[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":446},["ShallowReactive",2],{"site-settings":3,"article:\u002Fresources\u002Fguides\u002Fturtle-wow-successors-takedown-hardening":16},{"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":408,"description":409,"draft":410,"extension":411,"featured":410,"meta":412,"navigation":413,"path":414,"publishedAt":415,"seo":416,"sitemap":417,"sources":422,"stem":438,"tags":439,"updatedAt":444,"__hash__":445},"articles\u002Fresources\u002Fguides\u002Fturtle-wow-successors-takedown-hardening.md","Five Servers Run Turtle WoW's Client Now, And Only One Has A Plan For The Next Lawsuit","RealmList Editorial",{"type":21,"value":22,"toc":399},"minimark",[23,34,40,48,55,60,63,197,203,207,210,223,235,242,246,249,255,265,275,282,285,289,300,311,318,322,325,375,393],[24,25,26],"p",{},[27,28],"img",{"alt":29,"height":30,"loading":31,"src":32,"width":33},"Editorial illustration: five lantern-lit islands scattered across a dark sea, one of them drawn with mirrored duplicate buildings and hidden buried vaults visible through a cutaway, while a cold searchlight sweeps the water far above them",1024,"lazy","https:\u002F\u002Fs3.nanosnail.com\u002Frealmlist\u002Farticles\u002Fguides\u002Fturtle-wow-successors-takedown-hardening.png",1536,[24,35,36],{},[37,38,39],"em",{},"Original editorial illustration by RealmList, generated for this article. This is artwork, not game footage or official promotional material.",[24,41,42,43,47],{},"Turtle WoW's realms switched off on ",[44,45,46],"strong",{},"15 May 2026",", ending eight years of the most elaborate custom Vanilla project the scene has produced, under a permanent injunction that bars the original operators from running or recreating it. The obvious prediction was that its world would go with it.",[24,49,50,51,54],{},"Four months later, ",[44,52,53],{},"five separate projects are running Turtle's client."," They range from a Brazilian Portuguese realm that predates the shutdown to a project with roughly ten thousand players, and their differences are now more informative than their similarities — because those differences are mostly about how each one expects to survive the next letter from a lawyer.",[56,57,59],"h2",{"id":58},"the-five-as-tracked","The five, as tracked",[24,61,62],{},"The Turtle WoW wiki maintains a clone list with client versions, realm names and — notably — a field for anti-takedown measures. As of September 2026 it reads like this:",[64,65,66,91],"table",{},[67,68,69],"thead",{},[70,71,72,76,79,82,85,88],"tr",{},[73,74,75],"th",{},"Project",[73,77,78],{},"Launched",[73,80,81],{},"Client",[73,83,84],{},"Realms",[73,86,87],{},"Language",[73,89,90],{},"Reported population",[92,93,94,117,139,160,178],"tbody",{},[70,95,96,102,105,108,111,114],{},[97,98,99],"td",{},[44,100,101],{},"Sandworlds",[97,103,104],{},"August 2025",[97,106,107],{},"1.17.1",[97,109,110],{},"1 (Normal-PvE)",[97,112,113],{},"Brazilian Portuguese, some English",[97,115,116],{},"under 100 (August 2026)",[70,118,119,124,127,130,133,136],{},[97,120,121],{},[44,122,123],{},"OctoWoW",[97,125,126],{},"April 2026",[97,128,129],{},"1.18.1",[97,131,132],{},"3 (PvE, Hardcore, PvP)",[97,134,135],{},"English",[97,137,138],{},"~3,800 + ~600 + ~400",[70,140,141,146,149,151,154,157],{},[97,142,143],{},[44,144,145],{},"Capybara Paradise",[97,147,148],{},"May 2026",[97,150,129],{},[97,152,153],{},"2 (both Normal-PvE)",[97,155,156],{},"Chinese, growing English",[97,158,159],{},"~10,000 (June 2026)",[70,161,162,167,170,172,174,176],{},[97,163,164],{},[44,165,166],{},"LunaticPTR",[97,168,169],{},"27 July 2026",[97,171,107],{},[97,173,110],{},[97,175,135],{},[97,177,116],{},[70,179,180,185,188,190,192,194],{},[97,181,182],{},[44,183,184],{},"RavenCraft",[97,186,187],{},"22 August 2026",[97,189,129],{},[97,191,110],{},[97,193,135],{},[97,195,196],{},"~600 (September 2026)",[24,198,199,200,202],{},"Three of the five run ",[44,201,129],{},", the last version Turtle shipped; two are still on 1.17.1. That split is the clearest structural fault line in the group. 1.18.1 is where Turtle's final content, its custom races and its newest systems live — and, not coincidentally, it is the version whose core the projects claiming Turtle lineage actually hold.",[56,204,206],{"id":205},"why-there-are-five-of-them-at-all","Why there are five of them at all",[24,208,209],{},"Before the shutdown, building a Turtle-shaped server meant years of work: custom zones, custom races, a reworked class system and enough content to justify a 1–60 journey. After it, the barrier dropped to forking a core and shipping.",[24,211,212,213,215,216,218,219,222],{},"That is why the successor list looks the way it does. ",[44,214,184],{}," claims to be run by former contributors to Turtle's own 1.18.1 line and says it holds the final 1.18.1 core — the closest thing to a continuation with the original people attached. ",[44,217,145],{}," is run by former Turtle ",[37,220,221],{},"South-East Asia"," administrators and, on its Chinese-only realm, restored characters from Turtle's original SEA servers, which is the only case in the group where a player's actual history was carried across.",[24,224,225,226,228,229,231,232,234],{},"The other three are not continuations in that sense. ",[44,227,123],{}," rebuilt 1.18.1 from datamined data and split it across three realms by ruleset, including a dedicated hardcore realm no competitor offers. ",[44,230,166],{}," is a novelty built on the same bones — a level-one endgame with 4,681 quests available at level 1 and item progression up to Gnomeregan. ",[44,233,101],{}," has been running since before the shutdown and has no plans beyond 1.17.1.",[24,236,237,238,241],{},"Four months on, the honest summary is that the exodus did not produce one heir. It produced a diaspora, and the largest population share went to the project with the least connection to Turtle's staff and the most to its ",[37,239,240],{},"code",".",[56,243,245],{"id":244},"octowows-three-layer-hardening-and-what-it-actually-does","OctoWoW's three-layer hardening, and what it actually does",[24,247,248],{},"Only one project on the list publishes a coherent anti-takedown posture, and it is worth reading in detail because each layer addresses a different enforcement mechanism.",[24,250,251,254],{},[44,252,253],{},"Layer one — anonymous segregation."," OctoWoW's developers do not know each other's identities. This is aimed squarely at the discovery phase: Blizzard's 2025 action against Turtle WoW named individual staff under their real names, and a project where no participant can identify the others is a project where one person's mistake cannot cascade.",[24,256,257,260,261,264],{},[44,258,259],{},"Layer two — redundancy, including player-side portability."," Realm data is held in multiple countries by independent, anonymous keepers, and players can ",[44,262,263],{},"download their character data"," for possible reimplementation elsewhere. That last part is unusual and thoughtful: it treats a shutdown as a migration event rather than a deletion, and it means a player's investment is at least nominally recoverable.",[24,266,267,270,271,274],{},[44,268,269],{},"Layer three — obscured infrastructure."," No traceable third-party services directly attached to the project. Their community Discord is run by fans rather than the project, so there is no operator-owned channel to enumerate or subpoena, and the donation shop is ",[44,272,273],{},"crypto only",", which removes a payment processor as both a paper trail and a single point of failure.",[24,276,277,278,281],{},"The wiki lists ",[44,279,280],{},"no anti-takedown measures at all"," for Sandworlds, LunaticPTR or RavenCraft. Capybara sits in a different category: it has no stated measures, but its website is only reachable from a non-US IP, its official community channel is KOOK rather than Discord, and it is operated from China — which the wiki notes offers some practical protection.",[24,283,284],{},"Note what none of these layers do. None of them change the legal position of running a Blizzard-derived client, and none of them would stop a court order aimed at whoever is discoverable. What they change is the cost and the reach of enforcement. Whether that is enough is a question the 2025–26 record does not answer in the successors' favour — Turtle WoW, Stormforge and Project Ascension all ended, and the third of those was still operating at the largest scale in the scene when it did.",[56,286,288],{"id":287},"the-reporting-thread-is-the-more-interesting-signal","The reporting thread is the more interesting signal",[24,290,291,292,295,296,299],{},"On ",[44,293,294],{},"21 September 2026",", a player opened a thread on Blizzard's European forums titled ",[37,297,298],{},"\"New Turtle WoW clones have illegally opened up!\"",", naming RavenCraft, OctoWoW and Capybara and asking Blizzard to \"look them up and close them down as they are direct competition to WoW Forever.\"",[24,301,302,303,310],{},"The thread lasted about half an hour. A reply dismissed the poster — \"no-one likes a grass\" — and a moderator closed it, redirecting to the actual process: private servers are reported by email to ",[44,304,305],{},[306,307,309],"a",{"href":308},"mailto:hacks@blizzard.com","hacks@blizzard.com",", per Blizzard's own support article on the subject, not through the general discussion forums.",[24,312,313,314,317],{},"That exchange matters for two reasons. First, it confirms the reporting channel is support-email based and player-driven, which is how every major action in the last two years started — Turtle WoW's 2025 lawsuit, Stormforge's cessation, and the Ascension case were all preceded by public visibility, not by Blizzard stumbling across a realm. Second, it confirms how the successors are being framed ",[37,315,316],{},"by the community",": not as preservation projects, but as \"direct competition to WoW Forever.\" That framing is the one that historically precedes enforcement, and it is being applied to all three Turtle-client successors by name, four months before Forever's launch.",[56,319,321],{"id":320},"seven-checks-before-you-invest-time","Seven checks before you invest time",[24,323,324],{},"Every one of these can be done from a browser and a login, and together they give a better read on durability than any population figure.",[326,327,328,335,341,347,353,359,369],"ol",{},[329,330,331,334],"li",{},[44,332,333],{},"Read the anti-takedown posture as a risk statement, not a safety feature."," A project that publishes measures has told you it is planning for enforcement. That is useful honesty — and also a warning that it believes enforcement is likely.",[329,336,337,340],{},[44,338,339],{},"Check which client version you are installing."," 1.18.1 successors carry Turtle's final content; 1.17.1 ones are frozen earlier. Neither is wrong, but they are different products and a character built for one does not move to the other.",[329,342,343,346],{},[44,344,345],{},"Ask whether donations exist and how they are collected."," Every major takedown in the past year involved a project that accepted money. Crypto-only collection removes a paper trail but does not change that money changed hands.",[329,348,349,352],{},[44,350,351],{},"Test whether you can export your character."," OctoWoW's downloadable character data is the only reason in this list to believe progress survives a shutdown. If a project offers no export path, assume a shutdown is a deletion.",[329,354,355,358],{},[44,356,357],{},"Check the last announcement's date, not the Discord member count."," A project with 4,700 Discord members and no post in three weeks is a project in trouble. A project with 600 members and a patch note today is not.",[329,360,361,364,365,368],{},[44,362,363],{},"Check what the project does with its content gap."," Turtle's late patches are gone from every fork at a different point. Any successor claiming to ship ",[37,366,367],{},"new"," content past its inherited build has a much higher bar to clear than one shipping bugfixes.",[329,370,371,374],{},[44,372,373],{},"Verify the mechanics you were promised."," Free-to-play and no pay-to-win claims are the first thing to decay. Look for a donation shop, a cosmetic vendor, or a \"supporter\" tier list before you read the roadmap.",[24,376,377,378,382,383,387,388,392],{},"For the wider pattern this sits inside, our ",[306,379,381],{"href":380},"\u002Fresources\u002Fguides\u002Fprivate-server-sustainability-signals","guide to private-server sustainability signals"," covers legal versus cost-driven shutdowns, and the ",[306,384,386],{"href":385},"\u002Fresources\u002Fguides\u002Fverifying-private-server-population-claims","population verification guide"," covers why the numbers on directory pages should not decide this for you. If you have already picked one of these, the ",[306,389,391],{"href":390},"\u002Fresources\u002Fguides\u002Fjoin-turtle-successor-server-english-setup","English setup walkthrough"," covers client paths, fonts and addon safety.",[394,395,396],"note",{},[24,397,398],{},"Accurate as of September 24, 2026. Realm counts, client versions, language mixes, population estimates and anti-takedown descriptions are as published on the Turtle WoW wiki's clone list, which was last revised in September 2026 and which sources its figures from server trackers and community reports rather than operator statistics. Population numbers are snapshots and should be treated as indicative only. Turtle WoW's realms closed 15 May 2026 under a permanent injunction following a settlement with Blizzard, and no successor project's legal status has been tested. Nothing here is legal advice, and none of these projects is affiliated with or endorsed by Blizzard Entertainment.",{"title":400,"searchDepth":401,"depth":401,"links":402},"",2,[403,404,405,406,407],{"id":58,"depth":401,"text":59},{"id":205,"depth":401,"text":206},{"id":244,"depth":401,"text":245},{"id":287,"depth":401,"text":288},{"id":320,"depth":401,"text":321},"guides","Turtle WoW went dark on 15 May 2026 under a permanent injunction. Four months later, five separate projects are running its client. One of them — OctoWoW — has published an actual anti-takedown architecture: segregated identities, data redundancy in multiple countries, and a donation shop that only accepts crypto. Here is what each successor is, and what the hardening genuinely buys you.",false,"md",{},true,"\u002Fresources\u002Fguides\u002Fturtle-wow-successors-takedown-hardening","2026-09-24",{"title":18,"description":409},{"loc":414,"images":418,"changefreq":420,"priority":421},[419],{"loc":32},"weekly",0.8,[423,426,429,432,435],{"label":424,"url":425},"Turtle WoW Wiki — List of Turtle WoW clones (realms, client versions, populations, anti-takedown measures)","https:\u002F\u002Fturtle-wow.fandom.com\u002Fwiki\u002FList_of_Turtle_WoW_clones",{"label":427,"url":428},"Blizzard EU Forums — New Turtle WoW clones have illegally opened up (September 21, 2026)","https:\u002F\u002Feu.forums.blizzard.com\u002Fen\u002Fwow\u002Ft\u002Fnew-turtle-wow-clones-have-illegally-opened-up\u002F630463",{"label":430,"url":431},"Blizzard Support — How to report a private server (article 13639)","https:\u002F\u002Feu.support.blizzard.com\u002Fen\u002Fhelp\u002Farticle\u002F13639",{"label":433,"url":434},"Private Server Hub — Server news index (Turtle WoW, Stormforge, Project Ascension closures)","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.privateserverhub.com\u002Fnews",{"label":436,"url":437},"Private Server Hub — OctoWoW server profile","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.privateserverhub.com\u002Fservers\u002Foctowow","resources\u002Fguides\u002Fturtle-wow-successors-takedown-hardening",[440,441,442,443],"Private Servers","Turtle WoW","Vanilla+","Shutdown Risk",null,"4stn7CyO-pkAcfVmqYwRgb5DEYgECDCNJIZgjrstE8I",1790212675188]