Blizzard takes legal aim at the popular World of Warcraft rogue server Turtle WoW, filing a copyright infringement lawsuit that could shape the future of every private shard still online. The move lands just days after Daybreak sued a high-grossing EverQuest emulator, turning summer 2025 into the season when developers stop looking the other way.
The panic is already spreading among TOR noir fans; NetEase has apparently bailed on veteran designer Rich Vogel’s sci-fi MMO. Staff at T-Minus Zero Entertainment have gone ominously quiet, and the studio’s previously teased galaxy-spanning game is now all but vapor.
For players still committed to active worlds, Lord of the Rings Online has removed every last gate: every quest pack up to and including Gundabad is now free, while the Legacy 32-bit client has been sunsetted and Angmar and Mordor progression servers rise to level 75 cap.
Meanwhile spacefaring sandboxes are either soaring or sinking. Last Thursday No Man’s Sky added the Voyagers update, giving explorers the first craftable, livable, multicrew megaships—a feature set straight off every MMO forum wishlist for the last decade. In the opposite orbit, Dual Universe will fade to black tomorrow after a pair of farewell community streams.
On the studio-politics front, the Diablo franchise just became the newest Blizzard team to unionize under Microsoft, while Star Citizen CEO Chris Roberts pinned Squadron 42 for a released-by-next-year window and tossed 2027–2028 as an earliest possible date for Star Citizen itself. Over in Tamriel, The Elder Scrolls Online announced the Writhing Wall event for October 13, promising “forever” changes for the ongoing year-long saga.
Preparedness season continues: gothic-vampire survivors can queue the World of Darkness MMORPG discussion, sandbox crafters can mark September 17 for Lost Sky’s full launch, and PvP die-hards can ready themselves for Warborne Above Ashes on September 19. The turtle is officially on the run; the MMO calendar is not.
