Terminally Online
This is Terminally Online: PC Gamer’s very own MMO column. Every other week, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the genre, interviewing fellow MMO-heads like me, taking a deep-dive into mechanics we’ve all taken for granted, and, occasionally, bringing in guest writers to talk about their MMO of choice.
Inside me, there are two people. The first, a rational adult, understands the legalities of private servers, and how typically incompatible they are with… well, existence. I can’t say that certain servers, like TurtleWoW, played it safe either—while you do need to pay developers, opening up a cash shop for a game you’re running off a stolen IP isn’t smart.
The second has a grim understanding of the state of the genre by virtue of writing this very column. Not only have I personally observed that MMOs are an aging genre with very little in the way of newcomers, but I’m also not the only person who has identified a problem—I spoke to Raph Koster (Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies) earlier this month about the miserly state of things. Jack Emmert of City of Heroes fame also thinks there are huge problems. It’s not just me getting nostalgic and misty-eyed.
Regardless of the cause, one thing is true: New MMOs aren’t surviving, or they’re being shut down. There are a couple indie outliers like Project Gorgon that’re doing just fine for themselves, but we aren’t getting the big hitters anymore.
And while I might not mourn servers like TurtleWoW or Project Ascension quite like I might, say, wince in sympathy for poor Matt Frior—who made Project Blackbird for years only for it to be slain in the cradle by Microsoft—I still feel a little sad to see Blizzard folding in on them, even if they’re well within their rights to do so.
Because it’s not like Blizzard isn’t taking pointers, right? Of course, Ion Hazzikostas isn’t gonna walk out one day and say “yeah, we were inspired by the private server we shut down”. But there’s absolutely a pattern. Blizzard will muscle in on a private server, and then a year or two later, come out with their own version of what that server was doing.
The original example is, of course, Nostralius, which Blizzard came for in 2016. The server reached a major height of popularity as a version of oldschool World of Warcraft maintained by passionate fans, something Blizzard had previously rebuffed with the now-infamous quote: “You think you do, but you don’t.”
Two years after Nostralius shuts down, Blizzard opens up World of Warcraft Classic, an experiment so successful it’s still working through expansions today, both in the OG Classic and in Anniversary servers that are doing the whole time loop again.
I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of these servers were offering Classic-adjacent experiences with clever twists around the time Blizzard put out its Season of Discovery servers or Remix events, either. Or, indeed, that Blizzard has a mysterious “Project Camelot” on the horizon in the wake of these C&Ds.
I’m not accusing Blizzard of copying homework, mind. These versions of WoW are very much distinct from the dying servers—whether that be Project Ascension’s ability draft or TurtleWoW cooking up entirely new classes. But they were made in an environment where there was concrete proof that an appetite for interesting, experimental takes on the good old days are incredibly popular.
To be clear: I’m certainly not in the business of defending Microsoft, and I don’t think Blizzard needs defending when it comes to what it’s done. Stating that Blizzard has a right to shut these servers down is an outlining of the facts, rather than what I purposefully believe should be the case in a utopian society. The law and what I want are two different things.
But the facts are: We do live in a capitalist society with copyright laws. Blizzard is legally obliged to snub these things to protect its IP. There are alternatives, such as NCSoft’s treatment of the City of Heroes server Homecoming—but that was achieved under years of meticulous and very, very careful manoeuvring by the private server’s devs, who never once accepted donations beyond what they required to run the server.
They certainly didn’t open a cash shop. Again, TurtleWoW did itself absolutely no favours, even if I think what it was doing was rad in a vacuum.
So why am I still sad? Well, two reasons.
Well, in isolation, I think these private servers are often just doing cool stuff. I think it’s neat that Project Ascension had an ability draft version of WoW. I think it’s neat that TurtleWoW was cooking up entirely different classes and zones—just as I thought it was neat that Homecoming made new archetypes and story arcs.
While the scale of passion projects to actual illegal business varies from server to server, the MMO genre is a space that’s in dire need of innovation. And if Blizzard has been taking notes, it’s these servers we have to thank for a lot of the precious scraps of invention the company has been allowed to make.
Not necessarily because the devs have been nicking ideas. As a matter of fact, I think they’re plenty creative—but they’re bound to the laws of capital in a way these private server mavericks just aren’t, and they can’t just disagree with management because… well, it’s their career. A private server getting popular, however, means developers can point at their playercounts when pitching to the people with money.
I am willing to bet that we probably wouldn’t have WoW Remix or SoD without some of the servers that’re getting shut down. We certainly wouldn’t have had Classic without Nostralius.
But I’m also sad because, in a healthier videogame industry, with fewer layoffs and studio closures, might some of these private server devs have found positions within actual studios? In a world where companies aren’t obligated by copyright law to send cease and desist to fan projects, could these private servers tick along just fine?
And more to the point—in a world where the MMO genre wasn’t suffering from companies hounding after the next quarter (and, to be fair, ballooning development costs)—would these servers even exist in the first place?
It’s a pipe dream, I know. But I think private servers are a symptom of a wider illness, not a disease—and I have watched genuine creativity and effort be poured into them by people I can’t rightly blame for being unable to find legitimate work in this utter hellscape of an industry. It’s a sorry state of affairs, one I doubt will change in my lifetime—but I’ll quietly wish it would.
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