At the tail end of August, World of Warcraft company Blizzard slapped WoW rogue server Turtle WoW with a lawsuit accusing it of profiting to the tune of possible millions of dollars from Blizzard’s copyright. At the time, players speculated that Turtle WoW operators has likely previously received and ignored a cease-and-desist order, provoking said legal action, and we wondered whether any other servers would be next.

Apparently yes. According to the player admins on Discord, the rogue server set Everlook did receive a C&D and has decided to close down its EU servers as a result (it’s not entirely clear whether the Chinese servers will continue, but we suspect so). The operators say they “never meant to violate any copyright or benefit/profit” from WoW; in fact, they blast Blizzard for its decision to threaten rogue servers.

“This action by Blizzard, alongside other recent actions they’ve taken, just shows that they are once again unwilling to accept that many people want to enjoy a World of Warcraft experience that they have failed to deliver,” the admin says. “I hope that Blizzard takes this huge community (all the private server players) as an indicator and opportunity to reach a subset of players that they have lost over the last 20+ years, instead of thinking of it as competition. […] Blizzard risks alienating a huge number of people – much more than any PR or marketing could get back.”

Everlook’s website claims a peak concurrency over 9000 players last week, so not quite as large as Turtle WoW but still mighty. The servers are slated to close on September 22nd following what sounds like an extended farewell period.

The Reddit thread on the server announcement is a wild mix of players saying the server was dead anyway, was dominated by Chinese players and/or bots, was run by someone at Turtle WoW, or was just looking for a reason to close (the WoW private server Reddit is an odd corner of the internet… really all pserver communities are like this). A lot of folks seem confused about what a cease-and-desist order is, so for clarity here, it’s a first-step legal warning/threat. Technically, you are free to ignore it, but it’s very likely legal action will ensue. And here we are.