Xojins said:
DirkGently said:
Xojins said:
DirkGently said:
Xojins said:
Thespamanator said:
Xojins said:
That's like asking whether or not Open Battle.net should be banned from Diablo II. But no, it shouldn't. The private servers aren't causing any problems, so why worry?
The way some people look at it is that Blizzard is loosing an extra $15 a month for every player that plays on private servers. This might not seem like much, but that's $15 x 12 = $180 per year per EACH person that plays on private servers.
Sure, you could look at it like that. But really, the amount of money they're losing is negligible, considering their millions of paying members.
Those that play on private servers also don't get to interact with the millions of others that are on the public servers, so they don't get the same experience.
Wait, how are they losing money? If you're not using their servers, you're not costing them anything. That's like saying everybody who plays Guild Wars is costing them money because they're not playing WoW.
No it's not. WoW is supposed to have a monthly fee in order to play, so playing on private servers for free technically is losing them money. Guild Wars is a completely different game.
Look at it this way. Louis buys WoW to see what all the hype is about. He plays for the free month that comes with the game but decides it's not his thing and decides to instead play Guild Wars.
Louis does not cost Blizzard anything.
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.
Zoey plays Guild Wars. She doesn't ever play Blizzard money, but doesn't use any of their games. She costs them no money.
Louis - It's called a free trial. They give those out to anyone in hopes that they will want to continue playing with their character on a public public server, which they would have to pay for. Also, it does cost Blizzard something, but they are gaining so much more that it doesn't matter in the long run.
Bill (Francis as well, I guess) - Ok, he can level faster, but he can't use the same character on different servers (unless he pays to have it transferred). The subscription money goes to pay for game upgrades, or rather a small portion of that money: the money that isn't just schlurped up by the CEOs or whoever. Therefore, the people who play on private servers aren't contributing to this, so yea they're losing money.
Zoe: Irrelevant.
Louis didn't buy that two dollar trial disc. He bought the box copy of the game from his local games store. This costs like $20 and gives you an install disc which should have the majority of patches already on it, and when you activate an account with that CD Key, you get one month of game time. Louis uses this time, and only this time, and then he decides to play something else. He costs Blizzard nothing because they give him that time.
Bill & Francis aren't *costing* Blizzard any money. Private servers are not run by Blizzard, and they don't cost Blizzard anything. Francis and Louis bought legitimate box copies of the game from their local games store, and have only played on Blizzards servers with an active subscription. They're playing on a private server does not cost Blizzard any money. Since they're not paying for access to that server, they're just playing a game they bought.
Zoe: You insisted that by not giving Blizzard money, they were costing them money. Ergo, relevant.
I mean, it's all moot since private servers are against the WoW ToS, but seeing as how plentiful they are and how many ranking circle jerks there are, and how many of them aren't being slapped with Cease and Desist orders or being subpeona'd, Blizzard is clearly too busy making D3, SC2, and WoW: Level 90 and More Broke-Ass-Characters to care about them.