Yes, sorry.

I didn't mean that it was cashgrab for everyone hosting own wow server.

Many was great and great people.

Yes, Blizzard didn't want a hassle with licenses or maybe because they were toxic company from beginning. Remember lawsuits for sexual attacks in their offices, suicide on their meetings etc.

Ridiculous company.

If I can compare it with let's say, Ultima Online.

Dev community is cooperative to highest levels. People are making opensource servers and multiple opensource or free clients. And plugins.

And most played Ultima Online server has some type of licensing agreement with current IP owners.