This morning I woke up to the news that the owners of Turtle WoW have officially announced that the servers will be ceasing operations after the 14th of May. This shouldn't really have been a surprise, but I've got to confess: considering that the news of Blizzard's lawsuit against them broke close to eight months ago at this point, I wasn't ruling out that they would manage to get away with it somehow. Unlike other private server operators whom I've seen fold instantly the moment Blizzard's lawyers as much as looked at them, the Turtle team certainly gave evading the law a good shot. They made adjustments to the website, changed domains, and the owner supposedly deleted her old Discord account and created a new one in an attempt to not be pinned down.
All that said, it looks like the lawyers caught up with them in the end, somehow. I'll reproduce the Turtle WoW team's statement in full, since their website will eventually go dark and disappear:
Hello friends,
They say it's the journey, not the destination. How long must a journey last to be remembered fondly and warmly? We don't know. We only know that ours is coming to an end.
After almost 8 years online, Turtle WoW is heading towards shutdown. The final day of operation will be May 14, 2026, and the servers will go offline at 12:00 AM on May 15th.
Working on Turtle WoW has been the highlight of our lives. It has been an honor to build with you and for you. Whether you were exploring new stories, leveling, raiding, PvPing, roleplaying, or just enjoying a quiet moment in the world, seeing how much this game means to you has been our greatest privilege.
The adventures you had, the battles you fought, and the friends you met are what made it all worthwhile. We hope you will cherish those moments. What we leave behind are fond memories of an 8-year-long journey, and we hope you'll remember it every now and then.
Until the project's final day, we'll keep technical and in-game support active for everyone who keeps playing. All realm timelines will be immediately shifted to the final progression patch for those who want to see the new raids before the project's sunset.
We've turned off all donations until the end of the project and want to thank you sincerely for supporting us over the years.
Our website, forums, and social media will also be closed on October 16th.
Finally, we want to thank our incredible team.
Thank you for playing.
Thank you for being such a wonderful gaming community.
Thank you for your creativity and talent.
Thank you.
I logged into my high elf for the first time in a while and found that I hadn't been removed from the guild I was in despite my pretty prolonged period of inactivity. Some people were talking about where to play once Turtle WoW is gone, but others were continuing business as usual. I also saw a stream of announcements of level 60 hardcore characters dying, which I can only assume were people deciding to go out with a bang before the server shuts down, though doing so almost a month in advance seems a bit premature to me.
I'm thinking about going back to complete a couple more goals before the shutdown, such as actually hitting level 40 and buying a mount. I'd been playing with the idea for a while but it was kind of lacking in urgency. Now that the shutdown is final, it's now or never. We'll see where it ends up in my priorities over the next month.
And of course there's always a chance that the whole project will eventually pop up again somewhere else under a new name, which is not unusual for WoW private servers. I've also seen mutterings on reddit that the Chinese and South East Asian servers (seeing how Turtle was operating globally) might be staying up. Still, even if that's true, losing the English-speaking servers is certainly a blow.
They had it coming, but I still feel a little sad. Both things can be true at the same time: that Turtle WoW was blatantly profiting off an IP they didn't own, and that the people behind it were genuinely passionate about their product and had some great ideas.
No comments:
Post a Comment