Blizzard hands major private WOW servers DMCA.

[elbert]

Many a private servers have shutdown which include Wowscape, Toxic-WoW, burning wow, WoWGasm, Chaos Crusade, and WoW Fusion. Using an outside law firm targeting Softlayer hosted private servers. This however is a waste as blizzard can not take action against the emulation makers or database teams. Thus new servers will replace those taken down. I can only guess this is an attempted to boost Christmas sales due to timing. Due to blizzards high monthly cost these private servers wouldn't exist and until they change pricing it only furthers the problem.
http://www.conflictwarcraft.com/Dec3LtrtoSoftlayer.pdf

Up until now there has been only 2 open emulations for WOW. Mangos and arcemu currently can hold upwards of only a thousand players for an uptime of 2~10 hours. Wowscape which can hold upwards of 8 thousand players per realm due the emulator summit may see leaked code. Its own open source community may evolve and summit has uptimes of over 10 hours.

 

[purplerat]

Due to blizzards high monthly cost these private servers wouldn't exist and until they change pricing it only furthers the problem.

I highly doubt monthly costs has anything to do with people playing on private WoW servers. People who play on these servers are doing so because they are the type of people who like to do that type of thing. Even if WoW was free they would still want to play on their own private servers and avoid Blizzard's altogether.

I agree that it's a little silly for Blizzard to go after them, but what the hey it's their money.

 

[elbert]

Due to blizzards high monthly cost these private servers wouldn't exist and until they change pricing it only furthers the problem.

I highly doubt monthly costs has anything to do with people playing on private WoW servers. People who play on these servers are doing so because they are the type of people who like to do that type of thing. Even if WoW was free they would still want to play on their own private servers and avoid Blizzard's altogether.

I agree that it's a little silly for Blizzard to go after them, but what the hey it's their money.

currently it would cost over $74 just for the first month. That is the battle chest and the wotlk. For one year then adding $15 times 11 months a player would pay $165. $239 for one full year is crazy for this older game. Would you go to the theater and pay same price ever month to watch a single movie with only a few extra minute added?

No they play private because they are addicted but can no longer pay or justify the monthly cost.

They wouldn't play on private servers that crash ever 2~4 hours if retail was free. They get very pissed having to put up with all the bugs and broken quests on private servers. Some play private to only go back to retail for the expansions. Most have purchased the game and private servers only keep them addicted so they will return during expansions. I wouldn't lump those playing private servers in a group as thieves if thats your stereotype.

Blizzard should look at a more reasonable $3~5 monthly fee with maybe a $8~10 vip, no waiting line, monthly.

 

[Kraynor]

Personally I don't think WoW's expensive. For $15 a month I get more game time than I do out of $20+ pc console games that last about 3 weeks before feeling old and tired, at which point I go out and buy another game. With WoW, any other pc or console game lasts at least a month, so I can very happily justify paying for WoW.

As for Private servers, part of it's the same reason people use cheats in games, download trainers, things like that; to be able to breeze through quickly and easily. Private servers usually let you go over the level cap and acquire items far better than what's available normally, giving the player a feeling of massive return for little investment, whereas on the official servers you have to spend a good amount of time to get better.

Bottom line is some people are just too lazy to play the game and want quick and easy routes to the end. Others do it to gloat about huge achievements to friends that play retail who couldn't hope to achieve the same. And then, of course, some just don't want to spend any money. That last group probably downloads games on a regular basis anyway, why pay when you can get it free?

 

[purplerat]

Get a job children. $15 a month is not a lot of money. That's .50 a day. To put that in terms of a paycheck that means showing up to work 5 minutes early every day if you make minimum wage.

Lowering the cost would ruin the game for us adults because servers would get swamped and like you said you would eventually have to pay more for a "VIP" account but the game would still suck due to overpopulation just like every other free/cheap MMO.

I do agree with Kraynor that private servers are more about cheats, hacks, getting to see end game content etc. Of all the people I know that play WoW, which is quite a few, nobody has ever suggest playing on a private server because the game cost too much. But friends of mine have suggested putting one together for the above listed reasons.

 

[Kraynor]

Just to add another point that occured to me while on guild chat...

Private servers miss out on 1 huge aspect of WoW - the community in game, and those that spawn around it. By that, I mean sites like ElitistJerks, and the official WoW forums. Personlly I've had more fun in game because of people I've met on these sites, and have built up a good circle of friends in game through encounters on the forums.

I'll even give the extreme example and say some people have even ended up with a marriage over meeting people in game, and that's their choice. I wouldn't get that deeply into the game, but some people do.

 

[elbert]

Just to add another point that occured to me while on guild chat...

Private servers miss out on 1 huge aspect of WoW - the community in game, and those that spawn around it. By that, I mean sites like ElitistJerks, and the official WoW forums. Personlly I've had more fun in game because of people I've met on these sites, and have built up a good circle of friends in game through encounters on the forums.

I'll even give the extreme example and say some people have even ended up with a marriage over meeting people in game, and that's their choice. I wouldn't get that deeply into the game, but some people do.

Sorry to point this out but all these good things occurs on private servers. You can even see pics of wedding performed on private servers. The servers have there forums and many of the guilds have there own sites. Only the blizzlike realms that hackers get reported get large populations. Check out the top 100 private servers and link to there sites. Those 100 sites easily support a population of 5 million.

Hackers, bots, and gold farms have all had there days on retail and continue to play. Power levelers and gold farmers continue to sale on retail. All the bad things you throw at private server also occurred on retail.

Point is don't rock it till you tried it. These servers are well funded by players paying one time $50 for vip which gives teleport or the blizzcon items. Some private servers gives levels and or gold for donations but those are the lower population servers. Population takes away from those servers that give out any over powered items.

Does population take way from those retail servers that have power levelers and gold farmers? I would count this as massive return for little investment and to be able to breeze through quickly and easily,

@purplerat
Only a child wouldn't understand that $15, in some country's, is pay for a year. In the USA only a child wouldn't understand that is a car payment or a house payment. Given the current state of the housing market I can see now that funneling your money out in low payments put most Americans in trouble on the big ones. Have you heard that when an adult give up childish things. Stop your stereotyping because it only makes you look childish.

Understand with a much high population blizzard ends up making more and can have more servers. More servers the better deal they can get on hosting. What about the extra box sets they will sale for this higher population.

How many children are playing on runescape for $5 and what about microsoft ads on wow? Is blizzard going to cut prices due to forcing players to look at these ads? Currently it would cost a new player more than when it was cutting edge graphics over 2 years ago.

Point is they shouldn't have waste stock holders money on lawyers and just make there game more attractively priced.

 

[purplerat]

@purplerat
Only a child wouldn't understand that $15, in some country's, is pay for a year. In the USA only a child wouldn't understand that is a car payment or a house payment. Given the current state of the housing market I can see now that funneling your money out in low payments put most Americans in trouble on the big ones. Have you heard that when an adult give up childish things. Stop your stereotyping because it only makes you look childish.

If you only make $15 a year, or if $15 is the difference between your car payment or housing payment, or food, heating education, etc. Then you should not be playing WoW in the first place. You shouldn't even be owning a PC that can run WoW or having a broadband internet access.

Gaming is a luxury. If $15 a month is too much then you don't get to enjoy it. There are plenty of free MMOs out there so why don't you play them if WoW is too expensive?

Understand with a much high population blizzard ends up making more and can have more servers. More servers the better deal they can get on hosting. What about the extra box sets they will sale for this higher population.

Obviously you don't have a whole lot of business sense. There is always an upper limit to how many customers you can support. WoW already has a massive population. If they cut the cost to 1/3 then they would have to more than triple the population to make it worth while, and that would take a huge expansion of support resources (employees, servers etc) not knowing if they would even get that many new players. Even then they would still be making just about the same as they are now. So they would have to get several times more new players to justify a $5/month fee. Probably somewhere in the ballpark of 50 million+ subscribers.
Blizzard's not dumb enough to take that risk. It's a difficult edge to walk for any business. You either invest too much and get a poor return-on-investment or you under invest and get squashed by your own success. For Blizzard, why fix something that's not broke?

Point is they shouldn't have waste stock holders money on lawyers and just make there game more attractively priced.

I agree, but in what possible way do the three preceding paragraphs do anything to support this point? If anything you contradict yourself by showing concern for the Blizzard share holders who would also stand to lose if WoW's fee was lowered.

 

[elbert]

If you only make $15 a year, or if $15 is the difference between your car payment or housing payment, or food, heating education, etc. Then you should not be playing WoW in the first place. You shouldn't even be owning a PC that can run WoW or having a broadband internet access.


Gaming is a luxury. If $15 a month is too much then you don't get to enjoy it. There are plenty of free MMOs out there so why don't you play them if WoW is too expensive?

LOL I was speaking of the cost of a year which that payment for one month for a car or house. I think $237 for one month is a reasonable payment even in the USA. Yup one free MMO is private WOW. A $30 PC single core, 512mb's of ram, and with any nvidia or amd integrated gpu will run WOW that company's will almost give way as junk.

Obviously you don't have a whole lot of business sense. There is always an upper limit to how many customers you can support. WoW already has a massive population. If they cut the cost to 1/3 then they would have to more than triple the population to make it worth while, and that would take a huge expansion of support resources (employees, servers etc) not knowing if they would even get that many new players. Even then they would still be making just about the same as they are now. So they would have to get several times more new players to justify a $5/month fee. Probably somewhere in the ballpark of 50 million+ subscribers.
Blizzard's not dumb enough to take that risk. It's a difficult edge to walk for any business. You either invest too much and get a poor return-on-investment or you under invest and get squashed by your own success. For Blizzard, why fix something that's not broke?

Guess my BBA was given to me by your standards. That upper limit is the lowest elastic range while making a profit. No they don't have to sale 3 times to make up for 1/3 the price. They would get better deals on hosting with more servers. blizzard would sale more box sets and they would need not pay lawyers to just waste money.
Blizzard is dumb enough to risk a wow killer coming in with lower prices. They have nothing in development to combat a WOW killer. Its broke or they wouldn't be resorting to lawyers.

I agree, but in what possible way do the three preceding paragraphs do anything to support this point? If anything you contradict yourself by showing concern for the Blizzard share holders who would also stand to lose if WoW's fee was lowered

Shareholders loss if high prices angers loyal customers. Shareholders loss if a WOW killer comes out for the same price and Blizzard has no time to lower price. Lowering the price now is better business sense to hold customers than waiting to late. Shareholders loss if Runescape increases there graphics to meet WOWs. The threats are there and real. If you dont see them in what i wrote then its you that doesn't have a lot of business sense.

 

[purplerat]

Guess my BBA was given to me by your standards.

Nor did it come with much in the way of an English curriculum. Besides that, are you really arguing that Blizzard has a poor business model with WoW?

Ok Mr. BBA, look at this:

[From http://www.mmogchart.com/]

Where is Blizzard even going to get new players from? They could get a 100% market share and still not double their subscription base. Oh and by the way, this is a 4 year old game and still dominating unlike any other game in any other genre. Right now they are just printing money with this game and Blizzard itself is just waiting for WoW to start slipping so that they can release the next big MMO (Starcraft, Diablo, WoW2?). There's absolutely no reason from Blizzards perspective to lower subscription prices.

 

[gryph667]

@Elbert

They aren't wasting any cost on lawyers. They have had a legal team on retainer for years now. Additionally, in this very litigious era, coupled with the need to make sure that whatever they do in whatever foreign country they make the game available is legal, having lawyers on retainer and working is just necessary overhead.

Now lets dissect your statement that they can get discounts for more boxes in server farms. They already do that. Per live realm, how many boxes are involved? Hmm, let's see... Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, and instances. During Vanilla, that's 3 instances of the game running simultaneously, rendering three separate areas. With the release of BC, that adds a fourth instance of the game, assuming that they maintained the BC instances and raids on the same machine/prog running vanilla instances/raids. Now with Lich King, that's yet another "box" per realm. Let's assume highest efficiency, and assign a separate quad processor and bus per realm instance. That means for every live realm, there are FIVE boxes rendering that realm. For every new realm they add, which they do regularly, they add another 5 machines to their bill, capable of handling all of the connections required. This doesn't even take into account the authentication servers which we know are separate machines.

That is a lot of machines. Seems they are already maxed out on whatever discounts they can get, otherwise it would just be cheaper for them to buy the server farm themselves.

Bottom line, TANSTAAFL. For the kids out there, There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Anyone who thinks that the private servers were going to be left alone indefinitely don't get it. We're not talking about servers used by 6-30 people for the purpose of messing around, we're talking about setups involving a substantial number of people with websites and communities that, let's face it, were profiting from banner ads etc. Otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.

 

[Kraynor]

Don't forget that Arenas and Battlegroups run on seperate servers to the 3 Azeroth ones, Outland, and I'm sure instances have more than 1 box given how many different instances there are and how many people would be in them at once, especially on nights that are regular guild raid nights, Friday or Saturday. I'd estimate upwards of 9 machines per realm.

Then there's the fact that they're not all housed together, so in every server farm you've also got technicians and electricity costs (which I'd imagine are pretty high because server farms are normally equipped with powerful cooling systems).

As far as the advertising deal goes, it's only going to be on the website, and probably non-invasive, and something that you'll get used to seeing. Most players won't even notice it.

 

[elbert]

Guess my BBA was given to me by your standards.

Nor did it come with much in the way of an English curriculum. Besides that, are you really arguing that Blizzard has a poor business model with WoW?

Ok Mr. BBA, look at this:

http://mmogchart.com/Chart7_files/Subscriptions_12473_image001.png
[From http://www.mmogchart.com/]

Where is Blizzard even going to get new players from? They could get a 100% market share and still not double their subscription base. Oh and by the way, this is a 4 year old game and still dominating unlike any other game in any other genre. Right now they are just printing money with this game and Blizzard itself is just waiting for WoW to start slipping so that they can release the next big MMO (Starcraft, Diablo, WoW2?). There's absolutely no reason from Blizzards perspective to lower subscription prices.

Learned English on my own but my BBA did come with good business ethics. One being thou shout not rip of thy loyal customers.

Ok by that chart blizzard has no private server to sue so no reason for you to worry. LOL find a chart showing the box sales and see how many has left retail if you want a nice picture. By the way only 18 million gamers world wide. Think about that long and hard because that is blizzards 11 million players at %62.2. You fail at reading pie charts and understanding what they don't show.

Non subscription mmo's and mmo like games guildwars, NWN2, champions of norrath, and many more. Point is the pie chart is worthless to point out what population they could have.

Little history lesson. ID. soft did the same and look at them now. Diablo 3 will at most get those who still play diablo 2 so expect it to be a flop as the bar has been raised high. Those that left diablo 2 went to WOW so at best its going to cause WOW problems due to the free online play.b

 

[elbert]

@Elbert

They aren't wasting any cost on lawyers. They have had a legal team on retainer for years now. Additionally, in this very litigious era, coupled with the need to make sure that whatever they do in whatever foreign country they make the game available is legal, having lawyers on retainer and working is just necessary overhead.

Now lets dissect your statement that they can get discounts for more boxes in server farms. They already do that. Per live realm, how many boxes are involved? Hmm, let's see... Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, and instances. During Vanilla, that's 3 instances of the game running simultaneously, rendering three separate areas. With the release of BC, that adds a fourth instance of the game, assuming that they maintained the BC instances and raids on the same machine/prog running vanilla instances/raids. Now with Lich King, that's yet another "box" per realm. Let's assume highest efficiency, and assign a separate quad processor and bus per realm instance. That means for every live realm, there are FIVE boxes rendering that realm. For every new realm they add, which they do regularly, they add another 5 machines to their bill, capable of handling all of the connections required. This doesn't even take into account the authentication servers which we know are separate machines.

That is a lot of machines. Seems they are already maxed out on whatever discounts they can get, otherwise it would just be cheaper for them to buy the server farm themselves.

Bottom line, TANSTAAFL. For the kids out there, There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Anyone who thinks that the private servers were going to be left alone indefinitely don't get it. We're not talking about servers used by 6-30 people for the purpose of messing around, we're talking about setups involving a substantial number of people with websites and communities that, let's face it, were profiting from banner ads etc. Otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.

Try adding realms as the number of servers need per realm is fixed. BTW one would think over 4 years the cost of server would have went down enough to over compensate.

Also important is the price of server transfers and that increase which would occur with higher populations.

Anyone that thinks blizzard can stop private server though litigations is poorly fooled. The only shot is attack the emulation makers which isnt possible.

 

[purplerat]

Ok by that chart blizzard has no private server to sue so no reason for you to worry. LOL find a chart showing the box sales and see how many has left retail if you want a nice picture. By the way only 18 million gamers world wide. Think about that long and hard because that is blizzards 11 million players at %62.2. You fail at reading pie charts and understanding what they don't show.

With my highlighting:

But please explain to me what part of Blizzard creating a game, setting a price and then selling the game for that price goes against your "good business ethics"?

 

[gryph667]

Lawl. Just lawl. No they can't stop all of them. They can stop the ones that matter.

This is why business school grads suck. Research every company that has folded or is folding and you'll find an MBA that thought he knew what he was doing.

Next time admit TL;DR even if you're completely incapable of admitting "Didn't get it, too much logic."

 

[elbert]

Ok by that chart blizzard has no private server to sue so no reason for you to worry. LOL find a chart showing the box sales and see how many has left retail if you want a nice picture. By the way only 18 million gamers world wide. Think about that long and hard because that is blizzards 11 million players at %62.2. You fail at reading pie charts and understanding what they don't show.

With my highlighting:
http://www.purplerat.net/images/graphics/linkpics/mmocharthighlightother.jpg

But please explain to me what part of Blizzard creating a game, setting a price and then selling the game for that price goes against your "good business ethics"?

private servers are not subcription so no its not part of other. Learn to read the chart for sure. Thou shout not rip of thy loyal customers. Guess reading is where you failed.

 

[elbert]

Lawl. Just lawl. No they can't stop all of them. They can stop the ones that matter.

This is why business school grads suck. Research every company that has folded or is folding and you'll find an MBA that thought he knew what he was doing.

Next time admit TL;DR even if you're completely incapable of admitting "Didn't get it, too much logic."

Blizzard has had realm price the same for 4 years so why do you not understand. Im talking about tighter margins due to more money and higher populations. Your off on realm costs which blizzard can surly do the realm per price at current populations. The only way the price goes down is higher populations with more realms little more money comes in but tighter margins.

Margins can be tigher as sales goes up and thous thats how walmart sales cheaper.

Sorry but you don't realize these private server have developers with back up copy's of the database. They will just set up servers else where. All blizzard done was change leadership. So no they don't even stop the ones that matter.
Next time just admit you got off on the wrong discussion and incapable of addmitting you don't under stand higher sales with tighter margins.

 

[gryph667]

@elbert

HI. This is the wife of Gryph667. I do not play WOW. I'm not really interested in video games and at times, I think WOW gets far too intense for a recreational pastime- at least from what I've seen as an outside observer. I'd rather not have politics mix with my recreation. Anyway, you get the idea...

Still, I have a major issue with all this. When some one or a group of people put in the hard work to invent and develop a product, they deserve to be paid reasonable compensation for their time, efforts and thought. This is called capitalism and is something that defines the economic base of "The Free World".

In other words, you are allowed to buy, sell and conduct business as you choose, within legal boundaries. ALL users signed a licensing agreement in order to partake in this game. This is a LEGAL and BINDING contract. Period. You agreed to pay "X" amount a month for the privilege of using *their* services. You can certainly choose to stop paying, but it is just stupid to expect that you'll get to play for free. Should your employer dock your pay because of your personality or your age and expect you to work for "free"? Is your time, effort and though less valuable than someone else's because maybe you aren't as "new" or good looking as another co-worker?

If you go out and buy a new car with a bank loan, you have to pay a set amount until the terms of that contract have been satisfied. It doesn't matter that the car is going to depreciate over time and will be worth considerably less in three years than it was, new. The point is, you agreed to a contract to buy it and in return, you get to *use* the car (which technically the bank or lending agency owns in the meantime,) until you have made all your payments.

So, you have a choice to make. Either pay and play, or find another hobby. For you to think that pirate servers are a reasonable alternative is the same as thinking that it's perfectly OK to buy a stolen TV or stereo because it's "cheaper" than getting your own, legitimately.

Here's one final thing to ponder: "TANSTAAFL !" "There 'aint no such thing as a free lunch.

 

[purplerat]

Thou shout not rip of thy loyal customers. Guess reading is where you failed.

Who is ripping off their customers? Please explain.

There are millions of people who find WoW worth paying for. THOSE are Blizzards loyal customers and obviously they are doing right by THOSE people as can be seen in WotLK being the fastest selling game of all time.

Now if Blizzard were to suddenly drop prices to appease the people who currently are not their customers who would they be screwing then? They would be telling their loyal customers (ie the people already paying) "Hey, we've been overcharging you for years but now after you've paid your dues were going to slash prices and let all the rift-raft in."

I pay $15 a month for WoW. $10 less doesn't mean squat to me. Having wait times to get on a server or having trouble finding servers with mature populations are something I don't want to deal with. That's why I DON'T play free MMOs.

It's like going to a bar. You can choose to either go to the one with no cover charge and $1 pitchers or you can go to the place where it's going to cost you a few bucks to get in and drinks are a little overpriced. At the first bar you have to deal more unsavory elements but you can get drunk for cheap. The other place cost a little more but you get things like live music, maybe some food and better looking women. Neither place is ripping people off, each is just catering to what their respective clientele want.

 

[elbert]

@elbert

HI. This is the wife of Gryph667. I do not play WOW. I'm not really interested in video games and at times, I think WOW gets far too intense for a recreational pastime- at least from what I've seen as an outside observer. I'd rather not have politics mix with my recreation. Anyway, you get the idea...

Still, I have a major issue with all this. When some one or a group of people put in the hard work to invent and develop a product, they deserve to be paid reasonable compensation for their time, efforts and thought. This is called capitalism and is something that defines the economic base of "The Free World".

In other words, you are allowed to buy, sell and conduct business as you choose, within legal boundaries. ALL users signed a licensing agreement in order to partake in this game. This is a LEGAL and BINDING contract. Period. You agreed to pay "X" amount a month for the privilege of using *their* services. You can certainly choose to stop paying, but it is just stupid to expect that you'll get to play for free. Should your employer dock your pay because of your personality or your age and expect you to work for "free"? Is your time, effort and though less valuable than someone else's because maybe you aren't as "new" or good looking as another co-worker?

If you go out and buy a new car with a bank loan, you have to pay a set amount until the terms of that contract have been satisfied. It doesn't matter that the car is going to depreciate over time and will be worth considerably less in three years than it was, new. The point is, you agreed to a contract to buy it and in return, you get to *use* the car (which technically the bank or lending agency owns in the meantime,) until you have made all your payments.

So, you have a choice to make. Either pay and play, or find another hobby. For you to think that pirate servers are a reasonable alternative is the same as thinking that it's perfectly OK to buy a stolen TV or stereo because it's "cheaper" than getting your own, legitimately.

Here's one final thing to ponder: "TANSTAAFL !" "There 'aint no such thing as a free lunch.

Im happy you understand we are talk about paid reasonable compensation. Point one tho is under their agreement from before wotlk they did not forbid emulation. Very few private servers have wotlk working. Now im not using there services on private so that is not in question. Only agreement i have made is up to version 2.4.3 which in no way forbids playing on emulation servers.

P.S. nice analogy with the car but as far from the way retail works as mine with the movie getting a few extra mins each month.

The questions all come back to the same reasonable compensation. I buy the games but don't play on there servers IE no service thus I fill I have given reasonable compensation.

Another question is why do they charge as much as the original but don't give a free month play like the original? Greed and wanting over compensation for there outdated game I guess.

 

[elbert]

Thou shout not rip of thy loyal customers. Guess reading is where you failed.

Who is ripping off their customers? Please explain.

There are millions of people who find WoW worth paying for. THOSE are Blizzards loyal customers and obviously they are doing right by THOSE people as can be seen in WotLK being the fastest selling game of all time.

Now if Blizzard were to suddenly drop prices to appease the people who currently are not their customers who would they be screwing then? They would be telling their loyal customers (ie the people already paying) "Hey, we've been overcharging you for years but now after you've paid your dues were going to slash prices and let all the rift-raft in."

I pay $15 a month for WoW. $10 less doesn't mean squat to me. Having wait times to get on a server or having trouble finding servers with mature populations are something I don't want to deal with. That's why I DON'T play free MMOs.

It's like going to a bar. You can choose to either go to the one with no cover charge and $1 pitchers or you can go to the place where it's going to cost you a few bucks to get in and drinks are a little overpriced. At the first bar you have to deal more unsavory elements but you can get drunk for cheap. The other place cost a little more but you get things like live music, maybe some food and better looking women. Neither place is ripping people off, each is just catering to what their respective clientele want.

LOL I find it funny you see paying for there latest game makes a loyal customer. I have purchased ever game they have made starting back with warcraft for DOS. The only game I haven't purchased is starcraft2 because I'm a bit upset at there greed of late.

O so your saying we should have the choice to pay or play for free in the less fixed up private servers.

 

[purplerat]

Point one tho is under their agreement from before wotlk they did not forbid emulation.

NO! Blizzard never allowed people to play for free on private servers. Just because they only recently started to go after these people that does not mean they were ok with it before. Besides people playing on private servers are not Blizzards customers. The client software is free - you pay for the account. If you are playing on a private server then you are not using a valid account. You're not Blizzards customer they owe NOTHING to you. If anything it's you who owes them, ergo why they are suing.

The only game I haven't purchased is starcraft2 because I'm a bit upset at there greed of late.

FYI, you haven't bought StarCraft 2 because it hasn't been released. I'm not really sure what greed you are talking about other than the greed every company has because every company is in business to make money and the more the better.

O so your saying we should have the choice to pay or play for free in the less fixed up private servers.

You have the choice to pay to play Blizzard's game or play another game for free. There are lots of free MMOs out there. Why don't you play them?

The answer is that BECAUSE Blizzard charges they are able to/have more motive to make a better game. Free MMOs have less resources and motivation to make games as good as WoW. So you want to play WoW but not have to pay for the better experience. Basically you expect people like myself, who are willing to pay, to support you having a better gaming experience without have to pay yourself. Who's the greedy one now?

 

[elbert]

NO! Blizzard never allowed people to play for free on private servers. Just because they only recently started to go after these people that does not mean they were ok with it before. Besides people playing on private servers are not Blizzards customers. The client software is free - you pay for the account. If you are playing on a private server then you are not using a valid account. You're not Blizzards customer they owe NOTHING to you. If anything it's you who owes them, ergo why they are suing.

Didn't say play for free but they didn't forbid emulation till now. No the client isn't free unless you have downloaded it illegally. I have a valid account on there servers and a few chars from the one month free.

FYI, you haven't bought StarCraft 2 because it hasn't been released. I'm not really sure what greed you are talking about other than the greed every company has because every company is in business to make money and the more the better.

Sorry I was going to say im not planing on buying starcraft2. Blizzard run Diablo2 for 5 years which I payed $160 for 2 accounts for both me and my son to play. Now WOW would cost me more than that for 1 acccount for less than a year. I guess everyone is mad at big oil company's for just making money.

The answer is that BECAUSE Blizzard charges they are able to/have more motive to make a better game. Free MMOs have less resources and motivation to make games as good as WoW. So you want to play WoW but not have to pay for the better experience. Basically you expect people like myself, who are willing to pay, to support you having a better gaming experience without have to pay yourself. Who's the greedy one now?

The greedy one has only ever played WOW and calls him or herself a loyal customer. These greedy ones will cost blizzard many a true loyal customer. Now when I purchased WOW I had the understanding the monthly charge was for servers. I expected this rate to reduce as servers got cheaper. Was I mislead? I expect you to pay atleast as much as the lowest cost of the server. Anymore blizzard could make a vip account for and I would not care. Now WOW has been motive to only slow production on other titles.

P.S. Thanks for helping me keep this thread near the top.

 

[purplerat]

Didn't say play for free but they didn't forbid emulation till now. No the client isn't free unless you have downloaded it illegally. I have a valid account on there servers and a few chars from the one month free.

Emulation would violate copyright protection. The only difference is now they are going after people for doing so. You might want get a refund on those "good business ethics" you got with your BBA if you think emulating a server to avoid paying subscription fees is a permissible thing to do.

Free client right here:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/downloads/files/pc/TryWoW.exe

You can also take a single copy of WoW and install it on as many PCs as you want. The restriction being that you must use a valid account to play the game and only one person can play on the same account at one time. Using a non-Blizzard server is circumventing this restriction and is a copyright infringement. It's no different then using a pirated copy of any other game. If you think piracy is OK then see my previous statement about getting a refund on the ethics you learned.

Sorry I was going to say im not planing on buying starcraft2. Blizzard run Diablo2 for 5 years which I payed $160 for 2 accounts for both me and my son to play. Now WOW would cost me more than that for 1 acccount for less than a year. I guess everyone is mad at big oil company's for just making money.

Your talking about different products. Great that you enjoyed Diablo2, but WoW is a different game. I understand they are making a Diablo3, maybe that is a product you will find more desirable. Companies are well within there rights to price different products differently. The pricing scheme for WoW was well defined and known before it ever came, but now 4 years later your acting incredulous as if they snuck this in on you and you deserve access to this game because you bought past titles. Grow up.

P.S. Thanks for helping me keep this thread near the top.

If seeing your name at the top of a forum is what makes you feel good about yourself, then sure your welcome.