World of Warcraft

[Dante Alighieri]

As much as I fucking hate the whole Ascension fiasco, Blizzard has every right to do this. However, this is basically the Nintendo Situation where they will have a negative reputation towards their IP's and it won't ever transfer to actual sales of said product. Server players are not going to bother playing retail once you piss them off unless you actually provide a good alternative to said product.

Blizzard's handling of Classic WoW, as well as the inevitable "Classic+" that they're literally waiting to announce at BlizzCon, won't inspire those Private Servers to play on those servers either.

Yeah that's the thing, most people aren't going to suddenly start giving Blizzard money.

 

[Contemporary Jazz]

"EDIT" Another PS bits the dust.

DalaranWoW is finally dead? It was a cozy place well over 10 years ago but the population was abysmal. Any Kiwis remember another WOTLK server, TrueWoW? Or how it spun off into the first progressive 60 cap realm PrimalWoW?

Blizzard has taken the devs of Project Ascension to court for the following

Some quotes from the court filing:
"... these unauthorized private servers... fragment the WoW player community..." (pg4)
And Blizzard hasn't fragmented the own WoW community with a thousand version of Classic on top of Retail? Oh but it's their legal right to cause financial damage to themself!
"When a player moves to an unauthorized, illegal server... and has a negative experience... that confusion damages Blizzard’s official WoW brand" (pg4)
Not even the dimmest 3rd worlder with acute in utero lead and plastic exposure would confuse Project Ascension with Blizzard and somehow damage their reputation. What a bogus argument.
"Defendants have distributed (and are continuing to distribute) millions of pirated copies..." (pg5)
Millions? I highly doubt it. They are p2w funservers, no one is downloading Ascension in order to use it for other blizzlike servers which is the only way you might get a million downloads (like Kronos have 1.12 or Chromiecraft hosting 3.3.5).
"They have encouraged and induced members of the public to install that software on their computers and use it to connect to Defendants’ unauthorized servers." (pg5)
You mean like basically everyone in this thread does? Like /wpsg/ on 4chan? Like r/wowservers? Like the hundreds of Discords?
"Defendants’ decision to work with such criminal enterprises alone signals willful intent to engage in unlawful activity"
(pg6)
And Blizzard has chosen to employ dozens of US military and intelligence employees, including Ion Hazzikostas, who have been engaged in illegal and unconstitutional warfare against US citizens and non-citizens across the world under the guise of "terror", as well as manipulation to study their players in germ warfare scenarios (pre-patch WOTLK) and squeeze the mentally incompetent out of money and promote sexual self-harm (trannyism). Blizzard = DoD, WoW is basically a psychological weapon developed under DARPA and it's fairly obvious when you consider the shattered psyche of its aging playerbase, me included. Microsoft is engaged in illegal and unconstitutional spyware against millions of people worldwide and Blizzard is owned and collaborates with them; should every Blizzard employee be criminally charged with RICO too?

Sorry for the autism, just asking rhetorical questions to no one in particular. I don't even like Ascension. It was fun when it started but got way too bloated, weird, and p2w. Copyright, trademark, and patent law should be abolished already.

 

[Focken Kiwi]

Blizzard has taken the devs of Project Ascension to court for the following
(1) COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT (2) INDUCEMENT TO INFRINGE COPYRIGHTS (3) CONTRIBUTORY COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT (4) VICARIOUS COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT (5) VIOLATION OF THE DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT (6) INTENTIONAL INTERFERENCE WITH CONTRACTUAL RELATIONS (7) FALSE DESIGNATION OF ORIGIN [15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)] (8) PARTICIPATION IN A RICO ENTERPRISE [18 U.S.C. § 1962(c)] (9) ENGAGING IN A RICO CONSPIRACY [18 U.S.C. § 1962(d)]

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.1024702/gov.uscourts.cacd.1024702.1.0.pdf

I've outlined my experience with Ascension previously in the thread. TurtleWoW and its user base, I feel sorry for. Ascension? This puts a smile on my face.

 

[Well Intentioned]

Turtle folded before they went to court. Blizzard probably want to make an example what happens if you try to fight them.

They made the RICO claims in their filing against Turtle before they 'folded', as you said.

I'm fairly confident it's mostly boilerplate shit that they're lobbing at all of these private servers. Invoking the RICO Act isn't some new revelatory tactic they're unveiling, is all I was saying.

And Blizzard hasn't fragmented the own WoW community with a thousand version of Classic on top of Retail? Oh but it's their legal right to cause financial damage to themself!

@Contemporary Jazz, Yeah, Blizzard can do whatever they want with their product, and protecting their trademark is something that they have to do.

The big problem with all of these private servers is that they aren't just a bunch of buddies playing the game all cozy. They were/are for-profit enterprises, which is basically a legal minefield you don't want to step into, which is why I feel Blizzard is stomping on these guys so hard (I'm presuming, at least, that all of these private servers have some sort of financial attachment, given that one guy is living in a mansion, etc.)

Stuff like brand confusion might seem stupid, but if some rando sees a screenshot from one of those private servers, and you have Arthas going 'nigger faggot tranny' or something, they likely are just going to go 'that's WoW' at first glance. Maybe more discerning ones would realize shit like 'oh, it's a fan made thing' or 'it's a player doing that, not the company', but then you run into the issue of it being perceived as 'condoning' this, and if you're on this website you are probably really well acquainted with how companies get agitated over 'optics' or 'perception.' And that's ignoring the fact that they're legally obligated to deal with this shit, largely because people are deciding to use it to make money.

The issue isn't with retarded nerds like us, it's with the general public, and you have to assume that the general public is even more retarded than we are in shit like this.

 

[TheTDman]

I fucking love the internet lawyers who think Blizz dont know what they're doing lol

 

[Oddjob OTP]

Bro Ascension just has to prove that Blizzard lied about these simple facts and the Judge will rule that Blizzard doesn't own their own game; they just gotta hold the line.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

"Our lifetime", jesus christ. So they gave up on "a lifetime" with Retail, then with classic, then with fresh, then made their own private server, and now pull this propaganda? I swear these private servers serve no other use than to add cash shop items and make bank. I see people say that official WoW is a waste of time only to then sink hours upon hours into a private server that is bound to be taken away from them, just so they can go look for another private server.

Meanwhile I completely forgot Classic is going on MoP. I saw a stream of an SoO raid, every member having a legendary cloak. I'd be lying if I said it didn't bring back memories. Such a nice, clear-cut, day-by-day time investment quest line. No retarded top 1% mythic gating, no absurd rep grind.


But also:


Apparently they're rebooting SoD 'Fresh' with the exact same content? I tried it for a bit before realizing all the 'new' abilities were just retail ones ported into classic and given worse visuals. With all that said, I've really been trying to get myself into GW2 but I just feel foolish knowing it'll never surpass WoW. Contrarianism is half the appeal of non-WoW mmos and it sucks. My sub has finally run out; I'm free, and yet I'm almost tempted to resub just to play Fresh, knowing I won't reach max level or raid.. but the fantasy is more alluring than the reality of playing GW2.

 

[PetiteFeet]

But also:

Jesus Christ, they just gave up completely on keeping the art style consistent. This looks like it belongs in a different game, by a different company. I recognise the basic bear skeleton as Blizzard's but the rest is just straight up shit. Zero connection with Pandaria, it's like the shitty red panda anthro pet they added some time ago.

Apparently they're rebooting SoD 'Fresh'

That's fucking retarded. We didn't have Season of Mastery 2.0, why would they reboot SoD?
Admittedly I had a great deal of fun with phase 1 and 2. Blackfathom as a 10 man raid was fun, most of the bosses were interesting mechanics-wise and the same with Gnomeregan (although the menagerie fight can go fuck itself). My guild and I dropped out with phase 3 after they ruined the gamemode with nightmare incursions or whatever they called it, you could farm to level 50 in those within a single day if you wanted to and the gold rewards had to be nerfed. I didn't get to try Sunken Temple as a raid because they increased the raid group needed and we just didn't have the bodies. No idea if others had the same issue because I stopped paying attention to SoD and went into Retail (big mistake on my part)

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

why would they reboot SoD?

SoD was a lot of fun but it was also... FOMO the game. You had to be active in each leg of it to really get the juice, as if you came in late much of what made the magic happen in the first few evaporated.

Trouble is that yeah, they need to kick some shit out that just plainly didn't work and wasn't thought through

 

[PetiteFeet]

SoD was a lot of fun but it was also... FOMO the game. You had to be active in each leg of it to really get the juice, as if you came in late much of what made the magic happen in the first few evaporated.

Trouble is that yeah, they need to kick some shit out that just plainly didn't work and wasn't thought through

I have very vivid memories of the whole Ashenvale zone PVP from Alliance side. It was fucking glorious seeing people slowly earn their mounts and helping the latecomers get their rep without missing any of the bosses. But yeah, you HAD to be there for phase 1 because afterwards Ashenvale was fucking DEAD even if the PVP event still happened at the scheduled time interval. I don't quite remember what Phase 2 had aside from the Gnomeregan raid and the NPC alluding to being the knaifu waifu, and the secret sleeping bag. I wanna say the Stranglethorn pvp event was in phase 2 but I wouldn't bet money on it. It was less memorable and much more of a gold sink phase, the Gnomeregan recipes cost a fuckton of gold and Blizz refused to fix the economy aside from those patterns - raiders most affected, gold farmers not.

You can't just recapture that magic, it's not like Classic because it's not old content tied to nostalgia. It's not even three years ago. SoD was figured out not long after the content was implemented and it's not like Hardcore + Self-found, it's not some gimmick roguelite side content that stays relatively evergreen.
It's sad because I can tell there's still SOMEONE who cares at Blizz because SoD was a fresh idea, same with MoP remix and arguably also Legion remix even if they fucked it up by making it a worse grind AND timegated.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

SoD was a lot of fun but it was also... FOMO the game. You had to be active in each leg of it to really get the juice, as if you came in late much of what made the magic happen in the first few evaporated.

WoW is practically seasonal now. Play retail, clear raid, swing over to classic, clear black temple, fuck around on SoD, make a hardcore on classic; rinse repeat. And that's the kind of people who play these games now, yet instead of just playing any kind of WoW they feel like, there's this weird sense of elitism. "Heh, fuck retail sweats.. I only play games where I grind 80 hours a week!".

They play on one private server til it dies then moves on to the next one. If Blizzard found a way to shorten the time between raids and reduced the xp requirements so those of us with a job could join in, they'd have something going for them. There's always a lot of hype about a content timer hitting zero.

Then again, look at what content creators are spearheading WoW these days. That Guzu guy was a runescape main who played hardcore during OnlyFangs 2 or whatever. Now he's one of the marketable faces of Blizzard. We don't know any devs by name anymore and the streamers all moved on to.. variety/irl. It's hard not to consider this game on a massive decline, as if it hasn't been since it launched.

you HAD to be there for phase 1 because afterwards Ashenvale was fucking DEAD

That's more or less every mmorpg. Missed the max-member hunting parties in xiv? Tough luck, youll never get the mounts. Doing outdated events in GW2? Oops, tough luck. No insta-clear farming with 10 other people. All things considered, at least WoW sorta has the interface simplicity and general "we'll do anything instead of idling" kind of players to have a shot at old content outside "there's a lot of people doing this new event" which is honestly rarely ever a good time.

I'm browsing my old screenshots and I'd consider my guild alive if 4-5 people were on, rest only coming on for raids. I see 30 people in my classic grandpa guild today and I'm like "damn, there's too many people I won't remember by name". I don't even know what kind of guild I'd like to be in at this point, mostly because I write them all off as soon as I see a Discord in the motd, but having no Discord means there's a bunch of inner-circle jerking which is even worse.

Call it battered wife syndrome or whatever but at this point I'd still be better off just leveling up shit in WoW across the versions than disillusioning myself that I'll never play it again, thus instead staring at my Steam library feeling guilty that I'm not playing something else while I'd boot up WoW without thinking twice (which is also the issue).

>Kungen's pre-meds crusade for classic

 

[Thiletonomics]

Then again, look at what content creators are spearheading WoW these days. That Guzu guy was a runescape main who played hardcore during OnlyFangs 2 or whatever. Now he's one of the marketable faces of Blizzard. We don't know any devs by name anymore and the streamers all moved on to.. variety/irl. It's hard not to consider this game on a massive decline, as if it hasn't been since it launched.

Some WoW streamers, i.e. Snutz and Cdew, both also being AWC pro players, have even resorted to getting gambling sponsorships, because the marketing potential for the game has dried up. Some of the few remaining WoW streamers of notes are Xaryu (I'm not sure what he's up to these days, but people think that he's going to be part of the Classic+ marketing once it gets announced at BlizzCon), Payo (French Canadian manchild), and Pikaboo. (retail WoW Arena streamer that gets 2nd place at AWC, and even he started doing some variety content, and he hasn't participated in AWC for a while)

 

[Level99Manchild]

This just happened on Ascension's servers (at least the CoA one).

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

Some WoW streamers, i.e. Snutz and Cdew, both also being AWC pro players, have even resorted to getting gambling sponsorships, because the marketing potential for the game has dried up. Some of the few remaining WoW streamers of notes are Xaryu (I'm not sure what he's up to these days, but people think that he's going to be part of the Classic+ marketing once it gets announced at BlizzCon), Payo (French Canadian manchild), and Pikaboo. (retail WoW Arena streamer that gets 2nd place at AWC, and even he started doing some variety content, and he hasn't participated in AWC for a while)

mmos aren't worth streaming. all things considered, asmon did the right thing ditching them. Even as background noise, they're still too specifically "game-like" to attract a non-gaming audience. You also just know they won't move on from streaming it because their timesink nature demands you can't spend 12 hours in some indie.

I remember the first time I saw a full-time wow streamer, thinking "wow you can pay rent playing this?", but reality is that they can might as well make minimum wage, but because they love playing it, that's fine to them. A friend of mine started streaming exclusively XIV, wondering why it never picked it up. Shit, the one streamer I still watch ditched speedrunning for variety and tripled their viewers.

Ver archivo adjunto 9145439
This just happened on Ascension's servers (at least the CoA one).

Surely they'll all be high quality and not just "we modeled a new LEGO wig and put a hair texture on it".

 

[PetiteFeet]

Surely they'll all be high quality and not just "we modeled a new LEGO wig and put a hair texture on it".

The standard it has to reach is Blizz' Human 2.0 models.
Pineapple hair/beards and a weird hairline for some of the hairstyles, regardless of gender.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

I've outlined my experience with Ascension previously in the thread. TurtleWoW and its user base, I feel sorry for. Ascension? This puts a smile on my face.

Never had an issue with Ascension player base except when I want to do some gold farming. Their chat is also far better than WoWs. WoW you'll get people who wont shut up about politics, on Ascension you'll see people want to do Manastorm leveling runs or asking stupid questions about builds/ abilities. Sometimes I'll see someone get mad that I'm farming mats because I can one or two shot most things but that's rare and usually only new players.

 

[Focken Kiwi]

Never had an issue with Ascension player base except when I want to do some gold farming. Their chat is also far better than WoWs. WoW you'll get people who wont shut up about politics, on Ascension you'll see people want to do Manavault leveling runs or asking stupid questions about builds/ abilities. Sometimes I'll see someone get mad that I'm farming mats because I can one or two shot most things but that's rare and usually only new players.

I never said I had an issue with Ascension's playerbase. Hell, it was my favorite mmo sandbox experience. Let me requote myself so you know what my issues with it was.

I wouldn't recommend it. I tried it out but shortly ended up perma banned for 'bug abuse.' An update made their Tokens of Prestige obtainable from the objects around the game that gave mystic enchantments. The quantity obtained didn't match the standard sources of them in-game so it wasn't a misapplied reward and they could only be obtained once per object source, per account. There wasn't any announcements that it was a bug nor was there any patch notes announcing fixing it so I figured it was some one-off exploration bonus for new accounts. It wasn't like there wasn't already precedent for their custom items coming from unexpected sources. I recall Callboard Caches being granted after hitting certain small achievement thresholds.

My point is, it's not worth the trouble of dancing around eggshells wondering whether something you're doing was developed intentionally that way or not. One day, you'll step on the developers toes and they'll ban you the moment they think you're trying to sleight them without ever letting you get a word in edgewise. Thank the gods I learned this so early on before I got too invested.

Edit: I guess I should clarify. I don't hate Ascension's playerbase but I'm happy the owners of those servers are getting smacked in the face.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

I never said I had an issue with Ascension's playerbase. Hell, it was my favorite mmo sandbox experience. Let me requote myself so you know what my issues with it was.

Not something I had an issue with. Found quite a few bugs and reported them. Just minor things like items that go missing, quests broken, abilities broken. Never bothered with reporting old WoW bugs since there's nothing they can do with those except update the client. All the old holes in the world are still there as are the crevasse you can get stuck in. I think the worst bug I found was in their Manastorm instances where it would kick you but also keep you in the Manastorm instance. Couldn't leave without someone else teleporting you.

 

[FloorPlanGreen]

I don't hate Ascension's playerbase but I'm happy the owners of those servers are getting smacked in the face.

DEUS drama was proof Dutch and Grey were always going to be an issue at some point.

WoW you'll get people who wont shut up about politics

Granted neither will ascensions chat 2/3rds of the time, lol.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

Granted neither will ascensions chat 2/3rds of the time, lol.

I never saw that and I played at random hours of the day.