WoW: Legacy Servers Are 'Something We're Taking Seriously'

"It's complicated and we're still discussing internally, but it's something we're taking seriously."

By Terri Schwartz

The conversation around when and if Blizzard will ever release World of Warcraft legacy servers is a familiar refrain at BlizzCons, and especially so since the fan-made legacy server Nostalrius was shut down earlier in 2016. Since the Blizzard team, including CEO Mike Morhaime, met with the Nostalrius' core development team in June, there hasn't been much forward momentum on the topic, and no new news came out of any of WoW's BlizzCon 2016 presentations.

Speaking with IGN, World of Warcraft game director Ion Hazzikostas confirmed "it's still something that we're discussing internally," but the hold up has been "more of a 'can we, should we, how would we, how do do we?' And where does that lead to in the end?"

"There's no question it's something we want to do," said Hazzikostas. "I am a 2004 World of Warcraft player myself. Tons of us came to work at Blizzard because we fell in love with that version of World of Warcraft. And we met with the Nostalrius developers on our campus over the summer and were really impressed by the passion they had for the game and what they're trying to do to recreate what they see as a lost experience. Obviously there's always the question of doing it in a Blizzard way, in a way that lives up to Blizzard standards as integrated with our other projects."

This conversation came the same year Diablo's team offered its player base its own take on a vanilla experience with the announcement the original Diablo would come to Diablo 3 in an anniversary patch. Hazzikostas said that's not a format the World of Warcraft team is looking to emulate, though they're still considering the idea of "pristine servers."

"We floated the idea when we first discussed this on our forums of what we called pristine servers; servers that didn't have cross realm grouping or that had some more hardcore features. But it's about the content itself. It's about the pre-Cataclysm world," he said. "It's about level-capping, the old skills being what they were, etc. A lot of it is about nostalgia. A lot of it is about literally trying to re-experience what you remember from 2005-2006. Nostalgia is powerful."

Hazzikostas explained that the hold-up on any real news or announcement is that the World of Warcraft development team hasn't cracked how to bring the vanilla World of Warcraft experience to life again without treating it like an entirely new game launch.

"If we could just flip a switch and make it happen we already would have done that. The project is basically akin to launching a new game. The same way people say you should make Warcraft 4, it's a big discussion. It's something that requires a lot of deliberation," he said. "Basically, it's complicated and we're still discussing internally, but it's something we're taking seriously."

For more on World of Warcraft, check out the latest details on Legion Patch 7.2, find out why Patch 7.3 is heading to Argus and learn which two iconic WoW characters are making their way to Heroes of the Storm.

Terri Schwartz is Entertainment Editor at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz.

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