Blizzard Entertainment files lawsuit against owners of the fan-developed Turtle WoW servers — citing illegal use of official art, code, and more

Blizzard Entertainment, the developer of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft, is filing a lawsuit against the owners of Turtle WoW, which is a group of servers housing a series of fan-developed mods and updates, including Mysteries of Azeroth.

As described on the Turtle WoW website, Mysteries of Azeroth is a “fan-made expansion story for World of Warcraft Vanilla that delves deeper into exploring the original lore of the game,” eschewing the changes to the original World of Warcraft that Blizzard introduced through The Burning Crusade expansion in 2007.

Players can access Mysteries of Azeroth by downloading the free client, with the developers accepting but not requiring donations.

In the lawsuit, filed Friday in the Central District of California, Blizzard Entertainment alleges that the developers of Turtle WoW are using Blizzard's artwork, trademarks, and official code.

A Blizzard spokesperson shared the following statement:

“Our games are built on decades of innovation and creativity, and we take seriously our responsibility to protect the integrity of that work for our employees, our partners, and our players. This pirate server illegally uses our code, assets, and trademarks to market an unprotected experience. Given the scale and nature of the infringement we need to pursue formal remedies to protect the world we’ve built.”

Turtle WoW’s first server launched back in 2018, with the group expanding with additional servers over the years to accommodate more players in different regions. Earlier in August, Turtle WoW reached a peak of over 44,000 concurrent players across all servers.

The developers of Turtle WoW have released numerous updates for Mysteries of Azeroth, and the group has also shared plans to release an updated version of the game that rebuilds the client in Unreal Engine 5.

This new version, referred to as Turtle WoW 2.0, is planned to have improved visuals and higher PC requirements, while remaining compatible with a Legacy version that players can use if they prefer the older look.

Notably, Blizzard Entertainment launched World of Warcraft: Classic in 2019, giving an official version of the original game experience. The developers have continued to update Classic with the original expansions, such as The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, and most recently, Mists of Pandaria.

World of Warcraft: Classic requires an active subscription in order to access it, just like mainline World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft's next official chapter is coming in 2026

While this unfolds, the main ongoing story of World of Warcraft is entering its next phase.

The next expansion, World of Warcraft: Midnight, continues the Worldsoul Saga narrative that began with 2024's expansion, The War Within. This storyline is planned to conclude with a third expansion, The Last Titan.

World of Warcraft: Midnight does not have an exact release date right now, but is currently slated to launch at some point before June 30, 2026.

During Gamescom 2025, Blizzard took part to share details on what players could expect from the expansion, including a new race called the Haranir. The game is also finally introducing the long-requested Player Housing feature, letting adventurers decorate their own homes in Azeroth.

In wider Blizzard news, more and more teams at the Microsoft-owned game developer are unionizing, with over 450 workers on the Diablo franchise recently forming a union. The team cited numerous issues for galvanizing its organization efforts, including repeated waves of layoffs at Microsoft.

This group is following in the example set by several other Blizzard teams, including the World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2 development teams, as well as the Story and Franchise team, the latter of which works on the narrative and cinematics for multiple Blizzard games.