The World of Warcraft vanilla server petition should be in the hands of Blizzard. Kern has commented on Blizzard’s response to the idea of private servers.
J. Allen Brack stated in his response that there “is not a clear legal path to protect Blizzard’s IP and grant an operating license to a pirate server”. Kern disagrees and told The Escapist that “Brack is just…wrong”.
Kern who helped draft the licensing of World of Warcraft in China goes on to say, “I don’t know where he’s getting his advice from, but from a legal perspective he’s dead wrong. Let’s say, ‘He thinks he knows license agreements, but he doesn’t.'”
It’s unknown what the cost of setting up vanilla servers would be for Blizzard but Kern thinks the company would see the benefit.
“To me, Blizzard’s decision has less to do with business sense and more to do with the lack of will Yes, it’s hard. Yes, it’s work. But the money and profits are there to support it and make it a very handsome deal. It’s a no-brainer.”
Blizzard says they are open to looking at the idea of a “pristine server” but this probably doesn’t go far enough for players looking for that real vanilla WoW experience. Kern goes on:
“I find it odd that he is proposing something that, in my experience working on WoW, would be even more work and expense than simply porting legacy WoW to current technical support systems.”
What Blizzard does next remains to be seen, but there are literally hundreds of thousands of old WoW players who say they are committed to the WoW vanilla server cause. We’ll have to wait and see what happens now, the ball is firmly in Blizzard’s court.
Directly related to this story
- PC Invasion Interview – Ex-World of Warcraft dev Mark Kern explains why Blizzard should open vanilla servers
- Blizzard post official statement on World of Warcraft vanilla servers
- World of Warcraft vanilla server petition open letter released
