Enlarge / A scene from a recent stress test of the Elysium “legacy” server, which recreates classic World of Warcraft circa 2006. (credit: Elysium)

After their unofficial “legacy” World of Warcraft server was shut down by Blizzard, and after tiring of waiting for Blizzard to launch official legacy server support, the fan community behind the popular Nostalrius server is now organizing behind a spiritual successor. That new unofficial server, dubbed Elysium, is set to launch later this month with the same “Vanilla” PVP and PVE experience found in the classic version 1.12 of World of Warcraft circa 2006.

Back in April, Blizzard forced the shutdown of the 800,000-user-strong Nostalrius server, citing legal issues with allowing such unofficial servers that recreate how World of Warcraft existed a decade ago, before numerous expansions. But by May, after 250,000 people signed an online petition urging them to reconsider, Blizzard agreed to meet with the volunteer Nostalrius team to discuss the possibility of official support for legacy World of Warcraft servers.

In deference to that planned meeting, the Nostalrius team halted plans to release its source code publicly so new fan-run servers could flourish. And after that June meeting, the Nostalrius team seemed optimistic that Blizzard was making a good faith effort to address its concerns.