Gundato: Arguable, but the term "abandonware" exists solely to provide an excuse to pirate stuff. And most of those have NOT been abandoned by their copyright holders.

orcishgamer: I guess, the working term most folks understand is a title that has been unpublished for quite some time and not available for retail or planned to be so in the near term. Obviously titles can leave abandonware status if, for example, they become available on Steam or XBox Live Arcade or some such.
Is it a legitimate excuse to download the game without paying? Well, I can't make that decision for anyone. Can you violate copyright with abandonware, yes.

Gundato: Except that most of the "abandonware" titles are still readily available on Amazon and the like, let alone eBay.

orcishgamer: If it's available from an actual copyright holder or their agent on Amazon then of course it's not abandonware, if it's only available second hand then it still probably is. Just because someone can buy a used copy of Final Fantasy 3 for 400 dollars doesn't mean it's generally available (I have no idea if that's the going rate for a copy of that game, btw, it's just an example of an old semi-valuable title that I don't believe is available for purchase from the copyright holder or their agents).
Actual abandonware == games you can't buy from the copyright holder or their agent now nor in the near future; also generally excluding fairly recent games. Again, of course one can violate copyright with an abandonware game (which I think we agree on), though not all uses would necessarily be infringement.
I can't speak to what's on abandonware sites, if they have copies of games that are generally available by the copyright holder's agent in most areas of the world then I would argue they are including non-abandonware on their site.

Gundato: I am just going to speed things up:
Abandonware is a form of piracy. Simple enough.
Any form of "abandonware" is piracy. Any form of "warez" is piracy. I don't care how you justify that it deserves to be called "abandonware" instead of "warez". It is still piracy. And, by the letter of the law, it is piracy.

Gundato: Arguable, but the term "abandonware" exists solely to provide an excuse to pirate stuff. And most of those have NOT been abandoned by their copyright holders.

grove12345: If the stores dont have the games, and you cant buy it from the developers site, and no online distributors have it..... i consider that abadonware.
Hey i want that 15 year old game that you guys made and still own the rights to. Where can i buy it? No where...torrenting it is.
back to wizardry. heard there is a PS3 version, but only in Japan. It looks like the PS2 version but man i love the artwork they did for it.

Bysshe: Whoa now. Since I'm the one who brought up Wiz VII's "abandonware" status, let me see if I can clarify things. First off, you'll notice I didn't provide any links or affirmatively state that it was or wasn't abandonware, just that it is more widely available online than other entries in the series, for unclear reasons.
Second, that abandonware "exists" is, I would argue, self-evident. Legality doesn't enter into it. Whether one recognizes it as ethical or legitimate or not, that doesn't change the fact that it is a concept - a thing which exists in the world because enough people refer to it as such. For example, a bastard son of a medieval monarch might not have been a legitimate heir to the throne, but that doesn't change the fact that the son existed and was a living human being. A gay marriage might not yet be legally recognized in most of the United States, but you can bet a married gay couple from Massachusetts still considers themselves married when they visit Georgia. Abandonware exists, period. This is simply a semantic argument.
Also, let's put it this way: Some copyright holders allow their titles to become freeware or public domain, most often with no further support. I would consider this "freeware" to be a form of legal abandonware. You might insist on calling it freeware, but I think the key issue is availability and support. In addition, sometimes copyright ownership is ambiguous or unknown even to the companies that hold the rights themselves. It's pointless to argue about the ethics and morality of it, because we all have different standards - it's all about how you get through the night.
One can pay high prices to third-party sellers for old games which are far in excess of what contemporary games cost - money which, in all likelihood, will never go to the original creators of the game. One can download a game which is unlikely to be released in the near future, and thereby technically infringe on the rights of some holding company that doesn't care one way or another whether some IP they bought as part of a package deal 10 years and 5 CEOs ago is being "pirated" or not. It's all part of that grey area inherent to life.
I like GOG. I have no problem paying a nominal amount for old games. I think every form of media which can be transmitted digitally should be available for immediate download, for a reasonable fee, and with no strings attached. Eventually, that will probably be the case. In the meantime, I don't lose too much sleep over things like abandonware. If I really thought Wiz VII had been released to the public domain, I would have given a link - I just don't want people arguing further based on an offhand comment I made.
And please take no offense from my arguments about the existence of abandonware, either, Gundato. That's just how I view things. You're saying that it doesn't legally exist, and I'm saying that it doesn't have to be legally recognized to exist. We obviously both pay for games, let's call the whole thing off.

Gundato: I am just going to speed things up:
Abandonware is a form of piracy. Simple enough.
Any form of "abandonware" is piracy. Any form of "warez" is piracy. I don't care how you justify that it deserves to be called "abandonware" instead of "warez". It is still piracy. And, by the letter of the law, it is piracy.

reddog000: My favorite series of all-time. Actually played the original on an Apple IIE back in 1982 or 1983 I believe. I have the archives on CD and Wiz 8.
I might have to dig out these just 'cause I saw this thread. Blasphemy to you all ;) Hoping they will run on Win7 64-bit.
PS - I still have the original Clue Book for Crusaders of the Dark Savant. I have used it so much over the years it kinda looks like an old pirate map!

fisk0: Have any of you played the 2000 "Wizards & Warriors" game, if I remember correctly it was made by some of the people behind Wizardry 5 or 6. I have it and the graphics are still really beautiful in my opinion, but the game is extremely buggy, to the point I have a hard time actually playing the game since the interface doesn't work properly, of course, it has a lot of the forest walking parts many of you seem to have disliked in Wizardry 7 too.