Blizzard Entertainment is continuing its crusade against private World of Warcraft servers: The company filed a new lawsuit on Friday in a California court against the makers of Project Ascension, alleging copyright infringement, Digital Millennium Copyright Act violations, and other claims. Blizzard Entertainment claims that Project Ascension is a "lucrative way to exploit and profit from the popularity of the WoW game experience," according to the complaint, obtained by Aftermath.
Blizzard Entertainment's lawyers say in the complaint that Project Ascension purports to have "over a million players." Lawyers write that the developers have "distributed (and are continuing to distribute) millions of pirated copies of Blizzard's copyrighted WoW game software." They also allege that Project Ascension's servers are hosted on Russian "bulletproof" servers with Aeza Group, a company that was sanctioned in 2025 "for its role in supporting cybercriminal activity targeting victims in the United States and around the world," per a U.S. Department of Treasury press release.
"Defendants’ decision to work with such criminal enterprises alone signals willful intent to engage in unlawful activity," Blizzard Entertainment lawyers say in the complaint.
Blizzard Entertainment named six defendants and several companies it said were shell companies that exist "solely as a conduit for monetary transactions and to avoid U.S. tax liability for revenue related to Project Ascension." The defendants are largely U.S. residents, save one developer based in Australia. Blizzard's suit is looking to uncover the identities of several other people involved with Project Ascension.
Project Ascension bills itself, on its website, as a "Classless game that allows you to imagine and build the character of your dreams." In World of Warcraft, players pick a class during the character creation process, and are tied to that. Project Ascension lets players combine pieces of World of Warcraft's different classes to build unique characters. It's free-to-play, but players can purchase in-game currency, Donation Points, to buy things in-game, such as cosmetics and experience boosts. Blizzard Entertainment's lawyers assert that Project Ascension has made "millions of dollars from the sale of Donation Points."
To access the servers, players must download the "Ascension Client," which bypasses the need to connect to Blizzard Entertainment's own World of Warcraft servers, meaning that players don't need a World of Warcraft subscription. The company's lawyers also say that Project Ascension developers must have removed the security protections put in place by Blizzard Entertainment to get the software to run.
"Project Ascension also has caused significant and irreparable harm to Blizzard," lawyers say in the complaint. "This harm includes, but is not limited to, lost revenue from former WoW players who have been diverted to Project Ascension in order to avoid paying subscription fees to Blizzard and harm to Blizzard’s valuable intellectual property, which is being exploited, modified, and monetized without Blizzard’s consent and in ways that Blizzard disapproves and prohibits. "
Blizzard Entertainment says that Project Ascension developers have ignored communications from the company. Beyond the alleged copyright violations, Blizzard Entertainment is suing on claims on interference with contractual relations, false designation of origin for using World of Warcraft trademarks to mislead players, conspiracy, and participating in a "development, sales and trafficking enterprise," per the complaint.
Blizzard Entertainment successfully sued a popular World of Warcraft server called Turtle Wow last year. The project had been running since 2018, taking donations from players for the free-to-play server. Both sides announced in April 2026 that they'd reached a settlement after Blizzard Entertainment was awarded a permanent injunction to shut down Turtle WoW. The details of the settlement were not made public. Turtle WoW was shut down for good shortly after May 15; players gathered online to mourn the end of the server.
In October 2025, Turtle WoW developers made a plea to Blizzard Entertainment: "Unfortunately, unlike other studios, Blizzard does not yet have a framework that allows projects like ours to operate without risking legal conflict. With that in mind, we respectfully ask that Blizzard consider establishing a formal ecosystem for licensing fan‑run community servers." They pointed to operations by Daybreak Game Company, Rockstar Games, Valve, and Bethesda.
Other private World of Warcraft servers have shut down in the wake of the Turtle WoW lawsuit after receiving cease and desist letters from Blizzard Entertainment. Another, Project Epoch, closed its website as its developers stopped supporting the project. Reportedly, Project Epoch has come under the custody of Project Ascension developers.
Aftermath has reached out to Blizzard Entertainment and Project Ascension for comment.
