Ignorant, I can tell you never tried playing a private server.
Nostalgia hardly matters. It fuels the INITIAL drive, but soon matters little.
I played a private server last year and enjoyed making NEW memories, checking out places again with NEW people. While I did do all the questing on Alliance side that was available, save maybe a few in a couple different zones in TBC and WotLK before they revamped all the zones, just because it's the same doesn't mean you can't make new memories. Every day. Every moment. You're making new memories.
Not to mention, Vanilla was not when most people who play now started, most people started in Wrath of the Lich King or later.
Thus... for MANY MANY MANY MILLIONS of people, if they try it, it will have NOTHING to do with nostalgia, it will be NEW content, just from a different point of view.
Think about it... for those who really like a challenge, trying to get the reputations up in that Vanilla essence instead of doing it now when it's much easier, working on your epic mount, the Paladin and Warlock chains, trying 40 man raids... these are things many people NEVER got to do, and will love to do.
For instance:
I joined in mid-TBC, January 2008, I made a point of getting Timbermaw reputation up to exalted prior to hitting 60 even, I also made a point of getting the Nagrand ogre-killing reputation up, getting the mounts in Halaa, getting the Winterspring Sabers reputation up, getting my epic mount by 60 instead of being a gold one, getting the PVP tiger, because screw ezmode! I wanted to show off being a priest healer PVPer! And wow, when I was questing through EPL with an old buddy from Australia in my guild, and an epic
[Brain Hacker] dropped, we rolled, and I won, it was an amazing feeling.
Now very few things give me these feelings. Everything is very dished out in sample courses, reputation isn't a very tough thing to level up, and certainly mounts aren't hard to get anymore, unless you go for stupid hard ones where you absolutely have to depend on others to help you.
Anyways, I look forward to making new memories, as I did on the private server with both old and new friends, again, on Blizzard servers, no less!
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More than 100 thousand people who were playing on Nostalrius and pushing end-game say otherwise.
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People like you were already proven wrong with Nostalrius, and people like you were also the ones saying Blizzard "can't and won't!" bring Vanilla servers about.
Do you want to be proven wrong 3 times? Really? Come on now, just because
YOU didn't like it, doesn't mean
I didn't like it, doesn't mean these others didn't like it.
Sure, Vanilla may be good for just a few % of the WoW population, but most of that few % aren't subscribed anymore. If Blizzard can get those subs back (and they would in my case) through Vanilla servers which would require far less maintenance? Then you better believe they'll do it. It's money! It's... EASY money.