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Turtle WoW classic server announces shutdown after Blizzard wins injunction

26 points by Brajeshwar 2 hours ago | 14 comments

Just background in case you don't know: Turtle WoW tried to turn Classic World of Warcraft into a Roguelike, but in doing so wound up creating a bunch of new mechanics, and a gameplay loop that was quite unique even relative to other Roguelikes.

So my position on this is; two things can be true at the same time:

- Turtle WoW violated Blizzard's copyright, tried to charge money for some services, and Blizzard are well within their legal (and moral) rights to shut that down.

- Turtle WoW is more compelling than anything Blizzard has done with Classic WoW in years, and they should be commended for that.

So it was foreseeable, just a shame for what was lost.

x187463 31 minutes ago

Many hit games originated as mods. If the Turtle WoW team really are on to something, they should pursue it as an independent game.

RandomGerm4n 12 minutes ago

I think you're confusing this with Ascension which is a different server. Turtle was more like Classic WoW but with additional content that fits in as if the official expansions had never existed. So basically it's like Old School Runescape for WoW.

Daegalus 6 minutes ago

I am curious, can you elaborate more on these Roguelike features and mechanics. Its up for 1 more month, i might be interested in trying them out before it shuts down.

rhdunn 30 minutes ago

So it's similar to Defence of the Ancients that resulted in DotA and other MOBAs. It wonder if they'll be able to create a version of this with the new mechanics/gameplay loop but with different art/assets.

kibwen 27 minutes ago

> Blizzard are well within their legal (and moral) rights to shut that down.

Legal rights, sure. Moral rights, you're gonna have to explain yourself, because I see no moral objection here. Culture advances through remixes, and while we can grant artists some exclusive period to profit through their work, we're not morally obliged to let them have a stranglehold on culture forever. People of my generation might not want to hear this, but Classic WoW is a retro game. We, here in 2026, are as far from WoW vanilla as WoW vanilla was from Ultima II. A year from now, replace Ultima II with Ultima I. A year from then, replace that with motherfucking Rogue itself! Morally speaking, Blizzard^W Activision^W Microsoft can go eat their own ass.

iLoveOncall 20 minutes ago

WoW vanilla is being sold right now by Blizzard themselves, under a subscription model.

zapnuk 60 minutes ago

Couldn't be more clear violation from a legal standpoint.

Though its quite sad that the community had more creativity (and engineering talent) to develop classic(+) wow.

Everything Blizzard now touches is bland, lacks soul, or is straight up bad.

reactordev 47 minutes ago

The people who built Blizzard are no longer at Blizzard. Blizzard is a kin to Google now. Looks similar from the outside, completely different from the inside.

arctics 14 minutes ago

hobbyist server turned commercial enterprise, according to court documents Blizzard claims AFKCraft Ltd. (Turtle WoW) made millions of dollars over 2018–2026 period.

mjamesaustin 44 minutes ago

I'm just over here holding out hope that some aspect of the agreement includes Blizzard taking control of the many assets the Turtle WoW devs created, and that they use those to make lots of new content for the upcoming Classic+, whatever that ends up being.

lousken 43 minutes ago

WoW servers existed for years, it's funny blizzard still tries after this many years.

Nuzzerino 19 minutes ago

It’s almost as if their sales are plummeting and they’re desperate or something.

ronsor 8 minutes ago

Best way to solve that is to waste more money on lawsuits