Private Servers

Wolfe Tone

Anyone ever play on one? Do you play on one? What do you think about them? Experiences good or bad?

Back in the BC era I used to play on a server called Wowscape/Scapegaming when I could no longer afford retail. That was the biggest, had upwards of 15k people on at any one time, spread across a few servers. Played like a broken version of retail, but was entertaining nonetheless, however, the server eventually imploded and vanished, stopped playing then.

Was talking to a mate the other day and he plays on one which apparently is the most popular one. Server stats would back that up. He says that it is very enjoyable and I am thinking of giving it a go. I cant afford retail and this seems to be a serviceable substitute.

The biggest appeal of these servers is of course that they are free. There are all sorts of servers out there, with various rates of XP, instant 80 pvp servers etc, as well as more "blizzlike" ones.

With hard times ahead is anyone considering playing on these type of servers?

copeyhagen

against tos and against forum rules.

lock er up

Wolfe Tone

I PMd a mod in advance, got the go ahead.

TheDoc

And rightly so.

We arnt the police here, and discussing the activity on those servers isnt illegal in anyway shape or form and cant bring anything bad back to boards.ie.

Obviously any details in relation to how to join them etc is a nono, but discussing what happens on them, no biggy imo.

I used to play private for a few months a few years back. Wasnt a big fan. Granted the game is modified so you can pretty much fly through levels, get gear easy and the likes, there was too much changing and messing and I felt it was a better atmosphere and more enjoyable on official servers.

Private servers pve was like
One shot bosses
Admins increase damage output form bosses reduces player damage
One shot bosses
Rinse repeat
Wipe 100 times
Decrease boss damage increase player damage
wipe50 times

Basically it would change week in week out depending on the inflation of player damage and ability.

The maingame itself is more balanced, higher populated and more rewarding.

Worth the money to play the real version imo, just not a fan of the private ones.

Wolfe Tone

Decided to give this a go yesterday, I still have a copy of 2.4.3 WoW on my comp, found a private server on the patch and played a bit. Lag, which was the bane of servers back when I played, seems to be gone, leveled up a bit and didn't see any bugged quests. Server seemed very stable too.

Gonna get Wotlk(I never played it) and play on the more popular server I mentioned in the first post. Should be a bit of craic.

BeerWolf

Tried private servers during TBC days just for sake of seeing what WoW's like.

But they were incredibly buggy, lacked a community, etc. so my experience with them was just poor... so in the end I went onto the official servers - beats private servers ANY day.

Wolfe Tone

While I would agree that retail is better with regard to bugs etc, I found the community better on the private servers tbh.

Columc

Don't like private servers. pointless to play on them, unreliable(ok they might be up but for how long 1 month/2 months/ 3?) Blizzard try and take them down, and rightly so. Blizzard developed the game, and then someone else hosts a private server and put up a donations tab to "help the server running"

Now I dont mind Private servers when the company allows them, or even when the game has died out in the region. Use to be part of a privte server forum for various diffrent mmorpgs, which started from one old game in 1999 the company went bankrupt and left europe and there was no alternative other then private servers. Now I do have to admit that they were going ahead when the game was in full swing. And It did help destroy the game and make the company bankrupt as most private servers were actualy more populated then the europe servers

Robby91

Tried them once before - got bored of them after a few levels. The population was pretty low, ping was always high and gaining levels with every second mob kill just wasn't any fun. I don't think private servers can match up to an official server in any regard whatsoever.

Wolfe Tone

Columc wrote: »

Don't like private servers. pointless to play on them, unreliable(ok they might be up but for how long 1 month/2 months/ 3?) Blizzard try and take them down, and rightly so. Blizzard developed the game, and then someone else hosts a private server and put up a donations tab to "help the server running"

Now I dont mind Private servers when the company allows them, or even when the game has died out in the region. Use to be part of a privte server forum for various diffrent mmorpgs, which started from one old game in 1999 the company went bankrupt and left europe and there was no alternative other then private servers. Now I do have to admit that they were going ahead when the game was in full swing. And It did help destroy the game and make the company bankrupt as most private servers were actualy more populated then the europe servers

I played for over a year on one, the main one these days is hosted in like serbia or something where they can't be touched. In fact it is celebrating its one year anniversary atm.

sphetim

found the community better on the private servers.:)

copeyhagen

if its ok to talk about private servers which are against their tos, then it should be ok to talk about account sales.


MOD-EDIT

*SNIP*

Yurple

private servers are horrible.. u have everything u want.. u can kill everything u want.. etc etc there is no skill in it or achievement when u do something

VampiricPadraig

Yurple wrote: »

private servers are horrible.. u have everything u want.. u can kill everything u want.. etc etc there is no skill in it or achievement when u do something

Not all of them. I am on a PS and everything is the same, yes there is a different drop and experience rates, but that's the way they want to put it. It's fun for people who can't afford to pay for the retail servers (like me) or who doesn't do any hardcore gaming.

I am only playing the game because it's fun. I cannot tell the difference between the retail or the private servers.

/2cent

Wolfe Tone

Decided to have another look at these, disappointingly none(that I know of) seem to have cata yet... I wish I wasn't so poor!

Wolfe Tone

You really must if you went to the effort of setting up an account just to post that!
Why do you hate them btw?


I got playing on one the other day, they are decent craic.

Columc

Its a whole diffrent level of piracy, your not just taking the costumers from the business, via sales, but the person is also gaining money from it.

Wolfe Tone

Columc wrote: »

Its a whole diffrent level of piracy, your not just taking the costumers from the business, via sales, but the person is also gaining money from it.

Not true.

Vast vast majority of people who play on these servers cant afford retail, if they could they would play retail, its so much better. So how are they losing sales? If I could afford retail I wouldn't be slumming it on private servers, I used to play retail, I can't afford it anymore.

I bought the game and expansions myself. The servers are reverse engineered.

A lot of the money from donations goes to server upkeep etc, I know a few servers with relatively low populations who don't do donations for items etc, the community simply contributes to pay for the servers.

Rumors are that the big servers give money to blizz anyway(not sure if thats true but thats what people are saying).

Sonics2k

Wolfe Tone wrote: »

Not true.

Vast vast majority of people who play on these servers cant afford retail, if they could they would play retail, its so much better. So how are they losing sales? If I could afford retail I wouldn't be slumming it on private servers, I used to play retail, I can't afford it anymore.

I bought the game and expansions myself. The servers are reverse engineered.

A lot of the money from donations goes to server upkeep etc, I know a few servers with relatively low populations who don't do donations for items etc, the community simply contributes to pay for the servers.

Rumors are that the big servers give money to blizz anyway(not sure if thats true but thats what people are saying).

It's still piracy and breaks copyright.

And yes, the people who run the servers tend to take large amount for themselves, it's a profitable business after all.

Albeit some servers may be run be decent people, the majority, are just set up in some kids room from his PC, and uses the donations for himself.

As for the rumours about them paying Blizzard, it's a complete lie.
Compared to the money they'd earn from active subscriptions, anything they'd get from people running private servers would be tiny in comparison.

reforming giant

What about those of us who can afford to play retail, but just dont have the time to raid 3 - 4 times a week. I found that when I played retail, I could not raid too often because I was not able to devote as much time as needed to farm hc's and gear up etc. I dont know if asking this is against forum rules( i dont think it is) but do ps allow people with less time on their hands to run raids easier, like could I gear up faster?

Robdude

I ran my own private WoW server for a while. It was awesome.

I was working full-time, taking classes at school, and trying to fix-up my house. I was super busy. I didn't have a lot of time to play WoW on the real servers. I setup the private server and my girlfriend and I played on it.

We were the only two people in the entire game. It was great. No n0obs, no trash talking in trade, no jerks in dungeons rolling Need on everything or telling someone how to play the game.

I had GM powers and could adjust things on the server to scale down or up the difficulty. I could make it so a regular 5-man dungeon was challenging and fun for the two of us. We could take our time and do the whole dungeon without anyone saying 'PULL MORE!!!!' or 'WRONG WAY - BOSS IS LEFT' like in the real servers where everyone just wants to go from the spawn point to the boss ASAP.

I loved it.

We'd paid for the game and all of the expansions (two copies of each) and never cancelled our monthly subscription. So I don't consider it piracy or stealing. It was just more fun.

If you like PVP or big Raid groups - obviously it's not so great. But if you like PVE - it's awesome.