Blizzard Shuts Down Legacy WoW Fan Server Hours After It Goes Up

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monkeymagick

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In what took only a matter of 5 hours, Blizzard quickly brought down the hammer on a WoW fan-made private server. Trying to recreate what the World of Warcraft servers were like during the Burning Crusade expansion, many fans were anticipating the launch. Blizzard lawyers delivered a cease-and-desist to Gummy52, creator of the Felmyst fan server. Posted on the servers homepage is a message to the fans and disappointment as it took Gummy52 four years to develop.

Unfortunately, the company does not provide any vanilla-type server, but has stated it is something they are looking into. Several fans seek the "vanilla" flavor and feel the newer updates are missing the "old-school" experience.

"Our client's copyrights are extremely valuable and Blizzard takes this matter very seriously," the letter continues. "As you can appreciate, your activity causes serious and irreparable injury to the value and integrity of our client's products and intellectual property."
 
That sucks, but honestly, Blizzard has a long track record of exploiting fan developers. They either incorporate their work and call it their own, or they shut it down and claim copyright infringement. In this case, it might end up being both.
 
If this goes any way like the multiple mods they've integrated into their game over the years, they'll take this guy's work, find a way to take out what people really liked about it, and implement it in such a way that nobody is happy. Then they'll come back in a blue post saying 'hey, we tried, but a vocal minority are always complaining'.

Then again, I quit playing because it still costs money every month in a world where that doesn't really work as well (for me) anymore.
 
Gotta host in Russia or somewhere. A friend of mine plays on a server that has thousands of people active at any given time. I believe it is actually hosted in Russia.
 
Just another big name company crapping all over the modding scene....not surprised considering its Blizzard / Activision.
 
While I feel bad for this guy I also understand Blizzards POV.

This guy, most likely without permission from Blizzard used software they developed as a means to make money, then decided to modify said code and then put it on a free to play server without any compensation to the original developer of the software.

As a developer and company I'd be upset too. Spend countless man hours and hundreds of thousands if not millions developing and implementing to try and make money only to see some guy turn around and give it away for free.

Regardless of the games age and if Blizzard is making any money off of this expansion is moot, once they allow something like this to happen it opens the doors for other modders to follow suit with the rest of the expansions.
 
Usual_suspect said:
While I feel bad for this guy I also understand Blizzards POV.

This guy, most likely without permission from Blizzard used software they developed as a means to make money, then decided to modify said code and then put it on a free to play server without any compensation to the original developer of the software.

As a developer and company I'd be upset too. Spend countless man hours and hundreds of thousands if not millions developing and implementing to try and make money only to see some guy turn around and give it away for free.

Regardless of the games age and if Blizzard is making any money off of this expansion is moot, once they allow something like this to happen it opens the doors for other modders to follow suit with the rest of the expansions.
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I agree with that. At the same time, it sucks for those of us who purchased a product which was altered and is now a shell of itself.

I worked for many years at a game development studio. Yet I understand both sides. Activision needs to protect their IP. There's also the matter that in order to make money, they've forced themselves into a position where they need to push players to new expansions in order to survive. Yet, if they had it alone or slightly altered the core game with improvements they wouldn't be in the position to begin with - while purchasers of their product and subscription service are left yearning for the good old days.

I miss Burning Crusade quite a bit. I no longer play wow and haven't for years due to expansion creep.
 
Unoid said:
companies want games as a SERVICE not as something you buy a copy of and do as you wish.

What really burns me is that FPS games will not include dedicated servers or they disallow modding.
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You see but that is a double edged sword, because people are not only paying for a subscription service they also purchase a copy of the game.
 
some games allows modding maps, so whats so different with this game, oh yea maybe cause of the stupid paid subscription, c'mon blizzard, let people play games for free, if you buy the game, you can play anytime you want online and offline.
 
zomby said:
some games allows modding maps, so whats so different with this game, oh yea maybe cause of the stupid paid subscription, c'mon blizzard, let people play games for free, if you buy the game, you can play anytime you want online and offline.
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This is a giant online game that was designed as online-only from the ground up. There's never been a way or a point to playing this type of game "offline".
 
Stopped playing when Blizzard introduced Panda Bears. Would love to play BC or LK again. Not at all interested in their new content. The game has become a shell of its former self. Good memories of the vanilla game. Shame Blizzard doesn't realize what their fans desire.
 
I do miss the old school talents and raiding, mostly. I despise that so many raids have to have everyone do everything exactly right or it wipes the group. (I played a healer in BWL, so I know how one person's stupid mistake can wipe a group.) These days, raiding is back to that perfection standard, while still missing the customization of the character that the old school talents allowed. So it's more of the worst of both worlds. I pretty much just solo these days, avoiding dungeons and raids, because I don't like paying for other people's stupidity and impatience. I miss the Wrath of the Lich King days, when it was the best of both worlds.
 
I really really loved raiding back in the day. First getting into Molten Core was great, but during BC when I was in Sunwell Plateau was the best. I was always amped for raid night even though it meant wiping over and over as we learned bosses. Plus M'uru was one tough mofo.
 
EODetroit said:
Vanilla private servers have been around nearly as long as WoW itself. What made this one so special?
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Gummy has been advertising his server for a while, and he opened it up here in USA. Most private servers are outside of USA to prevent any legal action being taken. Elysium and Warmane have been running for a while now and any C&D they get is just tossed into the trash.
 
dyzophoria said:
not sure what to feel, I hardly cant understand how he honestly thought that blizzard won't go after them once they where live
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There is a valid lesson here don't spend 4 years of your life developing something with someone's else IP without consent.

I can't even imagine how that guy feels now...
 
dgingeri said:
I do miss the old school talents and raiding, mostly. I despise that so many raids have to have everyone do everything exactly right or it wipes the group. (I played a healer in BWL, so I know how one person's stupid mistake can wipe a group.) These days, raiding is back to that perfection standard, while still missing the customization of the character that the old school talents allowed. So it's more of the worst of both worlds. I pretty much just solo these days, avoiding dungeons and raids, because I don't like paying for other people's stupidity and impatience. I miss the Wrath of the Lich King days, when it was the best of both worlds.
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I played in a top 100 guild during WotLK...the game was amazing. Forgiving enough for anybody to get decked with good with some effort but challenging enough that the very ultimate top tier gear was out of range for all but a few 1000 players. I love beating all the content on non-heroic but also enjoyed beating my head against a wall on heroic. It made making "lulz" so much more fun in non-heroic since you knew how to skirt that knifes edge. The next two content patches dropped and we were "done" in about 4 weeks...then 2 weeks...then why bother.
 
Trepidati0n said:
I played in a top 100 guild during WotLK...the game was amazing. Forgiving enough for anybody to get decked with good with some effort but challenging enough that the very ultimate top tier gear was out of range for all but a few 1000 players. I love beating all the content on non-heroic but also enjoyed beating my head against a wall on heroic. It made making "lulz" so much more fun in non-heroic since you knew how to skirt that knifes edge. The next two content patches dropped and we were "done" in about 4 weeks...then 2 weeks...then why bother.
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That's pretty much the story of MMOs. People seek challenge but also complain about it at the same time. Devs remove challenge to "help" and suck all of the fun out of the game.
 
I personally think Blizzard got it right in WotLK. Ulduar to me still has the best concept of switching between normal nand hard mode on bosses.

I'm not a fan of the whole "Raid normal, then raid heroic if you want better gear." I liked how if your raid group felt up for a challenge they could initiate hard mode by whatever mechanic, give it a shot and if it was too much dial back and continue on, not leave instance lower/raise difficulty and start from the beginning.

As I've grown throughout the years, the time I've been able to spend raiding has substantially been reduced so the whole "Raid normal for the lower geared folks, leave and start over on heroic to get the gear I want" is annoying and really a deterrent to me when it comes to raiding. I'm on the ring of cancelling my account altogether as it seems like Blizzard wants to force a reason to have people raiding the same content over and over and over without actually adding any meaningful content other than what should have been the default armor graphics, a higher ilvl, and a few extra boss mechanics that could have easily been implemented through a mid-raid switch of some sort for guilds to test their strength to see if they're capable or not.
 
DukenukemX said:
Gummy has been advertising his server for a while, and he opened it up here in USA. Most private servers are outside of USA to prevent any legal action being taken. Elysium and Warmane have been running for a while now and any C&D they get is just tossed into the trash.
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Man I need to roll up a toon on one.

Maybe this weekend if I get the desktop back together.

Then again, this laptop would probably run it fine. I don't remember if they had SLI support off the bat though I'm not sure how vanilla their severs are.
 
Usual_suspect said:
I personally think Blizzard got it right in WotLK. Ulduar to me still has the best concept of switching between normal nand hard mode on bosses.

I'm not a fan of the whole "Raid normal, then raid heroic if you want better gear." I liked how if your raid group felt up for a challenge they could initiate hard mode by whatever mechanic, give it a shot and if it was too much dial back and continue on, not leave instance lower/raise difficulty and start from the beginning.

As I've grown throughout the years, the time I've been able to spend raiding has substantially been reduced so the whole "Raid normal for the lower geared folks, leave and start over on heroic to get the gear I want" is annoying and really a deterrent to me when it comes to raiding. I'm on the ring of cancelling my account altogether as it seems like Blizzard wants to force a reason to have people raiding the same content over and over and over without actually adding any meaningful content other than what should have been the default armor graphics, a higher ilvl, and a few extra boss mechanics that could have easily been implemented through a mid-raid switch of some sort for guilds to test their strength to see if they're capable or not.
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Both BC and WoOtLK were pretty good!

Your post reminds me so much of OG EverQuest
 
I wasn't aware the clients had copyrights...here I thought they were just money donor's to the Blizzard Entertainment foundation of tinfoil hats.
 
Unoid said:
companies want games as a SERVICE not as something you buy a copy of and do as you wish.

What really burns me is that FPS games will not include dedicated servers or they disallow modding.
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Don't forget when they shut them down the game becomes bricked and you can't play it again, even if there are people still playing. Meanwhile, you can still play the original Quake multiplayerno problem. Gotta love centralized servers from companies that don't give a fuck...
 
Personally liked the way the older WoW was versus the newer. It gave you (out of the box) quite a bit of help with quests but never held your hand, during WOTLK you saw it everywhere.

The writing was on the wall all along, do the same thing 15 times in different areas until you cleared an area and moved on.

Gear power is bunk, always has been. I get it that people want domination through gear stats but you need to be able to have statistics such as pull locations, aggro etc. otherwise it's just the same thing over and over.
 
I tried playing on one of those free vanilla servers and it was kind of fun. But I quit vanilla wow back in the day around lvl 47 because of how childish it is, all I really wanted was a slightly cooler theme and maybe some blood effects. Something about slicing and hacking away on some creature and never seeing a hint of blood or injury really takes away a lot of fun for me.

I recently started playing EverQuest which is free to play now and I have to say it's pretty much everything I ever wanted when I played wow, I wish I had done EQ instead back then. Even though I do like playing it these days you can never beat the magic when you are younger and the game is still relatively cutting edge.
 
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