Update: Mark Kern published a video about Vanilla servers.

Legion - Gold Cap Raised to 10 Million Gold

Official Reply to Vanilla Servers and Nostalrius
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
We wanted to let you know that we’ve been closely following the Nostalrius discussion and we appreciate your constructive thoughts and suggestions.

Our silence on this subject definitely doesn’t reflect our level of engagement and passion around this topic. We hear you. Many of us across Blizzard and the WoW Dev team have been passionate players ever since classic WoW. In fact, I personally work at Blizzard because of my love for classic WoW.

We have been discussing classic servers for years - it’s a topic every BlizzCon - and especially over the past few weeks. From active internal team discussions to after-hours meetings with leadership, this subject has been highly debated. Some of our current thoughts:

Why not just let Nostalrius continue the way it was? The honest answer is, failure to protect against intellectual property infringement would damage Blizzard’s rights. This applies to anything that uses WoW’s IP, including unofficial servers. And while we’ve looked into the possibility – there is not a clear legal path to protect Blizzard’s IP and grant an operating license to a pirate server.

We explored options for developing classic servers and none could be executed without great difficulty. If we could push a button and all of this would be created, we would. However, there are tremendous operational challenges to integrating classic servers, not to mention the ongoing support of multiple live versions for every aspect of WoW.

So what can we do to capture that nostalgia of when WoW first launched? Over the years we have talked about a “pristine realm”. In essence that would turn off all leveling acceleration including character transfers, heirloom gear, character boosts, Recruit-A-Friend bonuses, WoW Token, and access to cross realm zones, as well as group finder. We aren’t sure whether this version of a clean slate is something that would appeal to the community and it’s still an open topic of discussion.

One other note - we’ve recently been in contact with some of the folks who operated Nostalrius. They obviously care deeply about the game, and we look forward to more conversations with them in the coming weeks.

You, the Blizzard community, are the most dedicated, passionate players out there. We thank you for your constructive thoughts and suggestions. We are listening.

J. Allen Brack
This article was originally published in forum thread: Official Reply to Vanilla Servers and Nostalrius started by chaud View original post
Comments 1125 Comments
  1. MrPaladinGuy's Avatar
    It might actually happen.
  1. chase_the_mofo's Avatar
    Lots of bullshit talk to be honest, and I'll tell you why vanilla or any other previous expansions wont ever happen
    1) They don't want to work on older patches, because it takes much more time compared to current state of the game
    2) If they actually do release something "older" it's literally them saying that their current game sucks, go play older version
    3) No $$$ to be made there with in game purchases

    It's all about the money, newer expansions wont be sold cos people would be playing older patches.
    RIP WoW been fun
  1. Tedj's Avatar
    Hope in the end of the tunnel.
  1. Kikazz's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MrPaladinGuy View Post
    It might actually happen.
    if this happened i would cry tears of joy,

    being able to actually raid in greens and blues again cause thats all you had, then aquiring an epic and the community going OMFG look at that guys gear hes in the top %, he worked for his gear.

    now its oh that guys been in lfr, and mythic just on colour alone.

    gone are the days where gear made a difference in the playerbase, and the structure and community with it.

    everything wow had done in the past has been overshadowed and lowered due to accessability.
  1. mmoc1615415e70's Avatar
    Come on Blizzard, make it happen!!
  1. Talramass's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MrPaladinGuy View Post
    It might actually happen.
    Well it won't be the first time Blizzard destroy something to build on top of it. They sometimes reach and hire people who worked on pirate servers or did fanart, fan related stuff in general.
  1. Schmilblick's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by MrPaladinGuy View Post
    It might actually happen.
    Not at ALL.
  1. Chemii's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by chase_the_mofo View Post
    Lots of bullshit talk to be honest, and I'll tell you why vanilla or any other previous expansions wont ever happen
    1) They don't want to work on older patches, because it takes much more time compared to current state of the game
    2) If they actually do release something "older" it's literally them saying that their current game sucks, go play older version
    3) No $$$ to be made there with in game purchases

    It's all about the money, newer expansions wont be sold cos people would be playing older patches.
    RIP WoW been fun
    How did you read a sincere blue post about it (they didn't need to respond at all) and get all that negativity?

    Cheer up.

    Essentially what he talked about is the same experience people are getting from these nostalgia trips. Turn off everything that's convenient, including flying, group finder and heirlooms. All they need to do is up the health of the mobs and it's the the same experience without the glaring problems of vanilla.
  1. mmocdc260e8e2a's Avatar
    Let's not kid ourselves. Vanilla has little to do with it. The predominant reason those people play in there is because it's free.
  1. Tenjen's Avatar
    the laws work such that if you dont actively protect your IP, anyone can take advantage of it later to any extreme degree and you cant do anything about it because you didnt do anything about it during previous occasions
  1. Incandio's Avatar
    Well, pristine realms get my vote. Purely as a matter of choice. I'd still play on the other realms, but pristine sounds like a clearly-defined realm concept.

    Perhaps they can even add little "perks" to the interface options you can toggle on or off, like being dismounted going through water of any depth, and having to loot each corpse individually, or the XP "you've played too long" debuff ... for the fetishists ...
  1. Mekh's Avatar
    The sad tragedy of existing IP laws: Blizz is correct, failure to defend your IP on one front can be grounds for being unable to do so on other fronts.

    They should build this pristine realm so both sides of the argument can put their money where their mouth is.
  1. TheLimonTree's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by chase_the_mofo View Post
    Lots of bullshit talk to be honest, and I'll tell you why vanilla or any other previous expansions wont ever happen
    1) They don't want to work on older patches, because it takes much more time compared to current state of the game
    2) If they actually do release something "older" it's literally them saying that their current game sucks, go play older version
    3) No $$$ to be made there with in game purchases

    It's all about the money, newer expansions wont be sold cos people would be playing older patches.
    RIP WoW been fun
    Is there anyway a company can make a public speech and not be accused of this? people just love to envision businesses as big evil greedy monstrosities.
  1. VitesseEOD's Avatar
    I still think the nostalgia (for which a heap of people weren't even part of first time around) is clouding the issue here. Are the best guilds/players going to go back to content they've already killed 50+ times over a decade ago? No. Its a minority and other than some special "license" to run Nos, there's not much hope of another solution and given thats already been nixxed in the above statement...

    I find this whole situation quite amusing, Im actually part of a level 60 raiding guild on a casual basis, the community cries out for new content and now there's this clamour to go back to the beginning
  1. mmoc57cd24d5dc's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by tobindax View Post
    Let's not kid ourselves. Vanilla has nothing to do with this issue. The predominant reasons those people play there is because it's free.
    This!

    Theres no way Id want to go back to the old days of wow. Nostalgia and rose tinted specs seem to be helluva common. Honestly when you actually start listing all the improvements to the game since vanilla, you see why it should stay dead, and why only folk who have essentially pirated the game play on these servers.

    The sheer amount of people clouded by nostalgia is staggering and stupifying all at once. MADNESS!!

    Take your vanilla servers and ram em. And Im sorry but I dont buy into "I want 40 man raids" or "everything was harder, thus more fun" BS either.
  1. VitesseEOD's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Incandio View Post
    Well, pristine realms get my vote. Purely as a matter of choice. I'd still play on the other realms, but pristine sounds like a clearly-defined realm concept.

    Perhaps they can even add little "perks" to the interface options you can toggle on or off, like being dismounted going through water of any depth, and having to loot each corpse individually, or the XP "you've played too long" debuff ... for the fetishists ...
    This would pretty much stomp the face of the whole idea, if you want Vanilla WoW, you get Vanilla WoW - you cant have your cake and eat it
  1. thilicen's Avatar
    I would be interested in a Pristine Realm such as that. LFD and cross-realm pops have been very taxing on the whole "community" feeling.
  1. mmocfaf99010a6's Avatar
    This is the best news since final fantasy 7 remake.

    “pristine realm”. In essence that would turn off all leveling acceleration including character transfers, heirloom gear, character boosts, Recruit-A-Friend bonuses, WoW Token, and access to cross realm zones, as well as group finder. We aren’t sure whether this version of a clean slate is something that would appeal to the community and it’s still an open topic of discussion.
    If it still goes up to level 110 then its not what we want but it is a step in the correct direction.
  1. Incandio's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by chase_the_mofo View Post
    Lots of bullshit talk to be honest, and I'll tell you why vanilla or any other previous expansions wont ever happen
    1) They don't want to work on older patches, because it takes much more time compared to current state of the game
    2) If they actually do release something "older" it's literally them saying that their current game sucks, go play older version
    3) No $$$ to be made there with in game purchases

    It's all about the money, newer expansions wont be sold cos people would be playing older patches.
    RIP WoW been fun
    Like it or not, of course it's about the money, because it's a business model, at the end of the day, that has made this game (and much of modern society) possible.

    Within that, it's still possible for communities to grow and for meaningful events to take place. But if you remove the money, then everything else falls apart.

    There's no sense complaining about the money that makes it all possible. This is just naivety. You think all these artists and designers and managers and accountants are going to do all this for free?
  1. Archermit's Avatar
    It had been said by some streamers that they had to shut it down to protect intellectual property which makes sense. I would love teh idea of a pristine server updated to current wow that you could build a community around without being stuck in the old game.

    The fact that they are talking to the Nas team means they will be looking at a way to make this happen....they wouldn't talk about it for fun

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