Why I think what Blizzard did was wrong and immoral.

[Zoey_Urbina]

I've been following Blizzard and their games since early 2005 and been an avid supporter of everything they've created up to this point. I've always wanted to someday work at Blizzard as a customer support representative as it's always been a dream of mine. To work hard and earn a position within a company that would allow me to passionately help players that had the same love for the games that I have. But now, I wonder if that's where I want to go. I'm not here to argue their legal right to take action against private servers but I do wish to point out that I do morally agree with their position and action against private servers whom accepts payments for profit at the cost of Blizzards intellectual property. This wasn't the case with Nostalrius. Hence why I consider this action of Blizzard to have been unethical and immoral to the full extent of their respective definitions.

Everything about Nostalrius, every single action that was made by them were the same honorable action and within the same views that Blizzard had when I were a teenager. I'm sad to have seen and come to the absolute realization that these views and morals no longer exists within Blizzard Entertainment. Nostalrius was and still is a non-profit organization and for Blizzard to take an active legal action against a non-profit organization, let alone a lawsuit against the actual owners of said organization, of whom has been developing this masterpiece of a server and community for almost 5 years, is outright at the lack of a better word, sickening to me. Nostalrius created such a wonderful community, brought together the essence that is World of Warcraft, let alone the private server community, brought together thousands upon thousands of people and let those people create everlasting friendships and communities for themselves. To re-create that once was when I were a teenager playing World of Warcraft is no small feat, especially as a team made of volunteers and then just to watch Blizzard kill that flame of passion, hurting several hundreds of thousands of human-beings and the despair that I saw when all those realized what was happening. I saw the outrage and the outcry of sadness through characters in a virtual world. I can't imagine the emotional reaction/distress that hit all these players in real life.

For a company that I love so deeply to take action against something like Nostalrius for hosting something that Blizzard themselves does no longer support, for hosting something that isn't available anymore and in the technical term, doesn't virtually exist anymore. For hosting something that Blizzard refuses to host themselves. Not only is almost every single piece of code, model, object, spell, animation, effect, let alone the entire world itself no longer available and wouldn't virtually exist without the beauty that is emulation.

Emulation of games that are no longer available and doesn't virtually exist anymore isn't an immoral thing to do and it shouldn't be illegal. Without emulation, we wouldn't be able to play the very first games ever developed in the wonderful history of gaming. For Blizzard to take a stance against the preservation of games is in my opinion unacceptable to me and it's not something that I can morally stand beside. I would never have thought that Blizzard would lower themselves to this. The fact that Blizzard refuses to make some kind of exception policy for non-profit organization to host data that is no longer available to players proves in my opinion that Blizzard is no longer what Blizzard used to be. Nostalrius has stated that they're willing to work with Blizzard to assist Blizzard in creating legacy servers themselves and provide all the data that they've gathered and there are plenty of other ways to make these things work.

So in essence, I will no longer be supporting Blizzard, financially or otherwise. I will never attempt to work there as I can't accept their recent immoral and unethical actions against a wonderful community and the World of Warcraft community fans as a hole. Let alone the gaming community and the preservation of games for historical purposes. Without emulation of World of Warcraft Vanilla, everything prior to cataclysm would have been forever lost in history and no one would ever, in all eternity be able to experience it again. I've been so far having an active subscription while playing on private servers, even though I haven't actually logged into World of Warcraft retail for years. This will no longer be the case and I will continue to play what I love and support what I consider to be morally correct.

I do think it's quite a massive feat to have 800 000 registered accounts and 150 000 active players. All of these players, are people willing to play and experience vanilla, with the knowledge and risk of having everything they've worked for disappear at any point in time without warning. Imagine the number of active retail players, that would engage in World of Warcraft vanilla if Blizzard hosted it themselves, even if it would require a monthly subscription. Not to mention the huge amount of players that would come back to play. Blizzard, in my opinion, you're shooting yourself in the foot and you have been actively and repeatedly pulling that trigger the past 3 years.

To all those that believes the petition will do nothing, sure it might not. But it's an easy and good way to show Blizzard how many people actually wants this to happen. It won't force them by any means, but it will at least have a chance to make them reconsider. It's better to do something, no matter how small, than do nothing and just give up.

PETITION

[Zoey_Urbina]

In regards to the advertisers that concurrently spam and provide false information throughout the forum, let alone the game. Fuck you, you're far worse than Blizzard. Do you have no morals whatsoever?

[Dr. Doom]

Morality only exists when there's someone punishing people for not following it. Given that the Church wields no authority in this age, governments aren't concerned at all with it, and therefore society follows suit, what you'll get is a collective that tries to take as much as they can, so long as they seemingly abide by the few legal fictional rules that are in place.

What goes in the mind of Blizzard's legal department, just like the legal department of any other corporation has nothing to do with what benefits the general public, what will increase the general level of happiness or any of those concerns. What goes on in the mind, and the reason for which they're paid to do their work is: How can we tweak legal provisions, contract clauses and veredicts to secure as much revenue as we possibly can?