Blizzard shuts down popular fan-run “pirate” server for classic WoW
Found on Ars Technica on Thursday, 07 April 2016
One of the most popular "pirate" servers for World of Warcraft, running a classic version of the game no longer offered by Blizzard, will be shutting down under the threat of legal action from Blizzard.
The administrators say that 800,000 registered accounts and 150,000 active players were working through quest progressions reproduced to precisely match the game of a decade ago.
Hosting private servers is explicitly against Blizzard's Terms of Use, a rule the company says "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."
Legally correct? Most likely. A wise decision? Most unlikely. At least 150,000 very miffed users are now out there who will not just jump on the new WoW bandwagon and abandon the game they like. If Blizzard truly thinks that it's not about the lost fees, it could have just ignored the fandom.