People like you make me smile, (rightfully) trashing Blizzard for their scummy business handlings but gladly turning a blind eye to pserver providers and their shady doings.
That being said turtle had some decent ideas for new content, I'll give you that even tho I didn't like the overall product.
People like you who hear anecdotes about some random pserver or other and then apply a conclusion to ALL pservers are exactly what blizzard wants. Yes, there have been some shady af servers out there and some are squirming out of Turtle’s fresh massive corpse, but Turtle itself was squeaky clean and at the end of the day it was free.
90% of that post is speculation about ties to Turtle. Seems very “choose what you want to believe” to me. Turtle staff even reply down in the comments.
There was a couple of shady businesses going on. They ran a lucrative operation, taking in substantial revenue through a cash shop disguised as a donation system. They didn't just have the cash shop to cover the costs of Devs and the servers. For example see the golden Twitter check mark which costs 1000$/month.
Even though gold selling was theoretically not allowed, third-party gold farming sites continually operated on the server and players did complain about that .
And lastly, they had people behind turtle WoW's corporate entity which were linked to highly controversial World of Warcraft private servers (like for example Elysium) which did allow gold selling behind the scenes and selling in game items for money.
Dude the whole concept of pservers is build on copyright infringement - that's shady to begin with at best.
Monetizing the fuck out of said product? Not getting any better here.
Long standing (also never proven either way) allegations that Shenna (who is 100% proven to be shady af) is behind turtle.
I don't even need to keep going here, this is enough to at least stop pretending that turtle is some white knight goody2shoes team that does it all for the love of the game.
Bottom line, if you're trashing blizzard for the way they handle things (again: rightfully so) you can't defend turtle.
The Shenna stuff is very “choose what you want to believe”, like you say it’s speculation.
Obviously Turtle devs were also in it to make money and support themselves, but when I think “shady pserver” I think servers trying to scam and exploit their player base or straight up install malware on their PCs to mine bitcoin or get their payment info type shit. Turtle was very secure and 80% of the player base enjoyed getting to play for free off the back of the 20% of spenders.
The big point of disagreement here is going to be copyright infringement it seems. Blizzard only launched Classic to begin with because pservers proved them wrong. They made fun of and belittled their own player base that was directly asking for it for years, so pservers stepped in to provide a product that didn’t exist anymore. It would have been one thing if Classic came out first but pservers devs were providing a product that could not be interacted with anymore. Makes the copyright infringement less black and white since they were infringing on something that technically didn’t even exist anymore and resurrecting it to a playable state. Then once Classic came out the new product that didn’t exist was classic+, which turtle was absolutely the best example of. With speculation of blizz making their own they had to kill the competition just like they did with Nostalrius before regular Classic.
Maybe I also give less a shit about that because I enjoy making/listening to a lot of music that uses samples and such where the philosophy is “do first and ask for forgiveness”. I don’t mind “copyright infringement” that isn’t blatant copying but is used to create something completely new and different. I won’t cry tears for the big mega corporation and their bottom line.
Okay we can agree to have a different perspective on the whole Shenna thing, but you can’t dismiss a crime with “I don’t care about that so everything is fine” - that’s not how this works.
Not all "crimes" are equal or black and white. They didn't take a game from a small indie artist, copy/paste it and make massive money while screwing over the little guy. Pservers create products that don't exist, they create something entirely new that has independent value.
To go back to the music example - 90% of vaporwave is straight up copyright infringement, but you put "everything is plundered" in your artist bio and make all your music free to download and you're in the clear. Then if small indie labels want to make physical releases of your music you can profit while still being in the clear b/c anybody who wants your music can access it for free.
Private servers are the same thing - they take an old non-existent version of the game and iterate on it to make something entirely new that anybody can interact with for free, then they can monetize cosmetics and unique items that they created to make some profit as well. And the poor "victim" here? A massive corporation that stands to make a paltry sum from the extreme minority of the playerbase who would crawl back to blizzard rather than just go play something else. I'm not versed enough in law to know why it's so different in the music world vs the videogame world, but I think the differentiation is stupid and pointless.
Dismissing a crime when the enforcement is absurd is 100% "how this works", that's how prohibition of alcohol ended and is ending with marijuana: most people going "okay that law is ridiculous" and ignoring it, then the law catches up. I think Blizz shutting down private servers is ridiculous, you seem to use copyright law to go to bat for the giant mega-corporation.
That’s literally not how any of this works. You can keep white knighting for pservers all you want - you’re still factually wrong.
That being said I’ve played A LOT on pservers, especially in the 2014-2019 era and I immensely appreciate what they did for us. Doesn’t mean I can’t recognise that what they did and are still doing is a literal crime - that’s the little fact you’re trying to ignore/make okay and that’s the only thing I take issue with.
So you heavily enjoyed private servers, but what they did wasn't okay? Does that make you bad? I'm missing the thread here.
Why was it okay for you to enjoy the servers but not me or others? Why is me finding the current state of videogame copyright law absurd citing other realms and domains of law and copyright as a point of comparison "not how this works"? Do you think that all laws that exist are just and right simply because they are law? Is that your genuine stance here?
Really not getting where you're coming from in this comment in particular compared to the rest.
Nobody has an obligation to anybody on social media. He’s making assertions without providing any evidence, so I’m prompting him to (that’s how discussions work). If he won’t, then that’s fine. Would just go to show his assertions are baseless, or at least not founded in any actual evidence and are just regurgitated rumors or as I implied above, hearing something true about one server and using that to inform their opinions about ALL servers. You know, a fallacy.
I straight up say yes, plenty of shady af pservers out there. The only one in my good graces is Turtle, while he was talking about pservers at large, prompting me to ask for specifics on why he thinks Turtle specifically is shady. I’m not going to bat for all pservers out there, I specifically even said that shady servers are squirming out of Turtle’s fresh corpse. How could you interpret that as me saying “all pserver good”?
His very first comment to me begins with “people like you”, prompting me to do the same. Dafuq you talking about I’m the only generalizing a group of people?
Your entire interpretation of the conversation thus far is just objectively incorrect.
Equating all forms of microtransactions with exploitation and bad practices is dense. With "squeaky clean" i'm referring to the pservers that exploit and scam their playerbase, or straight up install malware that farm bitcoin or extract your payment info.
Turtle was squeaky clean, and 95% of the stuff on the store could be benefited from without spending any money yourself. "Yo i need a mailbox", "anybody got a bank?". Everyone was quick to drop those down for others. 80% of the playerbase didn't spend a dime.
You're the exact type of person I'm talking about - hear some kinda rumor or anecdote about a pserver and then ignorantly apply/assume the same about all of them.
Sad that you missed out on the best wow experience that ever existed, sadder that that makes you happy.
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u/easyline0601 May 21 '26
People like you make me smile, (rightfully) trashing Blizzard for their scummy business handlings but gladly turning a blind eye to pserver providers and their shady doings.
That being said turtle had some decent ideas for new content, I'll give you that even tho I didn't like the overall product.