Blizzard sues Project Ascension, one of the biggest WoW private servers

Blizzard filed suit last Friday against Project Ascension, one of the largest World of Warcraft private servers currently running, claiming it has "over a million players." The complaint accuses the team behind it of "large scale, egregious, and ongoing infringement" of Blizzard's intellectual property. It's the second such lawsuit in quick succession — earlier this year, Blizzard hit Turtle WoW with a cease and desist and a copyright suit, and that server subsequently announced it was shutting down.

Project Ascension is a modded, classless, free-to-play take on WoW where players build custom characters by mixing existing and custom spells — "build the character of your dreams," as the site puts it. Like Turtle WoW, it let players purchase in-game items with Donation Points, and Blizzard's complaint alleges that system has earned the Ascension team "millions of dollars." The filing also flags that the servers are hosted on so-called bulletproof servers tied to the Russia-based Aeza Group, which the U.S. Department of the Treasury has previously targeted for enabling cybercriminals and technology theft — an association Blizzard argues "signals willful intent to engage in unlawful activity."

Ascension also appears to have had a separate project in development aimed at adding new content to classic-era WoW, not unlike what Turtle WoW was doing. The Turtle WoW team previously called on Blizzard to consider an official licensing framework for fan servers, but Project Ascension hasn't issued any public statement yet.

The community isn't optimistic. "Welp, we're fucked," wrote Reddit user AnaTheSturdy in one thread. User micro_Ampere replied: "Thanks for the memories. I had a better time here than I had on any other private server currently out there. Shame to see all that creativity gone to nothing. Good luck devs, but surely you knew this was coming."