Team behind World of Warcraft's biggest private server calls for change after shutdown

One of World of Warcraft's largest, most popular private servers will shut down April 10 after receiving a letter of notice from Blizzard Entertainment. The team behind Nostalrius announced its impending termination on its website, attaching an open letter to the massively multiplayer online game's developer imploring it to revise its legacy server policies.

"Yesterday, we received a letter of formal notice from US and [F]rench lawyers, acting on behalf of Blizzard Entertainment, preparing to stand trial against our hosting company OVH and ourselves in less than a week now," the announcement on Nostalrius' homepage reads. "This means the de facto end of Nostalrius under its current form."

All of Nostalrius' servers will shut down by 11 p.m. "server time" on April 10, according to the team. These include Nostalrius Begins, which offered PvP and PvE modes and launched last February.

Nostalrius had gained popularity with fans longing for a "vanilla" version of World of Warcraft. Private servers like Nostalrius allow players to experience a customizable, older version of the MMORPG, without any of its expansions. Blizzard itself doesn't support or manage any of these vanilla servers; creating them or playing on them violates its Terms of Use, the company has said.

Despite that — and the reluctance of communities like the World of Warcraft subreddit to publicly discuss them — Nostalrius and similar takes on the game have amassed popularity. At its peak, over 10,000 players were actively using the server; it boasted 800,000 registered accounts, according to its developer.

That Blizzard is closing it down despite its popularity encouraged the Nostalrius team to post an open letter to the company, suggesting that its policy regarding these servers should be revised.

"We never saw our community as a threat for Blizzard," the developers of Nostalrius wrote in a note attached to a Change.org petition about changing the legacy server rules. "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."

While the petitioners aren't suggesting that Blizzard retract its cease and desist, or that its ultimate goal is reinstating Nostalrius for its thousands of players, they're offering to work with the company to come up with ways in which legacy servers can work with the official version of World of Warcraft.

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

We've reached out to Blizzard for comment regarding the shut down and the Nostalrius team's petition. It's currently less than 1,000 signers away from its end goal of 25,000 supporters of the proposed policy changes.