Private/Free servers don’t “hurt” Blizzard as much as you might think. For one, it’s an outrageous assumption that even if every free server shut down today, that all the people who play free servers would sub to retail. So in that sense there are a number of people who play free servers who aren’t would-be customers.
It’s also a huge amount of free advertising for retail. Essentially free servers offer a bigger demo for retail than blizzard’s free game. And when someone logs into a free server that’s bandwith, hardware, and support that blizzard doesn’t need to pay for - but the player is playing wow. Now you have someone’s interest, maybe they actually watch the trailer for the new xpac. Maybe they think it’s cool and maybe the free server won’t go live with dragons for a year or so. Maybe that person sub to retail, where without the free server, they never would have considered playing wow.
I’ll be honest, if there was an EQ emu type server for WoW that Blizzard was ok with people running in their homes, I would prefer it.
I set up an EQemu server for my son and myself and it was a lot of fun playing on it and just working through the process of setting it up and tinkering with everything (and I didnt even get as far as creating my own quests, NPCs or zones).
My EQ server was closed to everyone but people in my house. I was able to add bots to finish out groups for dungeons (never got to the raid part) but it just gave me a persistent world to play in, without the other people. With WoW, I assume I could reset my son’s account as needed without needing a new sub or even just reset achievements so I wouldnt need to get new account again and again (dont ask, its a long story)
Yeah if Blizzard was ok with it like Daybreak is, I would have a better time there - no matter the expansion (I would figure a way to limit to expansion)
Guessing they can only go after ps’s that popup in parts of the world/countries that follow international intellectual property rights, or laws. The ones that don’t then not to much Blizz can do about it.
The main ad provider on wowhead is google. The ads you are seeing could very well be based on your search results.
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If the provider is indeed google, their matching is extremely loose. Google sometimes shows ads for RMT services when searching anything vaguely WoW-related because sellers cast an extremely wide net for keyword targeting.
It would be great if Google gave users the power to not ever show ads of certain types but I doubt they’d give us that kind of power.
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You realize wowhead used to be owned by one of the biggest goldsellers in the world yea?
Copyright Laws still apply. Current copyright law is life of the creator plus 80 years. AB’s copyright on anything WoW is valid until the year 2102 (assuming the creator passes away right now) and no one can legally use it without their consent until said time. Fair Use does not apply here.
This doesn’t matter either. They are still using AB’s IP without consent.
ZAM or something like that right? I knew that almost all things WoW fansite were owned by one company but I didn’t know they were into gold selling. That’s actually pretty screwed up.
Do you get a free month of game time or something for reporting one?
the company is out to make money, not lose it by giving free subs.
Have you tried not playing on them and minding your own business?
It’d still land under Fair Use, as they aren’t trying to provide a similar experience that ActivisionBlizzard themselves provide, but are creating a fan project utilizing those assets. If it didn’t, then things like Machinimas would also be in violation of Copyright laws as they use the same assets the project in question has, and it’d make fanart and fanfiction a gray area as well, which we know they aren’t.
Other Private servers would definitely fall under the Copyright and not be able to argue for fair use as they are trying to provide a similar service as ActivisionBlizzard, but this particular one is going out of it’s way to provide an entirely different experience, just utilizing the art and world. That said, if the project itself was damaging to ActivisionBlizzard’s public image, there’d be cause for legal action, but that hasn’t been the case…which is also why they’re allowed to advertise on platforms such as Twitch and Youtube.
I hardly think you found one that Blizzard didn’t find. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
This only applies to trademarks (at least in the U.S.). The failure to defend against a known trademark infringement can and has resulted in the loss of the trademark (for instance, “Escalator”, “Trampoline”, and “Kerosene” were all once trademarked names for products that were later legally genericized for this reason). Copyrights and patents don’t suffer any such danger of loss, however, which is why there exists a thing called a “submarine patent”, where the patent holder stays quiet until the infringement becomes widespread, and only then takes action.
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There’s one that’s putting in advertising money on Youtube that Blizzard hasn’t stopped. Lol.
Script blockers are wonderful. I haven’t seen an ad on a website in about a year, Excluding YouTube video ads
Yeah a good adblocker is a must for any kind of browsing. Usually if I see an ad it’s because I’m using a fresh OS install and made the mistake of visiting some site prior to reinstalling extensions.
Script blockers block all scripts good and bad… Once you’ve configured them for sites you visit frequently it cuts out everything ad blockers miss, Including data trackers, Though one could assume Google or Microsoft probably get around it
I used to run a full script blocker (NoScript IIRC) but so much stuff was broken that I got tired of trying to build a good rule list and gave up.
I’ve gotten used to trial and erroring scripts that I recognize as essential for videos and pictures versus data tracking and ads.
Oddly enough and unironically they mostly call their script ad