Blizzard has finally addressed the players’ pleas for more legacy servers with a blog post that reads: “We also cannot ignore the sentiment of our players, acknowledging that we have heard them, and that there are many of you who miss the opportunity to play the games you want with your friends on a dedicated server. We are currently investigating ways to provide that experience.”
Blizzard finally responded to the petition calling for their decision to move forward with the Legacy Servers (also known as the Diablo 3 Servers) and the new Diablo 3 rumors that are surfacing. The company responded to the petition on their blog, stating that they have “no plans” to ever shut down the Legacy Servers. The petition was started in August of 2013 by a group of Diablo 3 players who were all very disappointed in the company’s unwillingness to continue supporting the Diablo 3 alpha and beta phases, as well as the lack of possible content updates.
In the past few months, the Destiny 2 community had been trying to get Blizzard to comment on the possibility of creating legacy servers for Destiny 2.
Earth, Storm, and Fire… Blizzard Responds to the Legacy Server Debate – Heed My Call
J. Allen Brack, executive producer and Vice President of World of Warcraft, has finally issued a comment in response to the 240,000-signature ‘Legacy Server’ petition.
Blizzard has been considering the idea of introducing old servers for years, according to Brack.
The response goes into great detail about Blizzard’s position on the matter, including why Nostralrius couldn’t continue with their private server; why Blizzard can’t simply create a classic server; and the concept of a “pristine realm,” a realm where all of World of Warcraft’s new features would be turned off.
“We looked at possibilities for building traditional servers, but none of them seemed feasible. We’d do it if we could press a button and everything would appear. However, merging old servers poses significant operational difficulties, not to mention the continuing maintenance of several live versions for every element of WoW.”
What is a Legacy Server, exactly?
Some World of Warcraft (or any video game) gamers are uninterested in the most recent expansions, or think that recent upgrades have made things worse, and that things were better “back in the day.”
Players may join to these private servers to get their Warcraft ‘fix,’ as groups have set up ‘Private Servers’ that run a vanilla version of WoW (no expansions), and players can connect to these private servers to get their Warcraft ‘fix.’
Some people on private vanilla WoW servers say that they’d rather pay a subscription fee to play on an official Blizzard vanilla server or ‘Legacy Server’. The petition was to request that Blizzard offer some legacy servers that would offer a vanilla World of Warcraft experience.
Blizzard has said time and time again that they have no interest in maintaining legacy servers for earlier expansions, claiming that there aren’t enough players who want to play on them anyhow.
Others argue that the popularity of private servers like Nostalrius is a counter-example.
What is the significance of Nostralrius?
There was a private server named Nostalrius that offered a free vanilla World of Warcraft experience.
With over a million registered accounts, about 100k active players, and around 15k individuals logged in at peak hours, Nostalrius has been a huge success. This server, Nostalrius, has been sued and ordered to be taken down.
Blizzard has a history of opposing private servers, and I think they have utilized the legal system to effectively shut them down in the past. Some speculated that Nostalrius might escape this fate by locating in France rather than the United States (where Blizzard is headquartered), but this does not seem to be the case.
The Nostalrius crew took great care not to profit from this, yet it isn’t enough to stay under the radar.
Brack explains why Blizzard can’t ignore them or any other private server in his statement:
“Why not simply let Nostalrius go on as before? The truth is that failing to defend Blizzard’s rights against intellectual property infringement would be detrimental. This includes unofficial servers and anything else that utilizes WoW’s IP. And, although we’ve looked at it, there isn’t a clear legal way to safeguard Blizzard’s IP while also granting a pirate server an operating license.”
On April 10th, the Nostalrius private WoW server was shut down.
‘Legion,’ the next expansion for World of Warcraft, will be released on August 30th of this year.
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