it would be quite expensive to do what would be very easy for people that actually know what they are doing developing software.

I think it is quite hasty to assume what transpires for Blizzard when they release a new expansion or patch. The reason why it would be difficult is because, in contrast to the people who ran the Nostalrius server, Blizzard employs thousands of employees all of which have a payroll. They also have 4 or so other games they have to keep active maintenance on, which costs additional money. Creative teams also require money, and they are the ones responsible for the new stuff that comes out.

And there's also the question of whether or not a vanilla server would last long enough based on nostalgia. There really is no guarantee that it would last. Sure an offline game like Jak and Daxter has no problem with contemporary gamers playing old copies because it's an offline game. And because it's an offline game, there's no online sale transaction for Naughty Dog to worry about. But like Jak and Daxter, and nearly every game in existence, people lose interest. I have a copy of Jak and Daxter, but I don't play it regularly like the newer games that come out.

 

[Strazdas]

I think it is quite hasty to assume what transpires for Blizzard when they release a new expansion or patch. The reason why it would be difficult is because, in contrast to the people who ran the Nostalrius server, Blizzard employs thousands of employees all of which have a payroll. They also have 4 or so other games they have to keep active maintenance on, which costs additional money. Creative teams also require money, and they are the ones responsible for the new stuff that comes out.

And there's also the question of whether or not a vanilla server would last long enough based on nostalgia. There really is no guarantee that it would last. Sure an offline game like Jak and Daxter has no problem with contemporary gamers playing old copies because it's an offline game. And because it's an offline game, there's no online sale transaction for Naughty Dog to worry about. But like Jak and Daxter, and nearly every game in existence, people lose interest. I have a copy of Jak and Daxter, but I don't play it regularly like the newer games that come out.

Its not an assumption. This is what Blizzard stated after investigating the possibility a few years ago. they simply dont have the vanilla server copies anymore (because who needs backups right) so they would have to rebuild it from scratch and thats too much effort.

I dont know whether vanilla server would be popular or not and i do not speculate on it. I only talked about blizzards explanation for not having one.

 

[anthony87]

ITT: People who have a perfect grasp of both copyright law and the internal workings of Blizzard? That's impressive.

 

[VaporWare]

IP law being what it is, if a company doesn't take clear steps on a regular basis to protect their ownership, they risk losing legal control of it. If Nostralrius had gone on long enough, and someone could prove Blizzard knew about it and had not taken steps to shut it down, they could argue that Blizzard had allowed Warcraft to lapse into the public domain.

No they dont. how many times is this going to be perpetuated? There are only 2 legal ways to loose a trademark: Commonification and abandonment. Abandonment is simple, you simply have to not use the trademark for a long time (i think current is 25 years). Commonification is when the trademark becomes a common dictionary word instead, for example Refrigerator or Elevator that were once Trademarks. Google is at risk here since Google = all search engines in common language. WoW however is nowhere near being at risk.

Hence the 'if it had gone on long enough without contest' caveat, among other things.

This is going to be perpetuated as long as people don't understand IP law as an umberella, and how Copyright and Trademark differ in use and as long as the conversations on the subject remain at least heated enough to discourage more careful inquiry.

http://www.inta.org/TrademarkBasics/FactSheets/Pages/LossofTrademarkRightsFactSheet.aspx

Please note the section concerning 'naked licensing', as well as where it explicitly discusses Failure to Police and so forth. While WoW may be in no particular danger of becoming a generic term or having it's trademarks abandoned, that is in part because no-one is allowed to run private WoW servers and thus use trademarked materials outside of WoW itself. If they did, we would soon be talking about specific subsets of WoWs: Vanilla servers, BC servers, tweaked servers, etc, all of which are things people have attempted to implement and which Blizzard has a history of shutting down...to stop that from happening.

Even if you don't agree with how I am interpreting these things, I think you can see how anyone would arrive at my conclusions.

I realize my language on the subject has not been terribly precise. I'm not a lawyer, nor someone who has a lot of trademarks to maintain, so it's not really been my business. For my part in the confusion, I apologize, but please understand: it's very, /very/ easy to be inaccurate about this and it has become a highly mythologized and contentious subject.

It'd be nice if we could all stop pretending to be experts and try to sort it out properly.

 

[Slenn]

Its not an assumption. This is what Blizzard stated after investigating the possibility a few years ago. They simply don't have the vanilla server copies anymore (because who needs backups right) so they would have to rebuild it from scratch and thats too much effort.

I don't know whether vanilla server would be popular or not and i do not speculate on it. I only talked about blizzards explanation for not having one.

I'm sure they had their reasons for doing so. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the vanilla game is no longer compatible with the current OSs, both Mac and Windows. Don't take my word on it.

Well, the popularity does play a factor in their aforementioned difficulty regardless. Popularity is where the sales for their games begins. And if it won't be popular for long enough, then it would be difficult.

 

[Strazdas]

Hence the 'if it had gone on long enough without contest' caveat, among other things.

This is going to be perpetuated as long as people don't understand IP law as an umberella, and how Copyright and Trademark differ in use and as long as the conversations on the subject remain at least heated enough to discourage more careful inquiry.

http://www.inta.org/TrademarkBasics/FactSheets/Pages/LossofTrademarkRightsFactSheet.aspx

Please note the section concerning 'naked licensing', as well as where it explicitly discusses Failure to Police and so forth. While WoW may be in no particular danger of becoming a generic term or having it's trademarks abandoned, that is in part because no-one is allowed to run private WoW servers and thus use trademarked materials outside of WoW itself. If they did, we would soon be talking about specific subsets of WoWs: Vanilla servers, BC servers, tweaked servers, etc, all of which are things people have attempted to implement and which Blizzard has a history of shutting down...to stop that from happening.

Even if you don't agree with how I am interpreting these things, I think you can see how anyone would arrive at my conclusions.

I realize my language on the subject has not been terribly precise. I'm not a lawyer, nor someone who has a lot of trademarks to maintain, so it's not really been my business. For my part in the confusion, I apologize, but please understand: it's very, /very/ easy to be inaccurate about this and it has become a highly mythologized and contentious subject.

It'd be nice if we could all stop pretending to be experts and try to sort it out properly.

But the long enough caveat only applies only if the trademark was abandoned, but since it hasnt been abandoned by blizzard then it does not apply.

Yet somehow other MMOs managed to have private servers operate for over decades (funny thing, i think Tibia has private servers open longer than WOW exists at all) and yet nothing like that has happened. Blizzard is in fact quite famous in the private server world as the only company that tries to go after every private server they notice.

Well to sort it out properly a first step in my opinion would be to not let actual lawyers get away with flat out lies like this. but thats just my opinion.

I'm sure they had their reasons for doing so. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the vanilla game is no longer compatible with the current OSs, both Mac and Windows. Don't take my word on it.

Well, the popularity does play a factor in their aforementioned difficulty regardless. Popularity is where the sales for their games begins. And if it won't be popular for long enough, then it would be difficult.

You can run vanilla wow clients on current OSes. As the server software for vannilla wow does not exist anymore i have no idea whether it can run or not and blizzard is probably the only ones that know.

I agree about popularity, Im merely pointing out that i do not speculate as to its popularity and that is not what my posts are about. that is a different subject.