The administrators behind the recently shut-down Nostalrius server —which ran a popular "vanilla" version ofas the game existed before its many expansions—are currently "scheduling a meeting at Blizzard campus" to discuss the status of what some call "legacy servers" but what Blizzard and others often refer to as "pirate servers."

In a post to the Nostalrius forums late Sunday night, the administrators seemed optimistic about serving as spokespeople for a group of players interested in preserving a playable history of the popular MMO— a group that has now grown to include over 250,000 signatories to an online petition.

"We are very excited to be able to help Blizzard understand the part of their community asking for legacy servers and many other related topics, in the hope that they will eventually make it possible to legally play previous game expansions," the team wrote. "After the answer from Blizzard and the amazing support we received, we feel we are now not only the admins of a private server: We are also the ambassadors of a larger movement for the entire World of Warcraft community that wants to see game history restored. It is a major responsibility. Our top priority and only focus now is to fulfill the needs of this community, by carrying your voice to Blizzard directly."

The Nostalrius team claimed a peak of 800,000 registered accounts, 150,000 monthly players, and 10,000 daily players before legal threats from Blizzard forced it to shut down the servers last month.

In its only official statement on the matter , Blizzard defended its need to legally protect "anything that uses’s IP, including unofficial servers." That said, the company also noted it had "recently been in contact with some of the folks who operated Nostalrius. They obviously care deeply about the game, and we look forward to more conversations with them in the coming weeks."

The scheduled meeting could be a sign that Blizzard is interested in setting up some sort of official "legacy" server support or allowing external servers to somehow operate legitimately. In its statement, Blizzard said it has been discussing such possibilities internally "for years... and especially over the past few weeks. From active internal team discussions to after-hours meetings with leadership, this subject has been highly debated."

News of the meeting comes with a bit of bad news for the classic WoW community, however. The Nostalrius team now says it will not publicly release the source code and database for its servers, as it had promised when the shutdown was originally announced. While there is a desire to give back to the emulation community that helped get Nostalrius up and running, the team seems to be holding the full release back as a sign of good faith (or perhaps a bargaining chip) to use in talking with Blizzard.

"Keeping the sources private could be useful at some point during the discussion with Blizzard," the team wrote. "They proposed to discuss together and we want to have all the chances on our side for the community we represent now. Furthermore, if official legacy servers were to be released at some point in the future, the emulation would become, in essence, obsolete for our community."

No timeframe was announced for the meeting, but the Nostalrius team says that "more information will be available on an announcement next week. Please, stay tuned!"