First official update since Nostalrius shutdown

[taran99]

Nevergrim is right. He has "captured" the essence of the problem, where as you guys are flapping around - no offense.

First of, we have all (at least I did) bought Vanilla WoW back in the day. I actually own 2 copies one with the orcs on the front and one with the elves.

I can't play this game now even though I bought it! So I'm using a vanilla server to play it again, because Blizzard says they wont support it. #YouTninkYouDoButYouDont

Running a private server IS in the gray legal area - WHY ? Because it's PURE emulation. They don't actually use ANYTHING from the original server files OR the game. Don't forget - YOU have the game - YOU are the one who is breaching the agreement with Blizzard - YOU the PLAYER. Try reading your License Aggrement....

The server merelly does what it knows best - accepts data packets (from YOUR game client) and runs the appropriate scripts so you can enjoy : NPCS, QUESTS, DUNGEONS, TEXTURES that are actually...wait...yes...on YOUR Game Client..Oops - Try reading the L.A again.

But because Blizzard can't sue each and every one of us for playing on a pirated server with THEIR game (IT's their game EVEN after you have bought it) they go for the easy route - sue the guys that emulate their servers. The closest thing they could come up at court to charge them would be "Impersonating a Blizzard GM or Server" even though they prefer to go with "Reverse Engineering Lawsuits"

unfortunately suing into oblivion is the tool of the giant company against smaller competitors. Morally what they are doing it wrong, and whether they have legal standing is up to a court to decide, but after all the litigation the court costs would destroy the smaller organisation financially and that's "mission accomplished" for blizzard. Harmony Gold has been at this for a long long long time with battletech and HG's other licenses. HG has even stolen FASA trademark blatantly and STILL sued FASA over macross/crusher joe/etc designs.

It's all about using the court system and the COSTS of the court system as a siege engine against the smaller guy. Whether right or wrong, it'll destroy the smaller guy, always.

Also about the "borrowed" ideas, you're absolutely correct. Just like marvel has many norse gods within their comic books, I can create my own THOR comic, and legally they can't do shit since it's technically public domain. But how much you wanna bet they'll send a DMCA to my company for publishing a thor comic?

[TomDeBaere]

It's true, the game isn't anymore what it used to be. If you bought the game 10 years ago and come back now, you won't recognize it anymore and you can say it's no longer the game you bought at the time. However, you did sign a license agreement where Blizzard states they can change, modify, suspend or discontinue any aspect of World of Warcraft, including removing items or revising the effectiveness of items in an effort to balance a Game.
So stop saying guys you have the right to go on private servers because the game you bought all this time ago isn't the one you have today. I do believe Blizzard put a wink in WoD cenematic when Garrosh walks over to Gul'dan who tells him this was not their destiny to which Garrosh replies "times change" .

[MaciejB]

Vaylqne already explained anything I wanted to say myself and probably even used better words.

The server was simply handling requests made by players client and was written by the development team from scratch, unless is was based on something created by Blizzard (not sure what is this Mango thing). And if it was created from scratch, how can it violate any copyrights?

I am not sure if even we violated any copyrights, since EULAs legal status in different countries appear to be different and as far as I learned, in some countries it has no power.

On the other hand, Blizzard altered heavily the product they sold us and made it impossible for us to play it anymore. While it's a common practice in gaming world, since EA did it at least to few of their sports games, it doesn't make it any less wrong.

I say we could organise as a community and start - possibly through kickstarter campaign - looking for our legal options to fight back. Not through devs and admins, but through community of former players.

[Enjurbn]

When you bought your wow cds back in the day what you purchased was the license to play this game on blizzard's servers, thats it, and this license has expired. When you open your 1.12 client terms of use state that you have no right to host or emulate blizzards services for this game. So you can get all technical all you want, torrent sites tried a similar argument and last time I checked they were illegal in most countries

[Pottu]

Again, that might legally be true in the US but in the EU, it's not. It does not matter what is written in the EULA/TOS, because if it conflicts with national or EU legislation, these always trump them. This has been confirmed in both national and EU courts. Most recent example being the debate of whether gamers and stores are allowed to sell second-hand copies of games. Another example would be on-line stores trying to refuse to honour the traditional 30-day return service.

Torrent sites are being taken down after national legislation in EU countries was changed and they were mostly changed from being in a grey-zone to being outright illegal. But it's not just a one-way street - EU forced Microsoft to de-couple Internet Explorer from Windows, and is currently forcing Google (and other cloud services) to ensure that the data of EU citizens is not routed through US, as that would be a violation of EU privacy acts.

In that sense, it would be immensely useful and informative to see someone with the money and time to fight Blizzard on this, to go through the whole legislative process outside of US (local national court, higher national court, supreme national court, EU court of appeals, EU supreme court), so that there would be a proper case example for everyone to see.

Caveat: I am not a lawyer, just an interested layman.

[Enjurbn]

Again, that might legally be true in the US but in the EU, it's not. It does not matter what is written in the EULA/TOS, because if it conflicts with national or EU legislation, these always trump them.

Really? My understanding was that Blizzard is a private company and can set any rules they want for their product, as long as consumer is presented with a choice to agree or disagree with them. Unless it is written specifically in the EU law, something that forbids game creators from doing that

I doubt that there were any TOS that these gamers agreed with when they bought their games initially, in which it was said that they cannot resell their cds

[abbath]

Again, that might legally be true in the US but in the EU, it's not.

then re-launch Nostalrius

[Fair]

Again, that might legally be true in the US but in the EU, it's not. It does not matter what is written in the EULA/TOS, because if it conflicts with national or EU legislation, these always trump them.

Really? My understanding was that Blizzard is a private company and can set any rules they want for their product, as long as consumer is presented with a choice to agree or disagree with them. Unless it is written specifically in the EU law, something that forbids game creators from doing that

I doubt that there were any TOS that these gamers agreed with when they bought their games initially, in which it was said that they cannot resell their cds

Blizzard TOS is irrelevant to the point where it means if you break it, they reserve the right to ban you from their network - it is not law, they have no legal standing to go after you unless what you did is also explicitly forbidden by law. However whether or not running a private server is legally allowed, I couldn't tell you. But their TOS is not the law.

[cmill78]

World of Warcraft (and all it's character names and models, etc....) are the intellectual property of Blizzard Entertainment. If someone uses the intellectual property for personal gain or even to distribute it for free, they are subject to very high penalties and in the rarest of cases, jail time. Blizzard has already proven how little of a grey area there is when it comes to people stealing their intellectual property. Blizzard has won multiple lawsuits against several different types of copyright infringement/violations of the EULA/TOS, such as: Multiple bot services shut down and forced to pay $7 million a piece. A Hearthstone Card Game clone in China (another 7+ million awarded to Blizz). And most notable, the $88 million they were awarded against a private server run by a woman in Georgia.

The reason why Blizzard can, at any time, come down on a private server (whether the server makes a profit or not) is because they are not only using Blizzard's intellectual property without permission, but allowing players to access the intellectual property on non-official Blizzard servers, thus circumventing a subscription fee. Now it is more difficult for Blizzard to take down a private server that absolutely makes no money from it's player base but it is still illegal and Blizzard has proven this with the shut down of Nostalrius.

We can hope for a grey area all we want, but unless the admins/devs/GMs wish to take this to places Blizzard doesn't want to spend the time and money to pursue, or unless someone is willing to change every character and town name in the game, as well as slightly alter the models, it is a direct violation of copyright law as well as the EULA/TOS agreement, they have to abide by the laws that have been enforced at this point. And despite the fact some here are saying that the EULA/TOS are irrelevant because of EU law, that isn't entirely correct. The whole point of the EULA/TOS, and the reason your clicking of 'I Accept' is so important for both sides, is to protect their intellectual property while also giving them an out if any misdeeds occur on the players part. Owning/operating/playing on a private server is one of those misdeeds listed, and as proven by the recent 'Cease and Desist', completely illegal even with a non-proft private server.

All that said, law can change, and with petitions and outcry hopefully we will see Blizzard change it's stance because I would love to see legacy servers or places like Nostalrius allowed to do what they were so good at while the server was up. Fingers crossed.

[bettypliu]

I just feel astonished there is still no any comments and feedback from Blizzard so far, even though all the influential medias are talking about it !!