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The Struggle For Private Game Servers
A story at the BBC takes a look at the use of private game servers for games that tend not to allow them. While most gamers are happy to let companies like Blizzard and NCSoft administer the servers that host their MMORPGs, others want different rules, a cheaper way to play, or the technical challenge of setting up their own. A South African player called Hendrick put up his own WoW server because the game "wasn't available in the country at the time." A 21-year-old Swede created a server called Epilogue, which "had strict codes of conduct and rules, as well as a high degree of customized content (such as new currency, methods of earning experience, the ability to construct buildings and hire non-player characters, plus 'permanent' player death) unavailable in the retail version of the game." The game companies make an effort to quash these servers when they can, though it's frequently more trouble that it's worth. An NCSoft representative referenced the "growing menace" of IP theft, and a Blizzard spokesperson said,"We also have a responsibility to our players to ensure the integrity and reliability of their World of Warcraft gaming experience and that responsibility compels us to protect our rights."
Blizzard haven't really fight against the private servers good afaik, and why would they - anyone who has ever tried any of them knows how crappy they are.
Sure, it was fun to set up my own WoW server and get some friends to join it. I had fun with the console commands, made everyone admins and we got the max levels and best items and flying mode. Some fun moments messing around for one night with some beers - but to actually play the game on such servers? No please.
MMO's are in good position because the private servers can never reach the same amount and quality of quests, other players (major part in mmo!), raiding, instances, battlegrounds or in-game economy. MMO's are a lot about the community and other people you play with - they make the world.
The sad part here is people who might for cheapness reasons to play on those servers instead and think the game is crap, while in fact the server just sucks.
"amount and quality of quests, other players (major part in mmo!), raiding, instances, battlegrounds or in-game economy. MMO's are a lot about the community and other people you play with - they make the world."
Sounds kinda like...'erm....Wall Street. Should try that other MMO called "real life." Some folks even manage to eke out a living by playing.
The article throws around "piracy", "illegal" and "copyright infringement". But what do any of these actually have to do with the servers people run?
Surely all the "intellectual property" is encapsulated in the official client software (models, sounds, etc.), which more than likely was acquired legitimately from the developer/publisher, or is resident only on the official servers (dialogue, quest text, etc.). Third-party server developers only need reverse-engineer the communications protocol, and then implement their own quests and such.
Is the "illegal" action involved here no more than the violation of a EULA, or am I missing something about how these servers operate?
As most of you know,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Warfare_2
For the PC version, Infinity Ward has decided to implement a new matchmaking service: IWNET working through Steam. This system is nearly identical to the console version of IWNET. Dedicated server support is removed, eliminating the ability for mods or user-created maps to be incorporated. Because the multiplayer aspect runs within Steamworks, the PunkBuster anti-cheat system utilized in previous titles has been replaced by VAC.[28] In addition, the PC version shares the same 18-player cap as the console versions (matches are a maximum of 9 vs. 9).[29] Such decisions have created some controversy amongst the PC community.
I played it on Xbox 360. I was saying to myself: This would have been a great game if they would have had it in a version that had :
a. A keyboard and mouse
b. Private servers
I could pretty much give up my Counter-Strike: Source: Gun-Game / Deathmatch addiction.
I can understand the argument for MMOs: In order to do "massive", one needs "massive servers". I've yet to figure out the logic behind killing private servers for a first person shooter game. The only FPS game which I could see needing company-hosted servers is the upcoming MAG, but that's only because it has support for up to 256 players.
The alternative is inevitable: People will make their own private servers. And guess what? When they bend over backwards to do so, they'll probably skip out on the cd-key authentication.
Oh, wait, There is already a video of someone running a COD:MW2 private server.
As opposed to making private servers and allowing you to set the ground rules, they've given the average PC FPS player the finger. Guess who's giving the finger back now?
Discuss.
The fact of the matter is that, at least in the case of WoW, private servers are downright terrible. They are so incredibly bad that, after spending a few weeks trying some different ones, I was actually driven to spend money on the real deal to have a decent gameplay experience.
Besides obvious problems like population shortage, all the servers I tried had two things in common; the first was XP scaling. In every server I tried, without fail, the exp scaling was always either too low, making it impossible to level properly through normal questing, or far, FAR too high, to the point that you'd finish a quest and have to walk a few miles to find another one you could get XP for.
The second problem common to all of these servers is really stupid glitches, especially terrain glitches. They come in all shapes and sizes. On every private server I tried, it is basically impossible to do any quest around small houses or in a mine (unless you are part of a party or already too high of a level), because as soon as a mob notices you, ten or so mobs in other rooms notice you and charge you through the walls. On servers that already have trouble with not dealing out enough XP this is pretty damn frustrating.
I wish decommissioned MMOs like Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault could be released to the public for private server admins to host. Unlikely to happen, so it remains my wish.
Blizzard did in fact try to take some measures a couple of years ago regarding South Africa and our fleet of Private Servers. Because of the high volume of "private servers" in SA (hosting all of Blizzards games [starcraft, d1,d2,War3, and WoW]) Blizzard threatened not to ship WoW - The Burning Crusade to South Africa. This fell through as the game was oddly enough available in Zimbabwe, and so suppliers were just importing the game. This being said, one of the main reasons PS exist in SA is because our pings to Blizzard servers(and everywhere else in the world) usually vary between 600-1200ms. It can be lowered to 350, but this requires a purchase of an unshaped account (which sells for over R125 per gig). So instead, SA gamers choose to rather enjoy a lag free game, rather than a full feature game. And with local bandwidth costing almost 10% of our "blended" bandwidth some players are almost forced into using PS. I'm not saying that this is a valid excuse to host PS, but sometimes when you are forced into a corner, you just have to make do with what you have.
Those poor, poor mega-billion dollar corporations. So victimized.
Just because a company has lots of money doesn't mean they don't have rights.
If a company makes a game, they own it. If you want to play it, you have to agree to their terms. If you don't like their terms, ok, go away and play a different game. Sorry, you don't get to play the game and ignore the rules. Is that really so hard to accept?
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
I wish there was an alternative platform that wasn't so damned tied into the corporate money-hungry mindset. The only reason this is an issue is because the priority is money, rather than having fun. I'll stick to ID games that can be hacked and extended without all the corporate bullsh#t.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
From the summary, emphasis mine:
"had strict codes of conduct and rules, as well as a high degree of customized content (such as new currency, methods of earning experience, the ability to construct buildings and hire non-player characters, plus 'permanent' player death) unavailable in the retail version of the game."
Why would anyone want to play on a server that could kill them?
Player - the fat slob (anecdotal evidence to be sure) sitting in front of the computer.
Character - the blob of pixels that represent the aforementioned fat slob within the game.
(I'm shooting for Funny, but Insightful is okay, too).
Those poor, poor mega-billion dollar corporations. So victimized.
Mega-billion dollar corporations? I guess if 'mega' translates to 2.9 (in 2007), then yes. For ALL of Activision-Blizzard, not just Blizzard...remove console sales from their and you lose between 1-2 billion. But assuming you meant 'mega' just as a pejorative, sure. Still, I'm not sure what your point is. Are you saying that simply because they're successful, that they rescind all legal rights to protect their interests? That if someone steals from them, it's OK because they're a big corporation? Never mind the fact that a big corporation is funded by thousands or millions of stockholders, both individually and through portfolios (including 401K and retirement funds). That big, bad corporation represents the financial interests far beyond some CEO paycheck. And even if it did, that doesn't mean that someone else is entitled to harm them or infringe on their work, just because they don't have the good graces to not make a profit.
The principle is simple. You pay them 50 cents a day and they let you spend as many hours on their servers as you want. It is win-win for everyone until you bring an unwarranted sense of entitlement to the table. It's not food or medicine that Blizzard sells, its freaking entertainment. You CAN go without it and going without it would probably actually be good for you. If you don't like their terms, go elsewhere.
Just because a company has lots of money doesn't mean they don't have rights.
If a company makes a game, they own it. If you want to play it, you have to agree to their terms. If you don't like their terms, ok, go away and play a different game. Sorry, you don't get to play the game and ignore the rules. Is that really so hard to accept?
It becomes hard to accept when paired with the concept of the game being 'sold' to me, yes. The subscription fee makes sense in that light. If I don't like your rules, I stop giving you my $15. Potentially, I take my $15 elsewhere. But to do that, I have to commit up to $50 for the core game and $50 for expansions, if only the most recent one. Remove the $50/year surcharge for the expansions and I suppose we'd be back on more equal ground. Until then I assume I was sold something and that this thing should retain some kind of value. That value, it would seem, would be to use it in any non-commercial way I see fit.
How is that an argument at all? Nowhere in their terms do they allow you to use private servers if you decide to stop paying. Who would subscribe if they did?
If you don't like the terms presented to you, don't give them any money. It's not that hard of a concept.
So how do private servers get made? Are they based on leaked code, running something that ships with the game in a different way, or are they written from scratch?
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
Seriously, for all of the "corporate bashing" in this thread; either complaining about subscription models or justifying reverse engineering, why is it that open source MMO projects don’t thrive? I remember when Ryzom was up for sale and a former community manager launched a very public campaign to raise funds to open source it. There was a lot of buzz. After it fell through, at least two OSS MMO projects sprung up from it; one game project which died within a week and another framework project which has one active developer (me) three years later. At least four other framework and game projects (Planeshift, WorldForge, Open NEL, Peragro Tempus) also tried to recruit among that populace. Of them, three are limping along with 1-3 active developers with only Planeshift having an active development community.
So why are people not clamoring to work on OSS MMO frameworks so that communities can run OSS worlds?
I guess my only problem with the business model is that they sell the game for largely the same price as everyone else charges for their games, but to play they want to force you on to their own servers. Ideally, the servers should be good enough that I'd want to pay for them, but I should still be able to get some use out of what I paid for without a recurring monthly fee. Or the game client should be freely available for download. Either way.
But, as you say, "if you don't like their terms, go elsewhere". "Ideally" above is my opinion. Just because I don't like a business model doesn't mean it's not a legal one, and I don't see that Blizzard is breaking any laws.
I'm not a big gamer, but I was very interested in trying out WoW at first. It looked like a lot of fun for $50. Or $15 a month. Or $50-100 a year in expansion pack upgrades. But, in the end, not all three. So I never tried it. Hey, capitalism works!
If they had an option that included the basic game, even if it was a few bucks more a month, I might consider trying it out. But I'm not about to plunk down $100 for the game and expansion packs in order to plunk down $15 to see if I like the game for a month. They want me to pay $115 (nonrefundable) to try the game out for the first month, plus a recurring fee of $15 a month to keep at it if I liked it. I would have been more than willing to prepay for the first month and give them $15-20 to try it out, even nonrefundable, then decide whether it was worth keeping. Since they don't have that option, they got $0. Fair enough. Yay capitalism!
My only caveat would be that I'd hope they are making it clear on the packaging that you are NOT buying a "game" in the sense that you'd buy the "game" next to it on the shelf for basically the same price. You know, one that doesn't require a monthly fee to play. You are buying a client that can be used only if you buy access to a closed, paid server and if you don't pay the monthly fee you are buying a pretty box with a shiny coaster in it. Amazon's mention of this caveat seems sporadic, unless certain WoW games or expansion packs can be played offline.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
I pay, they provide a service for me. I don't pay, they don't provide a service for me. I am fine so far. It is when they want to stop me from getting a service from someone else that I have to my middle finger at them. Of course, with the locked market capitalism that is practiced in most countries around the world, it is not strange to see that kind of entitlement.
If you don't like their terms, go elsewhere.
But wasn't that was exactly what you argued against?
Your math is completely off. You can get WoW and all it's expansions for about $35. New expansions are not $50-$100. I think they are $30 to $40 when they come out? And then they drop. They don't even come out every year. $15 is the worst case scenario. If you but multiple months, it is cheaper. On top of that, they have free 14 day trials where you can download it and try the game for free.
I don't play the game any more, but your cost complaint is a bit ridiculous. You get a ton of content that is actively maintained for the money you pay. If you go to one movie every few months, you are getting ripped off more than what you pay for WoW.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
you can download the game client for free what you pay for is the account not the software
You are totally clueless. When someone says "if you don't like it, go elsewhere", they mean go to another company. If you don't like the price on a Toyota Prius, you don't have an expectation to be able to buy a Prius from Ford. Same with WoW. You don't like it, play one of the many other MMORPGs out there. The fact that you have an expectation that Blizzard should allow other people to provide service for a game that they created in its entirety just shows that you completely unreasonable you are.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
I was referring to when it first came out. Hence my use of the term "at first". The game itself was in the $50 range, and I could buy most other games in that same price range. Other games that did not require monthly fees to play. I would have been OK with the monthly fee. I would have been OK with the cost of the game. I was not and am not OK with both.
I'm not arguing that such a model should be illegal, or is unethical, or whatever. It's a game, and they can charge what they like for it, and model it any way they want.
As to "if I wanted to get in to it now" math being ridiculous or completely off, I sourced actual prices off Amazon.com. Here's how I arrived at my numbers, please feel free to point out better sources or correct my addition.
I know I can get the "war chest" for about $20 from Amazon on clearance, that is the basic WoW plus "Burning Crusade". "Lich King" and "Cataclysm" are each in the $40 range. $40 + $40 + $20 = $100 to get current as far as I can see.
I was unable to find a source for "WoW and all it's [sic] expansions" for the $35 you reference. Is there a mega-bonus-pack out there that I didn't find?
Granted, there is a 14-day trial offer in the "war chest" so I could try out my new $100 purchase for two weeks for "free" if I chose, so I was off there. Fair enough. $100 instead of $115. I stand corrected.
As to the per annum "upkeep" fee... How many expansion packs a year come out? Last I knew it was at least two to three, or am I mistaken in that?
They tend to be $40 when they come out, we agree on that, which puts the "keeping up with the expansion packs" game at $80 - $120 per year, I averaged it at $100. Unless I'm mistaken on how many of them come out, in which case I apologize for the error.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Cataclysm isn't out yet. Your first month (in addition to the 14 days) is free (it's included in the core game.) You don't need Wrath to start playing, either. The Battle Chest will do you fine for at least a month.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
What is unreasonable is that Blizard will actively persecute anyone running a private server that they deem worthwhile. Selling a client that is restricted to only using their servers is sketchy but widely accepted as proven by many posts in this discussion. Frankly I don't care about EULA's, I buy a product and I'll use it however I see fit. I'm not really interested in playing WoW anymore, I quit over a year ago. But if someone set up a server allowing me to use the same client to explore a totally new game world I'd probably be interested.
What Blizzard and other MMO companies are doing would be like Apple telling people they can only use content on their iPod's that they purchased through the itunes site, and in the event that they stop purchasing content you are no longer allowed to use your iPod.
The reason that Blizzard et al are attempting to keep server code private is that if you only have one (or a central group of) server(s), you can tie that server into your billing / CD key verification server and make sure that people pay to play, which is not the case with private servers.
Ongoing payment is the core business reason for MMOs. Of course they're going to use everything in their arsenal to protect it.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
>>If a company makes a game, they own it. If you want to play it, you have to agree to their terms. If you don't like their terms, ok, go away and play a different game. Sorry, you don't get to play the game and ignore the rules. Is that really so hard to accept?
There's two parts to buying World of Warcraft. You give them $40 or so for the game. Ok. And you give them 10 or 15 bucks a month for the subscription.
If you don't pay the subscription, *you still own the game*. If you want to fuck around looking at the title screen, or feeding it fake information (say, from a private server) that's your own damn business and they can't tell you otherwise. The most they can do is kick you off their own servers and cancel your account.
The principle is simple. You pay them 50 cents a day and they let you spend as many hours on their servers as you want. It is win-win for everyone until you bring an unwarranted sense of entitlement to the table. It's not food or medicine that Blizzard sells, its freaking entertainment. You CAN go without it and going without it would probably actually be good for you. If you don't like their terms, go elsewhere.
Not really, no. I would agree if they only charged you for days that you logged in on, but that's not the case.