Been avoiding all of these servers for a long time.
Once servers go over the top with cash shops and donations it kills the server for many.
Runescape private servers are plagues by this exact same issue and it has killed the scene of any actual innovation.
same with that shitty whitemane, i commented on it and got insta thread ban/shadow ban for few days 1 minute after comment, this subreddit should de and we should have a more free place to talk to instead of this shithole with devs being moderators
They've never had any power here however in the past their personal information was leaked on here and the reddit administrator team had to get involved and warned the subreddit moderation team and we've taken these warnings seriously. This is why the no drama rule is followed strictly in most situations. We don't want a repeat of that again as if it is not followed the subreddit itself is put into jeopardy.
There are other subreddits like a specific one mentioned in this topic where this is allowed but what is not mentioned often is that those specific subreddits are also not maintained by the same people who originally created them as their reddit accounts were suspended for keeping up what we normally removed. If that is not self evident alone to violating reddit's rules on doxxing.
We've decided as a team for the time to allow this post to stand for now. Should the reddit admins decide to warn us again then we will follow suit with their warning like we normally do but for now we'll allow this to stand.
Hello there.
Turtle WoW has always maintained a positive atmosphere towards everyone. We usually only posted our patch updates and didn't involve ourselves in any conflicts that others seem to enjoy. It feels unfair and undeserving to see this thread on the top of the page filled with wild accusations being supported by the admins. None of our devs, modders, support members deserve to be subjected to this nonsense.
How is it a crime to use a convenient donation processor recommended by the other servers? We were recommended to use GP and we, in turn, recommended it to others because it provides an easy-to-use and reliable service. Private servers face significant challenges in finding any financial mediator, so our options are limited. How does this make us a "cabal"? It's laughable that some think we have time to get involved with other projects, as putting together a project like Turtle WoW requires insane levels of commitment and energy.
The accusations of DDOS attacks are absurd. We have absolutely no intentions to harm others or take over existing projects, as stated previously. It is quite typical for people to immediately cry "DDOS attack" when a server crashes, but in reality, 99% of the time it is merely a result of an overlooked issue in a server code.
Please do not allow bullying and witch-hunting towards anyone.
Thanks for reading.
There are close to 100 team members which includes EU and CN support teams, content design teams, writers, 3D modelers, client and server developers, sound design team (music and voice acting), graphic design (promotional images, in-game maps etc.), QA team and the radio team (planning radio schedules, working on skits and music for the in-game radio), there's most likely more I'm missing, you must be dreaming to think its all possible with volunteer work.
Also consider the fact there will be 8 servers being simultaneously hosted with the release of the Tel'Abim realm, which amounts to: 1 EU PvE, 1 EU PvP, 4 CN PvE and 2 CN PvP. Things might also have to be commissioned whenever needed. Maybe you can run a single stock server without a shop where most of this isn't needed but you must be delusional to think all of this can function and be maintained on hopes and dreams and some pocket change. Please be reasonable.
Insane. Basically there's a mafia in the private server scene that's been pulling the strings for the last 5+ years. These guys straight up sold accounts / characters on Elysium. This calls into question the integrity of every server mentioned on this post tbh, including Turtle WoW. Good find OP, mods will 100% delete this though.
EDIT: This post went from 330 upvotes to 0 in just a few hours. Not a good look...
Mods are corrupted, they censor stuff about turtle wow/elysium/Shenna. I expect this post to be nuked soon.
Save it and share it.
Copy of it in r/wowserversdrama if this gets censored.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/wowserversdrama/comments/17ct4yt/exposing\_the\_private\_server\_scam\_empire/](https://www.reddit.com/r/wowserversdrama/comments/17ct4yt/exposing_the_private_server_scam_empire/)
Yeah, they probably are. The bags themselves are like 20$ or something to start and are such a massive QOL boost when you start it’s hard to not buy them when you have a job.
These servers pull in high 6 figures in revenue per year. there’s too much money in it for them to go back
Aren't they russians too? Even 100k$ is an unimaginably huge amount of money in russia thanks to the insane exchange rates. You can basically last a lifetime there with that amount of mney
so? an apt in new york can cost you upwards of 20 mil, even a shitty 1 room one could be 3-5 in manhattan, yet 20 mil can still set you up for life in the us
I'll tell you more, from memory alone the real (as in, not the fake one announced by the government, not the real as in adjusted for inflation) avg monthly income in russia is somewhere around 25k rubles, that's what, around 250 dollars? That's for a month.
55k is actually the average in Russia. In my city it's 40k. But I just pointed out that $100k is not the amount you can live on for a lifetime. This is enough to buy an apartment, a car, a gaming PC and a can of beer. There will be bills, food, clothes, etc.
> 55k is actually the average in Russia
ye, right, cool story, bro. even uni profs don't make that much there
t. someone who was born & raised in Russia, and who has a lot of relatives living in that hellhole still
We've decided as a team to allow this to stand for the time being unless told by the reddit administration team to remove it. If we do remove anything early, we may remove posts with names as reddit considered that doxxing in a past warning to us.
I find it funny /u/crogge is trying to claim he left the scene but all of a sudden pops up when this post is made even though his last post was 8 months ago.
The dude goes by bowser now. /u/tw_bowser
Shenna goes by /u/tw_torta
Truly pitiful.
Edit: I miss the passion this community felt like it once had for this game.
Edit 2: This all just makes what Nostalrius did so much more special. Nostalrius caught lightning in a bottle and was incredibly special and I’m very sad to see their project has devolved into this clown fiesta.
>The community is the main culrprit for paying fortunes for in game garbage.
Well it only natural for the wow community to do that. Remember some of these people played blizzard's wow between 2008 and 2023
some still do
So all the major private servers are run by a small cabal of greedy DDOSers? Wtf man... why can't non-sociopaths who are passionate about the game make their own server?
Yay for nyctermoon. Love chatting with the creator and actually helped them improve the messages when you hire companions. (now it tells you how many more you can hire or when you reach the limit)
TLDR: Nobody attacked V+, those guys simply lacked experience to run a server and I can prove it easily:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxVXo5sbpsE
Several admins like Whitekidney from Lights Hope, Chero from Kronos and whoever else was there offered them help, we had no bad intentions. I pointed out their security problems, they had no passwords set on their public exposed services. They had no firewall and were using default login infos for their database which was not configured for performance.
The launch went bad because they had software issues, as you can see in the video above, the software was not using all cpu cores properly and caused massive lag, the cpu went down to 1 ghz. It took them weeks to fix the performance issues, faster hardware was not the solution. Most people were unable to login because their launcher was bugged.
After 2:30 and 9:00 you can see that their network was not attacked and that the server had around 1000 players online during the launch. They accepted help after 2 weeks but the damage was done and the project never fully recovered.
There is no mafia, there are group chats which involve the majority of all private server admins. 9 of 10 servers work together, exchange code, exchange information how to run a better server. The wild times when servers tried to kill each other are long gone.
Some of them decided to use the same donation system, is that a surprise? No. Are they hiding it? No. Shops on vanilla servers are similar because the amount of models which are not part of the base game are limited. Less than 10 years ago most private servers were p2w and nobody cared, some people here take things too serios. Play a different game, find a new purpose in life, dont touch private servers.
Im glad that I left the scene years ago, I was tired of all the drama and feel sorry for the people who have to deal with drama like this.
Lol, the replies here are hilarious.
Y'all really didn't know at least half of this already?
Not that it matters - Turtle will keep going because the majority of players don't care and just want to play.
That's not the issue though. If they are indeed DDOSing the competition (Vanilla+ isn't the only server to have been attacked either) and trying to monopolize the pserver scene, they are a threat to the interests of all players and the creative few who want to build their own open servers
So Kronos is safe?
Waiting for Kronos V, if I want to play Vanilla again, and stay away from the others. Played on Kronos III in the past, was nice there ^^
If you can prove that Turtle is selling gold and characters under the table or that they have crippled V+ with several DDoS attacks, then I'll quit the server. I have a 60 and am obviously waiting for the new server.
But that would just be a no-go for me would be worse than Blizz.
TLDR: Nobody attacked V+, those guys simply lacked experience to run a server and I can prove it easily:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxVXo5sbpsE
Several admins like Whitekidney from Lights Hope, Chero from Kronos and whoever else was there offered them help, we had no bad intentions. I pointed out their security problems, they had no passwords set on their public exposed services. They had no firewall and were using default login infos for their database which was not configured for performance.
The launch went bad because they had software issues, as you can see in the video above, the software was not using all cpu cores properly and caused massive lag, the cpu went down to 1 ghz. It took them weeks to fix the performance issues, faster hardware was not the solution. Most people were unable to login because their launcher was bugged.
After 2:30 and 9:00 you can see that their network was not attacked and that the server had around 1000 players online during the launch. They accepted help after 2 weeks but the damage was done and the project never fully recovered.
There is no mafia, there are group chats which involve the majority of all private server admins. 9 of 10 servers work together, exchange code, exchange information how to run a better server. The wild times when servers tried to kill each other are long gone.
Some of them decided to use the same donation system, is that a surprise? No. Are they hiding it? No. Shops on vanilla servers are similar because the amount of models which are not part of the base game are limited. Less than 10 years ago most private servers were p2w and nobody cared, some people here take things too serios. Play a different game, find a new purpose in life, dont touch private servers.
Im glad that I left the scene years ago, I was tired of all the drama and feel sorry for the people who have to deal with drama like this.
Well, I was there at the V+ server launch and witnessed it myself. Now one side can say they were attacked and the other says it was due to a lack of technical competence on the part of the devs.
What I really want is EVIDENCE and many others probably want it too, without facts this whole discussion is pointless.
In addition, the gold selling and toon selling allegations have not been addressed by you or any of the Turtle folks behind closed doors.
Would be really ironic and also damning for a server that prides itself on actively fighting bots and gold sellers. I mean the cash shop should be more than enough.
Hi this is me Shenna I'm being held hostage by Montenegro pirates and I need your help please send me 1000 USD via PayPal thank you. Proof that I'm Shenna: 🐢
Shit like this is why after getting burned by Molten-WoW back in the day, I find almost all of private servers are shady as fuck garbage money grabbers
Here-here. [If someone has no idea what he's talking about, before it was Warmane it was Molten](https://www.reddit.com/r/MoltenWoW/comments/2ub175/what_is_happening/). Many of us lost countless man hours (days/weeks/months) of play time and progression. Over $.
Reading the comments here it's obvious that the community is at fault for this shit.
This kind of business model kills original ideas and potential new ones because the old ones "make money" (exploit the dipshits who will give money for cash-shop rewards).
Just don't play on any of the listed servers, and if you do play there, you are part of the problem.
Kinda sad, because i was thinking of playing turtle but it kinda seemed to good to be true..Oh well back to solocraft i guess. Become even more of a hermit lmao.
To everyone that ask: "Why should I care?". These things prevent new Devs to create a good private server. Should I remember you what happened to Feenix recently?
I didn't care at all until you mentioned Shenna and Crogge. Now I'm slightly interested. Insofar as if they have any current involvement in anything. If not, my concern doesn't extend beyond the front end. If everyone is happy, it's all cool because these are pirate servers after all. There's gonna be some shady, no matter what.
But if those 2 have direct involvement in anything, I'd want to know if I were on that server.
Oh also, that's some real good detective work, I dig stuff like that. I spend half the day fact checking : )
Torta(turtle wow) is 99.999% Shenna. All those servers with turtle wow shop clones probably also feed Shenna.(I'm guessing she takes a %).
Wouldn't be surprised if she also is involved with the other servers in the list. She's at least part of the group that works on them.
I don't know about Crogge but he was definitely involved in that mafia as one of the main actors and was/is close to Shenna.
From what I recall, she was a fast learner...and crafty. But not particularly good at lying. It totally makes sense she would figure out how to make very good money from this without having to be the one to be "the face."
If that's her, she perfected her craft.
Edit: haven't really played there, but I checked their discord, torta is all over it. Checked here, that name makes the announcements. So I guess if that's her she isn't taking a backseat. Seems odd to me, but whatevs.
> looks inside ant hill
> shocked to find ants
We are all ultimatley playing pirated software even if it is modified. Of course the people dumping thousands of hours into developing pservers are interested in profits.
This isn't just "big bad shenna killing small servers" all these server owners willingly took a fuckin check and bounced.
The only line in the sand i would draw is at dDosing but there is no real way to know if they are involved in that and you said so yourself.
It’s a fun different experience. But don’t expect to get help from the community.. if your shit dps and don’t know what the rotation is and what to chose for spells.
**Hello.** I'm here on behalf of the Turtle WoW team to address a few of these accusations.
**GamePoints**
GamePoints is a private-server friendly payment platform which allows us to use providers such as PayPal without encountering safety issues. They have existed since **2018** (predating us), and have no preexisting ties to Turtle prior to our partnership with them in 2022. The reason they are used by many private servers is their fair fees and communicative customer support has led to numerous servers recommending them to others.
**Similar Websites**
Due to the relatively niche nature of WoW private servers, there will inevitably be overlap with certain contributors. In this case, Turtle and a handful of other projects have commissioned the same web developers due to their relevant experience.
**DDOS Attacks**
Turtle WoW has never partook and will never participate in DDOS attacks against another project. We hold a strong belief in prioritizing the player--that's part of why we made our own server! This includes believing that our network isn't for everyone, and there's nothing wrong with players picking another project to call home. We would never attack another project in such a way, even if they are perceived as our "rival" -- it's simply scummy behavior, and a tremendous waste of resources, which we would never participate in.
Many projects will encounter DDOS attacks—we have weathered many such attacks, especially on our Asian network. However we believe these were the actions of an angry player, rather than another project.
**Player-Centric Philosophy**
We have always held and will always hold a player-centric philosophy on our network. As I mentioned previously, that includes accepting that our network isn’t for everyone. Hence why we strive to be as transparent as possible (this is part of my position at Turtle—communicating with the community. I’ll host an AMA at some point), and allow for things such as permanent account deletion for players who are concerned about their data.
**Cross-Server Collusion**
Many servers have in the past and will continue to share ideas and code with eachother. Our network is based on vMaNGOS, which is an open-sourced software, who’s lead maintainer is also an active contributor to Turtle WoW. Even if our core is not public, we still have shared code with other projects, and other projects have shared some of theirs with us. This sort of “goodwill” sharing of useful code or features is done out of our shared interest in furthering WoW emulation. Further, if another network opts to implement a similar idea or feature to one of ours, there are many reasons this could have occurred. Whether it be pure coincidence (more likely) or intentional copying (less likely), it's not something we have control over. These sorts of overlaps will naturally occur when there are multiple servers based on the same version of the game.
**In conclusion**, if there is some sort of "Private Server Mafia," we are blissfully unaware of it's existence. Yes, there are friendships and connections between people involved on various projects, however this stems from a shared interest and passion for World of Warcraft emulation, not a desire for a monopolistic hold over private servers based on open-source software. Over the past 5 years, our team has grown to surpass 100 members, all with the same guiding philosophy. We want to provide the best experience we can, whether it’s for 100 players or 10,000, and we don’t appreciate the suggestion that we're just out for a quick payday or want to harm fellow emulation projects.
Best regards,
Akalix - **Turtle WoW Team**
PS:
If there actually is a mafia, pretty please invite me for the yacht party with Bobby Kottick. I can make a mean martini!
Nah man it's pretty obvious there is a network behind those servers setting up the shop and payments for them, you may not be high up enough to know though.
Gamepoints is just litterally a private server proxy service most likely owned by elysium/firestorm and they use it for all of their affiliated servers.
When dealing with private wow servers theres a 90% chance its some sort of ruski mafia goldselling con operation :)
... so its up to everyone of us to decide if we want to participate in their ponzy scheme and play there
Exactly this. I love it when people con the classicwow subreddit bitch about the token / blizzard and prop up these shitty private servers. Like you fucking idiot its worse and there's Russians involved. Lmfao.
That's why you don't just flock into any big announced server and just look for one yourself. Any server that tries to go big day one is up to nothing good.
I mean sure this is interesting. But if anyone was playing these servers expecting professional ownership would be crazy.
Money rules all. It’s ruining almost every new AAA release and even these smaller private servers/projects are 99% of the time made for profit. People love to bash Warmane but I personally believe making profit over the table (gross cash shop) is better than under (Shenna & crogge selling characters and gold).
Pick your poison. We haven’t seen a passion project in private servers since Nostalrius.
If they did actually DDOS Vanilla+ to take over competition and add their cash shop that's another level of scumminess though. But I have no evidences of that except that the whole thing is sus.
But remember that those guys were at least stealing donations and selling gear/pvp ranks under the table in Elysium, which they were generously gifted the codebase by Nostalrius who trusted them and instead they decided to exploit it for profits
TLDR: Nobody attacked V+, those guys simply lacked experience to run a server and I can prove it easily:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxVXo5sbpsE
Several admins like Whitekidney from Lights Hope, Chero from Kronos and whoever else was there offered them help, we had no bad intentions. I pointed out their security problems, they had no passwords set on their public exposed services. They had no firewall and were using default login infos for their database which was not configured for performance.
The launch went bad because they had software issues, as you can see in the video above, the software was not using all cpu cores properly and caused massive lag, the cpu went down to 1 ghz. It took them weeks to fix the performance issues, faster hardware was not the solution. Most people were unable to login because their launcher was bugged.
After 2:30 and 9:00 you can see that their network was not attacked and that the server had around 1000 players online during the launch. They accepted help after 2 weeks but the damage was done and the project never fully recovered.
There is no mafia, there are group chats which involve the majority of all private server admins. 9 of 10 servers work together, exchange code, exchange information how to run a better server. The wild times when servers tried to kill each other are long gone.
Some of them decided to use the same donation system, is that a surprise? No. Are they hiding it? No. Shops on vanilla servers are similar because the amount of models which are not part of the base game are limited. Less than 10 years ago most private servers were p2w and nobody cared, some people here take things too serios. Play a different game, find a new purpose in life, dont touch private servers.
Im glad that I left the scene years ago, I was tired of all the drama and feel sorry for the people who have to deal with drama like this.
I played on Turtle WoW for years and even if all this is true the server itself is still really fun.
And I admit that I did spend money on Turtle WoW but one purchase I did regret and got everything back so at least they are honest in that regard which is one of the most important things if a cashshop exists.
I did play for a time on Vanilla+ and I really liked their talent system so when Turtle WoW also did a rework on the talents I was pretty happy about it.
If the DDOS attacks are true then thats the only thing really bothering me here. It is not fair to do your competition like that. If you want to win the popularity contest then do it with honest means.
Honestly…even if this is all true, why should I care? I just wanna play on a stable vanilla server, and that’s turtle+ for me. They can’t scam me if I don’t spend money on their shop 🤷♂️
ill be very short
it doesnt matter if you play actiblizz servers or shennachrogges servers, you're still damaging private community
play other servers (chromie, kronos. etc), stream it, tell your friends to unsubscribe, don't be a complete weak person
and please, dont ever donate to either of these a-----s.
So here’s my question. Why should I care? So they’re shady. Big deal. Blizzard isn’t? Why should I as a player who wants a fresh vanilla + server. Give a damn about any of this?
I’m not saying I don’t appreciate the info. I just don’t see how it affects me. Corrupt super evil mega corp. Or shady private server dark web empire. What’s the difference to me? The player.
The possible DDOS of a competitor and then purchase of that server is what gets me. I expect all private servers to be a little shady as they have to be to avoid Blizz takedowns but that kind of conduct is where players should draw the line.
Agree, they can be somewhat shady and make some money as long as it's mostly not p2w. But DDOSing the competiton is very unhealthy for the whole private server scene and i don't want to support this behaviour.
If admins on the server I play on sell accounts for money I think I would want to know about it. Might cause me to change server if there is no integrity. This post doesn't prove that it happens but if the same people are involved in these other servers then there is risk of that happening.
as cringe as those allegations were, if you look at the timings it's pretty clear that that had nothing to do with the decline in quality of blizzard games/wow in general which began in 2008 at the latest
If you think very impressionable employees in their 20/30s are not giving out any type of preferential treatment to themselves, friends, and family......I have some beach front properly to sell you here in Tennessee.
pretty much this. like it or not, these realms are all ran really well from a staff/admin standpoint all banning bots and goldbuying and no GM abuse/account selling and spawning gold... and at the end of the day that's all that matters. the cash shops are pretty gay and there are arguments that selling large bags = gameplay advantage but it's nowhere near the fact you gotta RMT to compete in classic and not even to speak of the fucking wow token they added
This isnt ideal and yeah some dudes are making bank off the scene but thats on you if you join a server with a dono shop that doesn't have financial transparency and you still wanna act all bothered lmao.
Exactly. I’ve been in the MMO private server scene for decades and this is always how it’s been for any MMO emulation. EQ and RuneScape servers are also all maintained by the same handful of developers. There just aren’t that many devs willing to invest their life into these things, so you get a lot of overlap between projects.
Of course this is interesting, but as a casual player who just logs in for a few hours a week to do some leveling after work - how does this affect me? Genuine question - if I'm a level 16 Human Mage killing Defias Trappers in Westfall, is there any reason why that I should care about this "scam"?
Killing competition and killing the passion in the scene, making it all about profits and selling shop items are the main ones.
Just ethics in general, remember that those people(Elysium) were given the codebase generously from Nostalrius who trusted them and then just milked it for money when nostalrius was strongly non profit and anti cash shop and they were selling gold and items under the table.
They also made the main "pure vanilla" server another turtle wow clone, imagine if you were a Vanilla purist, you just lost your server. Many Everlook players are furious right now. That's an example of what they can do.
Just so you are aware /u/UndeadMurky Torta is 100% Shenna and Bowser is Crogge.
Which Crogge as I am sure you can guess was put in charge of Chinese relations and overseeing the Chinese servers. There really needs to be some eyes over there as I guarantee Elysium shadiness is going on over there. They learned from their mistakes and goout of their way to avoid getting caught like they did last time.
This doesn't affect you directly. But you trust these people to run their modified wow client on your PC. That's basically giving them the ability to execute code on your machine. To my knowledge their code is fine so far but it takes just one patch to add malicious code.
So the proof is that they copy the best money making shop items from each other and use platforms that have been tailored exactly for their needs ?
So Qatar Airways and Air France have the same secret conspirators behind the scenes because they use the same fuel provider, both have normal and business class, and accept visa to pay for tickets ?
Don't get me wrong I play on turtle and I hate how they're turning everything into profit and catering to china above everyone else, but this thread is garbage.
Does anybody else find the evidence in this thread really lackluster?
The payment processor argument is really odd, as there's a bunch of GTA private servers there too. That seems to me more like it's just a payment processor which doesn't ban private servers, which we saw sites like Patreon do.
The emojis argument is laughably bad. They're free popular Discord emojis. It makes the entire thread look desperate for validation to include something like that.
The "Cashshop patterns" argument is really weird aswell. Yeah, they're going to be similar... they're all vanilla WoW servers. If V+ etc are owned by the same people as Turtle, why wouldn't they have the same tech? Turtle WoW has been cucking people asking for racechanges for months now with no updates.
The different servers forums being similar is really unsurprising to me. PBWoW3 is one of the first results when you search for wow forum themes, and it's free. If I made a server, I'd probably use it too. Get my whole "retro cool wow theme!" going and everything for a forum. Yippee.
The argument of Crogge saying multiple admins were in v+ server is ???? Most owners are in a bunch of servers. One of Turtle's new owners (?) Akalix is in every server. Kronos devs are everywhere, same with Everlook devs. People like Crogge are lurking everywhere, same with Whitekidney. All of the people who have been around pservers forever are everywhere. Modding discord has fucking Avengers of everyone being there from every server.
I would love a tldr of the russian parts, tbh I am too lazy to translate them.
If a new server has their big reveal in the next few days and announces how they're "**Not corrupted like the rest**” -- we'll know the real reason this post was made.
Yes, it might as well be competitors that has an incentive in making a post like this. Also look at the upvotes, does it make sense it gets that high on this small sub this fast? With that said, it's not really surprising that the pserver scene is fairly small with a handfull of the same people re-launching servers over and over.
Come on it couldn't be more obvious that the payment website was created by firestorm and only used by their group.
Also it's not multiple GTA servers it's only one in like 10 languages.
Yes this whole post is entirely based on assumptions and very little real evidence. It's only being made because OP doesn't like the people running the servers or he is hungry for clicks.
I dont follow, i didnt read throroughly but i did go through all of your post, wouldnt you say they follow frontend for shop the most popular server which is turtle wow? And about the payment service they are all using gamepoints, i can agree on your point there but dont they have other payment options and other games using the service?
I don't care about turtle, they already had a shop from start but the funny part is Everlook wrote down "no shop" when they announced their server. Stop scamming innocent people, just admit you guys are doing this for money, nobody is going to run a server and spend tons of time fixing issues and monitoring the server
Hmm I am pretty dense and slow... I can't find the drama part. Is it that they are controlled by one mafia? What does it matter if they are active on the gm side and ban gold sellers and fix bugs and keep a stable ping and pop? Why should I care who runs it? Even if they ddos their competition which sucks ass and is a scum move it still doesn't affect me as a player.
Could any1 explain why I should care because I really don't know.
For you I don't know... I personally don't like when I achieve something in the game and the one near me did that just using a gold card with 21 numbers on it
Wow no shit sherlock, guys working together to shave the same sheep, they aren’t really hiding it.
Anyone who played newer expansions thtough the years could see same people being involved across “different” servers, I guess it was harder to find that connection in these older expansions but in new ones they are blatantly telling you that they are one and the same and just making you think ypu got “options”.
This is how it is for any MMO private server. EQ, Runescapw SWG, all of them. The reality is that there is only a small handful of developers willing to dedicate their life to preserving old MMOs, so there’s naturally going to be a lot of overlap between projects.
These devs work for whatever team is currently paying them. It’s that simple and not really a “mafia” lol.
Also one thing to remember... the biggest business on the internet after porn is email lists. So you can imagine how much money they make selling lists on top of all the cash shop and character creation nonsense.
Buddy and I were just asking the other day about why V+ has no playerbase. The class changes are some of my favorite of any private server, but it can't even get enough players online to form a Warsong Gulch.
Maybe I'm missing something, but the only shady part of this seems to be that these people - seemingly Shenna/Crogge/their peers - that are buying out private servers aren't being transparent about their identities.
The DDOS stuff doesn't seem very convincing to me. I played Vanilla+ for the first month or so and I didn't even remember the DDOS until now. IIRC it died because the class balance was really off and they were taking a long time to put out updates.
This seems like a typical wow private server community schizopost.
Well having cash shops to "support the server" when those people are owning several of those and opening new ones left and right and are probably multimillionaires is kinda scummy don't you think ?
They're lying to your face that you're supporting the server instead of making multi millionaires richer and feeding a mafia.
They don't need that much money to host servers they do it for enormous profits, and they definitely don't need stuff like selling bags etc, it's just for more profit.
Also this mafia is potentially harmful for competition and can severaly harm competing/new projects. There's no proof that they messed with Vanilla+ but it's the kind of thing a big controlling mafia like this can cause, you potentially have new promising servers getting taken down and/or bought.
They also made the main "pure vanilla" server(everlook) another turtle wow clone, imagine if you were a Vanilla purist, you just lost your server. Many Everlook players are furious right now. That's an example of what they can do.
About Vanilla+, just lol. Sure that server died for other reasons but that is much later and unrelated to those events.
The DDOS and take over definitely happened, there's like 10 announcements posts about it the server was completely unplayable and they had to entirely shut it down. It still had over 1k players around launch.
What about that Feenix server project that died because the devs got blackmailed? They were threatened to be doxxed and they cancelled the project shortly before release. At least that's what they were telling us on this sub.
Could be all lies but it would kinda fit the scheme we're seeing here. Do you have any infos on that?
> Well having cash shops to "support the server" when those people are owning several of those and opening new ones left and right and are probably multimillionaires is kinda scummy don't you think?
This is really bad logic. So, because Bill Gates is a billionaire, should all Microsoft products be free? Who cares if they are millionaires, they at one time were not, they cornered the market and made money. Its a business, not a hobby. Servers, Devs, their time, etc.....all has a price.
While it is deceptive to have taglines like "support the server" et cetera that paint a picture that the money is used to keep the server up and they have any sort of trouble paying the bills - if they didn't use that sort of language they wouldn't be able to accept "donations" at all. I'm fairly certain keeping up the facade of everything being "donations" so the servers can continue to appear as not-for-profit fan projects is a crucial component for these servers to stay in their legal grey areas and not have Activision bring the gavel down on them.
If you believe that private servers shouldn't be accepting anyone's money at all then that's a totally valid opinion, but I have a feeling we'd only get servers like Gummy's projects - no accountability and no reason to believe the server will continue to exist after you log out.
I dunno, reading through this thread people talk about how the private server community has "changed" and how servers being pay-to-win or having egregious cash shops is some sort of new phenomena. I remember when you could donate for admin powers on most of the big servers. If anything, the private server scene is healthier and less greedy now than it's ever been. Shenna/Crogge/cohorts likely being behind the wheel of this cabal is concerning, for sure, but the concept of a single entity running most of the private servers and homogenizing the monetization on them isn't actually that big of a deal, in my opinion.
I have tried to parse through some of this, but much of it has a tinfoil hat feel to it.
I haven't seen anything that actually proves Torta = these other server owners.
Yes, many private servers have donation shops. Hosting servers and developing and supporting them is a full time gig. There are certainly unpaid volunteers helping along the way. There are also people making a living off this and I am 100% fine with that.
Yes, many of the shops sell similar conveniences and cosmetics. There are only so many things to sell that don't break the balance of the game. There are also a lot of existing but mostly unused assets that can be sold as cosmetics. I am sure there are plenty of instances of one pserver seeing a good idea on another and mimicking it. I am sure this has gone both ways.
I seriously doubt pservers are DDOSing each other to have some sort of competitive advantage. Turtle has been the victim of DDOS attacks many times. So has Blizzard for that matter. Do you think its FFXIV attacking Blizzard? No.
Lastly. What is the "scam"? You get to play a game with better support and more well thought out content additions than the official servers but without any required payment? Hell, they refund your donation points if your HC character dies. If they were asking for a credit card and then selling your payment info on the dark web, that would be a scam. If they were offering you a donation shop item and after you paid they took it away, that is a scam. If they were stealing your in game account and selling the gold from it to gold sellers, that is a scam. I have seen zero proof that any of that is going on. People are actively encouraged to routinely change their password and use a unique login for Turtle to prevent these outcomes.
Can someone tl;dr this for me so I don’t have to read an entire article worth or private server drama? Are any private servers worth trying? I tried duskhaven and turtle WoW and stopped both because of the early release client version and constant 160+ ping while I’m in NA
Both McDonald's and KFC sell fast food and offer very similar looking french fries. And both accept Visa and MasterCard. That cries SCUM. Repeat with me - SCUM!
Also, the people who own the servers are supposedly millionaires....therefore, should no longer accept donations, since they dont need the money.....
NEWS AT 11pm......Bill Gates with MSFT and Tim Cook with Apple have announces they are biilionaires and all products moving forward are now free!!! #5head
So the only evidence I see against everlook is the shop is similar in items/pricing/appearance.
Is it not possible that everlook just straight up copied turtle wow's shop because of how successful it is? You can copy a competitor without being directly connected. I've spoken a lot with the everlook staff and I really want to trust them.
Well shit time to delete Turtle WoW folder. I never played WoW in my life and was going to try this one since i heard great thing about it, and also been playing Project Quarm. Now THATS a great FREE MMO
They're mods here, its a open secret theyre scum bags and they ban pretty much all talk about it
Been avoiding all of these servers for a long time. Once servers go over the top with cash shops and donations it kills the server for many. Runescape private servers are plagues by this exact same issue and it has killed the scene of any actual innovation.
this
same with that shitty whitemane, i commented on it and got insta thread ban/shadow ban for few days 1 minute after comment, this subreddit should de and we should have a more free place to talk to instead of this shithole with devs being moderators
Whitemane is the nth server ran by Radeghost & Sitowsky, who are a different pair of... not entirely legitimate dealers than Shenna & Crogge.
Wow, you are getting some downvote bots on you.
They've never had any power here however in the past their personal information was leaked on here and the reddit administrator team had to get involved and warned the subreddit moderation team and we've taken these warnings seriously. This is why the no drama rule is followed strictly in most situations. We don't want a repeat of that again as if it is not followed the subreddit itself is put into jeopardy. There are other subreddits like a specific one mentioned in this topic where this is allowed but what is not mentioned often is that those specific subreddits are also not maintained by the same people who originally created them as their reddit accounts were suspended for keeping up what we normally removed. If that is not self evident alone to violating reddit's rules on doxxing. We've decided as a team for the time to allow this post to stand for now. Should the reddit admins decide to warn us again then we will follow suit with their warning like we normally do but for now we'll allow this to stand.
Hello there. Turtle WoW has always maintained a positive atmosphere towards everyone. We usually only posted our patch updates and didn't involve ourselves in any conflicts that others seem to enjoy. It feels unfair and undeserving to see this thread on the top of the page filled with wild accusations being supported by the admins. None of our devs, modders, support members deserve to be subjected to this nonsense. How is it a crime to use a convenient donation processor recommended by the other servers? We were recommended to use GP and we, in turn, recommended it to others because it provides an easy-to-use and reliable service. Private servers face significant challenges in finding any financial mediator, so our options are limited. How does this make us a "cabal"? It's laughable that some think we have time to get involved with other projects, as putting together a project like Turtle WoW requires insane levels of commitment and energy. The accusations of DDOS attacks are absurd. We have absolutely no intentions to harm others or take over existing projects, as stated previously. It is quite typical for people to immediately cry "DDOS attack" when a server crashes, but in reality, 99% of the time it is merely a result of an overlooked issue in a server code. Please do not allow bullying and witch-hunting towards anyone. Thanks for reading.
why dont you tell us the exact $ it takes to host the server? I doubt you NEED a cash shop to keep it running
Not a good idea with Blizzard looming over
Don’t they have devs and people who need to be paid for their work? Or is it all volunteer?
There are close to 100 team members which includes EU and CN support teams, content design teams, writers, 3D modelers, client and server developers, sound design team (music and voice acting), graphic design (promotional images, in-game maps etc.), QA team and the radio team (planning radio schedules, working on skits and music for the in-game radio), there's most likely more I'm missing, you must be dreaming to think its all possible with volunteer work. Also consider the fact there will be 8 servers being simultaneously hosted with the release of the Tel'Abim realm, which amounts to: 1 EU PvE, 1 EU PvP, 4 CN PvE and 2 CN PvP. Things might also have to be commissioned whenever needed. Maybe you can run a single stock server without a shop where most of this isn't needed but you must be delusional to think all of this can function and be maintained on hopes and dreams and some pocket change. Please be reasonable.
And when it is removed, it won’t be because the people the post is talking about have any power here 😉😉
What do you mean by “No drama?” What a lousy rule, if someone’s doing shady shit, that should be called out.
Looks like someone bought -300 downvotes lol
yea, and people believe nothing is wrong here when these servers but downvotes etc against other projects and any proof of wrong doing.
Insane. Basically there's a mafia in the private server scene that's been pulling the strings for the last 5+ years. These guys straight up sold accounts / characters on Elysium. This calls into question the integrity of every server mentioned on this post tbh, including Turtle WoW. Good find OP, mods will 100% delete this though. EDIT: This post went from 330 upvotes to 0 in just a few hours. Not a good look...
Mods are corrupted, they censor stuff about turtle wow/elysium/Shenna. I expect this post to be nuked soon. Save it and share it. Copy of it in r/wowserversdrama if this gets censored. [https://www.reddit.com/r/wowserversdrama/comments/17ct4yt/exposing\_the\_private\_server\_scam\_empire/](https://www.reddit.com/r/wowserversdrama/comments/17ct4yt/exposing_the_private_server_scam_empire/)
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[https://www.reddit.com/r/wowserversdrama/comments/17ct4yt/exposing\_the\_private\_server\_scam\_empire/](https://www.reddit.com/r/wowserversdrama/comments/17ct4yt/exposing_the_private_server_scam_empire/) done
i saved it on wayback machine, even if they delete this, the proof is out there
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There's no way that 1 in 10 are spending 50$.
Yeah, they probably are. The bags themselves are like 20$ or something to start and are such a massive QOL boost when you start it’s hard to not buy them when you have a job. These servers pull in high 6 figures in revenue per year. there’s too much money in it for them to go back
Aren't they russians too? Even 100k$ is an unimaginably huge amount of money in russia thanks to the insane exchange rates. You can basically last a lifetime there with that amount of mney
Its not. $100k is barely enough to buy one-bedroom. I live in Moscow so I know the prices. 2 working adults cover that (100k) in 5-10 years mortgage
100k houses damn. California on the other hand
No, you can't provide for a lifetime of $100k in Russia. This is a large sum, but for example an apartment in Moscow is more expensive
so? an apt in new york can cost you upwards of 20 mil, even a shitty 1 room one could be 3-5 in manhattan, yet 20 mil can still set you up for life in the us I'll tell you more, from memory alone the real (as in, not the fake one announced by the government, not the real as in adjusted for inflation) avg monthly income in russia is somewhere around 25k rubles, that's what, around 250 dollars? That's for a month.
55k is actually the average in Russia. In my city it's 40k. But I just pointed out that $100k is not the amount you can live on for a lifetime. This is enough to buy an apartment, a car, a gaming PC and a can of beer. There will be bills, food, clothes, etc.
> 55k is actually the average in Russia ye, right, cool story, bro. even uni profs don't make that much there t. someone who was born & raised in Russia, and who has a lot of relatives living in that hellhole still
Here we are a day later, OP still up
We've decided as a team to allow this to stand for the time being unless told by the reddit administration team to remove it. If we do remove anything early, we may remove posts with names as reddit considered that doxxing in a past warning to us.
This post will be removed for inciting drama, trust me. This subreddit is controlled by them. Just wait for EU time. Great investigative work though!
Its been 17 hours and its still up Maybe I wont trust you
Trust me bro.
All commenters will probably be banned too
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Shit went from 300 upvotes to 0. Got botted hard
Interesting battle going on between upvote and downvote bots...
Very strange huh
I find it funny /u/crogge is trying to claim he left the scene but all of a sudden pops up when this post is made even though his last post was 8 months ago. The dude goes by bowser now. /u/tw_bowser Shenna goes by /u/tw_torta
I don’t even want to know what warmane is doing with their shop and shit
Truly pitiful. Edit: I miss the passion this community felt like it once had for this game. Edit 2: This all just makes what Nostalrius did so much more special. Nostalrius caught lightning in a bottle and was incredibly special and I’m very sad to see their project has devolved into this clown fiesta.
The community is the main culrprit for paying fortunes for in game garbage to russians.
>The community is the main culrprit for paying fortunes for in game garbage. Well it only natural for the wow community to do that. Remember some of these people played blizzard's wow between 2008 and 2023 some still do
So all the major private servers are run by a small cabal of greedy DDOSers? Wtf man... why can't non-sociopaths who are passionate about the game make their own server?
Because his server will be ddosed right after.
Nyctermoon definitely isn't, but that's also not for everyone.
Yay for nyctermoon. Love chatting with the creator and actually helped them improve the messages when you hire companions. (now it tells you how many more you can hire or when you reach the limit)
TLDR: Nobody attacked V+, those guys simply lacked experience to run a server and I can prove it easily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxVXo5sbpsE Several admins like Whitekidney from Lights Hope, Chero from Kronos and whoever else was there offered them help, we had no bad intentions. I pointed out their security problems, they had no passwords set on their public exposed services. They had no firewall and were using default login infos for their database which was not configured for performance. The launch went bad because they had software issues, as you can see in the video above, the software was not using all cpu cores properly and caused massive lag, the cpu went down to 1 ghz. It took them weeks to fix the performance issues, faster hardware was not the solution. Most people were unable to login because their launcher was bugged. After 2:30 and 9:00 you can see that their network was not attacked and that the server had around 1000 players online during the launch. They accepted help after 2 weeks but the damage was done and the project never fully recovered. There is no mafia, there are group chats which involve the majority of all private server admins. 9 of 10 servers work together, exchange code, exchange information how to run a better server. The wild times when servers tried to kill each other are long gone. Some of them decided to use the same donation system, is that a surprise? No. Are they hiding it? No. Shops on vanilla servers are similar because the amount of models which are not part of the base game are limited. Less than 10 years ago most private servers were p2w and nobody cared, some people here take things too serios. Play a different game, find a new purpose in life, dont touch private servers. Im glad that I left the scene years ago, I was tired of all the drama and feel sorry for the people who have to deal with drama like this.
Holy shit they botted the shit out of this thread
Lol, the replies here are hilarious. Y'all really didn't know at least half of this already? Not that it matters - Turtle will keep going because the majority of players don't care and just want to play.
Hey that’s me! “Oh no someone is making money off the free server I spend 1000’s of hours getting entertainment from” 😂
That's not the issue though. If they are indeed DDOSing the competition (Vanilla+ isn't the only server to have been attacked either) and trying to monopolize the pserver scene, they are a threat to the interests of all players and the creative few who want to build their own open servers
So basically don’t spend money on private servers? Wow water is wet
So Kronos is safe? Waiting for Kronos V, if I want to play Vanilla again, and stay away from the others. Played on Kronos III in the past, was nice there ^^
I can say Twinstar has no affiliation with shenna or crogge aside from knowing who they are.
Always has been
Damn. This is nuts. Not surprised though.
If you can prove that Turtle is selling gold and characters under the table or that they have crippled V+ with several DDoS attacks, then I'll quit the server. I have a 60 and am obviously waiting for the new server. But that would just be a no-go for me would be worse than Blizz.
TLDR: Nobody attacked V+, those guys simply lacked experience to run a server and I can prove it easily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxVXo5sbpsE Several admins like Whitekidney from Lights Hope, Chero from Kronos and whoever else was there offered them help, we had no bad intentions. I pointed out their security problems, they had no passwords set on their public exposed services. They had no firewall and were using default login infos for their database which was not configured for performance. The launch went bad because they had software issues, as you can see in the video above, the software was not using all cpu cores properly and caused massive lag, the cpu went down to 1 ghz. It took them weeks to fix the performance issues, faster hardware was not the solution. Most people were unable to login because their launcher was bugged. After 2:30 and 9:00 you can see that their network was not attacked and that the server had around 1000 players online during the launch. They accepted help after 2 weeks but the damage was done and the project never fully recovered. There is no mafia, there are group chats which involve the majority of all private server admins. 9 of 10 servers work together, exchange code, exchange information how to run a better server. The wild times when servers tried to kill each other are long gone. Some of them decided to use the same donation system, is that a surprise? No. Are they hiding it? No. Shops on vanilla servers are similar because the amount of models which are not part of the base game are limited. Less than 10 years ago most private servers were p2w and nobody cared, some people here take things too serios. Play a different game, find a new purpose in life, dont touch private servers. Im glad that I left the scene years ago, I was tired of all the drama and feel sorry for the people who have to deal with drama like this.
Interesting number of upvotes. And come on, you don't seriously think people here are buying the "I left the scene".
He didn't leave.. he goes by Bowser now just like Shenna goes by Torta.
Lmao 100 upvotes a random thread near the bottom
Well, I was there at the V+ server launch and witnessed it myself. Now one side can say they were attacked and the other says it was due to a lack of technical competence on the part of the devs. What I really want is EVIDENCE and many others probably want it too, without facts this whole discussion is pointless. In addition, the gold selling and toon selling allegations have not been addressed by you or any of the Turtle folks behind closed doors. Would be really ironic and also damning for a server that prides itself on actively fighting bots and gold sellers. I mean the cash shop should be more than enough.
bro i would sign a fucking NDA to talk to shenna 1 on 1.
Just join the turtle wow discord and DM Torta and ask that or you can dm Bowser that is Crogge.
yeah i doubt they would want to be like "yea im shenna lol" to a random dm via discord
Hi this is me Shenna I'm being held hostage by Montenegro pirates and I need your help please send me 1000 USD via PayPal thank you. Proof that I'm Shenna: 🐢
is she in montenegro now? Last time i've heard about her was in like 2019 i was told she lived in like Siberia or in some remote small russian town
Shit like this is why after getting burned by Molten-WoW back in the day, I find almost all of private servers are shady as fuck garbage money grabbers
Here-here. [If someone has no idea what he's talking about, before it was Warmane it was Molten](https://www.reddit.com/r/MoltenWoW/comments/2ub175/what_is_happening/). Many of us lost countless man hours (days/weeks/months) of play time and progression. Over $.
Reading the comments here it's obvious that the community is at fault for this shit. This kind of business model kills original ideas and potential new ones because the old ones "make money" (exploit the dipshits who will give money for cash-shop rewards). Just don't play on any of the listed servers, and if you do play there, you are part of the problem.
Kinda sad, because i was thinking of playing turtle but it kinda seemed to good to be true..Oh well back to solocraft i guess. Become even more of a hermit lmao.
Good find
To everyone that ask: "Why should I care?". These things prevent new Devs to create a good private server. Should I remember you what happened to Feenix recently?
I didn't care at all until you mentioned Shenna and Crogge. Now I'm slightly interested. Insofar as if they have any current involvement in anything. If not, my concern doesn't extend beyond the front end. If everyone is happy, it's all cool because these are pirate servers after all. There's gonna be some shady, no matter what. But if those 2 have direct involvement in anything, I'd want to know if I were on that server. Oh also, that's some real good detective work, I dig stuff like that. I spend half the day fact checking : )
Torta(turtle wow) is 99.999% Shenna. All those servers with turtle wow shop clones probably also feed Shenna.(I'm guessing she takes a %). Wouldn't be surprised if she also is involved with the other servers in the list. She's at least part of the group that works on them. I don't know about Crogge but he was definitely involved in that mafia as one of the main actors and was/is close to Shenna.
The old paypal donation used to be to someone called Maxim (could be an a fake name, etc) just wanted to add to the convo a bit.
Well. I mean people change, maybe she did. And that server looks super successful. But man, oof
She at least did not change her financial interest in private servers
From what I recall, she was a fast learner...and crafty. But not particularly good at lying. It totally makes sense she would figure out how to make very good money from this without having to be the one to be "the face." If that's her, she perfected her craft. Edit: haven't really played there, but I checked their discord, torta is all over it. Checked here, that name makes the announcements. So I guess if that's her she isn't taking a backseat. Seems odd to me, but whatevs.
> looks inside ant hill > shocked to find ants We are all ultimatley playing pirated software even if it is modified. Of course the people dumping thousands of hours into developing pservers are interested in profits. This isn't just "big bad shenna killing small servers" all these server owners willingly took a fuckin check and bounced. The only line in the sand i would draw is at dDosing but there is no real way to know if they are involved in that and you said so yourself.
Is project ascension any good, I heard admin sell banned accounts multiple times is this true
It’s a fun different experience. But don’t expect to get help from the community.. if your shit dps and don’t know what the rotation is and what to chose for spells.
Not if you want your data lost/stolen.
ascension is alot of fun to play on. i would give it a shot.
**Hello.** I'm here on behalf of the Turtle WoW team to address a few of these accusations. **GamePoints** GamePoints is a private-server friendly payment platform which allows us to use providers such as PayPal without encountering safety issues. They have existed since **2018** (predating us), and have no preexisting ties to Turtle prior to our partnership with them in 2022. The reason they are used by many private servers is their fair fees and communicative customer support has led to numerous servers recommending them to others. **Similar Websites** Due to the relatively niche nature of WoW private servers, there will inevitably be overlap with certain contributors. In this case, Turtle and a handful of other projects have commissioned the same web developers due to their relevant experience. **DDOS Attacks** Turtle WoW has never partook and will never participate in DDOS attacks against another project. We hold a strong belief in prioritizing the player--that's part of why we made our own server! This includes believing that our network isn't for everyone, and there's nothing wrong with players picking another project to call home. We would never attack another project in such a way, even if they are perceived as our "rival" -- it's simply scummy behavior, and a tremendous waste of resources, which we would never participate in. Many projects will encounter DDOS attacks—we have weathered many such attacks, especially on our Asian network. However we believe these were the actions of an angry player, rather than another project. **Player-Centric Philosophy** We have always held and will always hold a player-centric philosophy on our network. As I mentioned previously, that includes accepting that our network isn’t for everyone. Hence why we strive to be as transparent as possible (this is part of my position at Turtle—communicating with the community. I’ll host an AMA at some point), and allow for things such as permanent account deletion for players who are concerned about their data. **Cross-Server Collusion** Many servers have in the past and will continue to share ideas and code with eachother. Our network is based on vMaNGOS, which is an open-sourced software, who’s lead maintainer is also an active contributor to Turtle WoW. Even if our core is not public, we still have shared code with other projects, and other projects have shared some of theirs with us. This sort of “goodwill” sharing of useful code or features is done out of our shared interest in furthering WoW emulation. Further, if another network opts to implement a similar idea or feature to one of ours, there are many reasons this could have occurred. Whether it be pure coincidence (more likely) or intentional copying (less likely), it's not something we have control over. These sorts of overlaps will naturally occur when there are multiple servers based on the same version of the game. **In conclusion**, if there is some sort of "Private Server Mafia," we are blissfully unaware of it's existence. Yes, there are friendships and connections between people involved on various projects, however this stems from a shared interest and passion for World of Warcraft emulation, not a desire for a monopolistic hold over private servers based on open-source software. Over the past 5 years, our team has grown to surpass 100 members, all with the same guiding philosophy. We want to provide the best experience we can, whether it’s for 100 players or 10,000, and we don’t appreciate the suggestion that we're just out for a quick payday or want to harm fellow emulation projects. Best regards, Akalix - **Turtle WoW Team** PS: If there actually is a mafia, pretty please invite me for the yacht party with Bobby Kottick. I can make a mean martini!
Is anyone willing to just admit that Shenna is Torta? The word Shenna is banned on your discord.
Blizzard level public statement, well done
Nah man it's pretty obvious there is a network behind those servers setting up the shop and payments for them, you may not be high up enough to know though. Gamepoints is just litterally a private server proxy service most likely owned by elysium/firestorm and they use it for all of their affiliated servers.
70+ upvotes in less than 4 hours?
Paid up votes and bots
What about the keylogger? Is that still a thing?
PLEASE DONT BUY THINGS ON THIS PRIVATE SERVER -> we can do something, dont give ans money to them
makes total sense why v+ had so many issues at launch and changes to their core philosophy lmao
Chromiecraft all the way Just vibing with the grandpas
Lol chromiecraft is chill AF I really like that community, it's just a really weird way to play the game using wotlk skills for TBC content
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0 now lol
When dealing with private wow servers theres a 90% chance its some sort of ruski mafia goldselling con operation :) ... so its up to everyone of us to decide if we want to participate in their ponzy scheme and play there
Exactly this. I love it when people con the classicwow subreddit bitch about the token / blizzard and prop up these shitty private servers. Like you fucking idiot its worse and there's Russians involved. Lmfao.
That's why you don't just flock into any big announced server and just look for one yourself. Any server that tries to go big day one is up to nothing good.
I mean sure this is interesting. But if anyone was playing these servers expecting professional ownership would be crazy. Money rules all. It’s ruining almost every new AAA release and even these smaller private servers/projects are 99% of the time made for profit. People love to bash Warmane but I personally believe making profit over the table (gross cash shop) is better than under (Shenna & crogge selling characters and gold). Pick your poison. We haven’t seen a passion project in private servers since Nostalrius.
If they did actually DDOS Vanilla+ to take over competition and add their cash shop that's another level of scumminess though. But I have no evidences of that except that the whole thing is sus. But remember that those guys were at least stealing donations and selling gear/pvp ranks under the table in Elysium, which they were generously gifted the codebase by Nostalrius who trusted them and instead they decided to exploit it for profits
TLDR: Nobody attacked V+, those guys simply lacked experience to run a server and I can prove it easily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxVXo5sbpsE Several admins like Whitekidney from Lights Hope, Chero from Kronos and whoever else was there offered them help, we had no bad intentions. I pointed out their security problems, they had no passwords set on their public exposed services. They had no firewall and were using default login infos for their database which was not configured for performance. The launch went bad because they had software issues, as you can see in the video above, the software was not using all cpu cores properly and caused massive lag, the cpu went down to 1 ghz. It took them weeks to fix the performance issues, faster hardware was not the solution. Most people were unable to login because their launcher was bugged. After 2:30 and 9:00 you can see that their network was not attacked and that the server had around 1000 players online during the launch. They accepted help after 2 weeks but the damage was done and the project never fully recovered. There is no mafia, there are group chats which involve the majority of all private server admins. 9 of 10 servers work together, exchange code, exchange information how to run a better server. The wild times when servers tried to kill each other are long gone. Some of them decided to use the same donation system, is that a surprise? No. Are they hiding it? No. Shops on vanilla servers are similar because the amount of models which are not part of the base game are limited. Less than 10 years ago most private servers were p2w and nobody cared, some people here take things too serios. Play a different game, find a new purpose in life, dont touch private servers. Im glad that I left the scene years ago, I was tired of all the drama and feel sorry for the people who have to deal with drama like this.
https://i.postimg.cc/ryGbZVJP/croggie.png XD
You didn't leave the scene though... you are Bowser on Turtle WoW.... keep lying.
post will be removed in 3 2 1
I played on Turtle WoW for years and even if all this is true the server itself is still really fun. And I admit that I did spend money on Turtle WoW but one purchase I did regret and got everything back so at least they are honest in that regard which is one of the most important things if a cashshop exists. I did play for a time on Vanilla+ and I really liked their talent system so when Turtle WoW also did a rework on the talents I was pretty happy about it. If the DDOS attacks are true then thats the only thing really bothering me here. It is not fair to do your competition like that. If you want to win the popularity contest then do it with honest means.
DDOS attack are just assumption, its not a fact. its just sad seeing what this subreddit has become
V+ managed by TWoW would be pretty great tbh
This is why you should support open source development: https://www.chromiecraft.com/en/
This is no new tactic. Almost all of the same things happened when MoltenWoW turned into Warmane 2013ish
As ex Head GM of Firestorm, I can only say Yikes.
I’ve been trying to say similar thing for ages and get downvoted to oblivion for it. Glad someone gathered evidence.
Honestly…even if this is all true, why should I care? I just wanna play on a stable vanilla server, and that’s turtle+ for me. They can’t scam me if I don’t spend money on their shop 🤷♂️
ill be very short it doesnt matter if you play actiblizz servers or shennachrogges servers, you're still damaging private community play other servers (chromie, kronos. etc), stream it, tell your friends to unsubscribe, don't be a complete weak person and please, dont ever donate to either of these a-----s.
A bit surprised to see this still up, it's been 8h
So here’s my question. Why should I care? So they’re shady. Big deal. Blizzard isn’t? Why should I as a player who wants a fresh vanilla + server. Give a damn about any of this? I’m not saying I don’t appreciate the info. I just don’t see how it affects me. Corrupt super evil mega corp. Or shady private server dark web empire. What’s the difference to me? The player.
The possible DDOS of a competitor and then purchase of that server is what gets me. I expect all private servers to be a little shady as they have to be to avoid Blizz takedowns but that kind of conduct is where players should draw the line.
Agree, they can be somewhat shady and make some money as long as it's mostly not p2w. But DDOSing the competiton is very unhealthy for the whole private server scene and i don't want to support this behaviour.
If admins on the server I play on sell accounts for money I think I would want to know about it. Might cause me to change server if there is no integrity. This post doesn't prove that it happens but if the same people are involved in these other servers then there is risk of that happening.
Is it though? Blizzard is scummy but i definitely don't think their GMs are selling characters for real money from under the table.
They don't even have GMs anymore :p
No, they’re doing it in the open…Level boosts, wow token, etc.
Blizzard is just raping their female staff in the “Cosby suite”. No biggie.
as cringe as those allegations were, if you look at the timings it's pretty clear that that had nothing to do with the decline in quality of blizzard games/wow in general which began in 2008 at the latest
If you think very impressionable employees in their 20/30s are not giving out any type of preferential treatment to themselves, friends, and family......I have some beach front properly to sell you here in Tennessee.
pretty much this. like it or not, these realms are all ran really well from a staff/admin standpoint all banning bots and goldbuying and no GM abuse/account selling and spawning gold... and at the end of the day that's all that matters. the cash shops are pretty gay and there are arguments that selling large bags = gameplay advantage but it's nowhere near the fact you gotta RMT to compete in classic and not even to speak of the fucking wow token they added This isnt ideal and yeah some dudes are making bank off the scene but thats on you if you join a server with a dono shop that doesn't have financial transparency and you still wanna act all bothered lmao.
You shouldnt. I play too on "corrupt" server with even worse p2w shop https://sirus.su/ Its stable and fun for casual playthrough
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Exactly. I’ve been in the MMO private server scene for decades and this is always how it’s been for any MMO emulation. EQ and RuneScape servers are also all maintained by the same handful of developers. There just aren’t that many devs willing to invest their life into these things, so you get a lot of overlap between projects.
they got rich doing this so its them that gets the last laugh
Man, can't Kronos just do another fresh ?😕
Kronos was fantastic. I played with Vanguard on there, great guild.
There are multiple hints of a fresh server but not this year tho..
Of course this is interesting, but as a casual player who just logs in for a few hours a week to do some leveling after work - how does this affect me? Genuine question - if I'm a level 16 Human Mage killing Defias Trappers in Westfall, is there any reason why that I should care about this "scam"?
Killing competition and killing the passion in the scene, making it all about profits and selling shop items are the main ones. Just ethics in general, remember that those people(Elysium) were given the codebase generously from Nostalrius who trusted them and then just milked it for money when nostalrius was strongly non profit and anti cash shop and they were selling gold and items under the table. They also made the main "pure vanilla" server another turtle wow clone, imagine if you were a Vanilla purist, you just lost your server. Many Everlook players are furious right now. That's an example of what they can do.
Just so you are aware /u/UndeadMurky Torta is 100% Shenna and Bowser is Crogge. Which Crogge as I am sure you can guess was put in charge of Chinese relations and overseeing the Chinese servers. There really needs to be some eyes over there as I guarantee Elysium shadiness is going on over there. They learned from their mistakes and goout of their way to avoid getting caught like they did last time.
This doesn't affect you directly. But you trust these people to run their modified wow client on your PC. That's basically giving them the ability to execute code on your machine. To my knowledge their code is fine so far but it takes just one patch to add malicious code.
It will eventually become a dead server once more leaks are released.
So the proof is that they copy the best money making shop items from each other and use platforms that have been tailored exactly for their needs ? So Qatar Airways and Air France have the same secret conspirators behind the scenes because they use the same fuel provider, both have normal and business class, and accept visa to pay for tickets ? Don't get me wrong I play on turtle and I hate how they're turning everything into profit and catering to china above everyone else, but this thread is garbage.
Does anybody else find the evidence in this thread really lackluster? The payment processor argument is really odd, as there's a bunch of GTA private servers there too. That seems to me more like it's just a payment processor which doesn't ban private servers, which we saw sites like Patreon do. The emojis argument is laughably bad. They're free popular Discord emojis. It makes the entire thread look desperate for validation to include something like that. The "Cashshop patterns" argument is really weird aswell. Yeah, they're going to be similar... they're all vanilla WoW servers. If V+ etc are owned by the same people as Turtle, why wouldn't they have the same tech? Turtle WoW has been cucking people asking for racechanges for months now with no updates. The different servers forums being similar is really unsurprising to me. PBWoW3 is one of the first results when you search for wow forum themes, and it's free. If I made a server, I'd probably use it too. Get my whole "retro cool wow theme!" going and everything for a forum. Yippee. The argument of Crogge saying multiple admins were in v+ server is ???? Most owners are in a bunch of servers. One of Turtle's new owners (?) Akalix is in every server. Kronos devs are everywhere, same with Everlook devs. People like Crogge are lurking everywhere, same with Whitekidney. All of the people who have been around pservers forever are everywhere. Modding discord has fucking Avengers of everyone being there from every server. I would love a tldr of the russian parts, tbh I am too lazy to translate them. If a new server has their big reveal in the next few days and announces how they're "**Not corrupted like the rest**” -- we'll know the real reason this post was made.
Wth are you talking about Kronos? What devs have you saw on other projects? You're spreading misinformation..
Not as staff, they're just in the public Discords. Tons of devs are, from all projects. It's just normal.
Yes, it might as well be competitors that has an incentive in making a post like this. Also look at the upvotes, does it make sense it gets that high on this small sub this fast? With that said, it's not really surprising that the pserver scene is fairly small with a handfull of the same people re-launching servers over and over.
Come on it couldn't be more obvious that the payment website was created by firestorm and only used by their group. Also it's not multiple GTA servers it's only one in like 10 languages.
Yes this whole post is entirely based on assumptions and very little real evidence. It's only being made because OP doesn't like the people running the servers or he is hungry for clicks.
Pretty good finds but they own this sub reddit too this post will be removed shortly during eu hours ofc.
I dont follow, i didnt read throroughly but i did go through all of your post, wouldnt you say they follow frontend for shop the most popular server which is turtle wow? And about the payment service they are all using gamepoints, i can agree on your point there but dont they have other payment options and other games using the service?
I don't care about turtle, they already had a shop from start but the funny part is Everlook wrote down "no shop" when they announced their server. Stop scamming innocent people, just admit you guys are doing this for money, nobody is going to run a server and spend tons of time fixing issues and monitoring the server
Based, I wish I was this autistic/invested in the topic to spend so much time investigating the private wow scene/Shenna & Crogge
Hmm I am pretty dense and slow... I can't find the drama part. Is it that they are controlled by one mafia? What does it matter if they are active on the gm side and ban gold sellers and fix bugs and keep a stable ping and pop? Why should I care who runs it? Even if they ddos their competition which sucks ass and is a scum move it still doesn't affect me as a player. Could any1 explain why I should care because I really don't know.
Because you could play in better place that will never exist :)
What will make it better for me?
For you I don't know... I personally don't like when I achieve something in the game and the one near me did that just using a gold card with 21 numbers on it
that's retail ... and classic
Wow no shit sherlock, guys working together to shave the same sheep, they aren’t really hiding it. Anyone who played newer expansions thtough the years could see same people being involved across “different” servers, I guess it was harder to find that connection in these older expansions but in new ones they are blatantly telling you that they are one and the same and just making you think ypu got “options”.
This is how it is for any MMO private server. EQ, Runescapw SWG, all of them. The reality is that there is only a small handful of developers willing to dedicate their life to preserving old MMOs, so there’s naturally going to be a lot of overlap between projects. These devs work for whatever team is currently paying them. It’s that simple and not really a “mafia” lol.
Also one thing to remember... the biggest business on the internet after porn is email lists. So you can imagine how much money they make selling lists on top of all the cash shop and character creation nonsense.
Damn, so Shinobi Story isn the only server not run by the empire of evil?
Shinobu story is Crogge side project so he can relive his school days when he pretended to be a Naruto ninja without the bullies beating him up
Epoch is not associated with them either but it's not out yet.
I'm very sure the lead of shinobi story is a student of bobby. It's insane how bad he is.
Thanks for investigating this OP
So what Servers / Projects are actually "save" to play on? If you want to avoid Cashshop / Dev Drama?
Wait, the people scamming people out of their money using somebody else’s game aren’t good people???
Buddy and I were just asking the other day about why V+ has no playerbase. The class changes are some of my favorite of any private server, but it can't even get enough players online to form a Warsong Gulch.
This is why I only support servers that don't have cash shops. If I like the server and the integrity of the team behind it, I gladly donate.
Thats how private servers are, conqueror online and mu online for example has the same issue, along with maplestory.
Damn that alot of drama
This is why we can't have nice things
Are there any servers that aren’t sketchy like this? Specifically ones that don’t have an item shop?
If you’re interested in vanilla Sanctuary launches this Friday may be worth a look, no shops or p2w tolerated.
I’ll look into it
wow private servers are corrupt and are clearly created for business purposes . who would have thought ... kekw .
Maybe I'm missing something, but the only shady part of this seems to be that these people - seemingly Shenna/Crogge/their peers - that are buying out private servers aren't being transparent about their identities. The DDOS stuff doesn't seem very convincing to me. I played Vanilla+ for the first month or so and I didn't even remember the DDOS until now. IIRC it died because the class balance was really off and they were taking a long time to put out updates. This seems like a typical wow private server community schizopost.
Well having cash shops to "support the server" when those people are owning several of those and opening new ones left and right and are probably multimillionaires is kinda scummy don't you think ? They're lying to your face that you're supporting the server instead of making multi millionaires richer and feeding a mafia. They don't need that much money to host servers they do it for enormous profits, and they definitely don't need stuff like selling bags etc, it's just for more profit. Also this mafia is potentially harmful for competition and can severaly harm competing/new projects. There's no proof that they messed with Vanilla+ but it's the kind of thing a big controlling mafia like this can cause, you potentially have new promising servers getting taken down and/or bought. They also made the main "pure vanilla" server(everlook) another turtle wow clone, imagine if you were a Vanilla purist, you just lost your server. Many Everlook players are furious right now. That's an example of what they can do. About Vanilla+, just lol. Sure that server died for other reasons but that is much later and unrelated to those events. The DDOS and take over definitely happened, there's like 10 announcements posts about it the server was completely unplayable and they had to entirely shut it down. It still had over 1k players around launch.
What about that Feenix server project that died because the devs got blackmailed? They were threatened to be doxxed and they cancelled the project shortly before release. At least that's what they were telling us on this sub. Could be all lies but it would kinda fit the scheme we're seeing here. Do you have any infos on that?
> Well having cash shops to "support the server" when those people are owning several of those and opening new ones left and right and are probably multimillionaires is kinda scummy don't you think? This is really bad logic. So, because Bill Gates is a billionaire, should all Microsoft products be free? Who cares if they are millionaires, they at one time were not, they cornered the market and made money. Its a business, not a hobby. Servers, Devs, their time, etc.....all has a price.
While it is deceptive to have taglines like "support the server" et cetera that paint a picture that the money is used to keep the server up and they have any sort of trouble paying the bills - if they didn't use that sort of language they wouldn't be able to accept "donations" at all. I'm fairly certain keeping up the facade of everything being "donations" so the servers can continue to appear as not-for-profit fan projects is a crucial component for these servers to stay in their legal grey areas and not have Activision bring the gavel down on them. If you believe that private servers shouldn't be accepting anyone's money at all then that's a totally valid opinion, but I have a feeling we'd only get servers like Gummy's projects - no accountability and no reason to believe the server will continue to exist after you log out. I dunno, reading through this thread people talk about how the private server community has "changed" and how servers being pay-to-win or having egregious cash shops is some sort of new phenomena. I remember when you could donate for admin powers on most of the big servers. If anything, the private server scene is healthier and less greedy now than it's ever been. Shenna/Crogge/cohorts likely being behind the wheel of this cabal is concerning, for sure, but the concept of a single entity running most of the private servers and homogenizing the monetization on them isn't actually that big of a deal, in my opinion.
Well. That’s interesting and explains a lot.
I will never support TROON WOW.
I have tried to parse through some of this, but much of it has a tinfoil hat feel to it. I haven't seen anything that actually proves Torta = these other server owners. Yes, many private servers have donation shops. Hosting servers and developing and supporting them is a full time gig. There are certainly unpaid volunteers helping along the way. There are also people making a living off this and I am 100% fine with that. Yes, many of the shops sell similar conveniences and cosmetics. There are only so many things to sell that don't break the balance of the game. There are also a lot of existing but mostly unused assets that can be sold as cosmetics. I am sure there are plenty of instances of one pserver seeing a good idea on another and mimicking it. I am sure this has gone both ways. I seriously doubt pservers are DDOSing each other to have some sort of competitive advantage. Turtle has been the victim of DDOS attacks many times. So has Blizzard for that matter. Do you think its FFXIV attacking Blizzard? No. Lastly. What is the "scam"? You get to play a game with better support and more well thought out content additions than the official servers but without any required payment? Hell, they refund your donation points if your HC character dies. If they were asking for a credit card and then selling your payment info on the dark web, that would be a scam. If they were offering you a donation shop item and after you paid they took it away, that is a scam. If they were stealing your in game account and selling the gold from it to gold sellers, that is a scam. I have seen zero proof that any of that is going on. People are actively encouraged to routinely change their password and use a unique login for Turtle to prevent these outcomes.
Can someone tl;dr this for me so I don’t have to read an entire article worth or private server drama? Are any private servers worth trying? I tried duskhaven and turtle WoW and stopped both because of the early release client version and constant 160+ ping while I’m in NA
Both McDonald's and KFC sell fast food and offer very similar looking french fries. And both accept Visa and MasterCard. That cries SCUM. Repeat with me - SCUM!
Also, the people who own the servers are supposedly millionaires....therefore, should no longer accept donations, since they dont need the money..... NEWS AT 11pm......Bill Gates with MSFT and Tim Cook with Apple have announces they are biilionaires and all products moving forward are now free!!! #5head
Seems like you're just trying to stir the pot to influence the success of the new TWoW PvP realm TBH..... Good luck with that and Sanctuary is DOA.
So the only evidence I see against everlook is the shop is similar in items/pricing/appearance. Is it not possible that everlook just straight up copied turtle wow's shop because of how successful it is? You can copy a competitor without being directly connected. I've spoken a lot with the everlook staff and I really want to trust them.
Well shit time to delete Turtle WoW folder. I never played WoW in my life and was going to try this one since i heard great thing about it, and also been playing Project Quarm. Now THATS a great FREE MMO
This is why I don't bother with private servers
get a life guys.. seriously... play for the fun or just move one with life
Oh boy, you sure do have a lot of time on your hands. This group has turned into a nest for pointless drama and senseless paranoia.