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At least in the United States, and in parts of Europe, this answer is definitely yes. A private server exists because of reverse engineering, which is clearly against the terms of use and end user license agreement; any country that legally allows software vendors to place a "you must not reverse engineer our software" clause in an EULA (End User License Agreement) or TOU (Terms of Use), and supports the concept that a EULA or TOU is a legally binding contract, will likely rule in favor of Blizzard on the question of legality. In any case, should Blizzard find out you have one running, you will most likely end up in court.

However, with a few exceptions, private servers are generally not "stealing", and may actually be bolstering Blizzard's profitability. Those servers that do not charge a monthly fee and do not provide a copy of the client may have an arguable legal defense in court. They are not profiting from Blizzard in any way, and most players that play on private servers still hold active WoW accounts. A server operating under these conditions would have a total financial liability of zero in regards to theft of services; it can be argued that there is literally no revenue loss, thus no actual theft occurred.

However, that still leads to theft of Intellectual Property. Even though the server is free, and open source, and contains no licensed code, it still must communicate over an internally documented protocol, which is definitely IP. Reverse engineering protocols that are not officially publicly documented is IP theft, and subject to laws regarding IP. Not all countries recognize this, but most do, so there is still some illegal activity going on. Blizzard has a legal obligation to attempt to pursue all infractions, because if they fail to defend their IP, it may become an abandoned IP, meaning they would forever lose the ability to legally protect their service in court.

Overall, you should consider a private server for WoW as illegal, because even though there may be moral justifications for it (i.e. learning how to write your own server for a game you want to develop, want to play when maintenance is going on, want to play on a server that doesn't have 500ms+ lag, etc), the bottom line is that in most countries, you can be dragged into court for playing on a private server or operating a private server.

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Q: Is a private server for World of Warcraft illegal?
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Is World of Warcraft private servers illegal?

Technically, private servers are illegal for World of Warcraft. Nevertheless, many people still play on private servers.


Can you play Warcraft without a subscription?

No, you can not play World of Warcraft without a subscription unless you play on illegal private servers that are not supported by blizzard. These servers can be much more buggy and you will be kicked off the server many times because the server itself crashes many times and generally by an all around mess. EDIT: you can now play World of Warcraft for free until level 20.


Do you have to pay to play on private server in WoW?

No, you do not have to pay to go on World of Warcraft private servers. But if you want to Donate money to your private server developers you can and in most private servers donating gives you the best gear you can get. I recomend going on WoWlegacy private server or WoWBeez private server, they are both very good private servers for PvE and PvP.


How do you flood a privAte server?

You are talking about an illegal action. Flooding a server constitutes a Denial of Service attack and if traced back to you can get you into a whole world of hurt. Even if it is just a private server.


Warcraft world editor?

For Warcraft III a World editor comes with the expansion pack, The Frozen Throne. no Official editor has been released for World of warcraft. This is probably because of Wow's use of .adt's and that everyone must use the same .adt's for it to work, for a private server this can be done with a adt editor, but you'd have to give all of the players on that private server your world folder ( 34.6 MB ) Yikes! -Konnor J. Patterson