This is interesting point. I think lot of people assume that training gathers new "metadata" based on the original data and ignore what the training optimises for which is direct copy of the input. Training a model results in a fancy copy paste (unless incentivised differently).

You're naive thinking that Blizzard wants to make something new and creative.

They're just milking current players and they even let people to bot and RMT. Without banning anybody.

Turtle WOW is not a competition to the blizzard's in my point of view. I played on Turtle WOW from time to time with my kids, like once a month, because this is the amount of time I have.

I won't buy 4 subscriptions and pay them monthly, because there is no point of paying 63$ a month for one-a-month session. So obviously I am not interested in it. Also the new gameplay that is really crippled by a lot of un-skippable tutorials and too-much-experience first levels gameplay is appalling to me, so I won't teach my kids to play this new broken WoW version, sorry.

Competition? From top to bottom, they stole IP for the purpose of selling it. If there was zero content in common and with no overlap in quests, locations, etc, then a fair use argument might make some sense. Instead, they chose to set up shop next to Barnes and Noble and offer to sell photocopied books that they go next door and steal, then call it competition.

At the end of the day, copyright is a government-enforced monopoly. Crushing competition is literally the point.

Cases like this though make a good argument for copyright reform in my opinion. Video games probably don't need as long a copyright term as, say, books, and mods should legally protected (and copyrightable in their own right) as long as they don't function without a legal copy of the original game/program they're modifying.

Infantile take. Here's a positive: creates incentive for people who want to compete to actually make something new.

If we could just freely clone generational hit games and make millions off them, only idiots would make new games.

I mean, I don't disagree with you in this case, but if not this, then to a degree, what is IP for?

This just happens to be a positive example, IP still exists to restrict certain kinds of competition

I mean you can't get a clearer case of copycatting than this, as much as I'm a fan of pirate servers, assuming that they don't stifle the original game and considering calling Blizzard an 800 pound gorilla is quite an understatement in this case, I doubt this could

In WoW specifically, I'll chime in with some things I know about: - the WoW client contains a lot of stuff in their DBC (DataBase Client) files (for example spells and their effects, talents, achievements, etc), which you can extract (the file formats used are basically unchanged and well known since first WoW came out) - the client also uses WDB Cache files which contain things the player has encountered (creatures, items, quests), and volunteer players then send these files to projects like TrinityCore (probably the best known server emulator), which use them to build databases - for dungeon/boss scripting specifically, there's a lot of guilds competing for "world firsts" on official servers who collect a ton of information about boss behaviour, they then use that to develop addons, which help their players when actually doing the boss. then, when you want to implement the boss scripting in TrinityCore (or other emulator), these addons provide a decent starting point for things like abilities and their times, boss phases, etc. afterwards, volunteers report differences they encounter on official servers vs emulators in boss behavior

Yes kind of. You have to differentiate between all the different kinds of data. A lot of data was already included in the client files, but for the rest you had to sniff packages, analyse combat logs, watch 360p videos of boss fights and try to figure out exactly how mechanics are working. It got very ugly after a new expansion has been released, because it was not possible anymore to sniff for the older expansion.

It was always a “best effort”, but also very rewarding if you got a specific fight “somewhat” close how it was on the official servers.

Yes, exactly.

How expensive is this:

Download opensource wow server from github

Rent a server VM.

Come up with very cool name, like MurlocWOW

Create Discord for it.

Post AD to reddit/wowservers

Run server

Day 1, several thousands of players will join by themselves. Because everyone looks for something "new" for free.

Profit?

WoW (classic era through MoP) stores all game assets in MPQ archives. The client has a built-in override system it loads patch files in order (patch-1.mpq, patch-2.mpq, ... patch-A.mpq, patch-B.mpq etc...) and later patches override earlier ones. So to add custom content, you just drop a new patch-X.mpq into the Data/ folder with your modified files and the client picks them up automatically.

For something like Turtle WoW's custom races and zones that means shipping modified DBC files (the client-side database tables ChrRaces.dbc, CharBaseInfo.dbc, etc), new models/textures, modified Lua for the character creation UI, and map data for new zones. All packaged in an MPQ that players download alongside the client.

As for DRM Blizzard moved away from MPQ to CASC (their own proprietary archive forma) starting in WoD, which makes this kind of modding significantly harder on modern clients. But the classic-era client binaries have been in the wild for 15+ years, so that ship sailed.

When I played on a private server, you used an old version of the client binary. So even if Blizzard implemented DRM now, it wouldn’t impact these old versions.

Similar to the XML config you mentioned, WoW uses/used a plaintext config file where a realmlist URL can be set.

  I hope turtle open sources

Have private servers shared their work at all? I have a feeling that everyone is redoing everyone's work and keep it private out of rivalry.

Payment to devs could be considered profit, but profit for the actual people, not the project as a whole and its owners. Also, remember, it's still work, even if it's work on a game. There are reasons not to call pay you get from work "profit"

Having the prebuilt client and art assets you hack and change on saves you million of up front cost.

The foldingideas videos about decentraland talks about this. "Dead" mmorpgs work on a small skeleton crew despite the original game having taken 100s of people years to make. Looking it up the turtle wow server was like 5-10k concurrent players? A lot for sure but bordering on that category.

It takes a lot of work to manage that but nothing compared to making an original IP from scratch.

I’ll never understand modding in this day and age, I got it back in the quake and half-life 1 days when teenagers didn’t have access to commercial game engines but modding total seems crazy to invest time into building on infrastructure you don’t own, you can’t successfully monetize and will likely be taken from you if you do.

Instead of just building something you own.

There is no shortage of game dev talent or adjacent creatives. It’s doubtful they will go on to find roles in the industry given the current climate and they presumably don’t have the capital to gamble on multiple years of game dev for potentially no return.

Part of the settlement might prevent them from launching a similar game for X years. Wouldn't be unheard of.

If you just make “wow but with different graphics” how long until Blizzard sues you?

I'll answer myself - there are some projects available on github so nothing scarce, really. I just wonder how much does it take to set it up. And also the loneliness there would be unbearable (turtle wow was quite populated, so Auction House would pose some value)

I had to get a job and I just stopped working on it as time flew by. Fun times though

How can you be all for private severs, but against them using “art and stuff”? Have you ever played a private server that didn’t use WoW assets? That would just be another game.

Yes, give your money to the company of breast milk thiefs.

Former RuneScape private server[0] hoster here. Our infra costs would be about 200$/mo, but for a high quality server like in the OP, if you ever wanted to compensate any developer a respectable amount for their work, you would instantly be in the millions. We had about 20,000 hours of professional dev work put in over 5 years for our game.

[0] https://2009scape.org