LogFAQs > #942705229

Zeus posted...

Isn't it kinda hard to set up a private server?

Sure, but we're talking about somebody whose primary hobby depends on that. The choice is either to give up gaming entirely or set up a private server, so the stakes are potentially high enough to motivate them.

Zeus posted...

And don't they tend to get shut down?

Depends a lot on how much it's competing with current products. Sega, for example, didn't do much of anything to any of the PSO Blue Burst private servers that arose after they shut down the official ones, since it wasn't a game they were selling anymore (the Blue Burst release was available only via a subscription model, and stopped being sold when the servers were shut down), nor did they have any other games in their repertoire whose userbase would be appreciably affected by people playing the game on a private server. To my knowledge, most/all of those private servers died out naturally before PSO2 was released, which might have qualified for that, but even then PSO2 only just saw an official NA release a couple months ago and is such a radically different game that I would barely call them competitors (beyond the most absolutely basic interpretation of competing for users' free time, which literally every leisure activity ever does and trying to control a specific one is foolish).

Private Vanilla servers for WoW, though? Those were coming out at a point when Blizzard wanted to sell more expansions (and, later, sell Vanilla WoW itself again) so they were absolutely competing with one of their current products. Shutting those down was completely within expectations. Even once WoW actually dies, I'm sure Blizzard will try to release a remake somewhere down the road, so I would expect them to continue squashing any new servers that pop up because they do threaten their revenue.

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