As time passes, many players find themselves increasingly nostalgic to recreate the "Vanilla" World of Warcraft experience. This alone is illegal due to copyrights of Blizzard Entertainment- yet certain individuals organize servers that go far beyond a simple copyright, implementing functions such as excessive requests of donations, solicitation of "well-paid" employment, and reimbursements for voting for a server on popular websites. Two servers that specifically have all these are RetroWoW and DreamstateWoW. They are both run by the same team of administrators and have almost identical illegal tactics to making as much money from those who aid them in ripping off Blizzard.

I belong to a team of individuals that investigate realms like these and we have done exactly so. Over the course of 6 months, we have posed as players on their more-populated server: RetroWoW. We even went as far as donating strictly for the purpose to see if we would get favorability from the administrators. We did. Through this, we were able to communicate with some of them, specifically Bam and Env and even the mastermind behind all of this- Kelzo. (he is known as King on DreamstateWoW) We blatantly committed many offenses against the server such as multiboxing, exploiting raids, and even adjusting our character speeds with the use of a third party programs. We were not even warned for any of these offenses despite multiple reports from other members of our team as well as the community of this server. Since no action was taken against us, clearly our donation was why- especially since this server instant bans anyone who does even one of the actions we were doing on our donated accounts. (We got banned close to instantly doing the same actions on blank accounts under different IP addresses) Once we realized this, we asked for our donations back- without telling them why, of course. Unsurprisingly , the ones over 100$ were refunded... anything less was a no go. This was to be expected from these criminals, even though their "policy" says otherwise.

Aside from their fraud, this server's rules are EXTREMELY Draconic and they ban you for close to nothing at all... such as asking about the longevity of the server, asking about content release, inquiring about patch changes in a manner that they "DEEM" offensive. If you aren't banned for life on the spot, you can be muted throughout your entire account. One primary source of this was stripped of his ability to talk for 19 years which is absolutely ridiculous. On a personal level, I have never seen this kind of power trip from the administration of an online game let alone World of Warcraft. With that being said, this team of individuals is actually drawing players away from playing Blizzard games due to the fact that RetroWoW makes them believe that they are exactly as harsh. As a long time retail player, I have encountered players who were selling services for real money blatantly in-game and have only received consequences of one day bans. The player in question who was muted for 19 years simply called someone a "noob" (new player) and due to him receiving a completely unrelated warning months prior to the incident, he was issued a 19 year mute by a ban-happy admin named known as "Bam." I personally have interacted with Bam ingame and he is nothing but rude, uncaring, and a person with a false sense of authority. Additionally, his signature on the RetroWoW Forums (primarily used to solicit donations) states "My BAM Hammer in bound to my entire numpad!" Following investigation, we determined that the only reason this gaggle of crooks can get away with banning anyone they wish is due to the fact that there are a large amount of individuals on this server who donate upwards of 1000 dollars for in-game items. For example, the cost of getting a full set of top tier armor with a legendary staff (intentionally made unobtainable in game) for a mage character is around $500. Certain players have 10 characters, though the average seems to be around 2- not to mention many get banned..... thus encouraging them to create a new account and donate yet again. (refunds are not permitted for banned accounts) On a final note, a great deal of account selling goes down on this server and I have a feeling the GMs themselves are behind it. One account was sold for $200 with a full best in slot gear and a legendary staff warlock... considering those items would amount to over $700 with this server's prices there is no way a player would have sold it for that amount. Google it and I'm certain you will find that case as well as many others. Oh, and as if that is not proof enough go ahead and check out OwnedCore where a user sells gold that slightly undercuts the server prices for gold.

Simply put, this server is a disaster that needs to be shut down. Since their Burning Crusade counterpart has the same administration, they should meet the same fate especially since they are growing larger daily.

I ask any readers to please help out and sign this petition- private servers are truly scourges of World of Warcraft. This one, especially, is the epitome of corruption, greed, and unrighteousness. The only reason it is still around is due to its size- which only means it is under the radar. However, it is just as much of a threat as big servers such as Nostalrius.

Here's to hoping justice will be served.