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- Note that WoWWiki does not allow any links to, or naming of, emulated servers. See also WW:DNP.
Emulated servers, informally referred to as "private servers", are third-party (user-created) offline game servers for online games which do not normally support the use of such servers. This is not to be confused with games which support third-party servers as a normal feature, such as any number of first-person shooters. Playing on emulated servers through the use of Blizzard's WoW client is a breach of the World of Warcraft End-User License Agreement, which requires the user to agree not to connect to unauthorized emulated servers.
The servers
Emulated servers are usually created by writing or using custom emulation software which mimics the behavior of an official game server. For this reason, players are experiencing a third party product that may have new or different features and bugs from the official servers. Some servers offer incentives or advantages to play upon them such as custom or new items, access to cheap or free items and equipment, boosted experience rates and drop rates, disabled fall damage, access to inaccessible areas, the ability to go to war with your own faction, ability to go past the level 80 cap(aka: funservers), instant level 80, PVP- only (PVE Quests Disabled, instant 80 and a custom made starting zone with vendors to offer free gear, respec and other things) or even Game Master powers for certain users.
Blizzard responses
Blizzard has made substantial effort to prevent the authoring, distribution and hosting of third party Game Servers. Responses have included legal action against developers and sites hosting third party servers based on WoW code. Servers not based on WoW code have had no such legal action taken against them. Blizzard has not yet banned any users who connect to these servers, but in some cases, the users of private servers no longer have official server accounts.
Blizzard's current thinking circa 2016
On April 25, 2016, 
Nethaera put a blue post up that discussed how the issue of a retro or vanilla realms within the company (not speaking to emulated or private servers directly) has been debated written by J. Allen Brack.[1] The summary version of the response was this:[1] 1) private servers need to be shut down to protect intellectual property rights, 2) maintaining a set of vanila-style servers is more technically difficult than people outside the company think (no specifics), and 3) the closest thing Blizzard might offer would be a "pristine realm" version of the game with all progression and XP acceleration elements as well as group finder turned off plus no access to cross realm zones.
References
- ^ a b Nethaera 2016-04-26. To the WoW Community -. Official WoW Community > General Discussion forum (US).
See also
External links
Blizzard Entertainment (US) Battle.net® end user License Agreement Last Revised: February 28, 2015
Blizzard Entertainment (EU) Battle.net End User License Agreement Last Updated February 11, 2014- Blue posts
Official WoW Community > General Discussion forum (US) Classic Server Update J. Allen Brack via Ornyx 10/24/2016 10:00 PM Official WoW Community > General Discussion forum (US) To the WoW Community - by Nethaera 4/25/2016 11:22 PM PDT- News
Polygon.com Admins of shut down World of Warcraft server say they will meet with Blizzard By Owen S. Good on May 01, 2016 at 4:04p
GameSpot.com Team Behind Unauthorized WoW Server That Was Closed to Meet With Blizzard by Eddie Makuch May 1, 2016
Kotaku.com Blizzard Says They Had To Shut Down World of Warcraft Fan Server Nostalrius Jason Schreier4/26/16 10:31am Kotaku.com The Last Minutes Of World of Warcraft's Shuttered Fan Server Jason Schreier 4/12/16 12:30pm
EscapistMagazine.com Blizzard Squeezes $88 Million From Private Server Owner Tom Goldman 15 August 2010 2:57 pm- Old
Archive.org (archive of WorldOfWarcraft.com) Last Updated February 2, 2007; archived August 22, 2007