Sickly Fan Builds WoW Legacy Server – Blizzard Shuts it Down

The World of Warcraft Server Was Shut down Hours after Launch

One thing World of Warcraft fans have been asking from Blizzard is a vanilla game. A chance to go back to the MMO’s days when it wasn’t a painted chalkboard of content. To that end, one fan created ‘felmyst,’ a legacy server designed to take players back to the glory days of Burning Crusade. Unfortunately, not long after launch, Blizzard had the fan-made project shut down.

World of Warcraft Legion Screen

Kotaku UK described the legacy server as a place true to the WoW of 2004. Although rough in some regards, it carried the refinements of the current build. It took years to create and was the passion project of one Gummy52. However, Blizzard recently started taking a harsh stance against fan-made projects. Thus, after it moved from beta to release, the company quickly issued a cease-and-desist letter, reported Ars Technica.

In a letter now occupying felmyst.com, Gummy52’s response was the following:

“I began this project roughly four years ago and last year when Blizzard began taking action more seriously it weighed heavily on me as not only was I already heavily invested into the work but others around me were as well. Because of my health situation I wasn’t in a position to cut losses and start over on something different, at least not something that would take four years to make. Last year’s news of what Blizzard was doing came at the absolute worst time for me, frankly, with so many years already invested.” 

Diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, Gummy52’s only real investment was in the World of Warcraft legacy server. And he took a chance on building it because he’d already built a private server years ago called ScriptCraft. He wrote separately on Reddit, “That project did not receive a C&D. So in that regard my plan was to try and be no more popular than Scriptcraft was.”

Thanks to his health issues, Gummy52’s finds himself with no other options. “That is why I’m not able to pick up and move to another country as an alternative means to host the server since I’m not really able to live on my own,” he continued. “That is also the reason I’ve been able to work mostly full time on this project as I’m unemployed, though I have sacrificed much of my well being dedicating everything I have to this.”

The creator has weighed his options and has given thought to releasing felmyst’s source code, but the server will stay shut down for the foreseeable future. “If our providers contacted me on their own and said, ‘Hey, we don’t like that stuff being hosted here, take it down,’ then I’d pick another host, most likely in Europe,” he said. “Blizzard’s attorney contacting me, in person no less, is a different story. Here we are and there’s nothing I can do.” 

Would you play in a WoW legacy server? What’s your take on Blizzard’s stance? Let us know in the comments below.

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