Some fans of popular online games such as World of Warcraft (WoW) and EverQuest are logging into illegal game servers to avoid paying monthly subscription charges. Although the 'private' servers are believed to offer fewer features, the players do not mind as it does not hit their pockets quite as hard.

To slay dragons as a mighty wizard or warrior in WoW, players have to buy the game software for about $40 and pay a $25 subscription every month.

For EverQuest, US$15 (S$23) has to be paid every month.

Some illegal servers, however, charge a nominal fee while others are free.

Said 18-year-old Clarence Wong, who plays on an illegal server: 'I paid for the software, but I didn't want to keep paying $25 every month. So when a friend told me about these free servers, I decided to switch.'

The student played WoW on the company's network for a year before switching to the 'private' servers last December.

WoW is the world's most popular online game with 8.5 million players worldwide, 30,000 of whom are in Singapore.

It is difficult to tell exactly how many players use illegal servers, but discussions about them surface periodically on popular local websites such as Stomp and HardwareZone.

A spokesman for WoW's local distributor, AsiaSoft Online, told The Straits Times that the company 'discourages players from using such servers as they have fewer features and are less stable, since they are usually run from home computers'.

The stand against those who operate such servers is much harder.

'Running such a server is clearly copyright infringement and we will take legal action against anybody we find doing this,' said AsiaSoft spokesman Ivan Seah.

He added, however, that the company has not received any reports of such servers being hosted in Singapore - although the possibility cannot be ruled out.

Intellectual property lawyer Cyril Chua said that people found to be running illegal servers face up to $20,000 in fines and six months in jail.

But that does not appear to deter some WoW fans - such as 25-year-old undergraduate Michael, who declined to give his full name.

He downloaded what he thought was a copy of the software needed to run a game server for his friends to play on, but he could not get it to work.

So he found a 'reasonably stable private server' to play on.

'Of course it's not as shiok (Malay for 'enjoyable'), but at least it's free.'