Okay, I've just read the latest announcement from the Nost team.
My take is simple : the legal threat means they cannot restart Nost, anywhere in the world. To do so is to violate the C&D and then it's game over for the Nost team. They are backed into a corner. *Nost is not coming back, not from the Nost team*.
I think TBH they're taking a bloody big risk - as much as they can - just releasing their source code, but they should get away with it. Mangos itself is out there, they should be safe. They're also going to release the database, although given EU privacy law people have to specifically opt-in. That's just an external constraint, they gotta do it.
So where does that leave us?
Bliz I think is a dead horse. If Bliz can block Vanilla using legal, they will. It's just what they've always done. It's dumb, but that seems to be how it is - and, moreover, *even if* the terrible PR they're getting makes them reconsider, if they *host* Vanilla themselves, it'll go bad. That outcome is actually my greatest fear. It'll set the Vanilla scene back years - they'll release it, it'll take some time to go bad, but it will, and then we're back to where we started, only n years have passed. The only hope with regard to Bliz is that they actually license Vanilla to Nost (and others) and I think that's so remote a possibility, that, well, if it does happen - fine, all problems solved and we live happily ever after - but we must reasonably assume it will not and so then consider what we do.
And what do we do? assuming Bliz don't license, then we assume Bliz will forever C&D Vanilla WoW.
That means one thing and one thing alone : a way must be found to host Vanilla WoW which is immune to legal action.
I can see two ways to do this;
1. distributed server
2. host a normal server in a jurisdiction which ignores C&Ds (Russia, basically, I'd say)
One final and to my mind absolutely critical thought. When a Vanilla is hosted, the owners MUST charge the retail rate and MUST pass those funds on to Bliz. Bliz may not accept - they may ignore them entirely - in which case an alternative might be to require people who are playing to have a Bliz sub on retail.
Bliz own WoW. It is unethical in the first place - but understandable, given our emotional attachment to the Vanilla worlld - to create our own service. We must act as much as we can to limit that which we do which is unethical - and that means we must give Bliz retail per month.
