After the establishment of the largest private server for World of Warcraft Classic Plus, the team from Turtle WoW has now revealed how it plans to move forward.
What is Turtle WoW planning? When the servers of the private server of Turtle WoW went offline on May 15, 2026, a journey lasting more than 8 years came to an end. The operators had accomplished the feat of implementing a Classic Plus variant of World of Warcraft that thrilled many fans, and even a substantial expansion was released for it.
But that’s not all. Meanwhile, the team had been working on Turtle WoW 2.0, a modern WoW version in Unreal Engine 5. The ambitions had always been enormous considering the relatively limited resources. However, under pressure from Blizzard, all of that is now history.
Now it is clear that this is not the end for the team behind Turtle WoW. On the official Discord channel (via Reddit), the responsible parties have now announced that they wish to continue, now as part of the newly established development studio Moonwhisper Games. The announcement states:
We will build something completely new from the ground up: our own story, our own world, and our own IP.
For a long time, we debated what kind of game we want to make… what is realistic and what is not. But after seeing the farewell you all gave to our worlds, we realized what kind of game we truly want to create: a world where we can all reunite one day.
A game that we would want to play ourselves, and a game whose development would be enjoyable for us—regardless of time, risks, and the associated costs. That’s why we decided to start working on our own MMO!
“A colossal endeavor”
What else does Turtle WoW reveal? The team admits that they want to undertake “a colossal endeavor” with a completely new MMO. However, they are not starting from scratch. With Turtle WoW, they spent “years building MMO experiences, managing communities, creating content, and learning both the strengths and weaknesses of the genre.”
Currently, they are focusing on “laying the foundation: building the world, developing its background story (Lore) and history, defining the core pillars of gameplay, and creating the base upon which everything else will be built.”
Additionally, they are currently revamping the official Discord to make it the first point of contact for Moonwhisper Games in the future. A new website for the studio is to follow.
How does the community react? On Discord and on Reddit, there are some fans who are excited that the Turtle WoW team wants to utilize its experiences and accumulated expertise to develop a new MMO.
- Metalwell writes, “I believe this is a victory for a genre that has been lost and forgotten. I hope they develop something similar to WoW, but with more modern features.”
- –clapped– adds, “I have more faith in these people regarding MMO development than in most others. That is: unless I haven’t already passed away from old age before it even reaches alpha. I may only be 23, but we are talking about MMO development here.”
Diverse others remind that there have always been scam allegations from the community towards the makers of Turtle WoW and that in all these years, hardly any crowdfunding MMO has successfully reached final release (including allusions to Ashes of Creation).
- TheElusiveFox mocks, “So we are three days before they start a Kickstarter campaign to ask the community for money, and ten years before someone writes an angry post that the game, despite having paid tens of thousands of dollars, will never be released, and someone from their fanbase is then really surprised about that…”
- Climaxbruno1988 renames the new project: “Ashes of Turtle”
- UrGirlsBoytoy criticizes, “Still run by Shenna. Still a well-thought-out scam. No idea how often people have to warn about this. Wow, the players are only made up of Stockholm syndrome and Mountain Dew.”
How does MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz evaluate the project? In an era where industry veterans like Jack Emmert seem unable to secure funding for their desired MMORPG (despite an incredibly popular brand like Warhammer), it seems almost insane for a former private server operator to undertake such an MMO project.
On the other hand, I am glad for every genre enthusiast who still wants to attempt to realize such an MMO project and invest years of their lives into it.
I can only advise anyone who needs to watch their money even a little to refrain from any financial support in any form until the final release is announced and they have been able to play extensively. Too often, promising crowdfunding projects have turned into disasters over the past decades. With the many millions that fans have literally burned, one could have built a really good online role-playing game – here you can see the frustrating balance of previous Kickstarter MMOs over 14 years
Your opinion is important to us!
Do you like the article? Then let us know!