For nogle uger siden bragte vi historien om at Blizzards aktieselskab, havde udsendt et brev om sagsanlæg til de fans der drev den store fan-server, Nostalrius. De blev nødsaget til at lukke serveren og det har der været mange diskussioner om siden hen.
Blizzard, som ellers har været stille omkring emnet, har nu udsendt et svar til fans og andre der måtte være interesserede i deres holdning til private servere. I svaret fortæller J. Allen Brack, som er executive producer på World of Warcraft, fortæller at de udelukkende slog ned på Nostalrius, fordi at de ikke var istand til at beskytte deres varemærke og samtidigt lade en privatserver køre.
De sætter dog pris på deres fans passion for World of Warcraft, og ikke mindst Vanilla WoW, som Nostalrius kørte en version af på deres server. De har selv kigget på at tilbyde en sådan server, men er ikke kommet frem til en bæredygtig måde at gøre det på.
Her er den fulde besked, som J. Allen Brack bragte på World of Warcrafts forums:
”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