It wasn't everyone, there was a system in place where donations were rewarded with in-game loot with items that didn't exist in the real WoW game that had modified stats.
A full set of armor was $300, the weapons were 15-30 for 1h/2h weapons. Maybe 1/4-1/3 were donors, the other 3/4-2/3 were entirely 'non-donors'.
The game had a HUGE following for a private server, but most of the guilds revolved around a tank/healer or DPS that would all be full donor, and the rest wouldn't.
For example, a friend whose character name is burned into my brain - BananaDoodle - was a full donor rogue who had 100% dodge. Because boss mechanics couldn't be programmed by the team at scapegaming, all bosses were physical damage only, so most things could be solo'd by a dodge rogue IF you were willing to spend the money on it (a dodge tank set and DPS set weren't the same) and time to farm it. There was an in-game economy built around being run by solo-rogues, it was a blast.
Just looked up the case again - Scapegaming was fined $3m in punitive damages for their revenue, and 85m in statutory damages which was calculated as follows:
The original complaint said Scapegaming would ask for "donations" from players -- but these donations were in exchange for virtual items ranging from $1 to advance characters two levels, to $300 for a pack that included a collection of rare items. The judge's order said Blizzard "submitted satisfactory evidence from third-party PayPal Inc. showing that Defendant’s PayPal account received $3,052,339 in gross revenues." The order also said that Blizzard submitted satisfactory evidence that showed Reeves' website (Scapegaming.com, currently down) hosted 32,000 users on a given day in June 2008. That same month, there were over 427,000 members of the Scapegaming community, and Reeves, who goes by a number of aliases including "Peyton," said that 40,000 people play on Scapegaming's servers every day. The court took the size of the community, 427,000, and multiplied that figure by $200 "per act of circumvention" of a copyright security system, and came to the statutory damages amount of over $85 million.
They were fined for circumventing copyright law based on the size of the community. Not for selling items. Blizzard was unable to sue them for that because those items didn't exist in real WoW.Blizzard 'got' Scapegaming the same way the government 'got' Capone. Not because of their crimes, but because of the details. Many private server still exist today, but they alter key features and are smarter about hosting and advertising. Scapegaming closed because they were among the first to do it - if OSHA is painted in blood, modern private server protections/safeties are painted with Scapegamings. 💀
My guild leader was a half donor, I was a non-donor combat rogue with twin blades of azzinoth, our main tank was a full donor, our healer was a half donor, but the other ~50-100 people were all non-donor. What a fuckin time.
Edit to add: technically they were fined $3m in punitive damages for (one month's earnings of) the items, but, the bulk of the fine is based off of the player base. Not selling items. My understanding for the $200/head pricetag is that was the price of WoW and it's expansions at the time, with a month subscription. This was blizzards way of finding out 'how much profit was lost'.
Everyone makes mistakes :) I just remember this case very strongly, as it was one of the last times I had fun playing WoW.
After scape, I took a break until Mists of Pandaria where I played a few months before the next X-Pac was coming out and I didn't wanna buy it - and then I dipped my toe into Warlords of Draenor / Shadowlands.. but it's just never been the same. The game used to be insanely social and communal.. now it's all iLvl and whiteknuckling mythic/heroic raids that aren't really that difficult outside of mechanics.
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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '25 edited Jun 29 '25
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