Unfortunately blizzard is not Valve.

For anyone unfamiliar with WoW, private servers have been a thing for most of WoW's history. It's unclear to me where the source code came from. I've heard different stories (eg from Chinese servers) and also that it was a greenfield development reverse-engineered from the client. All of this was a copyright violation of course and Blizzard have shut down such servers in waves.

WoW originally released in 2004 and has changed every ~2 years with an expansion and the game now is vastly different to what it was originally, which is now called "vanilla". In the 2010s there was a lot of people calling for what became "classic WoW". Most private servers used an early version of the game (either vanilla or one of the first 2 expansions). A lot of people argued that game was more fun at that time and all the changes since have made the game worse.

This issue just didn't die and the game director was famously asked (by a still unidifentied fan AFAIK) if there were any plans to re-release the original game and he famously responded with "you think you do but you don't" at Blizzcon 2013 [2].

This just wouldn't die. There was one particularly famous private server called Nostalrius that got shut down by Blizzard but Blizzard ended up bringing that team in and by 2017, Blizzard announced Classic WoW [3], which launched in 2019 and for several years seemed to have more players than the current version of the game (called "retail") although that's tapered off now.

So Turtle WoW fit into a long history of wanting to play the original game. There's also a movement called "Classic+", which is to fork from the vanilla version of the game and make changes from that. Turtle WoW probably fit into the Classic+ model.

[1]: https://turtlecraft.gg/remastered

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghnLIc8EFIM

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUSRkBwQdc8

Let's say you loved playing Battle for Azeroth. Later Blizzard launches Shadowlands, the content for BfA gets irrelevant, the raids are not doable anymore at the same difficult, the power creep feeds in. Even if you buy the expansion just to get the “feel” on how it was, it's impossible.

MMOs like GW2 and even SWTOR does it way better, in GW2 content from Path of Fire is still relevant in the gameplay of the current expansion, while their PvE/PvP content is done by all players.

I feel Blizzard should just keep per expansion servers up and people can play “over and over again” the same expansion as much as they like.

Legal rights, sure. Moral rights, you're gonna have to explain yourself, because I see no moral objection here. Culture advances through remixes, and while we can grant artists some exclusive period to profit through their work, we're not morally obliged to let them have a stranglehold on culture forever. People of my generation might not want to hear this, but Classic WoW is a retro game. We, here in 2026, are as far from WoW vanilla as WoW vanilla was from Ultima II. A year from now, replace Ultima II with Ultima I. A year from then, replace that with motherfucking Rogue itself! Morally speaking, Blizzard^W Activision^W Microsoft can go eat their own ass.

You really can't compare this to something like DotA, where the original engine and IP was basically set dressing for the new game built within it. People were primarily interested in the mechanics - which is why DotA-the-game and League of Legends were able to become so popular.

4-player dungeons still end up being a bit of a faceroll, but it's definitely possible to wipe on the 8-player bosses if mechanics are not observed

A lot of their entire platform is built on mods they've bought and turned into proper 1st class games (cs, dota, Garys mod etc)

HL's engine GoldDrc was originally a mod for Quake. Team Fortress Classic was based on a quake mod. Counterstrike was a HL mod they bought out. Portal was a student game they bought. Dota 2 was based on a WC3 map. Left 4 Dead was a mod made by Turtle Rock while working on CS:CZ (so, yet again a mod, although a mod based on their own engine this time and build in house). Underlords was based on a Dota 2 mod.

Deadlock is original, but based on characters and lore from the game they made from the WC3 map.

Deadlock and L4D are arguably the only true original creations.

Valve knows their bread is buttered by outside creation using tools and platforms they can provide and then fold in if it catches their attention.

And yes there's a good reason: playing on a pirate server directly and explicitly violates the EULA. Blizzard bans people for violating the EULA all the time.

Sure it's no way comparable to the initial work of the original game but it's short sighted to think it's just a rip-off

So your idea, they copied their recent work is just ...

Other than that, I'm fan of Blizzard, mainly because of their relation to botting :) :) :)

It's part of why a lot of places might ban your account but they won't ban you-the-person if you make a new one, necessarily - even if every ban was accurately assessed, shrinking your potential player base permanently by even 0.5% annually compounds really badly over time.

(The notable exceptions usually include things where they're banning you for exposing them to legal liability in some fashion, because the risk of you doing it again is so large.)