[Teknoman117]

It's not piracy per se, but the practice of reverse engineering a backend to a paid service, whether that's real logic or just a licensing server, has existed for a long time.

I remember friends running World of Warcraft private servers back in '08 and '09. Heck, we even hosted one as a class project in high school.

World of Warcraft Classic exists partially due to the number of fans who ran private servers as a way to properly experience previous versions of the game as current expansions have you steamroll through older content.