Are pirate severs advertisement?

[Creed]

I recently joined official WoW but b4 that I played on 3 different local servers and they were all fun except fot the player cap,broken gameplay, char wipes on version upgrade,timeouts and many,many other issues.

Now we all know they were/are pirate servers and that piracy is wrong albeit free In the defense of pirate servers almost everyone(S.A ppl) I know on offical played on pirate servers at some point and a lot of them played with me.I would never have gone thru the effort of getting WoW and payed R100 p/m if I didn't know how great the game is.

Now the true question: Are pirate servers helping or hurting Blizzard?

 

[P0tenc]

good question as I also played the pirate servers at first and now play official.

 

[savage]

well, if it wasn't for the constant crap of broken chars and things not working on pirate servers, I may have never gone to offial to begin with

 

[SeanH]

I also played on 3 pirate servers before going official. Ive never looked back

 

[MrG]

I played TFR and Blackstrom before I moved to U.S and now I am playing E.U (both accounts still active)

I wouldnt have played WoW Official if I didnt try the game on Blackstorm.

 

[Darthmoose]

Well thats what 10 day guest accounts are for. Stay away from pirate servers as they do no justice to the game.

 

[Tinuva]

I cant testify that I have never played on a illegal server. When Europe was in beta testing I was port of it and I really thought wow what a great game. I then played on the US servers where friends played for almost a year.

If it wasnt for raiding times I would probably stay there. It was then that I realised hey the Europe had awesome times when I was beta testing there.

I since then moved back to Europe and never looked back.

 

[Bossman]

Well..re the Topic..

Pirate server's are an adverticement and very effective at it. On Stormrage alone are about +/-100 peeps that came from pirate SA servers. Me and alot of my friends would not have played the game officially if it was not for the broken pirate servers introduction to the game. (always heard things like: If only this spell worked like intended../cry Answer: Go play official if you want that to work....we all did

So therefore the answer to the question is yes, a big yes..

 

[killswitch]

I played Blackstorm before going official EU. I've been on official for a quite a while now, and cant imagine ever going back to a pirate server In a some arb way, i even think pirate servers spoil the proper WOW experience a bit, and those that are not playing official are seriously missing out :/

 

[Drix]

I also played TFR before giving official EU a try. I would NEVER have dished out R100/maonth if i hadn't seen the improvement. I'd say the pirate servers are helping Blizzard, or in SA at least.

 

[SonZeRo]

well since switching to official from a pirate i just have to say that peeps still on pirate dont know what they be missing.

but yes got addicted to it by pirates and then got fed up with the broken stuff and went legal.

will never go back to pirate, my lag is better on official anyways thanks to a nice socks server.(Thanks Squish102)

 

[Eniigma]

I have never played on an illigitimate server before. Although one of my guild mates set one up and assigned Van Cleef an assistant in the form of Raggy. While I see many people who have seen positive effects of playing on illigal servers and getting a taste and moving to the genuine thing, the question remains how many people are still playing on dodgy servers and will not move over? And that hurts Blizzard, not that I think they are struggling any way. As a matter of interest if you do the math... 270k accounts @ GBP8.99 per month - GBP 2427300 pounds per month. Thats a lot of cash. That does not even consider the US realms. I was in the UK when the EU realms where launched and I remember the articles then, that Blizzard only expected to sell 275000 copies in the EU in total ever. They sold that in the first weekend. Of course not all are still active, but I think that is a reasonable guestimate. Now if I can only come up with and MMOG that will rival WoW.

 

[Milov]

Eniigma wrote: "I have never played on an illigitimate server before. the question remains how many people are still playing on dodgy servers and will not move over? And that hurts Blizzard, not that I think they are struggling any way. As a matter of interest if you do the math... 270k accounts @ GBP8.99 per month - GBP 2427300 pounds per month. Thats a lot of cash. That does not even consider the US realms. "

You make a good point, but i can tell you Blizzard is getting free advertising from pirate servers. I played ages ago on blackstorm and moved to an official server, and will never in a million years go back to a pirate server. Also i would have never gone to an official server as a player in SA if it wasn't for the pirate server.
Also the question of how many people remain on those servers... well it's such a small amount,... i remember we were less than 60 players at one time on that server, of which moved periodically over to official, even long after i went to official people still kept moving to the official servers, because the game is great, but as a player you just cant deal with the crap of pirate servers in the long run, or the players would maybe move to another game or just stop playing... so yeah we don't have 270k amount of players in SA anyhow...
So i think yeah... Blizzard wins all the way, they have great product, free advertising for it that they dont havt to put a dime in for.

Also for ppl that feel pirate servers dont do WoW justice, i agree that is so true, but also as an old player on a pirate server, i can tell you how much you appreciate that stuff that is working properly and i realise how much work Blizzard must have put into that game! It is worth going to official if you are not.
LOL it's even embarrasing to even say to my friends on official that i've played on a screwed up server, they have no understanding how we could have done the things we did lol... all good fun, good memories.

I agree YES the pirate servers are more benefitial than causing any losses in South Africa, i wouldnt know about the rest of the world.

/WTB a tshirt "I SOLD MY SOUL TO BLIZZARD"

 

[snugam]

How about if they give us free bandwidth in this country...... oh sorry wrong post.... lol

 

[alexkellaris]

How can anyone play on Pirated servers, theres a max cap of like 70 people at a time, how the hell do you find a 40 man group and do any end level instances?

 

[Oneiros667]

Never would have tried WoW otherwise

I played on a 'local' server about a year ago, and now have an account on the European realm.

Wouldn't even have tried it if I didn't find the WoW installation on a local filesharing network.

Back when local wasn't capped, puilling a DVD iso for the game was no big deal. But I dont think many people would take the risk of getting the demo installation of the blizzard site now and trying it just to see if it's worth playing.

And as many have said before, the local servers don't compare with the real thing, and with time cards and the game available locally, anybody with a Internet connection can play.

So, while the local server are good for getting a look at the game, the free trial on the official servers is much better. Borrow somebody's install's and set up your own trial account if you'd like to try it out.

If you don't have a lot of self control, you might want to break up with you gf or bf now, and save a messy breakup later ;-]

 

[freeek]

I played on the local server! Was a level 60 Mage (one of the few) well that was all a year ago. I'm thinking of playing official now.

 

[Creed]

Go for it freeek, but if you were even a little hooked on a pirate server prepare to lose contact with the outside world from time to time =)

It really is worth the R100 per month