Popular World Of Warcraft private server Nostalrius has been shut down after lawyers sent its creators a letter of formal notice on behalf of Blizzard. The notice, which purportedly states that the company are prepared to stand trial against the company hosting Nostalrius and the creators themselves has resulted in “the de factor end of Nostalrius under its current form.”
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. This means the de facto end of Nostalrius under its current form.
The servers, which violate Blizzard’s terms of agreement, among other rules and regulations, have attracted a huge audience since launching, as they offer a ‘vanilla’ version of WoW – a version of the game that existed before any expansions packs were released for the MMO. Now, though, they’re due to all terminate service by 11 pm server time.
[zerggaming]However, despite the closure and Blizzard’s obviously firm stance against players creating their own servers, Nostalrius’ creators have sent an open letter to the company asking for some sort of compromise to let players who enjoy the legacy version of WoW the ability to play it officially under the guidance and go-ahead from Blizzard, going as far to suggest some form of partnership on a voluntary basis.
Blizzard have yet to comment on the closure of Nostalrius or any acknowledgement of the open letter, but we’ll be sure to keep tabs on the topic and let you know if any more news arises.