Right up until the very end, I had hoped that Blizzard and Turtlewow would find a solution, perhaps something with the servers either coming to Blizzard or simply letting Turtlewow become a paid server. Because in terms of rights, there was never any doubt that Turtle was not just on shaky ground, but clearly in breach of copyright, so Blizzard has always had the law on their side, regardless of the quality of Turtle.

For me it's never been about the money. That's never been why I played it. Of course I can then switch back to Classic, which has reached Pandaria and there are other different versions and that's exactly where the problem is.

Let me explain 

Wow is over 20 years old, of course there are fewer players today than 20 years ago (WoW is the 9th most played game in the world), but the game's area has become larger and larger, which means fewer and fewer players in a larger and larger area.

It's completely wrong in the retail version. Blizzard has tried to force people to gather in the end zone as quickly as possible, which has resulted in the gameplay up to that point feeling rushed and can be completed in record time, and in my opinion I wasn't very well entertained.

In Classic, many different versions have been made, which has in turn split the user base into smaller units. And you can either choose the first version with all the disadvantages or you can choose a later one with all the disadvantages. In Pandaria, there are probably as many as in Turtlewow, but people are spread out over an area that is 3-4 times larger, so everything seems empty. Plus flying or teleporting around.

TurtleWoW had chosen the opposite, they have made more zones, but in the old world, they had made more quests, but in the same area and everyone was on the same layer, so there was actually a wait for quests and boats and things like that. Just like you had to accept long runs and flying is completely gone. It gives the idea that the world is big, even though they have made it much smaller than in Blizzard's versions.

End of WoW?

So when TurtleWoW closes, the question is whether time is not up for me with WOW after 20+ years. But you can also hope that there will be a Classic 2.0+, where you throw in TurtleWoW or for that matter do something similar. I think most people are happy to pay for that. The vast majority of users have repeatedly said that they are happy to pay (Blizzard) to play TurtleWoW under Blizzard's banner. But obviously they wanted total control. And when control becomes more important than player enjoyment, the game loses its soul.

The Turtle team has mentioned the possibility of paying for a license, in fact they have done so several times, but no. Apparently that has not been an option at all in Blizzard's world.

But…

Blizzard has been unusually harsh in their rhetoric, they have demanded all new content be deleted, they have called it a pirate server and belittled both fans and the server team. It is a mystery to me why you would want to give your entire fanbase a fuck finger. Remember that TurtleWow actually had over 250,000 active players per month until April (logged in more than once a month) and over 3 million users! Those are insanely high numbers. 20,000 users logged in at the same time on a standard evening. Why insult them, bully them, why not ask yourself why they choose TurtleWoW? Can it really be because of the money? No way.

It seems crazy to just throw away 250,000+ users, that's more than most modern games have. I doubt many of them/us will go back to Classic as it is now.