The former head of World of Warcraft speaks out again about Classic servers, and pretty harshly and directly.
Former WoW Head Criticizes Blizzard’s Stance on Nostalrius
The story surrounding Nostalrius, the closed Classic server of World of Warcraft, and the fundamental idea of such servers never ends. After Mark Kern, the former head behind World of Warcraft, pledged his support for such projects and the petition, he has now released his own video where he directly addresses Blizzard.
The stack of papers is quite impressive. More than 10,000 pages full of signatures and comments on the issue.
Additionally, Kern sees Blizzard as responsible for preserving World of Warcraft in its original state for eternity, because:
“Games are now considered art. We preserve movies, books, and TV series for eternity, but with games, we are doing a poor job. Blizzard has a great responsibility as the guardian and rights holder for the massive game World of Warcraft. They are the only ones who can preserve this important piece of gaming history.”
Generally, Kern plays quite a bit with the numbers in his video. The petition has gathered more than 230,000 signatures. He also has a list of big Twitch streamers who have agreed to play World of Warcraft on stream if “Legacy” servers are created – the combined reach of these streamers is over 14,000,000 viewers. Just with a fraction of that, WoW would land directly at number 1 in the list of streamed games. But Kern stretches his numbers a bit further: If Nostalrius, an “illegal” server, had 800,000 registered users, how many would come back if Blizzard officially hosted such servers? “One to two million” is Kern’s estimate.
He gets very direct about Brack’s statement regarding the licensing issues that such fan-based Legacy servers would bring. Accordingly, J. Allen Brack from Blizzard simply has no clue about the legal matters surrounding licensing agreements:
“I myself contributed to the terms of use and licensing agreements for World of Warcraft, so I know a bit about the stuff. (…) [Brack] is simply wrong about this. I don’t know who he is being advised by, but legally he is just wrong. Let’s say: “He thinks he knows licensing agreements, but he doesn’t.”
In the official statement from Blizzard, it was said that it is difficult to support multiple versions of the game simultaneously. Kern sees little more than a lazy excuse here, because other “Legacy” games like Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, and StarCraft are also long supported again.
“Yes, it is difficult. Yes, it is work. But the money is there and it would make for a very profitable deal. It’s actually a ‘no-brainer.'”
For more news about Blizzard’s MMORPG, check out our World of Warcraft game page.
