Bad things have been brewing on the internet as of late. A group of fans that really weren’t doing anything wrong received a cease and desist order. This in and of itself isn’t anything unusual. Companies do this sort of thing all the time. However, this time it’s different and worth calling attention to, because the company is Activision Blizzard, the game is World of Warcraft , and the project being shut down is Nostalrius.
For those who have no idea what that is, here’s a summary. Over 150,000 people were playing on Nostalrius, a private World of Warcraft server. It was an awesome place, based on the original World of Warcraft . There were no upgrades or expansions. Just a little slice of nostalgia representing the MMORPG as it was back in 2004 and 2005. There were even trained Game Masters for this server. Activision Blizzard decided it didn’t like that, said there would be legal ramifications if it stayed online, and had it shut down on April 10. This is due to private servers being illegal, as Activision Blizzard is not making any money off of Nostalrius.
Which was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thing. First of all, because it isn’t like Nostalrius is the only private World of Warcraft server. It was just one of the largest. Singling out one specific, beloved group that’s providing something fans have been wanting and requesting for years was wrong. If Activision Blizzard was going to be petty and do this, it should have started with private servers emulating the current World of Warcraft experience, then moved on to more specialized ones.
Because Nostalrius was doing us all a favor. MMORPGs are living things. They’re constantly changing with each new update and expansion. Nostalrius took us back to the beginning of World of Warcraft . Since Activision Blizzard has been ignoring legacy server requests for years, these fans were giving people an in-demand experience that just wasn’t going to happen via official channels.
Besides, how much money was Activision Blizzard really losing off of this? In November 2015, the company said it wouldn’t be reporting subscription numbers after saying it was at 5.5 million active subscriptions. Nostalrius was at about 150,000 players at its best. These are folks who didn’t want World of Warcraft was it was. They wouldn’t have been giving Activision Blizzard money anyway. It was, as I said earlier, petty.
It’s a terrible move at an important time. World of Warcraft subscriptions are falling. The movie is coming out on June 10, 2016. Activision Blizzard needs goodwill. It needs people to like both the company and the game. Going after a few niche fans and shutting down a project that’s been running for years isn’t going to help. Instead of bringing down the wrath of the internet, it should have taken inspiration from Nostalrius, opened legacy servers, and been a hero to the 150,000-odd players on that private server and others who’ve wanted those servers for years.