Blizzard Shuts Down Pirate WoW Server That Doesn't Use Expansion Packs
Popular unauthorized servers hosting the vanilla version of World of Warcraft have been shut down by Blizzard.
Some World of Warcraft players long for the original game, so instead of settling for the expansion-laden world of Azeroth we know today, they join an unauthorized pirate server like Nostalrius. However, they won't be able to do that much longer as it appears that the developer, Blizzard, has ordered the aforementioned servers to be shut down.
The Nostalrius Begins team posted the news to its website, saying lawyers have ordered their hosting company, OVH, to cease and desist on behalf of Blizzard (via Eurogamer). They have less than a week to take the servers offline.
"As soon as we received this letter, we decided to inform the team and players about the future of Nostalrius, where we have all passionately committed our time and energy as volunteers," the team wrote.
Nostalrius Begins PVP, Nostalrius Begins PVE, Nostalrius TBC, and the rest of its servers will be taken offline at 11 PM server time on April 10--that is, if the team's hosting company keeps them up until then.
The team behind Nostalrius will release the source code and anonymized players data to the community, in order for them to decide its future. They say that they'll still provide "everything needed in order to setup your own 'Nostalrius,'" they just won't be leading the charge any longer.
The post says that the servers were "all about the nostalgia and memories of the glorious vanilla days."
"We don't know if you truly felt like it was the glory days while playing here, but we hope that you will keep good memories of the time spent here," it reads. "Once again, we can all be proud to have been part of the Nostalrius journey, no matter how much time was actually spent 'in-game.'"
Nostalrius was up-and-running for roughly one year, in which it attracted 800,000 registered accounts and 150,000 active players. The Nostalrius Begins team has created a petition as a plea to Blizzard to support legacy servers in the World of Warcraft community. At the time of publishing, the petition had 33,856 signatures.
In other news, World of Warcraft gets a new expansion this year called Legion. You'll also see the game's characters in the Warcraft movie this June.
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