Back in April, Blizzard sent a cease-and-desist order to the hugely popular fan-made server Nostalrius. The server hosted World of Warcraft – separate from Blizzard’s official servers – in its original 2004 version, and was the most popular and successful of the numerous fan-operated Vanilla servers. Blizzard cited “intellectual property rights” and “tremendous operational challenges” as reasoning for the decision, and that they were “in contact with some of the folks who operated Nostalrius”. Needless to say, with the amount of time that’s passed and Blizzcon coming and going, those talks were a dud and didn’t go anywhere.
On the 4th of December, an elusive Russian team called Elysium Project released a trailer announcing their intent to re-host Nostalrius alongside their other Vanilla WoW servers. Elysium’s servers never quite reached the sky-high numbers that Nostalrius did (around 150,000 at the server’s end), but this should still come as very good news for those left disappointed by Blizzard’s decision.
Arana blames her stunted social skills and her general uselessness on a lifetime of video games. Between her ears is a comprehensive Team Fortress 2 encyclopedia. Her brain remains at large.
