Early in April, Blizzard decided to shut Nostalrius down over what the developer claims as a direct infringement on its intellectual property rights.
Nostalrius has 150,000 active members and the fan that was running the service closed it down after a threat of legal action was issued by Blizzard Entertainment.
Blizzard Entertainment defended its move on Nostalrius when it explained at its forum site that it was just protecting its intellectual property rights.
The developer said that there is no clear legal path to protect its intellectual property and grant an operating license to a pirate server. It added that if they turn their blind eye on the pirate servers, it would be difficult for them to challenge other abuses to its “WoW” franchise in the future.
It also pointed out that it could not operate its own server for the original game without having great difficulty but admitted that because of the numerous demands from “WoW” gamers, it was really considering the opening of pristine or new servers to host the classic game.
Blizzard had to appease the fans because after it shut down the Nostalrius server, it sparked a petition which has attracted more than 240,000 signatures from “World of Warcraft” gamers.