An announcement, published on the Lights Hope website, revealed that the so-called legacy WoW server Elysium Project is shutting down due to “failures to uphold the project’s ideas and integrity.” Currently, the project servers are down but they will be relaunched under new management.
The reason for the Elysium closure were allegations that team members have been involved in dishonest practices regarding the project funding. More precisely, evidence shows that a core team member has taken home EUR2,000 per month, raised via PayPal donations, for personal financial reasons.
In addition, another member of the Elysium Project’s core team is said to have been involved in gold selling operation. As a result, the support team members were prevented from setting up a log management server as the initiative was “covered up”. All staff members accused of violating the good practices have permanently stepped down from their posts.
The reason for Project Elysium servers’ closure is team’s desire to protect the user data and avoid any data being sold to third parties. The servers managed by the accused team members have been completely wiped as well. However, backups have been made prior to the shutdown and Lights Hope will relaunch on the saved data.
The new team members acknowledged that shutting down the Elysium Project would result in a significant brand recognition loss. However, they added that the reputation of the entire team has been tarnished and they do not intend to bring it back from the ashes. They also confirmed that they would notify as many platforms as possible for the shift in branding and reassured all affected players that they would do their best to reestablish the trust. The new team requested the community assistance to deal with the issue in an efficient manner and announced that information about the plans and strategy they would adopt was coming soon.
The RealGear team remains committed to informing you promptly if new information on the matter emerges.