'World of StarCraft' MMO Modder Warned By Activision Blizzard

A StarCraft modder is finding himself the recipient of copyright infringement warnings from Blizzard, after he presented a project called "World of StarCraft" that aimed to create a StarCraft MMO. The lead modder, whose name is Ryan, had his work-in-progress videos pulled from YouTube just a day after they garnered much attention from fans, reports PC gaming site Rock Paper Shotgun. The project and its forums don't appear to be shut down yet, however. It's unclear yet whether Blizzard, which has a new large-scale MMO of its own in development, takes major issue with the project itself -- raising speculation of possible overlap with actual Blizzard projects in development. It seems likely the problem is simply the name "World of StarCraft", which rather overtly employs two of its brands: not just StarCraft, but its World of Warcraft too, and may violate the copyrights Blizzard has spanning both names. The modder describes himself as a longtime Blizzard fan who has "worked with every editor [the company has] put out since I was 13 years old," and in multiple posts on his forum indicates his willingness to work with Blizzard to achieve a resolution on the issue through communication rather than through legal threats. "If Blizzard/Activision doesn’t want this to happen then it won't," he writes. "This game HAS to be pumped through the veins of Battle.net to work. I hope and pray that we can come to an understanding here. If they want the name changed then I'll change it." Gamasutra has reached out to Blizzard for comment and will update with any we receive.