Shaman Tanking Is A Thing

It is not illegal to access a Pserver as you have not violated any laws. The data on your computer can be used privately in anyway you wish. It is and has always been legal to recreate anything not banned by law for private use. Pservers fall under copyright infringement for the operators that offer access to WoW recreation servers. Should they design their own world and story with only references to the data on the connectee’s computer, then they could run a Pserver all they want legally. Probably not for profit though.

Either way, most private servers are located in countries where U.S. copyright can’t reach. This means the only recourse Blizzard has is to ban your account from official servers if they some how find out. Luckily Blizzard can’t legally install encompassing spyware without explicit consent, not a clause in the ToS or EULA.

2 Likes

Sir this is burger king please pull ahead.

Can we stop saying pserver. Because private is not the word I think of when I see the letter P.

I prefer to say pserver. Doing so allows me to avoid offending people by saying “pirate server” because I ain’t calling it private.

You get a lot of oomf from being in BiS compared to having 10 extra levels. Having things like the windfury axe compared to a level 27 questing weapon or whatever makes up WAY more damage than 10 extra talents (which may or may not be useful depending on class) and like 10 strength.

1 Like

At that level the this priest could have tanked the dungeon. Also I solod mythic KJ on this toon as well.
/Flex

The point wasn’t that it’s illegal to access a private server. Rather, the server itself isn’t a legal implementation. Which means you do not have a legal right to access the content that you bought a license for.

If you take a legal car (1.12 client) and drive it down the highway on the wrong side, you’re still driving illegally even if the car itself isn’t illegal.

People like to say that they’re not doing anything wrong by playing on private servers because they paid for the game. My point was that the server is illegal and copyright infringement, which makes the entire activity problematic. At best it’s like drinking stolen wine and saying that it’s ok because you didn’t steal it personally and paid for some wine last week.

2 Likes

Illegal servers, are illegal. But, without them, its very questionable if we would have ever got a vanilla server from blizzard.

Given that the official response before 200k players from nost and others signed a petition, was you think you do but you don’t.

To a point, yes they can.

When having plate and a rage bar starts to matter, no, not so much.

That comparison is wrong. It would be more like shopping in a Wôl-mart (Pserver) not licensed, leased, or franchised from Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (Blizzard) with a Wal-Mart shopping bag (client on computer) that you purchased. You aren’t doing anything illegal. Now Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. can be butt hurt over your disloyalty by banning you from their stores, but they can’t bring legal action against you. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. could bring legal action against Wôl-mart for trademark infringement, but it is located in another country that doesn’t respect the laws the country Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is located in has.

We do have a legal right (as in blizzard can’t bring civil or criminal charges against us) to continue accessing content we purchased access to. The problem stems from the fact that Pservers do it illegally by accepting donations and being open access to recreated copyrighted material. Should I make a server to use privately (self use only), blizzard would have no recourse as there is no law against it.

1 Like

So, raids.

There’s a difference between “a legal right” and “it’s not illegal to do”. A legal right is something that is a legally recognized and protected action or activity. You have no “legal right” in this situation because there’s no obligation on Blizzard’s part to provide that content forever. Once the content changes or ceases to exist, you simply no longer have access to it and that’s how it’s intended to be. A legal right to access that content would require that it could be an actionable right.

The problem with your example of “Wol-mart” is that the store is actually called “Wal-mart”, carries all the same stuff that Walmart has carried before, and doesn’t make any attempt to alter the name, appearance, or experience. “Wol-mart” might be in a country that doesn’t respect the laws of most other countries, but that doesn’t change much necessarily. They’re still engaging in illegal behavior, they’re just doing it in a way that keeps them out of the reach of the people who want to do something about it.

You might consider purchasing the game to include the content, but an online game isn’t (and rarely ever has been) a static game. That content changes, and you’re guaranteed no continuation of older content.

It’s also worth noting that, as you pointed out above, you can get banned by Blizzard. This is particularly important, because if they did that, they’ve revoked your license. You would not have a legally valid license to play WoW with. Which would mean that you no longer have any kind of “right” to play the game, since you only ever purchased a license, and that license has been invalidated by your actions.

One thing you fail to mention, however, is that providing the game client is actually copyright infringement on it’s own. For the end user, this is likely to at worst result in a letter from their ISP telling them not to pirate software. Even if you “paid” for the license, it’s a murky legal area. Downloading that client is unlikely to be much of an issue to you, but providing the download can get you a cease and desist.

In the end, the only “legal” aspect of the activity is that there’s no law against playing on or connecting to a private server. Running the server is illegal in most first world countries, pirating the software is illegal (and thus providing it is illegal) as well. The whole thing is just mired in issues legally. Can you download it and connect? Sure, and it’s probably not “illegal” where you live. That doesn’t mean that the overall situation is not legally grey.

I have a vivid memory of a shaman tanking sunken temple back in vanilla and they were able to do it just fine. They certainly wont be viable in raids but dungeons? Absolutely, especially if you’re willing to go a little slower, that being said I wouldn’t recommend any Shaman set out to be a tank, you’re pretty outclassed but the talents and abilities are there to make it work if you have to.

Well yeah its a thing even at higher levels.

Tanking is taking damage for the group and holding aggro, too many people with retail mentality will dismiss what ever is not reality in retail.

Some warriors will even refuse to tank the most simple of things.

They can rank until all your basic lvl 60 dungeons and actually are quite sturdy after 40 especially. It’s when you’re 60 and don’t have special tanking abilities that they lose out. You produce enough threat leveling with just rockbiter and earthshock. It’s actually ez

2 Likes

Not actually true. The intent is the important part as it isn’t illegal to host a download for ones self and others a ROM that you and they own on cloud site. The concept is the same. What is illegal, is the unauthorized downloads by people who don’t actually own access to the content. As the intent for the client upload can’t just be inferred anymore there is a lot of content not being taken down anymore.

Not true either. We don’t have a right to Blizzard’s servers, but we do have a right to play what we had access to as long as we can provide it ourselves as we purchased it. That is protected and has always been regardless of its enforcement. It’s the reason why it was ruled (in the U.S.) that bypassing DRM to access content behind a security check that is no longer in service was legal (despite the law saying it wasn’t contrarily). The legal right was upheld over legal protection.

Shaman healing threat wasn’t nerfed like paladins either. You get full half threat of how much you heal which is beastly when it comes to AoE threat

One of my great disappointments in WoW is that shaman never got a proper tank spec.

Up until the end BC or so you could single-target tank with a shield and rockbiter. It was never optimal but it could save you from a wipe. Of course people tanked other things just because they could, but it was never optimal.

https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/shaman/AcMEPzDMEAI_Iw

I would go for something like that. Weave in the LHWs for threat and mitigation. I can’t stress enough about the LHWs for any multi-target fights. In fact, it was originally how I kept AoE threat on my paladin before they nerfed threat and before I could get 21 points allocated in the ret tree (spiritual focus used to be a top tier talent instead of a 2nd tier talent). People would kick warriors just to have me tank once they found out how I could keep threat so well. Even after the nerf it was doable once one got BoSalvation, but it was never so overwhelmingly awesome again.

1 Like

I offtanked my Shaman in ZG back in the day. I had no threat issues and we had no issues with keeping me alive.