WoW Private Server?

[Clockstop]

I have a question because this seems to be a gray area.

Me and a friend would like to host our own private server (not because its free, but because we want others to be able to play pre-bc content), some say this is illegal, and others say its legal.

First, what exactly does the law say for emulated servers?
And second, even if it is illegal or a "maybe", can the server be hosted on your servers if I sign something saying I take full responsibility?

Thanks!

[coupsan]

I'm pretty sure it'd be a violation of Blizzard's terms of agreement, or terms of service (whatever is which)--or, at least, it would make sense for them to do so.

[coupsan]

Here is what seems to be an older post citing Blizzard's terms:

http://wow.incgamers.com/forums/showpos ... ostcount=7

[Edge100x]

I agree with coupsan's read of this -- as far as I can tell, they're not legal. However, I am not a lawyer, so I can't say for certain.

We don't explicitly police our customers for game publisher TOS violations, but if Blizzard were to contact us and ask us to take down the server, we would most likely need to comply. This situation would be the same at all other hosts.

[thephoenix007]

It's not illegal, however it's against wow's TOS to use wow to connect to any server other than blizzards.

The reason it isn't illegal is because all of the "WoW" emulators are open source server software built from the ground up, they are simply capable of using the map and database files that the wow servers use.

you'll probably never find full functionality in a private wow server, however, they can be very fun to have/run/administrate and it's usually a nice break from the standard blizzard grind.

wowscape was up for a LONG time and never got shut down by blizzard, their servers used to hold 5-7 thousand players during peak times. the problem was, they were getting massive donations, but never upgraded the servers, and the GM's would ban you based upon their mood. so people stopped donating/playing.

again, it's not Illegal to host a private wow server, as they are PRIVATE, and use open source software to run.

the server in and of itself really uses no blizzard Intellectual property, just the content of the server is similar to blizzards. which is why most people think that it's illegal.

the software is open source.

the database information isn't extracted from wow's database, it's coded by people, just like you and me, and is once again, open source.

keep that in mind when you think about these things.

remember. violating the TOS of blizzards game can only get your account banned (they really have no way to tell what server you tell their client to connect to, as doing so would violate massive privacy laws) so that being said, it's impossible to get your account banned for even connecting to one(unless you broadcast it in the forums)

[biggsy2012]

soooo. you could run a wowps server?

If you wanted 2 because from what you just said its legal because its not blizzards software?

[biggsy2012]

wowps-world of warcraft private sevrer

[rustydusty1717]

I did it a few years back. It uses A LOT of resources, and I never found it that useful. I only did it for a couple weeks, but if Blizzard every gets a report of it, you are definently gonna be in some big doo-doo.