The Business: Proof That MMOs Are The Digital Counterpart of Tabletop, Down To The Retro-Clones

I said previously that the private MMORPG server scene is the Vidya version of Tabletop's retroclones. This proves it.

That is the Vidya version of Dark Dungeons, Basic Fantasy,Labrynth Lord, and other D&D/Chainmail clones.

Compare this against the videos for Turtle WOW and Project Epoch. You'll see that just in the World of Warcraft niche, the most dominant one (as it is to MMOs what D&D is to Tabletop, including its total domination of the niche to the point of reaching escape velocity and leaving all competitors behind due to its Network Effect strength) specifics on how a given server interprets the prompt of (Version) Plus--as there are other servers focus on specifc expansions--varies significantly from each other and from the official version of that iteration of the game.

If Blizzard--and now Microsoft--were smart they'd do what WOTC did 25 years ago and do their own version of the OGL and d20 System Trademark license, but they're not so they won't and instead Lawfare is the order of the day; Ascension, Turtle WOW, Epoch (partially) are set up to be immune to this due to international jurisdiction arbitrage rendering US court judgements moot. Tabletop, by comparison, need only either use a given license (OGL formerly, now Creative Commons) or scrupulously avoid Trademark and Copyright violation (a lot easier in Tabletop) to do the same- Palladium's continued existence proves this.

What is going to happen after this wave of Lawfare fails to knock out the designated targets--the biggest private servers--is that Blizzard and Microsoft are going to attempt a more grayzone approach by pressuring payment processors to deplatform these servers or get them on Mastercard's shitlist (which does the same thing).

If that doesn't work, and it may not, the lobbyists beseige DC, London, and Brussels to get (Super-)State regulation to do it for them. If they frame it properly, that will happen and it may work against all but the Big Two: Ascension and Turtle, both of which structure their operations to be proofed against that using the same rules that the Billionaire Set use to protect their wealth and influence. (Read the Panama and Pandora Papers, folks.)

Any further attempts to fuck with the system will be shut down because it touches that Third Rail; Blizzard and MS will either have to do Cyberpunk Dystopia things like hiring mercs to murk them, or call Ryan Dancey to consult on how to pull off an OGL scenario. Count on the latter, eventually.

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Project Ascension is Free To Play; this specific server goes live on Friday the 3rd at 9:00AM Central Time, and others have other play modes including one still in the works: Conquest of Azeroth (all new classes on a fresh class-based server). Ascension also hosts Project Epoch (also F2P), the other recent Classic Plus World of Warcraft private server and--after recent developments--handles all administration. Turtle WOW (also F2P) remains the oldest surviving private server, the MMO counterpart to Labrynth Lord.