[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":351},["ShallowReactive",2],{"site-settings":3,"article:\u002Fresources\u002Fguides\u002Fturtle-wow-archive-before-october-16":16,"article-surround:\u002Fresources\u002Fguides\u002Fturtle-wow-archive-before-october-16":341},{"id":4,"description":5,"email":6,"extension":7,"footerNote":8,"legalNotice":9,"locale":10,"meta":11,"name":12,"stem":13,"url":14,"__hash__":15},"settings\u002Fsettings.yml","Compare World of Warcraft realms by expansion, region, population and play style.","listings@realmlist.org","yml","An independent realm directory.","Not affiliated with Blizzard Entertainment.","en",{},"RealmList","settings","https:\u002F\u002Frealmlist.org","QXaYspLUSxnrVumL6oFir6PInhNsRw-yJchxEYSe1AU",{"id":17,"title":18,"author":19,"body":20,"category":302,"description":303,"draft":304,"extension":305,"featured":304,"meta":306,"navigation":307,"path":308,"publishedAt":309,"seo":310,"sitemap":311,"sources":316,"stem":332,"tags":333,"updatedAt":339,"__hash__":340},"articles\u002Fresources\u002Fguides\u002Fturtle-wow-archive-before-october-16.md","Turtle WoW's Website, Forums and Social Pages Go Offline on October 16","RealmList Editorial",{"type":21,"value":22,"toc":293},"minimark",[23,32,40,50,55,60,127,130,134,137,165,168,172,185,188,213,217,220,272,276,284,287],[24,25,26,27,31],"p",{},"Turtle WoW's game servers have been offline since May. On ",[28,29,30],"strong",{},"October 16, 2026",", the rest of it goes: the official website, the forums, and the project's social media pages are scheduled to be taken down, closing out a public presence that ran for most of a decade.",[24,33,34,35,39],{},"For anyone who played there, this is the last window in which the ",[36,37,38],"em",{},"record"," of the project is still a live website rather than a set of archive captures. The game is already unrecoverable. The documentation is not yet.",[24,41,42],{},[43,44],"img",{"alt":45,"height":46,"loading":47,"src":48,"width":49},"A candlelit archive room with shelves of scrolls and ledgers, one section already emptied to bare wood",1024,"lazy","https:\u002F\u002Frealmlist.org\u002Fimages\u002Farticles\u002Fguides\u002Fturtle-wow-archive-before-october-16.webp",1536,[24,51,52],{},[36,53,54],{},"Original editorial illustration by RealmList, generated for this article. This is artwork, not game footage or official promotional material.",[56,57,59],"h2",{"id":58},"what-has-already-closed-and-what-closes-on-the-16th","What has already closed, and what closes on the 16th",[61,62,63,76],"table",{},[64,65,66],"thead",{},[67,68,69,73],"tr",{},[70,71,72],"th",{},"Date",[70,74,75],{},"Event",[77,78,79,88,96,104,112,120],"tbody",{},[67,80,81,85],{},[82,83,84],"td",{},"August 2025",[82,86,87],{},"Blizzard files a copyright infringement suit against the Turtle WoW project",[67,89,90,93],{},[82,91,92],{},"April 12, 2026",[82,94,95],{},"The project announces it is ending after almost eight years",[67,97,98,101],{},[82,99,100],{},"April 15, 2026",[82,102,103],{},"A federal consent judgment is entered, permanently enjoining the defendants from operating, developing, updating, supporting, distributing, marketing, promoting or facilitating Turtle WoW and its modified client",[67,105,106,109],{},[82,107,108],{},"April 18–19, 2026",[82,110,111],{},"The shutdown timetable is confirmed: game servers on May 15, website, forums and social pages on October 16",[67,113,114,117],{},[82,115,116],{},"May 15, 2026, 00:00",[82,118,119],{},"Game servers close; donations had already been disabled",[67,121,122,124],{},[82,123,30],{},[82,125,126],{},"Website, forums and social media pages come down",[24,128,129],{},"Two things about that sequence are easy to miss. The site closing date was published in April, alongside the server date — it is not a new announcement. And donations stopped months before the servers did, which means the project ran its final phase without an income channel.",[56,131,133],{"id":132},"why-the-forum-is-the-part-that-actually-hurts","Why the forum is the part that actually hurts",[24,135,136],{},"The game shutdown was decisive and total. The forum shutdown is a slower and more ordinary kind of loss, and it removes material that nothing else reproduces:",[138,139,140,147,153,159],"ul",{},[141,142,143,146],"li",{},[28,144,145],{},"Version and patch history."," Turtle WoW shipped original content continuously for years; the patch notes for each of those releases were published as forum posts, and for several of the older patches the post is the only public changelog.",[141,148,149,152],{},[28,150,151],{},"Design rationale."," The project's public argument with its own players — why a class was changed, what was reverted, what was coming — happened in those threads, not on the website.",[141,154,155,158],{},[28,156,157],{},"Guild records and player history."," Recruitment posts, raid reports, name lists. Once gone, membership rolls exist only in whatever Discord servers survived independently.",[141,160,161,164],{},[28,162,163],{},"Your own posts."," If you participated, your account history lives on that forum and nowhere else.",[24,166,167],{},"Discord is the usual counter-argument, and it only partly holds. Turtle-specific servers exist and some are active. But Discord is a poor archive: it is not indexed, it is not searchable from outside, and a server ending is a single deleted-owner problem away from disappearing entirely. The forum was the project's public record. The Discord was its private one.",[56,169,171],{"id":170},"what-the-injunction-covers-and-what-it-does-not","What the injunction covers, and what it does not",[24,173,174,175,180,181,184],{},"The April consent judgment is broader than a shutdown order, and it is the reason this article does not point at mirrors or reuploads. As covered in our ",[176,177,179],"a",{"href":178},"\u002Fresources\u002Fguides\u002Fturtle-wow-successors-takedown-hardening","Turtle WoW successor breakdown",", the order names the modified client specifically, extends to promoting or facilitating the project, and — critically — addresses ",[28,182,183],{},"transferring Turtle WoW software or materials in a way that would enable a successor",". The then-announced \"Turtle WoW 2.0\" was named directly.",[24,186,187],{},"The practical implications for anyone looking at the October 16 date:",[138,189,190,196,207],{},[141,191,192,195],{},[28,193,194],{},"The website's text is not the same thing as the client."," Patch notes, announcements and forum posts are a historical record. An unsupported public reupload of the client or its patched files is a different object with a different legal status, and one that third parties should not be treating as settled.",[141,197,198,201,202,206],{},[28,199,200],{},"Mirrors, torrents and \"preservation\" repackages are unverified by definition."," Provenance is not checkable, contents are not checkable, and the legal position is exactly what the judgment above describes. Advice circulating about successor clients should be read as claims, not recommendations — our ",[176,203,205],{"href":204},"\u002Fresources\u002Fguides\u002Fchecking-a-private-server-client-download","client download verification guide"," covers how to assess one.",[141,208,209,212],{},[28,210,211],{},"A successor project is not the same project."," The five projects reported to be running Turtle-derived clients are community continuations with their own operators, their own terms and their own risk profile. None of them is Turtle WoW, and none of them holds the original records.",[56,214,216],{"id":215},"a-two-hour-archiving-checklist-before-the-16th","A two-hour archiving checklist, before the 16th",[24,218,219],{},"Personal archiving for private use is the low-risk, high-value thing to do with the remaining window. Do it from the live site while it is up — web archives capture pages, not always attachments or images.",[221,222,223,233,239,249,255,261],"ol",{},[141,224,225,228,229,232],{},[28,226,227],{},"Save the patch notes and version announcements."," These are the most-cited and least-duplicated material. Browser print-to-PDF per release page gives you a readable offline copy; the Wayback Machine's ",[36,230,231],{},"Save Page Now"," gives you a public one.",[141,234,235,238],{},[28,236,237],{},"Capture your own account history."," Your posts, threads you replied to, and any guild thread you were part of. If the forum software supports bookmarks, export what you can before it goes.",[141,240,241,244,245,248],{},[28,242,243],{},"Ask a web archive to take the index pages now."," Submit the forum index, the news category and the wiki-style pages to the Wayback Machine ",[36,246,247],{},"before"," the live site disappears — a capture taken from a live page is a capture of the real thing.",[141,250,251,254],{},[28,252,253],{},"Screenshot character and guild records."," Armory-style pages, raid kills, guild rosters. Screenshots are the only durable evidence of what existed, and they take minutes.",[141,256,257,260],{},[28,258,259],{},"Re-establish contact with people you only knew through the forum."," If someone has no Discord, no other handle and no website, October 16 is the last day a private message reaches them.",[141,262,263,266,267,271],{},[28,264,265],{},"Keep the local client archive you already have."," If you still hold an old Turtle client folder, the ",[176,268,270],{"href":269},"\u002Fresources\u002Fguides\u002Fprivate-server-shutdown-backup-checklist","shutdown backup checklist"," covers what is actually portable from it — macros, keybinds, SavedVariables and screenshots.",[56,273,275],{"id":274},"where-the-community-already-went","Where the community already went",[24,277,278,279,283],{},"The reassuring part of this story is that the community did not leave with the servers. Turtle-derived realms launched through 2026, former staff formed ",[176,280,282],{"href":281},"\u002Fresources\u002Fbriefings\u002Fprivate-server-studios-moonwhisper-games","Moonwhisper Games"," to build something non-Warcraft, and the Ascension community ran a deliberate data-preservation effort when its own realms closed in September. The pattern across all three of this year's closures is the same: the platform ends, the people re-form somewhere adjacent.",[24,285,286],{},"What does not re-form is the archive. October 16 is a fixed date, it is not going to be extended, and the material that disappears is material nobody can rebuild afterwards.",[288,289,290],"note",{},[24,291,292],{},"Accurate as of October 1, 2026. The October 16 site, forum and social closure date comes from the project's own April 2026 shutdown announcement as reported by RottenWiFi and Best MMOs and summarised in Chinese-language community coverage; RealmList has not independently re-verified it against the original post, which is itself hosted on the closing site. The consent judgment date, its scope and its treatment of successor-enabling transfers are as described in the sources above and in RealmList's September 24 guide. Nothing here is legal advice, and nothing here recommends obtaining, distributing or operating third-party clients; redistribution of a project's material after a shutdown order has a legal status that varies by jurisdiction and by what is being moved. Archiving advice covers personal and publicly archived copies of published pages only.",{"title":294,"searchDepth":295,"depth":295,"links":296},"",2,[297,298,299,300,301],{"id":58,"depth":295,"text":59},{"id":132,"depth":295,"text":133},{"id":170,"depth":295,"text":171},{"id":215,"depth":295,"text":216},{"id":274,"depth":295,"text":275},"guides","The last public trace of the eight-year Vanilla project disappears in mid-October. What the court order actually covers, what is worth saving before the 16th, and why no successor can legitimately inherit the archive.",false,"md",{},true,"\u002Fresources\u002Fguides\u002Fturtle-wow-archive-before-october-16","2026-10-01",{"title":18,"description":303},{"loc":308,"images":312,"changefreq":314,"priority":315},[313],{"loc":48},"monthly",0.7,[317,320,323,326,329],{"label":318,"url":319},"RottenWiFi — How to Download & Install Turtle WoW: Current Status and Historical Steps","https:\u002F\u002Frottenwifi.com\u002Fhow-to-download-install-turtle-wow-current-status-and-historical-steps",{"label":321,"url":322},"Best MMOs — Turtle WoW Shutdown Announced, Blizzard Faces Community Backlash","https:\u002F\u002Fbestmmos.com\u002Fnews\u002Fturtle-wow-shutdown-announced-blizzard-faces-community20042026",{"label":324,"url":325},"什么值得买（社区）— 乌龟服官网 10 月 16 日永久下线：转生的四只「新龟」都活得怎么样","https:\u002F\u002Fpost.smzdm.com\u002Fp\u002Fa5rdxp57\u002F",{"label":327,"url":328},"RealmList — Turtle WoW's Successor Servers and What the Shutdown Order Forbids (September 24, 2026)","https:\u002F\u002Frealmlist.com\u002Fresources\u002Fguides\u002Fturtle-wow-successors-takedown-hardening",{"label":330,"url":331},"RealmList — Your Private Server Closed. Here Is What You Should Have Backed Up (September 15, 2026)","https:\u002F\u002Frealmlist.com\u002Fresources\u002Fguides\u002Fprivate-server-shutdown-backup-checklist","resources\u002Fguides\u002Fturtle-wow-archive-before-october-16",[334,335,336,337,338],"Turtle WoW","Private Servers","Preservation","Legal","Community",null,"ifAfU8Hf5zyclKrgu1Ri6wlKizyHPPu4nnKQHIFDbIk",[342,347],{"title":343,"path":344,"stem":345,"description":346,"children":-1},"What Private Servers Have Announced for the Rest of 2026: An October–December Calendar","\u002Fresources\u002Fguides\u002Fprivate-server-q4-2026-calendar","resources\u002Fguides\u002Fprivate-server-q4-2026-calendar","Eleven dated events between October and December 2026, from Frostmourne Heroic Tier 7 to three fresh WoW Circle realms. What each entry actually commits to — and which parts of a server roadmap are worth planning around.",{"title":348,"path":204,"stem":349,"description":350,"children":-1},"Before You Run It: How to Check a Private Server Client Download","resources\u002Fguides\u002Fchecking-a-private-server-client-download","A modified game client from a file host is the one private server download that can carry an executable payload. What a download page should publish, how to verify a hash, and which launcher behaviours are not normal.",1793551966032]