Blizzard sues popular WoW private server Project Ascension

Blizzard Entertainment has filed suit against the operators of Project Ascension, one of the most popular private World of Warcraft servers on the internet, in a move that continues the developer's accelerating crackdown on unauthorised WoW communities.

The 51-page lawsuit filed by Blizzard in the US District Court for the Central District of California on Friday alleges that the creators of Project Ascension are guilty of copyright violation, Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) violation, false representation, interference in contractual relationships and even racketeering in relation to their alleged profit from the server.

The lawsuit has named various individuals as defendants along with two US shell companies, an anonymous group that allegedly handles the donations made, and unnamed “Doe” defendants associated with online usernames.

The server lets players mix abilities and construct builds free from Blizzard's class system, layering custom content on top of older WoW material, an approach that has attracted a sizeable audience.

According to the website itself, the Stormforge Project has in excess of 226,000 community members on their Discord server and an average of over 60,000 users logged on at any time.

The complaint filed by Blizzard says that the game has received over one million player-hours since 2016 when it came out and claims that the Ascension client was altered to override server checks that automatically redirect a user to Blizzard's servers.

It started with a lawsuit filed against Turtle WoW owners for copyright and trademark infringement in August 2024.

After several other lawsuits were filed by Blizzard, both Turtle WoW and the Stormforge Project ceased to operate due to the pressure from the lawsuits only a month before Project Ascension was targeted by Blizzard.