Blizzard Entertainment is suing Turtle WoW, one of the largest private World of Warcraft servers, for several charges including racketeering and copyright infringement. The lawsuit specifically names Turtle WoW and 10 members of the Turtle WoW team as Defendants, claiming:
“The Defendants in this action have built an entire business on large scale, egregious, and ongoing infringement of Blizzard’s intellectual property.”
Operating a private World of Warcraft server is illegal and an infringement of Blizzard’s copyright. Playing on a private World of Warcraft server is against the game’s Terms of Use and is grounds for an account ban. Although the unlawfulness of these acts is clear with little room for interpretation, many private servers have been allowed to operate for years with little to no attention from Blizzard, making this a noteworthy case.
Turtle WoW was launched in 2018, offering a World of Warcraft experience that recreated mechanics and gameplay from WoW’s Burning Crusade era. Early on, the private server had to contend with 2019’s World of Warcraft Classic, Blizzard’s official recreation of the classic WoW experience. But when Blizzard made it clear no new content would be coming to WoW Classic, many players turned to private Classic WoW servers like Turtle WoW, whose teams were actively developing new content on top of the classic experience. In the years since it was first released, several new races and even entire regions have been added to Turtle WoW.
One member of the Turtle WoW team sent the following message to the Turtle WoW official Discord shortly after the lawsuit was filed.
