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NEWS
Blizzard to discuss future of legacy World of Warcraft servers with Nostalrius team
Last month, Blizzard Entertainment flexed its legal muscles to shut down a popular private World of Warcraft server called Nostalrius, which recreated the game as it existed roughly 10 years ago. The Nostalrius admins posted a Change.org petition hoping to get Blizzard’s attention, and after receiving over 250,000 signitures, Blizzard has agreed to meet with the Nostalrius team in person.
“We are very excited to be able to help Blizzard understand the part of their community asking for legacy servers and many other related topics, in the hope that they will eventually make it possible to legally play previous game expansions,” the Nostalrius admins wrote in a post on their forum.
The team noted that after all of the attention they have received as a result of the server being shut down by Blizzard, they feel that they have essentially become “ambassadors of a larger movement for the entire World of Warcraft community that wants to see game history restored.” As such, their discussion with Blizzard will focus on the status of legacy servers as a whole rather than simply the fate of Nostalrius itself.
It is unclear exactly how receptive Blizzard will be regarding the future of private legacy servers like Nostalrius. In a recent post on the official WoW forums, executive producer J. Allen Brack highlighted the Nostalrius team’s “failure to protect against intellectual property infringement” as the primary reason for why Blizzard chose to shut it down.
“This applies to anything that uses WoW’s IP, including unofficial servers,” Brack said. “And while we’ve looked into the possibility – there is not a clear legal path to protect Blizzard’s IP and grant an operating license to a pirate server.”
Brack noted that Blizzard has considered several options for offering its own legacy servers, but he said that “none could be executed without great difficulty.”
The Nostalrius admins are likely aware that they will be facing an uphill battle when dealing with Blizzard, but the team still seems optimistic about the upcoming meeting.
“We will need the help and feedback of the whole World of Warcraft community to carry all their voices,” the team said, “and make the meeting with Blizzard a success.”
Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment (c)
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