Battlenet in Background safe?

[pensi]

Hey guys,

I'm sorry but I was talking with a friend who doesn't want to join me on Nostalrius because he is
affraid that Blizzard would catch him, playing on a private server and close his Battlenet Account.

Well, Im not affraid of this going to happen but he doesn't trust in my believe.
What can I tell him?
Is it really that safe when you sometimes play stuff like Hearthstone, an open Battlenet Client in the Background while playing some good Vanilla on Nostalrius?

Hope you can help me there.

Best regards,

pensi

[Pottu]

Battle.net launcher does not scan your hard disk, as far as I know. Playing on Nostalrius is in any case safe, as merely playing is not against Blizzard's terms of service.

[pensi]

Hey Pottu, thanks for the fast reply!

Okay, that sounds pretty good to me, I will tell it my friend, hope he joins us all now on this great Realm.

best regards,

pensi

[AverageJoe]

Hey guys,

I'm sorry but I was talking with a friend who doesn't want to join me on Nostalrius because he is
affraid that Blizzard would catch him, playing on a private server and close his Battlenet Account.

Well, Im not affraid of this going to happen but he doesn't trust in my believe.
What can I tell him?
Is it really that safe when you sometimes play stuff like Hearthstone, an open Battlenet Client in the Background while playing some good Vanilla on Nostalrius?

Hope you can help me there.

Best regards,

pensi

I was afraid of this at first as well, so I carefully researched it for a few weeks before committing to playing on a private server.

From everything I've read across various forums, as Pottu stated, none of Blizzard's software (Battle.net launcher, Warden, etc.) conflicts with running additional private servers' WoW.exe clients. At worst, if you somehow accidentally managed to get your Nostalrius 1.12.1 WoW.exe client scanned or imported into Blizzard's Battle.net launcher, it'll just see it as "outdated" and will attempt to patch it to their current release (6.1 for Warlords of Draenor).

I know because I've tried this. It doesn't set off any alarms at Blizzard; it just makes it seem as though you've retained a really, really old version of WoW and are returning after years to resume playing and need all the updates that go along with it.

Blizzard's not concerned with people playing on private servers; they're more concerned with those who are running private servers and deriving large sums of money from it in the process (E.g.: A lot of "pay to win" servers). If you Google it, there's a legal case where Blizzard sued someone who made millions of dollars off a private server and won; those are the types of people Blizzard is concerned with, not the individual players like you and I.

Blizzard does not stand to gain anything from banning individual players who play both (Or have played at some point) retail and private servers. If someone plays both retail and private and Blizzard bans them, they just lost out on revenue from that player's subscription. If someone only plays private and Blizzard bans them, they just lost out on potential revenue from that player either resubbing or buying the next expansion. This is why the risk of playing on a private server while also having retail software installed is very low.

If it makes your friend feel any better, I've been playing on Nostalrius for almost a month and half now while also having the Battle.net launcher and retail software installed on my PC and I haven't been banned yet. I can still open up Warlords of Draenor like normal and nothing's changed.