I googled up private servers, and I saw soooo many. Blizz, why dont you wtfpwn all these private servers? Like, are they protected somehow? I dunno, it just really gots me trippen hundreds of these public pirate bootleggers are doing this.

i think they go after some of those guys but it's all a legal gray zone

I do know that playing on a private server is against the ToS.

And I've seen somebody play on a private server, and it looked horrible. It was laggy, almost every single mob was bugged, and pretty nothing worked right. I couldn't see how that guy could stand playing on it.

I'm staying as far away from these private servers as I possibly can.

Nope its not legal.

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Q u o t e:


The biggest problem with private servers is that they're reverse engineered (Again, against the tos) from the ground up... Which means that bugs are far more likely to be in the game.

Also, some private servers start you at 60 or 70 and stuff... which defeats the purpose of the game.

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Wrong, the biggest problem with private servers is that blizzard isn't getting money for the game they made...

I guess blizzard has a shaky case against the servers. Its explained over here http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=291341

I couldn't ever imagining pirating something off of Blizzard.
Blizzard gave me Starcraft, a game that I played for the past 7 years and still do occasionally. Warcraft 2, a game that first introduced me to real time strategy. Diablo both 1 and 2. A game that really was one of the first games I ever played multiplayer with friends. Warcraft 3, though I like Starcraft more, WC3 was a GREAT rts with an amazing story. Starcraft 2 is in the making. WoW is still being constantly updated plus a future expansion on the horizon. DIablo 3 is in the making.
I have never remained so loyal to a company as I do to Blizz that I can buy a game without worry at all that it will be bad. If it is bad, I have faith they will patch it until it is good.
I pay 15 bucks a month via the game card for WoW. I go the game card because I am very short on money at times with college and helping my fiance pay rent, so I don't want a committed 15 bucks going out every month, I'd rather buy it when I'm sure that I can afford it. That money goes to maintaining good service and frequent patches, as well as profiting future games that Blizzard can release.
Additionally, Warcraft 3, Starcraft Broodwar, and Diablo 2 are all free. Blizzard allows me to play on their servers for free and STILL patches all 3 games occasionally.
I loyally support Blizzard and probably will until the end.

Bootleg servers are used in countries where the income/cost of living ration is so low that to them 15 euros/dollars a month is still completely unaffordable (like when your parents only make 100 dolars a month, yet rent is 200 dollars a month. i dont know how they manage to get by, but i dont begrudge them a little entertainment. financially, its not practical to go after these people, it would cost a lot in legal fees, but they dont have any money, so in the end blizzard wouldnt get anything for their effort anyway.

as far as i know private servers are completely legal as long as the owner does not use the server to earn money, in a sense they cannot charge usage like Blizzard can....it is Blizzard's intellectual property, it is liscense under their name, and theirfore anyone using is cannot make mioney off of it without paying Blizzard a liscensing fee and it would prolly have to b upon agreement... but in any regards, Blizzard has little to no control what you do to the game when you aren't connected to the internet... so regardless of legality or not unless the person is making themselves a known server that requires a subscription fee blizzard cannot really enforce the policy upon them...

Wrong wrong wrong. I swear some of you will justify breaking any law just to say you did.

Q u o t e:
The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled Thursday that federal law--specifically, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act--disallows players from altering Blizzard games to link with servers other than the company's official Battle.net site.



and

Q u o t e:
The defendants in the case, Ross Combs and Rob Crittenden, reverse-engineered the Blizzard protocol using tools like "tcpdump" to listen to the software's communications with a game server. .

The 8th Circuit also cited a contractual agreement that Combs and Crittenden OK'd when installing Blizzard software. That agreement prohibits reverse-engineering.

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Q u o t e:
I do know that playing on a private server is against the ToS.

And I've seen somebody play on a private server, and it looked horrible. It was laggy, almost every single mob was bugged, and pretty nothing worked right. I couldn't see how that guy could stand playing on it.

I'm staying as far away from these private servers as I possibly can.

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This sounds a lot like the "I have a friend who is gay" speech.

So you played on an illegal server eh? You know, Blizz mentioned that they really like banning the accounts of people who play on illegal servers, and also how the criminals almost always slip up and proclaim thier crime either in logged in-game chat or even on these very forums.... Why, I see at least 3 bans from this thread alone. :-)

Linkses: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=4272177362&sid=1
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=2843687575&sid=1&pageNo=3