Blizzard forces owner to close World of Warcraft server with old content content
Blizzard has ordered an owner of a private classic World of Warcraft server containing ten-year-old content from the game to stop immediately. The server was launched on Friday, but the owner complied with Blizzard’s demands within five hours and shut down the server.
Blizzard had a law firm send a cease and desist letter to the owner of the server, nicknamed Gummy52. In the letter, Blizzard accuses the server owner of violating the intellectual property of the game company and making improper use of ’emulated server software’. Also, the owner with his server, called Felmyst, would contribute to the use of pirated versions of the game and thus contribute to a decrease in the value and integrity of World of Warcraft.
The official website of the server, which previously contained information about the server and a forum, now only contains a statement from Gummy52. In it he describes how he has worked intensively on the server for four years and suffers from a serious hereditary muscle disease. Due to his condition, Gummy52 says he is unable to continue his project elsewhere in another country because he cannot live on his own.
The project gave the unemployed developer a purpose in his life. In his response, the owner also states how much he is a fan of World of Warcraft and its community, and how much he liked an older version of the game. He indicates that parts of the source code may be passed on to others, but is aware of the possible legal consequences. Blizzard has not yet responded to a request for comment from Ars Technica.
In no time at all after the server, which Gummy52 itself rented, was opened, it was already 3,000 players, the maximum number. He hoped that such a limited maximum would keep his server under the radar, as was previously the case with his earlier project Scriptcraft, an emulator of an older version of World of Warcraft. Felmyst is a similar project, with the server running a classic version of World of Warcraft that is similar in content to the World of Warcraft expansion The Burning Crusade. It came out in early 2007.
It’s not the first time Blizzard has targeted private World of Warcraft server running emulators. In 2016, the Nostalrius server was taken offline shortly after it was launched. This server also ran an old version of the game, as it looked in 2006. According to the administrators, there were 800,000 registered accounts and 150,000 active players. They were supposed to talk to Blizzard about providing support for legacy servers, but Blizzard was silent, prompting the administrators to launch a new similar server project called Elysium in December; this server is still online.