Blizzard is closing a server for their World of Warcraft, which was operated by fans.
It has been a phenomenon in World of Warcraft and other games for some time. The fans themselves call it “Classic Server” or “Private Server,” but you could also say “Pirate Server.” These are servers operated by others than Blizzard without any license. These servers run previous versions of WoW.
There are usually no fees for players to use these servers, while the official WoW is still a subscription game. This and the nostalgia factor certainly contribute to the popularity of these offerings .
The private server Nostalrius had, as reported by Kotaku, 800,000 registered users and 150,000 active players at its peak. Now French and US lawyers are shutting down the server on behalf of Blizzard. According to the operators of Nostalrius, they received a formal letter announcing a lawsuit. They responded by shutting down. Players likely have until April 10 at 23:00, then the lights will go out.
Nostalrius ran with 1.124, the vanilla version just before Burning Crusade. The operators of the private server announced that they will make the source code and anonymized player data freely accessible, so that the community will decide the fate of Nostalrius. The current operators will no longer “take the lead.”
Additionally, a petition has been launched asking for signatures.
Blizzard has not commented on the server’s shutdown.
Perhaps the server’s popularity was its downfall
Mein MMO believes: It’s a sensitive topic. Fans say: This belongs to us, we have invested so much time and passion here. We just want to play like we used to when we fell in love with the game, just leave us alone. You’re not giving us what we want anymore, so we use our energy to create our own world, and then you destroy it.
Blizzard says nothing. But anyone can guess what lies behind it: It’s our game, we hold the rights to it, this is our job, jobs depend on it, and we are proud of our game; it belongs to us. If you want to play it, then on our servers, on our terms, and in a way that makes us money.
Whether every developer sees it this way is debatable. Former Everquest head Smedley has expressed his admiration for the energy and ingenuity involved in private servers for Everquest. From a “business perspective,” the stance is clear.
With all sympathy for the passion that people put into such “private servers,” everyone should know that such things can be shut down at any time, and the likelihood increases the bigger and more well-known a “private server” becomes. In recent months, it was increasingly observed, even by us, how comments about Nostalrius were being made as if it were totally normal to play there and as if there was nothing wrong with it.
In any case, this story heats up the discussion on the question: “Why doesn’t Blizzard create WoW classic servers themselves?”
