Discussion
Turtle WoW classic server announces shutdown after Blizzard wins injunction
lousken: WoW servers existed for years, it's funny blizzard still tries after this many years.
mjamesaustin: I'm just over here holding out hope that some aspect of the agreement includes Blizzard taking control of the many assets the Turtle WoW devs created, and that they use those to make lots of new content for the upcoming Classic+, whatever that ends up being.
zapnuk: Couldn't be more clear violation from a legal standpoint.Though its quite sad that the community had more creativity (and engineering talent) to develop classic(+) wow.Everything Blizzard now touches is bland, lacks soul, or is straight up bad.
reactordev: The people who built Blizzard are no longer at Blizzard. Blizzard is a kin to Google now. Looks similar from the outside, completely different from the inside.
Someone1234: Just background in case you don't know: Turtle WoW tried to turn Classic World of Warcraft into a Roguelike, but in doing so wound up creating a bunch of new mechanics, and a gameplay loop that was quite unique from even relative to other Roguelikes.So my position on this is; two things can be true at the same time:- Turtle WoW violated Blizzard's copyright, tried to charge money for some services, and Blizzard are well within their legal (and moral) rights to shut that down.- Turtle WoW is more compelling than anything Blizzard has done with Classic WoW in years, and they should be commended for that.So it was foreseeable, just a shame for what was lost.
rhdunn: So it's similar to Defence of the Ancients that resulted in DotA and other MOBAs. It wonder if they'll be able to create a version of this with the new mechanics/gameplay loop but with different art/assets.
x187463: Many hit games originated as mods. If the Turtle WoW team really are on to something, they should pursue it as an independent game.
kibwen: > Blizzard are well within their legal (and moral) rights to shut that down.Legal rights, sure. Moral rights, you're gonna have to explain yourself, because I see no moral objection here. Culture advances through remixes, and while we can grant artists some exclusive period to profit through their work, we're not morally obliged to let them have a stranglehold on culture forever. People of my generation might not want to hear this, but Classic WoW is a retro game. We, here in 2026, are as far from WoW vanilla as WoW vanilla was from Ultima II. A year from now, replace Ultima II with Ultima I. A year from then, replace that with motherfucking Rogue itself! Morally speaking, Blizzard^W Activision^W Microsoft can go eat their own ass.
RandomGerm4n: I think you're confusing this with Ascension which is a different server. Turtle was more like Classic WoW but with additional content that fits in as if the official expansions had never existed. So basically it's like Old School Runescape for WoW.
arctics: hobbyist server turned commercial enterprise, according to court documents Blizzard claims AFKCraft Ltd. (Turtle WoW) made millions of dollars over 2018–2026 period.
Daegalus: I am curious, can you elaborate more on these Roguelike features and mechanics. Its up for 1 more month, i might be interested in trying them out before it shuts down.
zuzululu: but then how is PokeMMO still operating ? Weren't they both using game assets and creating an emulator essentially? Or did Turtle step out of bounds? It's a legally gray area so hard to find more details.
iLoveOncall: WoW vanilla is being sold right now by Blizzard themselves, under a subscription model.
stavros: Oh yeah, I remember when they abandoned it for years, third party servers revived it, Blizzard realized they can make money off it and shut the third party servers down.
mock-possum: Blizzard should’ve just shut down. It’s lived long enough to see itself become a monster.
Xunjin: That's one of the things that Blizzard does so bad and private servers try to solve, which is previous expansion content:Let's say you loved playing Battle for Azeroth. Later Blizzard launches Shadowlands, the content for BfA gets irrelevant, the raids are not doable anymore at the same difficult, the power creep feeds in. Even if you buy the expansion just to get the “feel” on how it was, it's impossible.MMOs like GW2 and even SWTOR does it way better, in GW2 content from Path of Fire is still relevant in the gameplay of the current expansion, while their PvE/PvP content is done by all players.I feel Blizzard should just keep per expansion servers up and people can play “over and over again” the same expansion as much as they like.
