"Human or not" a letter to Yoshi-P & SEFollow

Private servers have existed since forever, why get riled over them now?

If SE is bothered by them, they'll do something like Blizzard did against Nostalrius. What's the point of players discussing the "legality" of fan works?

By that logic, what's the point of discussing anything?



That's arguable. You can certainly argue that people playing on a private server wouldn't be subscribing to the normal service anyway so there's no actual lost money, but you'd never be able to prove that 100% of private server players fall into that category. Even if you could it wouldn't matter because the copyright violation is pretty in-your-face in this case. Even "victimless" crimes are still crimes.

I've been a game developer and designer. I'm sorry that respect for people's hard work is so uncool and inconvenient.

You can bet people would if they could, though. When it comes to any private server scene, what usually keeps things "behind" is the ability to either reverse engineer or recreate systems. Or in some cases, hosts being set in their ways and not wanting the game to evolve past their prescribed period of greatness.

As some have pointed out, however, there's no grey area. It is theft of intellectual property regardless of whether or not a portion of code is present. Maybe not the end of the world relative to other possible crimes, but it does convey a certain degree of disrespect to those who did work on the project in particular. Realistically, those coders/artists/musicians aren't getting kickbacks nowadays relative to subs/sales unless they're still actually working on the game today, but the potential lack of revenue could affect future works, be it actual creation or overall implementation.

It's kind of sad how desperate we are to consume art, but are so quick to treat creators terribly and further justify those indiscretions as long as it convenient for the consumer. At the very least, I do like to give people the benefit of the doubt in that they'll pay for things they appreciate. That's kinda the root of F2P models other games/companies have ran with and not all have sunk in consequence.

Perhaps it was popular, but Blizz stated just this weekend at Blizzcon that there are no plans for any classic server. Then again, the current expansion is full of fan service including dungeons and raids that players loved from back then being given new life.


Stealing isn't disrespectful and doesn't hurt anyone? You really don't think so?

Again, there's next to nothing in FFXI that you can't do from 'Vanilla' so there's not much point to private servers. I know a lot of people who would like to play an FFXIV that had continued to build from 1.0, but would anyone want 'vanilla' XIV?

I'd take that action since people have been making that bet for like a decade.

While I'm sure the game's age is a factor, I'd also posit the language barrier works to our benefit. Nonetheless, sicking legal teams on guys is an expense they need to weigh the pros and cons on, as well as the potential publicity it would garner for better or worse. So, while you may occasionally see some server boast having a few hundred unique players, the reality is you'd be lucky to see 1/3rd of them on at once, as well as the sheer impossibility of recreating those olden days where prime times saw 3000+ people on.

While I wouldn't call it an honor, it does highlight a flaw of games restricted to multiplayer. When/if servers go down, they're effectively gone, and with that whatever investment a player made. With that said, I do believe there's actually been some recent legal rumblings involving this matter and what could be called fan revivals. Basically, a judge ruled in their favor since the official means was no longer available/being supported. Yet even if this is to be XI's fate, I'd hope one day that full game is recreated or at least officially released, because for some people, things were better WotG and later.

That definitely is a great concept and design, I just hate the aspect of having to buy a new character essentially, so while it technically would be a charge of $30 every year+2 there's other things you'd likely end up buying.

But I do agree, it's nice to see there are still some developers around that recognize MMOs still deserve depth in their game.

Well considering your new character inherits all your skills and abilities.. with some limits due to his age and experience, then youre really not losing anything in the end

All I could think about was the idea of people returning to the library to learn about their past lives in effort to correct their mistakes. If only SE had applied that concept to it's game development.

I think I'm more excited for XV and VII remake to be honest. XV to see where the genre is going and VII to see just how much SE can milk from it's fans.

Well dying in combat doesnt kill you outright. Otherwise like you said that WOULD be stupid, especially if you can get killed while offline. Instead dying (and it all depend on how you die and what you do to resurrect yourself) in combat just lowers your lifespan, so if you were gonna live 1 year now since you died youll like 11 months and 3 weeks or something to that effect.

Also Im pretty sure you can keep your name, if not like you suggested just add Jr at the end or something its not like you lose any skills or abilities so I wouldnt have a problem with it.


And your absolutely right about the trollbait. But thats the magic of it.. I mean thats whats so great about EVE (cause it surely isnt the gameplay) Ppl can kill/backstab you at anytime and the entire world and economy is controlled/effected by the players. So you gotta make friends and make sure youve vetted them and know who you can trust before you trust them. Im pretty sure there are completely safe places or at least places you are less likely to get attacked at (like your house, clan/guild base/a castle etc etc) that you can log out in and not worry about it cause your clan/guild or family could watch out for you while youre offline. I mean lets say you pay someone to watch you while youre offline, ok maybe you had to go to sleep or work thats probably gonna be 8+ hours, do we really expect them to stay online guarding you 8+ hours? What if THEY have to go to sleep/work? So yeah there would have to be ways around that. Also PVP/PKing can be done anywhere but its "illegal" to do outside of times of War so if someone did literally backstab you or kill you while you were offline, they could go to jail or have other things happen to them and you can put bounties or contracts on someone so for the right price you could have half the town hunting them down. (which is another feature I like the sound of, too many times Ive seen ppl get scammed or ninja looted in FFXI and XIV and nothing could be done about it other than informing ppl on message boards. In this game however you can have those sorts of people dealt with... or do it yourself, and theirs corpse looting (again in the right situations) so if they stole from you you can take your **** back or have someone else get it back for you). So yeah I doubt ppl will go around randomly killing ppl and doing trollish/griefing things unless they REALLY had to.

Edited, Nov 11th 2016 2:12am by DuoMaxwellxx

I dont have faith but i would think the consenquenes for thei actions would make them less inclined to do things as opopsed to a game where you can do stuff like that and get away with it WoWE

I am, too. These lands are no longer fertile for farming.