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Blizzard shutting down Nostalrius, popular WoW private server

262 points by bbunqq 11y ago

minimaxir 11y ago
> Today is also the day where Nostalrius will start being community-driven in the truest sense of the word, as we will be releasing the source code, and anonymized players data (encrypting personal account data) This will be interesting. Apparently, there are open source reverse-engineerings of the old WoW code already, but having them release the source code may allow for some interesting applications. I'd love to play around with that data dump as well.
- zanny 11y ago
  There are actually dozens of WoW private server implementations (called cores) on github, for every version of the game. Their patches will be immensely useful to the various vanilla cores to improve their out of the box support, but this is actually the second shutdown server this year that is dumping its full scripting as open source after a server called Sunwell did it for WoW 3.3, and those scripts produced a dramatic increase in quality among other servers at that version very quickly.
  - cyanbane 11y ago
    Is there a project that focuses on portability between these "cores", for example taking your AD&D Character sheet with you between all these different cores?
    - zanny 11y ago
      Series of the cores share common functionality amongst themselves, but the character data structures between them are radically different because of changes in character info between versions (ie, they added achievements in wotlk, and then made them account wide in Cata / MOP), and in MoP / WoD they removed several item slots on certain classes). The problem with most private servers is not character portability, but scripting portability. A quest scripted for a vanilla core probably won't work on a Burning Crusade one because the API used is different. The WoW private server scene is actually fascinating to read from a code study perspective, because its all entirely hobbyist and often novice software development. Common solutions to problems like delegation or templates are often unused because the people writing the code just didn't know they existed and never formally studied software best practices.
Meekro 11y ago
I used to be involved with this sort of thing, and it's actually pretty interesting stuff. There are enormous open source projects, operating largely out of public sight, that have recreated the WoW server backend in most of its glory. The lower-level content works quite well these days, though a lot of complex raid scripts are missing or broken. This one is probably the most popular: https://github.com/TrinityCore/TrinityCore https://github.com/TrinityCore/TrinityCore It's pretty rare for Blizzard to go after these companies in court, but it's happened here and there. Look up "Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. v. Alyson Reeves" if you're curious what such a lawsuit looks like! Every patch since Lich King, though, has attacked these reverse engineers on the technical front by adding layers upon layers of obfuscation to the protocol. That's had some effect, and many private servers have stuck with the old Burning Crusade or Lich King releases.
- wcummings 11y ago
  There's also a cool community around reversing the battle.net protocol(s).
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    The Battle.net 2 protocol is almost entirely Protobuf based and the protos can be recreated from the HS decompiled code or the Diablo 3 in-executable protobins. https://github.com/hearthsim/hs-proto https://github.com/hearthsim/hs-proto https://github.com/hearthsim/proto-extractor https://github.com/hearthsim/proto-extractor
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  One could argue that the Lich King was the last "good" patch for WoW. What I've never understood though was there is clearly some residual demand for "down rev" versions of the game where the mechanics favored a more engaged play style, why not facilitate it? How much does it really cost to run a single realm at the Vanilla, TBC, and LK levels? So many new players where their first experience with Onxyia was soloing her with a Paladin. Just not the same as 40 people trying to bring her down without falling to the whelp adds. Sure I don't think you could get $15/month for it but certainly $5/month or $10 a month. And they already let you "play for free up to level 20" why not just let you play for free on a vanilla server up to level 60?
hoodoof 11y ago
Seems the classy thing to do would have been for Blizzard to ask politely instead of sending in the dogs.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Zancarius 11y ago
  I'm wondering if their objective here was to make an example out of this particular server as they have with others. Once they reach a particular critical mass, they gain Blizzard's interests and down comes the legal hammer. Although you have to wonder what sort of impact this is going to have, if any. I'd wager most of the players are unlikely to pay for a retail subscription if they aren't already simply on the merits that they were actively looking for a 1.x vanilla server. Further, it has to be a bit like a game of whack-a-mole: For each server they shut down, one or two reappear to take their place, but it does serve as trademark/copyright protection against dilution and illegal use of game assets. I've read a few threads on the official forums out of shear curiosity, and it almost reminds me of the discussions that occurred during the height of Napster et al. The primary difference being that the private servers recreate a product that effectively doesn't exist anymore (not justifying the legality of it, but if you ignore the copyright/trademark issues, that's essentially the underpinning issue). Blizzard claims there's insufficient interest in prior expansions to justify re-implementation (and maybe they're right) but the number of private servers surely can't all be populated with freeloaders. Part of me wishes there was a better resolution to this. WotLK was my favorite expansion, and it'd be nice to play it again with some of the more recent improvements mixed in (minus the spell culling and talent nonsense--it feels far too dumbed down).
  - ohyes 11y ago
    I agree that it's making an example rather than actually trying to shut down private servers. probably more about copyright and being able to maintain that they were defending theirs, rather than being scared of multitudes of private servers depriving them of business.
  - 11y ago
jackgolding 11y ago
Wonder if the popularity of Nostalrius will cause Blizzard to do a Jagex inspired re-release of vanilla or the burning crusade? Not sure if I have the commitment but it would certainly be nostalgic.
MichaelBurge 11y ago
I wonder if it makes sense to charge the monthly subscription for the client, rather than the server. That way you could play on whatever server you want, but still had to pay a monthly fee.
- grrowl 11y ago
  They'd probably be worried about "watering down" the player counts on their One True server.
- EugeneOZ 11y ago
  Only in theory. In practice any client will be hacked.
marak830 11y ago
I learnt programming from running an ultimate online server back in the day. A little sad to seeing an(I assume), open source server like this being taken down. As an admin we use to run on the premise of, if we weren't told not to run it, we could. Probably not 100% legal but it seemed to work. It does make me wonder if they take the server down, is it because their subscription dropping so much?
- bottled_poe 11y ago
  Assuming the open source software was freely licensed, why would hosting an alternative server not be legal?
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    Generally, when Blizzard goes after private server owners, they go after them for copyright and trademark infringement. In fact, the very popular case of MDY Industries linked above is exactly that: trademark infringement, copyright infringement etc. The silent rule is "don't tarnish the Blizzard trademarks". It's generally the most unethical servers with tons of microtransactions that get taken down first. This is also why plenty of them are left alone.
  - mjrpes 11y ago
    I think it's because players have to download an old version of WoW in order to play. This is a full game download and includes artwork and music IP content. Not to mention it means there is no need to pay a monthly fee to Blizzard. Blizzard is fully in their right to shut it down, but it's unfortunate the current state of things. This is not about getting around paying for WoW. Vanilla WoW is practically abandoned-ware. Blizzard has been clear they have no plans to launch a Vanilla server, and they don't even seem sympathetic to the idea. There is content and gameplay in Vanilla that you cannot experience in the current version of WoW. There are many old school players who have fond memories of Vanilla (including me), and we have no way to get our nostalgia fix other than a server like Nostalrius. I have moved on from WoW and have no interest in the current game, but I would enjoy experiencing Vanilla again, just like I enjoy playing old SNES RPGs, listening to 80's music, or reading the same books or watching the same movies over and over. With other forms of media you can do that, but not here. I understand the legal reasons, but still, it's unfortunate. I see this as another new and lamentable consequence of things moving to the cloud. I find similarities here with the Nest/Google fiasco. It used to be you could buy something and it was yours, completely, forever, to do with whatever you want. Now, not as much.
soared 11y ago
A lot of commenters are suggesting a server that runs old patches, like Jagex and RS. This is essentially the definition of cannibalization and almost never a good idea. IMO Jagex only got away with it because they explicitly released a new version of the game that was totally different. Unless WoW's next expansion is WoW 2.0 with totally different mechanics, I don't see them hosting an old server.
- zanny 11y ago
  Each version of WoW in general has completely different mechanics. Between different versions of the game they have changed effectively everything. If you were to play the live version of the game today and compare it to vanilla, it is much more different in both mechanics and technical implementation than a lot of standalone independent games have been by significant margins. Just think of Doom 1 and 2, or more recently Wolfenstein: The New Order vs The Old Blood, or CoD Black Ops 1 and 2. All those pairs of games reused game assets and engines almost verbatim, with much more similar or identical game mechanics compared to how much Blizzard changes between versions. The argument these players make is that the version of WoW today is not the game they bought or played in 2006 at all, and by every metric you would measure "difference" in besides "is this the game Blizzard entertainment today calls World of Warcraft?" it would be measurably more different than dozens of games we consider independent products.
bbunqq 11y ago
Here's a petition written by the Nost team asking to legalize Legacy servers: https://www.change.org/p/michael-morhaime-legacy-server-among-world-of-warcraft-community?recruiter=10263686&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink https://www.change.org/p/michael-morhaime-legacy-server-amon...
bigpoppa 11y ago
these guys need to put their game server in a blockchain!
sergiotapia 11y ago
Wow, this is eerie for me! I literally just sat down on my computer to create an account to play on Nostalrius and see this on HackerNews. Talk about synchronicity! Here's a neat info graphic of what Nostalrius had achieved (found on /r/wow): http://i.imgur.com/jxtOQlu.jpg http://i.imgur.com/jxtOQlu.jpg
unknownzero 11y ago
It's worth noting amidst all the debate about whether it's feasible or worthwhile to offer older versions of the game as server options, blizzard has already done this for a long time with Diablo 2. You could (can still) choose to play classic or expansion on the legit battle net servers, and both had ( possibly still have ) vibrant communities. So it's not like this would be particularly novel as an idea to them, I'm surprised they haven't done it with wow already.
- Shivetya 11y ago
  with their constantly dropping subscription numbers it might just be a good idea for them business wise to open specific expansion set servers.
  - debacle 11y ago
    I would honestly pay to play pre-BC WoW again. The real problem that Blizzard seems to have is listening to their users - they're constantly making changes based on the feedback of vocal groups of players or trying to simplify their games to be more appealing. They have some of the most valuable IP in gaming and I feel like they're not making the most of it.
darkstalker 11y ago
I used to work for a private server that shut down in 2010 (Phoenix Wow). It was my first exposure ever to a big code base, teamwork with version control and some reverse engineering. The "cores" were usually forks of the Mangos project (TrinityCore, R2) written in C++ and pretty unstable (uptime was usually only hours). If Rust existed in that era it would've been much better.
EugeneOZ 11y ago
My opinion is not popular, but I think Blizzard are absolutely right in this case, by many reasons (not only because of money).
- yarou 11y ago
  Care to elaborate on your reasoning? The people playing on Nostalrius aren't suddenly going to switch to the latest expansion, so there's literally zero incentive for them to go after it.
  - EugeneOZ 11y ago
    It's exactly main reason: Blizzard have right to control the history and evolution of the WoW universe. Players can still play on old locations even on official servers, but things like game balance, economics - it's all was made by Blizzard and they have right to change it, for good or bad.
    - glastra 11y ago
      > Players can still play on old locations That is not true, unfortunately.
      - chiph 11y ago
        I think he meant you can still visit Stormwind, Dun Morogh, etc. and aren't limited to Draenor. But of course, the mechanics of everything in the old areas will be that of the new expansion.
    - sheepleherd 11y ago
      you sound like a libertarian invoking libertarian principles which I don't agree with so I don't see the "obviousness" of it that you see. Even if Blizzard hired Howard Roark himself as their architect, seems to me I should be able to make alterations to the design of my own building in which I wish to park a Howard Roark designed car, no matter how angry it makes Howard, Eugene, and Blizzard. And a court may rule in my favor even if you seem to think I should take your word on it, from your perspective of the zany libertariangasm you guys get from thinking about the ownership of ideas and not having anybody tell you what you can't do so long as you get to tell other people what they can't do.
thedudemabry 11y ago
Something that to some small degree worries me is that video game preservation is all but impossible for online-only services. WoW and its ilk have played a large role in the evolution of video games, but in ten years we're unlikely to be able to recreate anything like the experience of playing the game at any stage. I don't think there's a good solution, especially without market leaders such as Blizzard, Sony, or NCSoft taking a pro-preservation stance. Legislation to protect the rights of reverse-engineers seems troublesome, and existing copyright law makes any kind of expiration period ineffective.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
drunkcatsdgaf 11y ago
I had a feeling this was gonna happen when I saw blizzard shilling WoW on reddit the other day and these guys were all over the comments promoting.
jmnicolas 11y ago
A bit off topic but anybody knows what kind of stack Blizzard is using for WOW ?
- cdbattags 11y ago
  I'd love to know/dig into this as well! Any ideas?
  - ZenoArrow 11y ago
    You can get some clues here: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/posting.html?id=15000IO http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/posting.html?id... Linux, C++, SQL, etc...
  - ace22b 11y ago
    I don't have a timestamp but some of the details were discussed in this panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx_C7LkB1Q8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx_C7LkB1Q8
clevernickname 11y ago
Suddenly Blizzard's April Fools tweet seems cruel. Re-Live the old worlds of warcraft with our legacy servers coming this june! Starting with vanilla! https://twitter.com/Blizzard_EN/status/716004308043624448 https://twitter.com/Blizzard_EN/status/716004308043624448
- cdbattags 11y ago
  Ouch
- victorp13 11y ago
  That's a fake account.
  - pluma 11y ago
    It's not verified but I'm missing the obvious clue as to why you think it's fake. They seem to post genuine tweets and link to official marketing websites.
    - electroly 11y ago
      All of Blizzard's accounts are verified. Their official corporate account is @blizzard_ent (note the "t").
  - clevernickname 11y ago
    I've been had. Ironic timing on their part, at least.
odinduty 11y ago
I wonder if this will mean more and more servers are going to be sued. I've been playing on private servers since 2012, I play hours each day, and the future does not look very bright if this keeps happening I'm afraid... Just two days ago I started my journey as a blood elf hunter :-) The problem with private servers is that they seem to be addicted to OVH. I get it that it's cheap, has nice routes and usually they don't give a damn about what you host, but it's a single point of failure. I wonder if many of those servers are about to move to Ukraine (Russia) or something like that :-) Ah, and believe me, some of them make ludicrous amounts of money, have paid employees, etc. It's not just a community. They all forked MaNGOS or TrinityCore and starting piling up their fixes on top of it (which they don't have to share because it's GPL, not AGPL), but some chose to pay their developers! I'm happy to answer any questions about what it's like to play on private servers or how some stuff works in the technical side, or the community, or whatever!
- pnathan 10y ago
  How much administrative effort does it take to operate a private server? I've always kind of conceptualized it as a duct-tape-and-baling-wire affair, but I have a sneaking suspicion things are a lot more professional these days.
sickbeard 11y ago
Maybe blizzard might be getting ready to release a "classic" version of the game because the nostalgia is strong (even though they've publicly decried it many times).
goda90 11y ago
My friend logged on last night to see the response to the decision and found a huge number of players online. They were gathering together and mourning, doing things together one last time. It's kinda sad to think about a community destroyed.
- JackdawX 11y ago
  Here is a gif of the action from the reddit thread: https://gyazo.com/945aa97382bd4a2f4e49a662b5ff6399 https://gyazo.com/945aa97382bd4a2f4e49a662b5ff6399 This is more populated than any live server event since the dark portal opened (the first time).
Aoyagi 11y ago
I like how there are two versions of the title >popular WoW private server >popular WoW pirate server
jayhuang 11y ago
A bit late to this discussion (understatement I know), but running this type of private game server was partially what got me in this industry. In my case, I was running relatively successful Maplestory private servers back in 2008, on the order of 12,000~15,000 concurrent users. Hundreds, probably thousands of these servers cropped up overnight after the first "core" was created, and many many variations of that core quickly followed. At some point, many of us in the private server community caught wind of Nexon (creators of Maplestory) going after certain kids for their private servers. This was an everyday occurrence. Almost always, it was in the form of a Cease and Desist letter. Many of these servers had < 10~50 users concurrently and were run on home computers as many of us had non-existent budgets. Most servers were merely carbon copies of each other, as the owner would be able to create the server by using some reputable core and a setup guide. As with anything, a lot of traction was gained by servers that put development effort into adding their own touch into the game (alternative currencies like chickens, alternative bosses like Sonic the Hedgehog, and rebirth systems that let you utilize the skills of multiple character classes at once), and ones who were frequently engaging with their community and hosting in game events/contests. There were private server rankings. Everyone would be vying for votes to get to the top 3 and gain visibility, which invariably resulted in them receiving letters. Those of us that became significantly more popular and had players actively going out and advertising for us quickly came under the spotlight and received letters with the threat of legal action if not promptly shutdown. In fact, these shutdown letters were such a big part of the scene at the time, that some popular servers got shutdown by competitors sending fake Cease and Desist letters (don't ask how I know)...the response would typically be a quick and simple shutdown, waving goodbye to the community. Some owners with more skin in the game would deviously "shutdown" their server, then "re-birth" it as a different, smaller server since any communication sent in game was unlikely to be seen by Nexon. Few brave souls would post the Cease and Desist on their website while taunting and berating Nexon, though I never found out what happened to those guys. Seeing this post brings back so many memories -- Honestly, a lot of time was wasted on that game but I would not be doing what I do today if it weren't for the people I met while doing it (my next major project was with a friend of a dedicated player on my server). It was also lots of fun.

262 points by bbunqq 11y ago

> Today is also the day where Nostalrius will start being community-driven in the truest sense of the word, as we will be releasing the source code, and anonymized players data (encrypting personal account data) This will be interesting. Apparently, there are open source reverse-engineerings of the old WoW code already, but having them release the source code may allow for some interesting applications. I'd love to play around with that data dump as well.

zanny 11y ago
There are actually dozens of WoW private server implementations (called cores) on github, for every version of the game. Their patches will be immensely useful to the various vanilla cores to improve their out of the box support, but this is actually the second shutdown server this year that is dumping its full scripting as open source after a server called Sunwell did it for WoW 3.3, and those scripts produced a dramatic increase in quality among other servers at that version very quickly.
- cyanbane 11y ago
  Is there a project that focuses on portability between these "cores", for example taking your AD&D Character sheet with you between all these different cores?
  - zanny 11y ago
    Series of the cores share common functionality amongst themselves, but the character data structures between them are radically different because of changes in character info between versions (ie, they added achievements in wotlk, and then made them account wide in Cata / MOP), and in MoP / WoD they removed several item slots on certain classes). The problem with most private servers is not character portability, but scripting portability. A quest scripted for a vanilla core probably won't work on a Burning Crusade one because the API used is different. The WoW private server scene is actually fascinating to read from a code study perspective, because its all entirely hobbyist and often novice software development. Common solutions to problems like delegation or templates are often unused because the people writing the code just didn't know they existed and never formally studied software best practices.

Meekro 11y ago

I used to be involved with this sort of thing, and it's actually pretty interesting stuff. There are enormous open source projects, operating largely out of public sight, that have recreated the WoW server backend in most of its glory. The lower-level content works quite well these days, though a lot of complex raid scripts are missing or broken. This one is probably the most popular: https://github.com/TrinityCore/TrinityCore https://github.com/TrinityCore/TrinityCore It's pretty rare for Blizzard to go after these companies in court, but it's happened here and there. Look up "Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. v. Alyson Reeves" if you're curious what such a lawsuit looks like! Every patch since Lich King, though, has attacked these reverse engineers on the technical front by adding layers upon layers of obfuscation to the protocol. That's had some effect, and many private servers have stuck with the old Burning Crusade or Lich King releases.

wcummings 11y ago
There's also a cool community around reversing the battle.net protocol(s).
- scrollaway 11y ago
  The Battle.net 2 protocol is almost entirely Protobuf based and the protos can be recreated from the HS decompiled code or the Diablo 3 in-executable protobins. https://github.com/hearthsim/hs-proto https://github.com/hearthsim/hs-proto https://github.com/hearthsim/proto-extractor https://github.com/hearthsim/proto-extractor
ChuckMcM 11y ago
One could argue that the Lich King was the last "good" patch for WoW. What I've never understood though was there is clearly some residual demand for "down rev" versions of the game where the mechanics favored a more engaged play style, why not facilitate it? How much does it really cost to run a single realm at the Vanilla, TBC, and LK levels? So many new players where their first experience with Onxyia was soloing her with a Paladin. Just not the same as 40 people trying to bring her down without falling to the whelp adds. Sure I don't think you could get $15/month for it but certainly $5/month or $10 a month. And they already let you "play for free up to level 20" why not just let you play for free on a vanilla server up to level 60?

hoodoof 11y ago

Seems the classy thing to do would have been for Blizzard to ask politely instead of sending in the dogs.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Zancarius 11y ago
I'm wondering if their objective here was to make an example out of this particular server as they have with others. Once they reach a particular critical mass, they gain Blizzard's interests and down comes the legal hammer. Although you have to wonder what sort of impact this is going to have, if any. I'd wager most of the players are unlikely to pay for a retail subscription if they aren't already simply on the merits that they were actively looking for a 1.x vanilla server. Further, it has to be a bit like a game of whack-a-mole: For each server they shut down, one or two reappear to take their place, but it does serve as trademark/copyright protection against dilution and illegal use of game assets. I've read a few threads on the official forums out of shear curiosity, and it almost reminds me of the discussions that occurred during the height of Napster et al. The primary difference being that the private servers recreate a product that effectively doesn't exist anymore (not justifying the legality of it, but if you ignore the copyright/trademark issues, that's essentially the underpinning issue). Blizzard claims there's insufficient interest in prior expansions to justify re-implementation (and maybe they're right) but the number of private servers surely can't all be populated with freeloaders. Part of me wishes there was a better resolution to this. WotLK was my favorite expansion, and it'd be nice to play it again with some of the more recent improvements mixed in (minus the spell culling and talent nonsense--it feels far too dumbed down).
- ohyes 11y ago
  I agree that it's making an example rather than actually trying to shut down private servers. probably more about copyright and being able to maintain that they were defending theirs, rather than being scared of multitudes of private servers depriving them of business.
- 11y ago

jackgolding 11y ago

Wonder if the popularity of Nostalrius will cause Blizzard to do a Jagex inspired re-release of vanilla or the burning crusade? Not sure if I have the commitment but it would certainly be nostalgic.

MichaelBurge 11y ago

I wonder if it makes sense to charge the monthly subscription for the client, rather than the server. That way you could play on whatever server you want, but still had to pay a monthly fee.

grrowl 11y ago
They'd probably be worried about "watering down" the player counts on their One True server.
EugeneOZ 11y ago
Only in theory. In practice any client will be hacked.

marak830 11y ago

I learnt programming from running an ultimate online server back in the day. A little sad to seeing an(I assume), open source server like this being taken down. As an admin we use to run on the premise of, if we weren't told not to run it, we could. Probably not 100% legal but it seemed to work. It does make me wonder if they take the server down, is it because their subscription dropping so much?

bottled_poe 11y ago
Assuming the open source software was freely licensed, why would hosting an alternative server not be legal?
- scrollaway 11y ago
  Generally, when Blizzard goes after private server owners, they go after them for copyright and trademark infringement. In fact, the very popular case of MDY Industries linked above is exactly that: trademark infringement, copyright infringement etc. The silent rule is "don't tarnish the Blizzard trademarks". It's generally the most unethical servers with tons of microtransactions that get taken down first. This is also why plenty of them are left alone.
- mjrpes 11y ago
  I think it's because players have to download an old version of WoW in order to play. This is a full game download and includes artwork and music IP content. Not to mention it means there is no need to pay a monthly fee to Blizzard. Blizzard is fully in their right to shut it down, but it's unfortunate the current state of things. This is not about getting around paying for WoW. Vanilla WoW is practically abandoned-ware. Blizzard has been clear they have no plans to launch a Vanilla server, and they don't even seem sympathetic to the idea. There is content and gameplay in Vanilla that you cannot experience in the current version of WoW. There are many old school players who have fond memories of Vanilla (including me), and we have no way to get our nostalgia fix other than a server like Nostalrius. I have moved on from WoW and have no interest in the current game, but I would enjoy experiencing Vanilla again, just like I enjoy playing old SNES RPGs, listening to 80's music, or reading the same books or watching the same movies over and over. With other forms of media you can do that, but not here. I understand the legal reasons, but still, it's unfortunate. I see this as another new and lamentable consequence of things moving to the cloud. I find similarities here with the Nest/Google fiasco. It used to be you could buy something and it was yours, completely, forever, to do with whatever you want. Now, not as much.

soared 11y ago

A lot of commenters are suggesting a server that runs old patches, like Jagex and RS. This is essentially the definition of cannibalization and almost never a good idea. IMO Jagex only got away with it because they explicitly released a new version of the game that was totally different. Unless WoW's next expansion is WoW 2.0 with totally different mechanics, I don't see them hosting an old server.

zanny 11y ago
Each version of WoW in general has completely different mechanics. Between different versions of the game they have changed effectively everything. If you were to play the live version of the game today and compare it to vanilla, it is much more different in both mechanics and technical implementation than a lot of standalone independent games have been by significant margins. Just think of Doom 1 and 2, or more recently Wolfenstein: The New Order vs The Old Blood, or CoD Black Ops 1 and 2. All those pairs of games reused game assets and engines almost verbatim, with much more similar or identical game mechanics compared to how much Blizzard changes between versions. The argument these players make is that the version of WoW today is not the game they bought or played in 2006 at all, and by every metric you would measure "difference" in besides "is this the game Blizzard entertainment today calls World of Warcraft?" it would be measurably more different than dozens of games we consider independent products.

bbunqq 11y ago

Here's a petition written by the Nost team asking to legalize Legacy servers: https://www.change.org/p/michael-morhaime-legacy-server-among-world-of-warcraft-community?recruiter=10263686&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink https://www.change.org/p/michael-morhaime-legacy-server-amon...

bigpoppa 11y ago

these guys need to put their game server in a blockchain!

sergiotapia 11y ago

Wow, this is eerie for me! I literally just sat down on my computer to create an account to play on Nostalrius and see this on HackerNews. Talk about synchronicity! Here's a neat info graphic of what Nostalrius had achieved (found on /r/wow): http://i.imgur.com/jxtOQlu.jpg http://i.imgur.com/jxtOQlu.jpg

unknownzero 11y ago

It's worth noting amidst all the debate about whether it's feasible or worthwhile to offer older versions of the game as server options, blizzard has already done this for a long time with Diablo 2. You could (can still) choose to play classic or expansion on the legit battle net servers, and both had ( possibly still have ) vibrant communities. So it's not like this would be particularly novel as an idea to them, I'm surprised they haven't done it with wow already.

Shivetya 11y ago
with their constantly dropping subscription numbers it might just be a good idea for them business wise to open specific expansion set servers.
- debacle 11y ago
  I would honestly pay to play pre-BC WoW again. The real problem that Blizzard seems to have is listening to their users - they're constantly making changes based on the feedback of vocal groups of players or trying to simplify their games to be more appealing. They have some of the most valuable IP in gaming and I feel like they're not making the most of it.

darkstalker 11y ago

I used to work for a private server that shut down in 2010 (Phoenix Wow). It was my first exposure ever to a big code base, teamwork with version control and some reverse engineering. The "cores" were usually forks of the Mangos project (TrinityCore, R2) written in C++ and pretty unstable (uptime was usually only hours). If Rust existed in that era it would've been much better.

EugeneOZ 11y ago

My opinion is not popular, but I think Blizzard are absolutely right in this case, by many reasons (not only because of money).

yarou 11y ago
Care to elaborate on your reasoning? The people playing on Nostalrius aren't suddenly going to switch to the latest expansion, so there's literally zero incentive for them to go after it.
- EugeneOZ 11y ago
  It's exactly main reason: Blizzard have right to control the history and evolution of the WoW universe. Players can still play on old locations even on official servers, but things like game balance, economics - it's all was made by Blizzard and they have right to change it, for good or bad.
  - glastra 11y ago
    > Players can still play on old locations That is not true, unfortunately.
    - chiph 11y ago
      I think he meant you can still visit Stormwind, Dun Morogh, etc. and aren't limited to Draenor. But of course, the mechanics of everything in the old areas will be that of the new expansion.
  - sheepleherd 11y ago
    you sound like a libertarian invoking libertarian principles which I don't agree with so I don't see the "obviousness" of it that you see. Even if Blizzard hired Howard Roark himself as their architect, seems to me I should be able to make alterations to the design of my own building in which I wish to park a Howard Roark designed car, no matter how angry it makes Howard, Eugene, and Blizzard. And a court may rule in my favor even if you seem to think I should take your word on it, from your perspective of the zany libertariangasm you guys get from thinking about the ownership of ideas and not having anybody tell you what you can't do so long as you get to tell other people what they can't do.

thedudemabry 11y ago

Something that to some small degree worries me is that video game preservation is all but impossible for online-only services. WoW and its ilk have played a large role in the evolution of video games, but in ten years we're unlikely to be able to recreate anything like the experience of playing the game at any stage. I don't think there's a good solution, especially without market leaders such as Blizzard, Sony, or NCSoft taking a pro-preservation stance. Legislation to protect the rights of reverse-engineers seems troublesome, and existing copyright law makes any kind of expiration period ineffective.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

drunkcatsdgaf 11y ago

I had a feeling this was gonna happen when I saw blizzard shilling WoW on reddit the other day and these guys were all over the comments promoting.

jmnicolas 11y ago

A bit off topic but anybody knows what kind of stack Blizzard is using for WOW ?

cdbattags 11y ago
I'd love to know/dig into this as well! Any ideas?
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  You can get some clues here: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/posting.html?id=15000IO http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/posting.html?id... Linux, C++, SQL, etc...
- ace22b 11y ago
  I don't have a timestamp but some of the details were discussed in this panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx_C7LkB1Q8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx_C7LkB1Q8

clevernickname 11y ago

Suddenly Blizzard's April Fools tweet seems cruel. Re-Live the old worlds of warcraft with our legacy servers coming this june! Starting with vanilla! https://twitter.com/Blizzard_EN/status/716004308043624448 https://twitter.com/Blizzard_EN/status/716004308043624448

cdbattags 11y ago
Ouch
victorp13 11y ago
That's a fake account.
- pluma 11y ago
  It's not verified but I'm missing the obvious clue as to why you think it's fake. They seem to post genuine tweets and link to official marketing websites.
  - electroly 11y ago
    All of Blizzard's accounts are verified. Their official corporate account is @blizzard_ent (note the "t").
- clevernickname 11y ago
  I've been had. Ironic timing on their part, at least.

odinduty 11y ago

I wonder if this will mean more and more servers are going to be sued. I've been playing on private servers since 2012, I play hours each day, and the future does not look very bright if this keeps happening I'm afraid... Just two days ago I started my journey as a blood elf hunter :-) The problem with private servers is that they seem to be addicted to OVH. I get it that it's cheap, has nice routes and usually they don't give a damn about what you host, but it's a single point of failure. I wonder if many of those servers are about to move to Ukraine (Russia) or something like that :-) Ah, and believe me, some of them make ludicrous amounts of money, have paid employees, etc. It's not just a community. They all forked MaNGOS or TrinityCore and starting piling up their fixes on top of it (which they don't have to share because it's GPL, not AGPL), but some chose to pay their developers! I'm happy to answer any questions about what it's like to play on private servers or how some stuff works in the technical side, or the community, or whatever!

pnathan 10y ago
How much administrative effort does it take to operate a private server? I've always kind of conceptualized it as a duct-tape-and-baling-wire affair, but I have a sneaking suspicion things are a lot more professional these days.

sickbeard 11y ago

Maybe blizzard might be getting ready to release a "classic" version of the game because the nostalgia is strong (even though they've publicly decried it many times).

goda90 11y ago

My friend logged on last night to see the response to the decision and found a huge number of players online. They were gathering together and mourning, doing things together one last time. It's kinda sad to think about a community destroyed.

JackdawX 11y ago
Here is a gif of the action from the reddit thread: https://gyazo.com/945aa97382bd4a2f4e49a662b5ff6399 https://gyazo.com/945aa97382bd4a2f4e49a662b5ff6399 This is more populated than any live server event since the dark portal opened (the first time).

Aoyagi 11y ago

I like how there are two versions of the title >popular WoW private server >popular WoW pirate server

jayhuang 11y ago

A bit late to this discussion (understatement I know), but running this type of private game server was partially what got me in this industry. In my case, I was running relatively successful Maplestory private servers back in 2008, on the order of 12,000~15,000 concurrent users. Hundreds, probably thousands of these servers cropped up overnight after the first "core" was created, and many many variations of that core quickly followed. At some point, many of us in the private server community caught wind of Nexon (creators of Maplestory) going after certain kids for their private servers. This was an everyday occurrence. Almost always, it was in the form of a Cease and Desist letter. Many of these servers had < 10~50 users concurrently and were run on home computers as many of us had non-existent budgets. Most servers were merely carbon copies of each other, as the owner would be able to create the server by using some reputable core and a setup guide. As with anything, a lot of traction was gained by servers that put development effort into adding their own touch into the game (alternative currencies like chickens, alternative bosses like Sonic the Hedgehog, and rebirth systems that let you utilize the skills of multiple character classes at once), and ones who were frequently engaging with their community and hosting in game events/contests. There were private server rankings. Everyone would be vying for votes to get to the top 3 and gain visibility, which invariably resulted in them receiving letters. Those of us that became significantly more popular and had players actively going out and advertising for us quickly came under the spotlight and received letters with the threat of legal action if not promptly shutdown. In fact, these shutdown letters were such a big part of the scene at the time, that some popular servers got shutdown by competitors sending fake Cease and Desist letters (don't ask how I know)...the response would typically be a quick and simple shutdown, waving goodbye to the community. Some owners with more skin in the game would deviously "shutdown" their server, then "re-birth" it as a different, smaller server since any communication sent in game was unlikely to be seen by Nexon. Few brave souls would post the Cease and Desist on their website while taunting and berating Nexon, though I never found out what happened to those guys. Seeing this post brings back so many memories -- Honestly, a lot of time was wasted on that game but I would not be doing what I do today if it weren't for the people I met while doing it (my next major project was with a friend of a dedicated player on my server). It was also lots of fun.