On 18 April 2026 Stormforge announced that it had received a cease-and-desist from Blizzard Entertainment's legal representatives and, after discussions, had agreed to end all operations, development and distribution of World of Warcraft content by 14 May 2026. The announcement came within days of Blizzard's court victory over Turtle WoW.
Stormforge was formed as a partnership between the Atlantiss and Tauri teams and had run for more than four years. PCGamesN reported the project had registered more than 671,000 players, with around 28,000 active in the week before the announcement.
Stormforge said the closure was "not necessarily the end of everything we do" but confirmed it would not operate private servers for Activision or Blizzard games going forward, choosing instead to focus on original creative projects.
Together with Turtle WoW's sunset, the closure removed two of the most-played Classic+ style servers in a single month and led to a wave of speculation about Blizzard's intentions ahead of BlizzCon 2026.