In case you did not hear, Blizzard recently shut down a rogue World of Warcraft server that continued to run the vanilla World of Warcraft. The server wasn’t so much about piracy, but rather a group of players who just wanted to enjoy World of Warcraft the way it was when it was first released, but given that it belongs to Blizzard, we guess we’re not surprised at the way things turned out.However the players of the server soon launched a petition containing more than 200,000 signatures in hopes that Blizzard could make an exception and have a change of heart. The developer has been pretty mum about the whole situation, at least until now when the game’s executive producer J. Allen Brack posted a response in the World of Warcraft forums.
According to Brack, the issue boils down to managing Blizzard’s intellectual property. “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.”
He goes on to state that the idea of a “pristine server” is still one that is being discussed, but he is unsure whether or not it will appeal to the community, although we reckon the 200,000 plus signatures says otherwise. Brack also adds that they are in contact with the folks who operated the Nostalrius server, but what will come of these discussions is anyone’s guess.
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