Blizzard’s Official Response to Classic Server Debate
by JR Cook - 8 years ago show comments
CM Nethaera and Executive Producer/Senior Vice President J. Allen Brack have taken to the forums to offer a response to the ongoing debate about classic servers, triggered by the shutdown of the Nostalrius community earlier this month.
The major takeaways:
- Blizzard doesn’t have a legal path to protecting their rights while allowing a third party to use their IP.
- There are “tremendous operational challenges” to making classic servers happen, followed by supporting those servers into the future.
- A “pristine realm” with many of the modern accouterments of the game is a possibility.
This is a careful response, but it does throw a few important details into the forefront of the discussion. The fact that Blizzard can’t allow pirate servers to operate without damaging their own IP is an important distinction to make, because it’s not about retaining subscription money, but about their rights as the custodians of the Warcraft IP.
The “pristine server” concept is interesting, since the list of things that would be turned off (realm transfers, heirloom gear, character boosts, RAF bonuses, the WoW token, CRZ and Group Finder) seems to hit on several of the complaints that the pirate server community has been airing lately, about leveling speed impacting immersion, and how the anonymity granted by not having to share a server with people impacts how players behave with each other.
However, it’s what the “pristine server” concept doesn’t address that may end up shaping the argument going forward. Some of the other popular complaints about modern WoW that have driven support for pirate servers involve older versions of the talent system, or elements like faction-specific classes (recall that pre-BC, shamans were locked to the Horde, and paladins were locked to the Alliance). If pristine servers are only going to impact how quickly characters can develop and who they can play with rather than how they play, it might not be enough to truly end the debate.
The core of this, though, is that Blizzard is offering a response to this debate that isn’t just a mocking dismissal; and it’s important that Brack himself is the one offering the response, because it’s his own dismissal of the concept (most famously during the BlizzCon 2013 WoW Q&A, origin of the “you think you do, but you don’t” meme) that the emulation community has been pointing to as Blizzard’s attitude on the matter.
Pristine servers may or may not let people go back to their perceived golden days of World of Warcraft, but this response from Blizzard helps to establish a fresh floor for the discussion, and that’s important when everyone’s emotions are running so high. It certainly doesn’t end the debate but it does shape things in a new manner: the pristine server concept really feels like a move to direct the conversation to something more productive, if nothing else, it’s already a productive conversation: since midnight PST, the US post has garnered close to 900 responses so far, and that number is growing by the minute.
Read the full post below.
We wanted to let you know that we’ve been closely following the Nostalrius discussion and we appreciate your constructive thoughts and suggestions.
Our silence on this subject definitely doesn’t reflect our level of engagement and passion around this topic. We hear you. Many of us across Blizzard and the WoW Dev team have been passionate players ever since classic WoW. In fact, I personally work at Blizzard because of my love for classic WoW.
We have been discussing classic servers for years – it’s a topic every BlizzCon – and especially over the past few weeks. From active internal team discussions to after-hours meetings with leadership, this subject has been highly debated. Some of our current thoughts:
Why not just let Nostalrius continue the way it was? The honest answer is, failure to protect against intellectual property infringement would damage Blizzard’s rights. This applies to anything that uses WoW’s IP, including unofficial servers. And while we’ve looked into the possibility – there is not a clear legal path to protect Blizzard’s IP and grant an operating license to a pirate server.
We explored options for developing classic servers and none could be executed without great difficulty. If we could push a button and all of this would be created, we would. However, there are tremendous operational challenges to integrating classic servers, not to mention the ongoing support of multiple live versions for every aspect of WoW.
So what can we do to capture that nostalgia of when WoW first launched? Over the years we have talked about a “pristine realm”. In essence that would turn off all leveling acceleration including character transfers, heirloom gear, character boosts, Recruit-A-Friend bonuses, WoW Token, and access to cross realm zones, as well as group finder. We aren’t sure whether this version of a clean slate is something that would appeal to the community and it’s still an open topic of discussion.
One other note – we’ve recently been in contact with some of the folks who operated Nostalrius. They obviously care deeply about the game, and we look forward to more conversations with them in the coming weeks.
You, the Blizzard community, are the most dedicated, passionate players out there. We thank you for your constructive thoughts and suggestions. We are listening.
J. Allen Brack
So you are either lying now, or lying before. I take this as lied both times.
You understand that by accusing Blizzard of lying, literally nothing gets accomplished, right?
Accusing them of lying when they’re telling the truth doesn’t endear them to your cause, and it makes them have to consider how many hoops they should jump through before it’s no longer worthwhile to try to keep you as a customer. They likely choose to be more judicious with their communication if they keep it up at all, and you get more corporate non-speech than actual responses.
Calling them out by saying they’re lying when they’re actually lying isn’t going to make them suddenly fess up and say “you got us, we were telling lies the whole time” because if they were willing to tell the truth at all, why not just do that in the first place instead of waiting for the Ever Astute Internet Sleuths to catch them red-handed? Then they’re admitting they’re untrustworthy, and why should we trust them to do anything that they say?
If you feel like Blizzard’s broken their trust with you, you either have to be willing to extend trust to them again or you should walk away. Standing around calling them liars while still paying for their services only makes you look foolish, and standing around calling them liars while NOT paying them and not offering anything that they could use to entice you back does not give them any reason to pay attention to you. Literally everyone loses, because you don’t have the game you want and Blizzard doesn’t have you as a player.
I dont play wow any more. I also did not play on that server. Give me any reason to believe their statements havent been lies. Now or then.
Ill elaborate.
Today they are saying that some sort of legacy servers are possible. Up until today, EVERY claim out of blizzard is that “The code no longer exists for those builds so its impossible” So, lie then or now? Both most likely.
As fas as to them shutting down the nost server to protect their ip, another lie. There are thousands of private wow servers. Its been going on since vanilla. Bliz has only ever gone after a handful of them. If you are protecting your ip, youd be legally obligated to pursue them all. So, lie then or now. Again, both most likely.
Last thing….where o where did anyone say that I was paying for their services. I do not. Then you say “Then they’re admitting they’re untrustworthy, and why should we trust them to do anything that they say?” Please name some time they did what they said. “No more 2 years in between xpacs” – Lie “No more 12 month + content droughts”
– lie “More content” – ships WOD with 30 days content, pushes out tannaan later for another 30 days content – lie. I can keep listing them if youd like.
Blizzard has announced expansions and then released them. They said they weren’t going to implement flight, and then in response to the community outcry, they implemented a method to allow flight on Draenor. If your argument is that Blizzard never does anything they say they’re going to do, the fact that GAMES are RELEASED shuts that argument down.
The fact that they have occasionally reversed course on a decision (i.e. “you’ll never be able to transfer characters between realms” –> “you’ll never be able to transfer from PVE realms to PVP” –> “transfer whatever wherever you just can’t leave the region”) doesn’t mean that they’re liars. It means that they change course when the community will AND technology allow them to do so.
Let me restate this:”standing around calling them liars while NOT paying them and not offering anything that they could use to entice you back does not give them any reason to pay attention to you.” You’re not paying Blizzard? Cool. Your money, your choice. But you come to a fansite dedicated to Blizzard’s products and take the time to write up a comment calling Blizzard a bunch of liars? What do you hope to gain from that?
No one can DO anything with that. It doesn’t engender a conversation. Blizzard can’t say “we’re not liars!” because if you’re accusing them of lying, then “we’re not liars” could very well be a lie.
lol keep eatin up the lies flushing your $. i dont care.
lol keep wasting your time on fansites for games you don’t play