Following the unfortunate but expected shut down of the vanilla World of Warcraft “Nostalrius” server, fans are still attempting to carry on the decade-plus legacy of the MMORPG.

Now, the Nostalrius team are taking matters into their own hands by releasing the source code and tools to the community. Their first benefactor is another private server that is poised to bring back the Nostalrius server, but under a different name.

“The source code will be first given to an existing Legacy project which we believe to be the most in line with our core values, named Elysium. This server shares the volunteer spirit and passion for the game we had,” reads a statement from Nostalrius admin Viper in a forum post.

“Furthermore, an important part of Nostalrius volunteers are already working there, some under different names. We wish them all the best, and hope that they will become a new home for the reunited Vanilla community. We will continue collaborating closely with them. This collaboration could include additional ‘things’ to share with them if necessary to achieve this goal. In exchange, this server promised to not receive any profit from this activity. They will also have to create the documentation required to install, understand and use the work we did.”

The Elysium developers confirmed the news on Reddit, noting that all current Elysium characters have been saved and frozen pending a transfer to the new system.

“Elysium will now proudly revive and continue what began a year and half ago. We will be gratefully accepting the core and player database of Nostalrius. This means that Nostalrius, exactly as you know it, will be returning,” Suzerain_Elysium wrote.

“Additionally, as many of you know, we have a very large percentage of the Nostalrius staff that has been part of Elysium. Their positions in the staff reach all possible areas such as Administration, Development, Game Masters and Quality Assurance. As of now we have a total of 16 Nostalrius team members (excluding Nostalrius’ administration whom will remain off of the project) and the number is growing. Together we will bring true Legacy servers to the private server community until Blizzard does.”

Blizzard met with Nostalrius team admins and even the team lead of vanilla World of Warcraft himself, Mark Kern – however the discussions seem to have fallen on deaf ears. For what it’s worth, Blizzard does seem keen on not ruling out “Pristine”, vanilla servers.

The Elysium team make a bold promise: “Nostalrius, exactly as you know it, will be returning.”

How do you guys feel about fans passionately trying to preserve older online games? Sound off in the comments below!