The Struggle For Private Game Servers

A story at the BBC takes a look at the use of private game servers for games that tend not to allow them. While most gamers are happy to let companies like Blizzard and NCSoft administer the servers that host their MMORPGs, others want different rules, a cheaper way to play, or the technical challenge of setting up their own. A South African player called Hendrick put up his own WoW server because the game "wasn't available in the country at the time." A 21-year-old Swede created a server called Epilogue, which "had strict codes of conduct and rules, as well as a high degree of customized content (such as new currency, methods of earning experience, the ability to construct buildings and hire non-player characters, plus 'permanent' player death) unavailable in the retail version of the game." The game companies make an effort to quash these servers when they can, though it's frequently more trouble that it's worth. An NCSoft representative referenced the "growing menace" of IP theft, and a Blizzard spokesperson said,"We also have a responsibility to our players to ensure the integrity and reliability of their World of Warcraft gaming experience and that responsibility compels us to protect our rights."

Irony

[pdusen]

The fact of the matter is that, at least in the case of WoW, private servers are downright terrible. They are so incredibly bad that, after spending a few weeks trying some different ones, I was actually driven to spend money on the real deal to have a decent gameplay experience.

Besides obvious problems like population shortage, all the servers I tried had two things in common; the first was XP scaling. In every server I tried, without fail, the exp scaling was always either too low, making it impossible to level properly through normal questing, or far, FAR too high, to the point that you'd finish a quest and have to walk a few miles to find another one you could get XP for.

The second problem common to all of these servers is really stupid glitches, especially terrain glitches. They come in all shapes and sizes. On every private server I tried, it is basically impossible to do any quest around small houses or in a mine (unless you are part of a party or already too high of a level), because as soon as a mob notices you, ten or so mobs in other rooms notice you and charge you through the walls. On servers that already have trouble with not dealing out enough XP this is pretty damn frustrating.

Re:Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Or play on PC, where there is keyboard and mouse available (plugging USB keyboard&mouse on xbox 360 wont work)

You do note that the parent mentioned that one of his requirements were private servers, no? Private servers are important in first-person games. The list is too long to post here. What if valve decided to make counter-strike 1.6 a hosted solution? Just like a MMO, they could have let the servers go "dark"; people would have been forced basically throw away perfectly working software.

It's offtopic too, as MMO private servers are quite a different thing than dedicated servers on FPS games

I'm sure that you read the article, right? About 4 paragraphs in the BBC article has the following text:

Games such as the hugely-popular fantasy World of Warcraft (WoW) as well as plenty of first-person shooters have spawned numerous pirated worlds.
They are typically run by amateurs and allow gamers to assume powers unavailable in the commercial form of the game. Crucially, players rarely pay a subscription fee for the privilege of entering the world - unlike retail versions.

As far as I can tell, this article is talking about, in general, games which do not have private servers and people creating private servers for them. The interviewed person talked about features that he was able to add that the vanilla set-up did not allow.? From my point of view, this new trend of removing private servers from first person shooters which traditionally had them is extremely on-topic

To each his own I guess.

Re:WoW

[runyonave]

Competition in WOW or any other point and click mmorpg is a JOKE. There is no skill involved. You just point click and hope your damage multiplier plays in your favour. All luck.

Now games that require actual skill and strategy like Street Fighter 4, Starcraft or DMC on DMD mode can be played competitively.

Re:Irony

[r_naked]

It must have been a very long time ago that you tried a private server, or you happened to pick a really crappy one that disabled LoS processing to save ram / cpu.

The "terrain" issues that you speak of are a lack of 3D data in the maps (vmaps). This problem has been solved for a long time. However (at least on Trinity and MaNGOS) you can disable vmaps processing on certain maps -- this will save you some memory and cpu usage. By default only map 369 (the deeprun tram) is ignored since it has no 3D data in the maps -- we aren't sure HOW blizz handles LoS (line of sight) issues on that map.

I would say that I am one of other scenarios ... the one that blizz doesn't like. I liked running my own server with just me and my wife playing that I quit playing on blizz's servers, and hell even started developing the database that drove the server I was using.

Re:WoW

[Tezcat]

There is competition in the form of skill, and there is competition in terms of strategy and concentration. With many games a peak of 'skill' is achievable; but the best competitive players will spend time developing new strategies to defeat their opponents' strategies. This is what happens in games like Street Fighter, Starcraft and Chess:
The meta-game [tvtropes.org] BECOMES the game.

Re:WoW

[selven]

Private as in "not affiliated with the government (ie. Blizzard)", not as in privacy.

South African WoW player

[ultral0rd]

Blizzard did in fact try to take some measures a couple of years ago regarding South Africa and our fleet of Private Servers. Because of the high volume of "private servers" in SA (hosting all of Blizzards games [starcraft, d1,d2,War3, and WoW]) Blizzard threatened not to ship WoW - The Burning Crusade to South Africa. This fell through as the game was oddly enough available in Zimbabwe, and so suppliers were just importing the game. This being said, one of the main reasons PS exist in SA is because our pings to Blizzard servers(and everywhere else in the world) usually vary between 600-1200ms. It can be lowered to 350, but this requires a purchase of an unshaped account (which sells for over R125 per gig). So instead, SA gamers choose to rather enjoy a lag free game, rather than a full feature game. And with local bandwidth costing almost 10% of our "blended" bandwidth some players are almost forced into using PS. I'm not saying that this is a valid excuse to host PS, but sometimes when you are forced into a corner, you just have to make do with what you have.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:WoW

[Ash Vince]

Blizzard haven't really fight against the private servers good afaik, and why would they - anyone who has ever tried any of them knows how crappy they are.

The sad part here is people who might for cheapness reasons to play on those servers instead and think the game is crap, while in fact the server just sucks.

This is exactly why Blizzard would try and shut them down, they reflect badly on the game as a whole. I know you could say only stupid people would think this, but stupid people can still post there opinion to the internet :)

(See, told you so)

Re:The poor corporate victim

[dave1791]

The principle is simple. You pay them 50 cents a day and they let you spend as many hours on their servers as you want. It is win-win for everyone until you bring an unwarranted sense of entitlement to the table. It's not food or medicine that Blizzard sells, its freaking entertainment. You CAN go without it and going without it would probably actually be good for you. If you don't like their terms, go elsewhere.

Re:we need more alternatives

[dave1791]

The only reason this is an issue is because the priority is money, rather than having fun.

Company wants to make money, news at 11.

Re:The poor corporate victim

[Anonymous Coward]

How is that an argument at all? Nowhere in their terms do they allow you to use private servers if you decide to stop paying. Who would subscribe if they did?
If you don't like the terms presented to you, don't give them any money. It's not that hard of a concept.