This week, MMORPG emulators pushed to the forefront of the news thanks to World of Warcraft emulator server Nostalrius, whose administrators decided to halt the project under threat of legal action from Blizzard Entertainment. The fact that the server boasted 150,000 active accounts prompted a spirited gamer debate over copyright ownership, the value of vanilla servers, and whether Blizzard ought to heed a 57,000*-signature petition to legitimize Nostalrius or set up retro servers of its own. (*At the time of this writing.)
Read on for the very best of this week’s MMO news and opinions.
NOSTALRIUS & VANILLA WOW
World of Warcraft: Classic is surveying players about rolling out The Burning Crusade
Mark Kern didn’t just quit WoW Classic: He accused his old Firefall studio of Chinese corruption
Massively Overthinking: The future of WoW and WoW Classic
The Daily Grind: How much does nostalgia drive your MMO play?
MMO Year in Review: Landmark is wiped off the map (January 2017)
Nostalrius admins take victory lap over World of Warcraft Classic
World of Warcraft Classic announcement sends shockwaves through the vanilla emulator community
The Daily Grind: Will you be playing World of Warcraft’s Classic servers?
BlizzCon 2017: World of Warcraft’s classic server will be a ‘massive effort’
World of Warcraft emulator leaders attempt to soothe a skittish community
World of Warcraft Elysium emulator disbands, reforms under cloud of corruption
World of Warcraft’s Burning Crusade emulator shut down by Blizzard cease-and-desist
New World of Warcraft emulator project takes players back to The Burning Crusade era
Global Chat: Getting a hit of that EverQuest nostalgia
Massively Overthinking: Are MMORPG players a minority in their own genre?
The Elysium WoW emulator community is in total meltdown
WoW emu Elysium suffers serious ‘database compromise’
Massively OP Podcast Episode 100: The nesting instinct in Elder Scrolls Online
Nostalrius has decided handing its WoW emu code to Elysium wasn’t such a good idea after all
Elysium opens up yet another Nostalrius server
New Nostalrius PvP server goes live this weekend
The most popular MMORPG conversations of 2016
MMO Year in Review: Turbine gave the ring to the eagles (December 2016)
MMO Year in Review: New Eden free-for-all (November 2016)
MMO Year in Review: WoW’s legacy server snarl (April 2016)
The new Nostalrius emulator suffered six DDOS attacks on launch day
Massively OP’s Best of 2016 Awards: Biggest MMORPG Story of 2016
25000 people have signed up for the new Nostalrius server so far
Elysium gears up for Nostalrius emu character transfers and relaunch
Massively OP Podcast Episode 94: Play this expansion, meatbag!
Nostalrius is resurrecting next week. Your move, Blizzard.
Perfect Ten: The biggest MMORPG stories of 2016
Mark Kern renames Ember to Em-8ER, picks up Nostalrius programmer
Massively OP Podcast Episode 90: BlizzConcerns
Nostalrius releases WoW emu source code to community, Elysium plans Nostalrius shards
Mark Kern posts new WoW Legacy server petition ahead of BlizzCon
Blizzard isn’t announcing WoW legacy servers at BlizzCon
The Daily Grind: Will Blizzard announce vanilla WoW servers at BlizzCon 2016?
Mark Kern to Ember followers: ‘I feel a profound sense of responsibility for what happened to Firefall’
Nostalrius team releases vanilla World of Warcraft survey summary
Massively OP Podcast Episode 69: WildSteam
WoW dev vows ‘richer patch content lineup for Legion’
Nostalrius team believes Blizzard ‘want[s] to have legacy WoW servers’
Mark Kern says Blizzard took his vanilla WoW petition meeting ‘very seriously’
Mark Kern says he’d buy Firefall back if it sunsets
The Daily Grind: Do we have a right to play the games we actually buy?
Mark Kern to deliver Nostalrius petition to Blizzard next week
Nostalrius heads to Blizzard in June
Nostalrius team surveys community about a World of Warcraft legacy ruleset
The Nostalrius team on hopes for a legacy World of Warcraft server
MMO Week in Review: Nostalrius as ‘ambassadors’ for the vanilla community (May 1, 2016)
Leaderboard: What must a classic WoW server have to make you play it?
Nostalrius admins to meet with WoW execs
The Daily Grind: Would you play Blizzard’s idea of a ‘pristine’ WoW server?
Blizzard responds to vanilla WoW server requests, considers ‘pristine realms’
Vanilla WoW petition hits 200K signatures, invokes Mark Kern
EverQuesting: Daybreak is on the right side of the MMORPG legacy server debate
RuneScape argues why MMO companies should offer classic servers
BBC news reports on World of Warcraft Nostalrius server shutdown
Working As Intended: Busting up the MMORPG nostalgia party
WoW Factor: Nostalrius, copyright, and player demand
The Daily Grind: Would you play on a vanilla World of Warcraft server?
WoW emulator Nostalrius’ sunset renews calls for retro WoW servers
Blizzard’s legal threat shuts down WoW emulator Nostalrius
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES
Matt Firor says Elder Scrolls Online’s ‘population is huge and thriving’ - ZeniMax Online's Matt Firor has addressed The Elder Scrolls Online playerbase on the occasion of its second anniversary with a bundle of screenshots from his own character's journey through Tamriel. "Over…
Daum EU confirms Black Desert figures: 400K Western sales, $12M revenue in first month - In a piece published earlier today, MMO Culture claimed a number of Black Desert statistics gleaned from last week's Daum Korea press conference: 400,000 US/EU purchasers in the first month…
Flameseeker Chronicles: The future of Guild Wars 2 under Mike O’Brien - [AL:GW2]The news coming from ArenaNet has been very interesting since the company's President Mike O'Brien took over as Guild Wars 2 Game Director, so I thought it might be a good…
The Repopulation spin-off Fragmented launches early access this month - Earlier this year, the team behind The Repopulation faced down its HeroEngine difficulties with an ambitious plan to port the entire sandbox MMORPG to a new engine and publish a…
SWTOR launches heist chapter ‘Profit and Plunder’ on May 3rd - If you have early access for the latest chapter in the continuing saga of the Star Wars: The Old Republic expansion Knights of the Fallen Empire, then you are likely playing…
Blizzard swapped Tracer’s butt pose in Overwatch with a… different butt pose - We're sure you're all still watching Overwatch's #tracergate with keen anticipation, so you'll be pleased to know that Blizzard replaced Tracer's infamous "butt pose" with the latest patch. [caption id="attachment_54636"…
EVE Online war update: Thousands return to join the war - For the past week we've been closely following the events of a monumental war that has kicked off in sci-fi MMO EVE Online. The conflict that has come to be known as "World…
Black Desert is patching in auto-path looping right now - Hope you voted yes on the auto-path looping feature that Black Desert put to player vote on Monday! The poll closed with over 83% of the vote in favor of the feature, and it's…
Tree of Life launches open beta April 18th - When is an MMO wipe a good thing? When it precedes a beta launch, that's when. This week, Tree of Life studio OddOneGames announced that it will enter its official…
Camelot Unchained makes ‘slow and steady progress’ toward beta - The pieces are falling into place for Camelot Unchained's first beta, although it's not quite here yet. Mark Jacobs jumped onto the stage on Friday to share some of the…
The Game Archaeologist: Guild Wars Utopia - Aztecs. Chronomancers. Mounts. Halberds. Golems. Dual wielding. These are all but a hint of what a fourth Guild Wars campaign could have been, a campaign that was under development in…
Nosgoth is shutting down at the end of May - Sad news today for fans of asymmetric vampire shooting games; Nosgoth, the multiplayer shooter based on the Legacy of Kain franchise, will be shutting down on May 31st. In an…
Massively Overthinking: Grouping, kill-stealing, and open PvP in MMORPGs - This week's Massively Overthinking topic arrived in our inboxes from longtime reader Leiloni. It's a timely one all about newly launched Tree of Savior -- and one of its more irritating old-school…
Star Citizen’s Around the Verse teases procedurally generated planets - This week's Star Citizen Around the Verse video sees Cloud Imperium's Sandi Gardiner and Ben Lesnick discussing the game's 2.4 patch, explaining the plan for new local merchandise shipping warehouses…
Warframe celebrates third birthday with almost 23M registered users - [AL:WarF]Warframe has been busy celebrating its birthday month with anniversary goodies. "Since Warframe's release in 2013, more than 22 million players have played 2.1 billion Missions, crafted more than 18.5…
Perfect Ten: MMORPGs with huge class rosters - After talking with Mark Jacobs the other week about the difficulty of balancing Camelot Unchained's 30 classes, it got my mind thinking of MMOs that don't merely stop with a…
This is why Star Citizen has toilets everywhere - Last week, Star Citizen Lead Level Designer Michael Barclay ran a piece on Gamasutra discussing the conflict between sandboxes and cinematics. He argued that while size and scope matter in…
Players plan a 12th anniversary celebration for City of Heroes - City of Heroes is gone, but the dedicated fans of the game aren't about to let a little thing like the title's shutdown prevent them from celebrating the game's anniversary.…
En Masse confirms TERA layoffs - [AL:TERA]MMORPG.com reports that layoffs have struck TERA's western developer En Masse Entertainment. The official statement from En Masse reads, "The gaming industry is a fast moving, ever evolving and changing business,…
Tree of Savior compensates players for dungeon troubles - It's been a rough go in Tree of Savior as of late, with players encountering what the team is calling "instance instability" in its dungeons. It had gotten so bad…
How players will control capital ships in Star Citizen - Not every spacecraft in Star Citizen will be some sleek, agile fighter; the team is prepping powerful, lumbering capital ships such as the Idris as well. In the latest 10…
TERA’s reward program includes exclusive dungeon [update] - [AL:TERA]TERA is kicking off its player loyalty reward program today, and it might surprise you with how it's structured. The program has two facets, so pay attention. The rewards emporium…
Black Desert puts auto-path looping to player vote - Burke's Law: Never ask a question unless you already know the answer. That's a rule Daum hopefully knows already, else it might not have asked the entire Black Desert community…
Twitch streamer hits 100 in World of Warcraft using only dance pads - Over the years, there have been several players who have created unique World of Warcraft leveling challenges for kicks and giggles. One New Zealander Twitch streamer named Rudeism came up with…
Overwatch’s second animated short features the assassin Widowmaker - Following Overwatch's first animated short featuring the superhero Winston comes a new movie that takes a look at the assassin Widowmaker. The six-plus minute video revolves around an attack in…
Crowfall’s healer/nuker Druid archetype isn’t a ‘firehose healer’ - Crowfall devs confirmed today that they are indeed working on the Druid archetype. In fact, ArtCraft's goal is to integrate the Druid into the Hunger Dome and Siege Perilous testing…
THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS
Massively OP Podcast Episode 59: This great stage of fools
Battle Bards Episode 72: Listeners’ request anniversary
The Stream Team: Making a maze with mobs in Landmark
The Stream Team: Exploring ARK’s new cave biomes
The Stream Team: Taking on the third Ascendancy trial in Path of Exile
The Stream Team: To Ankh and back in The Secret World
The Stream Team: Taking to The Skies for a second time
The Stream Team: Sailing in Black Desert
The Stream Team: Surviving a sneak peek into The Skies
AND FROM OUR FRIENDS AT BLIZZARD WATCH
BlizzCon 2016 announced for November 4-5
How to upgrade your PC for WoW: Legion
New Warcraft movie posters give high-rez looks at the cast
Every week, get caught up on the MMO genre’s latest news and Massively OP’s best content in our MMO Week in Review! Want more roundups of content? Try Friday’s Betawatch for MMO testing highlights, Saturday’s Make My MMO for MMO crowdfunding updates, and Sunday’s The MOP Up, which mops up all the little bits of news we didn’t cover anywhere else.
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