Blizzard Forces “Pirate” Classic WoW Server to Close

The largest “pirate” server hosting an early version of World of Warcraft that is no longer available via conventional means is being forced to close after WoW developer Blizzard Entertainment threatened the team responsible with legal action.

The server in question, Nostalrius, is running version 1.12 of World of Warcraft from 2006, before the “Burning Crusade” expansion was released. Nostalrius has 800,000 registered accounts and 150,000 active players, according to its administrators.

The existence of the private server was in violation of Blizzard’s Terms of Use for WoW, with the company adding (via Ars Technica) that it “isn’t an issue because of ‘lost’ subscription fees from players choosing these illegitimate servers over the real WoW servers—it simply boils down to the fact that private servers are illegal, and that’s that.”

The team behind the Nostalrius server has launched a petition, appealing to Blizzard to protect the ‘Vanilla’ version of WoW as a “legacy” server:

“We never saw our community as a threat for Blizzard. It sounds more like a transverse place where players can continue to enjoy old World of Warcraft’s games no longer available, maybe until a new expansion appears; a huge and powerful community of fans that remains attached to future Blizzard games, as we have in no other gaming company.

We don’t have the pretention to come up with a complete solution regarding legacy servers that you and your company didn’t already think about, but we’d be glad and honored to share it with you if you’re interested, still on a volunteer basis.”

The Nostalrius server is due to close at midnight on 10th April.