The World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade unofficial legacy server known as Felmyst has launched, though it hasn't gone quite as smoothly as planned. Felmyst has been very highly anticipated within the World of Warcraft private server community for several years now, having been created by a well-known private server developer named Gummy with a small team of friends, and has been in development since as far back as 2011.

Felmyst isn't the first Burning Crusade private server, but it may be the best. Gummy and team built the engine on their own after growing unhappy with what was available previously. As such, Felmyst will be built and run exactly as these World of Warcraft fans think a Burning Crusade private server should be run.

Here are some of the ways Gummy is ensuring that Felmyst delivers the World of Warcraft experience that fans demand from the Burning Crusade expansion. Felmyst runs in the 2.1 patch, the main addition of which is the Black Temple raid, but also includes a significant wave of balance changes that are always required after an expansion's launch. The server increases experience gains in a more natural way than a simple rate change, and going beyond even attunement, Felmyst will limit post-Black Temple content to those who with Black Temple attunement.

Felmyst's goals are to provide not necessarily a wholly authentic Burning Crusade experience, but to focus in on difficulty and progression. Think of it as how Blizzard manages content in World of Warcraft these days to encourage players to continue playing and constantly moving forward, having fun.

It's an admirable goal for someone like Gummy and his team, who are accepting no donations for the completely free-to-play project. Barring the possibility of a behind-the-scenes investor, Felmyst has been entirely a personal project for the developers. Being a fan-made, non-profitable project, Felmyst may not earn the ire of Blizzard's lawyers, yet if it's too good and ends up pulling players away from World of Warcraft's subscriptions then Blizzard may very well change its mind.

In the meantime, as noted, Felmyst is having a rough start. After a very successful open beta period with a stable player-base, a new wave of attention has caused new player numbers to skyrocket. While the game server itself is still up, the website where the files necessary to run the private server are hosted is toast. Gummy has said they're working on increasing their bandwidth, but it may be a while before any new players will be joining in on the fun.

World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade private server Felmyst is now available on PC. Check out more information on the server on the official Felmyst website.