Blizzard Shuts Down Popular Fan-run 'Pirate' Server For Classic WoW (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Blizzard is threatening legal action against the popular "pirate" servers for World of Warcraft. The Nostalrius servers have been operating for nearly a year, running version 1.12 of the original World of Warcraft as it existed in 2006. Admins say that 800K registered accounts and 150K active players were working through quest progressions reproduced to precisely match the game of a decade ago. Nostalrius' team says its French hosting provider has been issued a formal letter asking it to shut down the servers or face a potential copyright infringement lawsuit as hosting private servers is explicitly against Blizzard's Terms of Use. Blizzard says the rule "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." Nostalrius' servers will be shut down on April 10, but the team says it "will still be publicly providing everything needed in order to setup your own 'Nostalrius' if you are willing to."

Comments

Re:Illegal??? What law did they break, exactly?

[firesyde424]

The 1st commandment of Capitalism: Thou shalt not piss off people with vastly more money than thyself...

Re:Nost != pirate

[Marc_Hawke]

Even if the Terms of Service say that you can only use the client with Blizzard servers, they have no grounds for shutting down the Nost server. You don't have to sign any EULA to put up a server that speaks TCP and answers questions.