Blizzard Servers Attacked Following Shutdown Of WoW’s Nostalrius Servers

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This story reminds me of those days back in grade school when some kid would get mad and decide that, if he can't play a game, no one else can play either. The difference here is that people are upset over Blizzard forcing an unauthorized private server to shut down. So, if those people couldn't play, they made sure legitimate Wow players couldn't either. :(

Not everyone has taken a diplomatic approach to the servers being shut down. Legendary troll group, Lizard Squad, has been paid to attack Blizzard’s game servers. However, they don’t explicit say if it’s in response to the shut down of Nostalrius. Blizzard noted that there are no attacks on user account data, and this is all an attempt to prevent people from logging in and playing StarCraft, Diablo and World of Warcraft.
 
What a bunch of a-holes.

That's all it is. Whiney little bitches that can't play so they are making it so that others can't play. Damn babies.
 
That article said "could be in response to"...there was nothing definitive in that article that the group responsible came out and said they were doing it because of Nostalrius....misleading article is misleading.
 
I had a lot of fun re-living the glory days of WoW with my brother.

we were around lvl 42 on nostralius and having fun. really sad to see it go.
 
Andross182 said:
That article said "could be in response to"...there was nothing definitive in that article that the group responsible came out and said they were doing it because of Nostalrius....misleading article is misleading.
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Do you honestly believe those script kiddies had another reason?
 
I don't see why Blizzard is willing to alienate consumers by shutting these down. If I were to play the game right now; all I would want is vanilla. I would NOT want any of the noob-catering, lowest common denominator, world of pandas, free max-level characters, care-bear bullshit they added in the expansions.
 
Hey, at least they have some idea of maybe why. Usually when my servers get a DDoS, ihnfc why.
 
Normally, I'd be side with the developer. But they are essentially being assholes to their customers.



Jontron covered this a bit and blizzard are truly cunts for pulling c&ding vanilla world of war craft.
 
jonathonball said:
I don't see why Blizzard is willing to alienate consumers by shutting these down. If I were to play the game right now; all I would want is vanilla. I would NOT want any of the noob-catering, lowest common denominator, world of pandas, free max-level characters, care-bear bullshit they added in the expansions.
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Back in my day, we called them trammies. Fuckin trammies.
 
viscountalpha said:
Normally, I'd be side with the developer. But they are essentially being assholes to their customers.
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So, making everyone else that wants to play not able to play is the answer? That won't get you much support from the company nor the gamers that were shut out of playing.

Not saying Blizzard is in the right at all. Just the reaction is a bit BS. You won't let me play? Then I won't let anyone else play. I'm taking my toys and going home. It's a rage quit.
 
How can they be customers if Blizzard is not getting paid? No matter how much I dislike Blizzard for doing so, they are absolute right.

If they love vanilla WoW so much, create a similar damn game and offer it as donation based online game privately.

The world is full of entitled idiots these days. How did we get to this point? Maybe we all need to have an apocalypse so we end up back to hunter/gathering days where everyone have to contribute just to eat.
 
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Ur_Mom said:
So, making everyone else that wants to play not able to play is the answer? That won't get you much support from the company nor the gamers that were shut out of playing.

Not saying Blizzard is in the right at all. Just the reaction is a bit BS. You won't let me play? Then I won't let anyone else play. I'm taking my toys and going home. It's a rage quit.
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Obviously not everyone involved with Nostalrius is responsible for this. But at the same time you have to understand peoples frustration. Current WoD is a casual mess. They had a Facebook game they called Garrisons, where you got to command NPCs to go out and do missions. They even introduced selfies in WoD. The game is super easy. Like run up to anything in the world and it instantly dies. The elites take a few more hits to die.

Blizzard isn't obviously listening, so a bunch of people got together and made a realm specifically for Vanilla. For a lot of people, that's when WOW was at it's best. Blizzard said they would never create realms specifically to relive old versions of WoW. So for free, the people of Nostalrius made an accurate working Vanilla WoW. You can't buy this experience from Blizzard, so taking this server away is going to leave a lot of people butt hurt. From what I hear the realm could be just moving to Russia, so it maybe back up and running soon.
 
Well if this action was a result of Blizzard shutting down an independently run and free fan supported vanilla server that Blizzard would not supply to their customers, Blizzard could just as easily allow the servers and none of this would happen. It does not harm them financially and the customers who want to play the expansions can do it on the official servers. Everyone was happy with that until Blizzard shut down the independent server. So, it would seem Blizzard is in the best position to stop this. Expecting everyone in a large community to all act appropriately is a bit Pollyanna in thinking.
 
snowcrash said:
How can they be customers if Blizzard is not getting paid? No matter how much I dislike Blizzard for doing so, they are absolute right.

If they love vanilla WoW so much, create a similar damn game and offer it as donation based online game privately.

The world is full of entitled idiots these days. How did we get to this point? Maybe we all need to have an apocalypse so we end up back to hunter/gathering days where everyone have to contribute just to eat.
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Why should they have to develop the game they want to play if it already exists? I have no vested interests in any MMO game or Blizzard, but if Blizzard refuses to offer the option for individuals to play the vanilla version of the game, why can't some other entity set up a server to do so? The game has changed so much over the years, would that even compete with the retail game? What I don't understand is that many people have been begging for Blizzard to allow people to play the vanilla version of the game, and if some random folks got together to put up a vanilla server, why can't Blizzard? There's clearly a market for it.

This is where things get tricky with games today. When a game is at the end of life (and since vanilla WoW is no longer officially playable, is that considered end of life?), what can people do to play them?
 
jcollett69 said:
Well if this action was a result of Blizzard shutting down an independently run and free fan supported vanilla server that Blizzard would not supply to their customers, Blizzard could just as easily allow the servers and none of this would happen. It does not harm them financially and the customers who want to play the expansions can do it on the official servers. Everyone was happy with that until Blizzard shut down the independent server. So, it would seem Blizzard is in the best position to stop this. Expecting everyone in a large community to all act appropriately is a bit Pollyanna in thinking.
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I'm pretty sure the reason is that if Blizzard allows this server then they will not have the law on their side to shutdown other truly illegal servers. The court will use this example to tell Blizzard they cannot play favorites.
Killa_2327 said:
Why should they have to develop the game they want to play if it already exists? I have no vested interests in any MMO game or Blizzard, but if Blizzard refuses to offer the option for individuals to play the vanilla version of the game, why can't some other entity set up a server to do so? The game has changed so much over the years, would that even compete with the retail game? What I don't understand is that many people have been begging for Blizzard to allow people to play the vanilla version of the game, and if some random folks got together to put up a vanilla server, why can't Blizzard? There's clearly a market for it.
This is where things get tricky with games today. When a game is at the end of life (and since vanilla WoW is no longer officially playable, is that considered end of life?), what can people do to play them?
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Because this is Blizzard's game and they are still creating new contents. It is nowhere near end of life to them.
 
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Execs at Blizzard thinking that they are going to get some customers from this is the real problem. If they really wanted to get these customers they would create vanilla servers and then send a cease and desist. Doing things the way they did just pisses people off and most people aren't rational these days. We like to think we are rational but most people are crazy passive aggressive narcissist, especially on the internet. So when you do a dick move to 100k people guess what, a few them are going to be crazy people that do something irrational.
 
snowcrash said:
Because this is Blizzard's game and they are still creating new contents. It is nowhere near end of life to them.
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WoW is not at end of life, but vanilla WoW is. Why not just put up a vanilla server?

c@Nc3r said:
Execs at Blizzard thinking that they are going to get some customers from this is the real problem. If they really wanted to get these customers they would create vanilla servers and then send a cease and desist. Doing things the way they did just pisses people off and most people aren't rational these days. We like to think we are rational but most people are crazy passive aggressive narcissist, especially on the internet. So when you do a dick move to 100k people guess what, a few them are going to be crazy people that do something irrational.
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If they were smart they would put up a server. Even if it fails, at least they can say they tried and the market just wasn't there. If a bunch of no name people can do it and get 150k active players, how many would Blizzard get?
 
The fact that it's the Lizard Squad who's behind the DDoS pretty much ends the whole case of 'getting back at Blizzard', because the Lizard Squad is only interested in making a grandstand to advertise for their DDoS on demand services.
As for WoW, Blizzard's attitude is off-putting, but that's another story. The Activision subsidiary is not what Blizzard used to be.
 
Killa_2327 said:
WoW is not at end of life, but vanilla WoW is. Why not just put up a vanilla server?
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It is not in their best interest to do so and the most current content is what everyone should be playing are their usual responses.

My solution to Blizzard would be to "contract out" to server operators like this but force all players that want to play there to also be a current paying customer with Blizzard. That way Blizzard still get paid and have none of the headaches of maintaining separate servers. The contractors will get paid through donations.

Now that we're back to money, these private servers will no longer be popular as they are not free anymore. Because, let's face it, only a small number of players donated to this private server. That alone says everything.
 
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jonathonball said:
I don't see why Blizzard is willing to alienate consumers by shutting these down. If I were to play the game right now; all I would want is vanilla. I would NOT want any of the noob-catering, lowest common denominator, world of pandas, free max-level characters, care-bear bullshit they added in the expansions.
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As stated in below quote as well the problem is those servers generally allow people with illegal versions of the game to play, aka pirated copies which end user paid no money for. WoW is a pay to play game that you gotta pay per month and that server running allows players to play the game without paying for it.

snowcrash said:
I'm pretty sure the reason is that if Blizzard allows this server then they will not have the law on their side to shutdown other truly illegal servers. The court will use this example to tell Blizzard they cannot play favorites.
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Well if blizzard said that it was a known good server that doesn't steal details or put people as risk they could allow it. They can enforce law on a server as they please letting 1 go if they see it as a good thing then killing off ones that are just there to allow people to play online without even buying a legit retail game copy.

Blizzard has and had every right to shut down those server. Its their game and their choice if they allow 3rd party online servers to exists or crush them.
 
darrpara said:
Ahh, UO. Atlantic beta -> 2000 here.

Every game is basically Trammel now. Rust is kinda fun in terms of messing with people though..
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Napa Valley since 2000!

And this is so true! As someone involved with developing online games, it is incredibly frustrating to see the trend. I lack the tools to effectively argue my position on this and am often labeled as being too Hardcore in a gaming industry that is no longer Hardcore.
 
Juason1 said:
Napa Valley since 2000!

And this is so true! As someone involved with developing online games, it is incredibly frustrating to see the trend. I lack the tools to effectively argue my position on this and am often labeled as being too Hardcore in a gaming industry that is no longer Hardcore.
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Nice, I actually played freeshards (IPY/Metropolis/Rel Por) for years but stopped about 3 or 4 years ago.
I basically quit MMORPGs because of it. I basically play only sc2 and BF4 with friends now (all ex UO players) because suddenly there just wasn't a place for us anymore. I'm not asking for every game to be 100% cutthroat but the RISK of losing your stuff and even your HOUSE is what made games fun. We've been tooling around a bit in Rust though and it seems pretty fun.
 
I played on this server a number of months before stopping a while back. It was a very good server overall and the PvP realm atleast had a very sizable (and sometimes annoying) population. It felt basically 100% like vanilla. Even though I quit playing, because I didn't want it to consume me like it used to, the Nostalrius private server felt completely legit. Fuck Blizzard. I used to be their biggest fanboy too.
 
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Also this server didn't have any gimmicks, like "pay to win" or increased XP, it was a purely legit experience. Was awesome.
 
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Arbit3r said:
As stated in below quote as well the problem is those servers generally allow people with illegal versions of the game to play, aka pirated copies which end user paid no money for. WoW is a pay to play game that you gotta pay per month and that server running allows players to play the game without paying for it.
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I get that but this is a version of the game that there is obviously a market for and they flat out refuse to provide it. Instead of dropping huge legal ban hammers and pissing off their customers; they should just pick a little goodwill off the "not just in this for the $$$" tree and work with communities like Nostalrius.
 
jonathonball said:
I get that but this is a version of the game that there is obviously a market for and they flat out refuse to provide it. Instead of dropping huge legal ban hammers and pissing off their customers; they should just pick a little goodwill off the "not just in this for the $$$" tree and work with communities like Nostalrius.
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It may not entirely be Blizzard's decision though, as they are no longer their own company, they may have their strings pulled.
 
To everyone saying blizzard is being aholes to their customers.

1. the people running the code got their hands on code that SHOULD NOT BE OUT THERE. It is Blizzards IP and they do not have a right to use it.

2. Blizzard isn't doing anything wrong. These people are NOT blizzard customers. They are downloading free versions of the client to play a version of the game they don't pay blizzard for.

So stop saying blizzard is alienating customers. That simply isn't the truth.
 
jonathonball said:
I get that but this is a version of the game that there is obviously a market for and they flat out refuse to provide it. Instead of dropping huge legal ban hammers and pissing off their customers; they should just pick a little goodwill off the "not just in this for the $$$" tree and work with communities like Nostalrius.
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So because they don't want their product to be that way anymore it is okay for people to steal the server code and play for free. So money changed hands and blizzard/activision saw none of it for this group. That is what sparks the legal department. Yes I do think there is money to be made with blizzard doing this but honestly, if there was a paid version to come out after an established 'free' one, then how would they entice customers? Not to mention you could also play on these servers without even buying the original game. It was bound to happen.
 
Darunion said:
So because they don't want their product to be that way anymore it is okay for people to steal the server code and play for free. So money changed hands and blizzard/activision saw none of it for this group. That is what sparks the legal department. Yes I do think there is money to be made with blizzard doing this but honestly, if there was a paid version to come out after an established 'free' one, then how would they entice customers? Not to mention you could also play on these servers without even buying the original game. It was bound to happen.
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It's not really a black and white situation. I think both sides have points. On one hand, you're right, Blizzard can't really back down from a legal perspective, so they are justified in shutting it down. On the other hand, they refuse to sell something their customers want and have already paid money for in the past, but they just happen to have the luck to be able to continue running it illigitimately, I certainly can't fault the players for that. By Blizzard enforcing their "rights", it's actively leading to the destruction of a unique game. I think the people running it have every moral right to do so in the name of art preservation, but not legally.

Think of it this way, if we always respected publisher "rights" to destroy their own games, a LOT of gaming history would have been lost today, easily hundreds if not thousands of games. This is more of that same conflict.
 
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tetris42 said:
It's not really a black and white situation. I think both sides have points. On one hand, you're right, Blizzard can't really back down from a legal perspective, so they are justified in shutting it down. On the other hand, they refuse to sell something their customers want and have already paid money for in the past, but they just happen to have the luck to be able to continue running it illigitimately, I certainly can't fault the players for that. By Blizzard enforcing their "rights", it's actively leading to the destruction of a unique game. I think the people running it have every moral right to do so in the name of art preservation, but not legally.

Think of it this way, if we always respected publisher "rights" to destroy their own games, a LOT of gaming history would have been lost today, easily hundreds if not thousands of games. This is more of that same conflict.
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I don't think we can mix the mod mentality with the MMO scene or multiplayer environment. There are always going to be some small group of people that want something that the developer didn't provide (especially for titles with tens of millions of users). In a single player game most companies will permit people to modify their games to accommodate their desires (kind of a don't ask don't tell thing) and as long as the modder doesn't sell their work (violating the companies IP and licensing agreements) then things are cool. In the multiplayer environments that operate off of servers it is a different animal completely. The user license doesn't extend to the server environment (even when that software might be in the installation folders). There is no legal right for someone to say that they didn't get what they wanted so they are going to modify someone else's IP to try and create something that satisfies the wants of a fraction of percent of the game's user base. That said, I think Blizzard should have offered them a deal like paying 1,000,000/yr to Blizz as a limited license fee rather than just shutting them down. They would have still shut down since they would likely not pay the fee but Blizzard would have shown their willingness to work with them.
 
kbrickley said:
I don't think we can mix the mod mentality with the MMO scene or multiplayer environment. There are always going to be some small group of people that want something that the developer didn't provide (especially for titles with tens of millions of users). In a single player game most companies will permit people to modify their games to accommodate their desires (kind of a don't ask don't tell thing) and as long as the modder doesn't sell their work (violating the companies IP and licensing agreements) then things are cool. In the multiplayer environments that operate off of servers it is a different animal completely. The user license doesn't extend to the server environment (even when that software might be in the installation folders). There is no legal right for someone to say that they didn't get what they wanted so they are going to modify someone else's IP to try and create something that satisfies the wants of a fraction of percent of the game's user base. That said, I think Blizzard should have offered them a deal like paying 1,000,000/yr to Blizz as a limited license fee rather than just shutting them down. They would have still shut down since they would likely not pay the fee but Blizzard would have shown their willingness to work with them.
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I wasn't even thinking of modding actually. My point was a LOT of old games only even exist now (or are even documented) because of piracy. The parent companies either didn't give a damn or would have stopped people if they could. I see this as the same thing. I think the fans are totally justified trying to set up a server for the original style since Blizzard refuses to. Again, without them, experiencing WoW in its original state is impossible. So it really does come down to a matter of preserving a game v. respecting the rights of one of the richest game companies on the planet. Blizzard has made it clear the two aren't compatable. However, the people running the server also shouldn't be surprised by the lawyers coming after them.

I see this as similar to pirated copies of the original Star Wars making their way around the internet back while Lucas was determined to only release the "enhanced" copies. The fans wanted the original experience they knew and loved, Lucas didn't, thus piracy.
 
tetris42 said:
I wasn't even thinking of modding actually. My point was a LOT of old games only even exist now (or are even documented) because of piracy. The parent companies either didn't give a damn or would have stopped people if they could. I see this as the same thing. I think the fans are totally justified trying to set up a server for the original style since Blizzard refuses to. Again, without them, experiencing WoW in its original state is impossible. So it really does come down to a matter of preserving a game v. respecting the rights of one of the richest game companies on the planet. Blizzard has made it clear the two aren't compatable. However, the people running the server also shouldn't be surprised by the lawyers coming after them.

I see this as similar to pirated copies of the original Star Wars making their way around the internet back while Lucas was determined to only release the "enhanced" copies. The fans wanted the original experience they knew and loved, Lucas didn't, thus piracy.
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I see your point but the problem arises when the game is still currently available and is something that has to be paid for. After a game expires, perhaps that would become acceptable. The "I want something and someone says I can't have it so I will do it anyways" is not a good legal defense. They knew the risk they took and this is the result. You will never be able to make everyone happy with a game, that doesn't automatically give the unhappy ones the right to host their own version of the game, you are in fact free to create your own game that would be exactly what you want. I would love a server locked at BC but I am not willing to risk legal litigation just to satisfy my desire.
 
Reverse engineering server code and running a private server based on that entirely reverse-engineered code is perfectly legal. The issue of legality comes into play when private servers are running official server code which was pirated somehow, usually leaked by some disgruntled employee. Also, asking for any type of money for the server starts getting into a very tricky legal dilemma. I'm not familiar with Nostalrius but usually when a private server reaches a certain size the team starts to slip up and make some legal mistakes, perhaps using some donation money to hire some admins for maintenance. Also any user connecting to a private server is breaking the EULA, though the only legal action that can be taken in that case is banning them from connecting to the official servers.

You have to be very very careful to run a private server without getting in the crosshairs of a paralegal team.
You can accept donations but you can't ask for them in any way.
You can't host the client and can't tell people to modify their client's files in any way in order to connect.
If you are going to ignore all these things you have to make sure you host the server and website in a place where the paralegal team has no jurisdiction or grounds for legal action.

The admins at Nostalrius slipped up in some way. It's their own fault, can't really blame Blizzard.
 
In the end it's Blizzard's IP. Hacking, modding, reverse engineering, redeploying, etc are all off the table if the game company indicates so. You are not entitled to just wholesale hijack their IP.


Scizyr said:
Reverse engineering server code and running a private server based on that entirely reverse-engineered code is perfectly legal. [...]
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Citation?
 
tetris42 said:
I wasn't even thinking of modding actually. My point was a LOT of old games only even exist now (or are even documented) because of piracy. The parent companies either didn't give a damn or would have stopped people if they could. I see this as the same thing. I think the fans are totally justified trying to set up a server for the original style since Blizzard refuses to. Again, without them, experiencing WoW in its original state is impossible. So it really does come down to a matter of preserving a game v. respecting the rights of one of the richest game companies on the planet. Blizzard has made it clear the two aren't compatable. However, the people running the server also shouldn't be surprised by the lawyers coming after them.

I see this as similar to pirated copies of the original Star Wars making their way around the internet back while Lucas was determined to only release the "enhanced" copies. The fans wanted the original experience they knew and loved, Lucas didn't, thus piracy.
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You are trying to couch this as an abandonware issue and I don't think that is the best analogy. True abandonware that a company no longer supports because of its age or because the company is no longer in business should have more user protections (up to a point). This is an active product that is still being supported and upgraded, but a certain small percentage of the user base is resisting change and trying to hold onto the original and out of date software releases. If down the road Blizzard finally closes off the the WoW servers so there is no longer an active product then I would support these bootleg servers as meeting the abandonware requirements (and be deserving of protections), but not while Blizzard still has an actively supported product.
 
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