The WoW legacy server train doesn’t ever stop, but mostly consists of cease and desist letters. While Nostalrius sequel Elysium continues to provide for the community that wants vanilla, no-expansion WoW back, others were hoping to return to the days of The Burning Crusade – widely regarded as one of the game’s golden ages.
After weeks of hype and four years of private development, TBC server Felmyst came online three days ago. Five hours later, creator Gummy52 shut it down, having received a cease-and-desist letter from Blizzard and their lawyers.
For what’s happening in the live game, check our rundown of WoW patch 7.3.
As posted on Reddit and gathered up by Ars Technica, Gummy had to kill the server hours after launch, when thousands of players had already signed up. As proof, the Felmyst website has now been replaced with a picture of the C&D letter, as well as a testimonial from Gummy as to what happened.
He explains that working on the project full time over the past few years happened due to his disability, muscular dystrophy, leaving him unemployed. It’s also why he can’t simply move to another country where Blizzard’s lawyers are a little less able to shut him down. He also explains that he’s happy so many people were interested in something he made, and that while he did see the problems coming, he wasn’t in a position to cancel all his work.
The wowservers subreddit is mostly positive after some initial, misdirected anger at Gummy. They will likely find another project to bet their hopes on soon, though whether it will prove any more successful is debatable. For now, all eyes on BlizzCon in the hopes of an official legacy project announcement from Blizzard – which seems less and less likely as Legion’s success continues.