Nostalrius, a legacy server run by a team of dedicated volunteers, has been shut down by Blizzard because of copyright infringement issues.
Lawyers of the World of Warcraft developer sent the Nostalrius administration a cease and desist order after initial reports concluded that the private server was infringing on Blizzard's copyright. According to the company, the private legacy server was violating its terms of use and thus the decision for legal action.
The volunteers behind Nostalrius, a group of 30 individuals, promptly scheduled the shutdown of the server as soon as they received the letter to avoid further complications.
It wasn't an easy task for both administrators and players, however, as the server had been running for almost a year and countless hours had been devoted into the game, be it development or game time.
According to the site's released statistics, about 800,000 players have registered on the server, of which 150,000 players were active. The developers followed the original version, offering players a "vanilla" server that had constant patches and content updates. Nostalrius aimed to recreate the initial build of World of Warcraft 10 years ago for nostalgic fans.
"Nostalrius was 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. 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]," the team said in their last statement.
Prior to the server's shutdown, players had been logging in to show their support. A "suicide march" was organized in which players would walk in a straight line from Orgrimmar to Thunder Bluff before jumping to their deaths from the peak. Other players would log on hours before closure to document gatherings in various areas, immortalizing the final hours of the game until the very last minute.
Despite the end of their journey, the Nostalrius administrators offered to release a post-mortem report in the coming week that "might be useful for the gaming community / industry to understand the need for no longer available content, how Nostalrius fulfilled it the best it could, along with complete suggestions for decision makers."
The moment it happened, the Nostalrius WoW servers are switched off. #ripnostalrius pic.twitter.com/KEhapxyF46
— WoW Nostalgia (@NostalgiaWow) April 10, 2016
A petition against the firm hold of Blizzard on World of Warcraft has also been started by the Nostalrius team, addressed to Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime. In it, they ask the public to join them in supporting not only them but other servers as well, "in hopes that changes may be made possible in the link between Blizzard and volunteer based legacy servers."
The petition currently has about 83,800 signatures at the moment of this writing. About 66,200 signatures are still needed before it reaches its 150,000 target.
A video compilation of the final moments of Nostalrius can be viewed below:
