Private Servers Status and Origins

Hi, I'm just a little curious (quite a bit actually :D) about the legal status of the WoW Private Servers; I mean, they use the same source code of the Blizzard servers, and it should be protected by Copyright. Isn't it?

Also, if it's a private code, how did the community obtained it, and when?


Ty for the patience 'xd

Depends on the country really, they all take copyright and reverse engineering into different considerations. But in most countries it is considered illegal(-ish), but Blizzard usually will send you a "cease and desist" letter, which tells you to stop or get sued which usually is enough to stop you regardless of the laws, because honestly would you try and go against Blizzard in court?
There are ways to do it near totally anonymous, but that goes a bit offtopic.

Nope they probably use 0% of the code Blizzard uses it is written by the community through the process of reverse engineering. There is data involved which is taken from the game client and falls under copyright, which is why they aren't part of the emulators but have to be extracted from the game client.

Hope I could give you a decent insight into the topic.

Well it's abit of a grey area but technically you're right, anything belonging to Blizzard Entertainment is licensed and therefore illegal to use.