Is it pronounced "wares" or "war-EZ"?
 

Somebody in another thread Was talking about piracy and it reminded me of a time when I was working at a computer store in the 90s. this guy came in telling me how he would never buy anything in the store because he could always download the "war-EZ" Versions. He did this repeatedly and I was quite enjoying hearing him pronounce it this way.

Since then, a few people have pronounced it this way. As anybody else heard it pronounced like this?

I only very rarely heard someone use that word and it would just be "wares" but implied to end with a Z of course because HackerMan999. In polite conversation it would usually be a cracked copy. It's a rather oafish word after all.

I always just said 'wares'. As one of those sad people who mostly bought games I don't recall ever hearing it spoken. I remember playing it in Scrabble against someone much older who understandably wasn't familiar with the word though.

Uh. It's just another word for "goods". Age should have no baring on knowing the word or not.

Back in the day, hearing it pronounced with a z at the end was pretty common in the groups we were in...
Not sure if that was just a local thing or not...

Think we got it from the BBSes we used to visit... I think some of them even spelled it with a z at times...

Just pretend you are saying Juarez, badly.

That’s how I pronounced it back in the early 2000s :D

Obviously we are not an English-speaking country so English words like “warez” came out with wildly varying pronunciations, especially back then :)

It was intended to be pronounced "wares" I'm sure. The word in English means "goods" or "items".

Or as in "Dude, where's my games?"

Wares. As in "software". Never heard "War-EZ". :laughing

You think that is where it came from?

I always thought "wares" as in "goods for sale" but "softWARES" might make more sense.

Your guess is as good as mine, maybe it's a bit of both! Definitely not war-EZ either way, haha!

LOL, it was so absurd hearing this guy standing there with a straight face telling me to my face that he was not going to buy anything in my store because he could just pirate it at home.

Yes, that's what it always meant to me too. But I never heard it used IRL, it was always just "New games" or "New cracks" etc.

Yes, it is Wikipedia, but still.. ;-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warez

From one of the links on the wikipedia Warez sites.
Eric Goldman, The Challenges of Regulating Warez Trading (2005), https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/facpubs/620/

This seems to be the way I would pronounce it, but I guess the true source would be those who were/are active?

Would be interesting if some of the former active members can confirm the 60 hours? Or was it less when using a cart (Action Replay III) ? It must rapidly increase and improve your muscle memory. Also is a cart still faster when you could start coding custom decryptor tools, or would you just load decryptor or tool in memory and the first line loads the address in to the (ax) register?

This seems like some unusual behaviour, bragging perhaps? :nuts

I say it like ware-ez or ware-rez

He pronounced it as war-easy? Weird.

In Germany we called that "RAUBKOPIEN"... :D