Blizzard is widely known for having strict regulations regarding their intellectual property. It was pretty clear with the recent incident regarding the cease-and-desist letter received by the developers of a non-profit vanilla server called Nostalrius.

Recently, another new private World of Warcraft server called Felmyst was shut down by Blizzard, 5 hours after its launch.

Cease-and-Desist

Moments after taking down the legacy server, the developer Gummy52 posted the photo of the cease-and-desist letter he received from the law firm that represents Blizzard called Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP. The cease-and-desist letter contains the details regarding the legacy server’s violation of Blizzard’s intellectual property.

The letter said that Gummy52’s involvement with Felmyst meant that he was engaged in its development, its distribution, and its hosting. Furthermore, the infringement of services also allowed the users to play illegitimate versions of World Of Warcraft without even having a legitimately-purchased copy or monthly subscription.

The legal firm also stated in the letter that Blizzard has never authorized the project. As a matter of fact, the company even expressly prohibits such activity. They also added that Gummy52’s activity caused serious and irreparable injury to the value and integrity of Blizzard's products and intellectual property.

On the former Felmyst website and forums, Gummy52 posted his opinion regarding the issue. He said that the legacy server was the result of his four years of hard work. He also added that his unfortunate suffering of muscular dystrophy condition prevented him from moving to another country to more efficiently host the server.

Attention is its downfall

Similar to the previous shut down server Nostalrius, one of the issues that Felmyst faced was the number of players that have taken an interest to it.

According to Gummy52, his initial intention for building the private server was only to cater to a small community of players and enjoy the older version of World of Warcraft. However, the sudden boom of the project to fame rendered his plan impossible.

After getting shut down, Gummy52 said that he has no plan to hand over the project including the codes to someone else. And with the current attention it is garnering, he said that the market to wrongfully profit from it would be much too lucrative to hand it out on a whim.

Gummy52 also said he gambled that his server could cap at 3k and enjoy a close community of players. However, he did not win the gamble. Still, on some level, he thought it was nice to see so many people eager to enjoy the work he did, and the project gave the last four years of his life a sense of purpose that he thoroughly enjoyed.