The most popular private server running World of Warcraft, Elysium, has been forced to shut its doors temporarily while it reboots into a new guise called Lights Hope. The reason? One of the team members who was responsible for handling funding for the server had been skimming money off of the top and even potentially selling off the details of gamers to third parties.
The history of Elysium is a long and storied one, but in its most recent times, it absorbed previous legacy server frontrunner, Nostalrius, after a series of problems with Blizzard itself. This made Elysium the premier point for gamers looking for that old-school WoW feel. Now though, they'll need to make the move once again to Lights Hope if they want to continue playing, as Elysium, as it was, is no more.
That doesn't necessarily mean starting from scratch though. In shutting down the servers, those running Elysium have locked out the individual who stole funds from them and the community. However, before they did, they made a backup of in-game data which will be made available once again when Lights Hope goes online.
"We understand that we are abandoning a lot of brand recognition from both Nostalrius and the Elysium Project by doing this; however, we believe that the actions of two rogue staff members have irrevocably damaged the image of the rest of the staff and trying to pick up the pieces is not worth the hassle," the staff said in a statement to fans.
"We will be making every best effort to ensure that we communicate this change to as many platforms as possible so that word may spread of the coming shift in branding. We ask that you, the community, assist us in these matters so that we can continue to provide the best legacy experience possible, improve our internal processes to prevent these kinds of issues from ever happening again, and rebuild the trust that we hold in highest esteem. We want to demonstrate to you that we are worthy of that trust and your time invested with the Project."
No word yet on when Lights Hope will go online, but it's expected to be in the near future.
