The fact that his combination StarCraft and World Of Warcraft mod, World of Starcraft got pulled from YouTube didn’t really surprise young creator Ryan Winzen. The ensuing conversation with Activision Blizzard’s lawyers, however, was a bit unsettling.

The mod trailer is good looking. While the newly released StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was highly criticized for some of the “improvements” it made over the 1998 original StarCraft game, some of the ideas can be seen resuscitated in this new mod, one of the major reasons programmers often modify an existing game. The creator can pick and choose his or her features.

Winzen has a year and a half left in his college career, but the 25-year old is already getting a lot of attention for the trailer he put on YouTube of the impressive mod he created using the StarCraft II tools kit. Some of the attention has been in the form of well-wishers and fans of the mod. Some of it has concerned possible copyright infringement, and finally, Riot Games has invited him to apply for a job with them.

Winzen feels that his story has blown up because his video was removed from the public sharing site, YouTube, angering new fans and others who adopt the causes of those whose rights have been infringed upon. “Obviously, Blizzard did not have this problem with “StarCraft Universe,’” Winzen said, the MMO project by the modder mille25 that preceded Winzen’s. “If they never would have taken the video down, this never would have happened. The story wouldn’t have gotten this big.”

He urges fans to carefully consider their comments about the company. According to Activision Blizzard, the issues surround trademark protection (owning the name) instead of copyright infringement (owning the content), since the mod was created using a public tool set. At any rate, two of the biggest and most classic names in MMO gaming have combined into a cool mod that may serve as a building block for spin-offs or original work by Winzen. Read more about it here.

World of Starcraft Trailer

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 5th, 2011 at 08:00 and is filed under Retrogamer Lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.