Thread: Invite to register your gaming site

Aren't private WoW servers illegal?

Yes, they are illegal. For many other MMOs it is, too. This is also looks like a spam message, even if they say in it is not, considering that if they really were interested they would have contacted any obvious staff instead of making a post just to get attention for more hits.

And for the record, here is legal documentation stating it is in fact illegal to host private servers.

Link to their legal documents page:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/

Quote from the End User License Agreement (areas not pertinent edited out):
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/eula.html

2.
Additional License Limitations.
The license granted to you in Section 1 is subject to the limitations set forth in Sections 1 and 2 (collectively, the "License Limitations"). Any use of the Game in violation of the License Limitations will be regarded as an infringement of Blizzard�s copyrights in and to the Game. You agree that you will not, under any circumstances:

A. in whole or in part, copy, photocopy, reproduce, translate, reverse engineer, derive source code from, modify, disassemble, decompile, or create derivative works based on the Game; provided, however, that you may make one (1) copy of the Game Client and the Manuals for archival purposes only;

F. host, provide or develop matchmaking services for the Game or intercept, emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Blizzard in any way, for any purpose, including without limitation unauthorized play over the internet, network play, or as part of content aggregation networks;

G. facilitate, create or maintain any unauthorized connection to the Game or the Service, including without limitation (a) any connection to any unauthorized server that emulates, or attempts to emulate, the Service; and (b) any connection using programs or tools not expressly approved by Blizzard; or

And quote from their Terms of Use (areas not pertinent edited out):
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html

1.
Grant of a Limited License to Use the Service
Subject to your agreement to and continuing compliance with the Terms of Use agreement, you may use the Service solely for your own non-commercial entertainment purposes by accessing it with an authorized, unmodified Game Client. You may not use the Service for any other purpose, or in connection with any other software.

2.
Additional License Limitations.
The license granted to you in Section 1 is subject to the limitations set forth in Sections 1 and 2 (collectively, the "License Limitations"). Any use of the Service or the Game Client in violation of the License Limitations will be regarded as an infringement of Blizzard’s copyrights in and to the Game. You agree that you will not, under any circumstances:

A. use cheats, automation software (bots), hacks, mods or any other unauthorized third-party software designed to modify the World of Warcraft experience;

C. use any unauthorized third-party software that intercepts, "mines", or otherwise collects information from or through the Game or the Service, including without limitation any software that reads areas of RAM used by the Game to store information about a character or the game environment; provided, however, that Blizzard may, at its sole and absolute discretion, allow the use of certain third party user interfaces;

E. host, provide or develop matchmaking services for the Game or the Service, or intercept, emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Blizzard in any way, for any purpose, including without limitation unauthorized play over the internet, network play, or as part of content aggregation networks;

F. facilitate, create or maintain any unauthorized connection to the Game or the Service, including without limitation (a) any connection to any unauthorized server that emulates, or attempts to emulate, the Service; and (b) any connection using programs or tools not expressly approved by Blizzard; or

Originally Posted by Vasco

Hello,

My name is Vasco Rouw and I am the webmaster of a game toplist called http://top-game-sites.com.

This email is to invite you to sign up on Top Game Sites, so please

take a look on my site and hopefully register as I would really like your site on it.
Please dont think this just as regular spam, as I am searching the web by hand looking for websites that I like.
And I thought yours were very nice.
To make things more appealing to you, I am giving out one free Gold membership for a month.

We also have an Incentive Tracking option which will allow you to track who is voting and who is not voting when they visit Top-Game-Sites.com from your site. Some games did use this feature and we discovered that as many as 45% of their players aren't actually voting when they coming to the voting site!

To access this feature, simply login to your user control panel, and click the link 'Edit Account' and follow the instructions there

I hope that I will see you soon, and have good day.

Best regards
Vasco Rouw
http://top-game-sites.com

your website tracker looks like it's geared for MMORPG and web-based RPG games.....why would we sign up?

and what are the ranks based on? "IN/OUT" means what? people clicking some annoying "vote for our clan" icon on their website? If so, we aren't interested in joining any site tracking system that involves our users clicking on anything. It's insulting and degrading.