Should Private World of Warcraft servers be allowed?

[Kirosilence]

Alright, so you make something great, better than great, you make your life's masterpiece as a game. Right?

Alright, now in order to keep this masterpiece running, you need subscriptions, not hard, because your game is so fun and addictive that you now have chocked up 11 million subscribers, at $15 a month.

Okay, now you discover someone has taken your masterpiece, the game you gave life to, and has created a knockoff version of it that runs externally to yours. He may have changed some things, may not have, either way, you did all that work, and now someone else is providing it to players for free without permission.

It's like someone borrows your TV without permission, sets it up on the lawn so that people without cable can watch cable TV. I believe it is wrong, I do, Private WoW servers are essentially stealing and bootlegging the technology to people who may or may not have wanted to play in the first place. It isn't a matter of lost sales, but mores of ego.

Then again, Wrong or Right it is Blizzard's IP, they can do what they damn-well please. I don't think it's a question of money when these private WoW servers rarely see more then 1000 subscribers, It is a question of "You took my masterpiece and cheapened it with your piracy. Go to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200".

 

[Hamsterlad]

i have played WoW for a long time and i didnt even know about private servers

 

[Thespamanator]

i have played WoW for a long time and i didnt even know about private servers

lol, many people don't. They might get more users if people did, so from Blizzard's point of view it's probably better people don't know, which may be one reason that they haven't tried any massive clean up of private servers.

 

[Ravenholm27]

I think that defeats the whole purpose and concept of an MMO excespiaclly(i know i butchered the word) one like WoW

 

[JemJar]

Louis's friend Bill also buys WoW. He plays for the month of free time that comes with WoW, but decides that he wants to level faster, and a classmate, Francis, points him to a private server that is free to play on and has quicker leveling. Bill and Francis enjoy this private server. Since they are not playing on Blizzard's servers, they cost Blizzard nothing.

Francis then pirates the updates blizzard releases to update his private server (Lets assume he owns it) and encourages more people to stop paying for Blizzards product when they can get it perfectly free from this free server.

He then downloads a new album and encourages people to do the same, because why buy it when they can get it perfectly free from a torrent?

Free servers: Piracy with some prettier bullshit excuses.

This.

Irrespective really of whether Francis updates the server with Blizz's content stuff, it's still no different to downloading a movie or a game - sure a film studio doesn't pay for you to pirate a film but it still costs them if you end up with a copy of the film without paying for it.

 

[SilentHunter7]

I like them, and if you've bought a copy of the game, i think you should be entitled to use them. The only reason you pay fee's is to use Blizzards servers so if you don't it dosen't really matter.

So all the new content that is released falls from a magical tree?

No, it's paid for by the cost to buy the expansions in the first place.

Francis then pirates the updates blizzard releases to update his private server (Lets assume he owns it) and encourages more people to stop paying for Blizzards product when they can get it perfectly free from this free server.

Free servers: Piracy with some prettier bullshit excuses.

How is it piracy if all the games and expansions are bought and paid for? I can see if they are somehow connecting to Blizzard's servers for free, but they are using private servers run by private people, funded by private money.

Either way, it's fruitless to argue. The DMCA gives copyright holders so much power, it'll be pointless to fight a ban in an American court, if it did happen. All the Blizzard lawyers would have to do is put a 'no private server' clause, and a 'it's illegal to even look at this product without paying the $15' clause in the EULA and say "there". Case closed and a lot of people go to jail. Maybe someone would be able to get the banned overturned in Canada.

 

[D.O.A]

Should it be allowed? Well...Blizzard says no at the moment. And you know, it's their game. That said...isn't it more akin to stealing television channels? That is, you've paid for the set-up and all that but are mooching channels you haven't paid for for free.

Also, they charge barely anything for the basic game. And more you can even download the whole client for free if you're so inclined from their own site via the trial game, after that of course you do need to pay for the expansions, but I'd imagine after being out for some time even Wrath will drop in price significantly. Probably see WoW triple packs going for ?/£/$9-15 etc. pretty soon after that.

i saw one box set for 30 dollars at game stop. blizzard isnt charging much for the game itself it just wants the profit from each month

 

[Thespamanator]

It is a question of "You took my masterpiece and cheapened it with your piracy. Go to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200".

I like ^^

Irrespective really of whether Francis updates the server with Blizz's content stuff, it's still no different to downloading a movie or a game - sure a film studio doesn't pay for you to pirate a film but it still costs them if you end up with a copy of the film without paying for it.

And /agree

 

[Antmajig]

Wow... thats kinda retarded spam... do you think a big company like Blizzard would allow other people to play servers that aren't theirs.. all private servers are to them are money stealers

 

[Jack and Calumon]

I shall talk as a Private server player, as I am one.

I played Private server for about a month, and really, it is not as good as normal WoW. It is riddled with bugs, if you see 18 different players in a whole day that is considered a very busy day, and really, it's just not as fun. Also there is lag. And quite a bit. Kind of annoying. After all that, I'm thinking about buying a time card.

 

[jay_boyo]

Personally I belive that its mainly Blizzards own fault for why people revert to private servers and thats partly becuase of the cost of the subscription. Paying around £100 a year ($140 a year) for the monthly subscription, for many people is just too much, I personally know about 20 - 30 people who dont play wow mainly down to the fact that it just costs too much. After all what other options do you have ? play something that isnt as good, dont play anything at all or play on a private server. I know that there are goign to be large costs to running the wow servers but the fact that they make millions more than what they need to is a bit over the top, when if they would just lower the price of it then people wont need to go over to the private servers, meaning more registered users for Blizzard, which then means more paying customers, so then they wouldnt loose out on any money.This would then Lower the popularity of the private servers and raising the popularity of theirs.