The generally accepted ETA

[Wries]

What's this talk of them remaking the game in the current engine?

I thought for sure they'd slap a patch on the 1.12 client. Hell that's what they did with their SC "remaster".

[Mosotti]

But too many people are sticking to the 1.5-2 year frame and I'm inclined to believe it, but would like an explanation. What don't I understand?

My 15 years of software development agrees with that ETA. They are still hiring people, people that know nothing about a project with millions of lines of code that used to run on some 15 years old system. The testers know nothing about the game from 15 years ago, sure it's easy to test most quests, because they are fetch quests, but the scripted ones... I hope they still have some notes. Then they need to test all the mobs, the dungeons and the raids. Also test the new things added. And they need to test for multiple languages

[Deleted]

My 15 years of software development agrees with that ETA.

Well the experience with 3rd party servers says that a few guys can hack together a working vanilla server that supports over a hundred thousand active players.

[XDurionX]

It certainly won't collide with BfA, that's for sure, so 1,5 years are the minimum. Plus there's a lot of problems to solve.

[Mosotti]

Well the experience with 3rd party servers says that a few guys can hack together a working vanilla server that supports over a hundred thousand active players.

Actually Nostalrius said before launch that they were working for 5 YEARS on that. Stop being silly.

Ah, and the quality of the Nostalrius server compared to original is PURE SHIT.

[Nutri]

1) I guess Q4 of 2019. 2) I wouldn't be surprised if it would eventually be Q4 2020. 3) I hope it's somewhere 2018. :P

[voidillusion]

Considering the information they gave that a dedicated team would be on in i wouldnt be surprised if it was out mid 2018.

[Deleted]

Actually Nostalrius said before launch that they were working for 5 YEARS on that. Stop being silly.

As a small number of volunteers on their free time. And the majority of that work is something Blizzard does not need to do—they don't need to reverse engineer anything since they have the original code, designs and content. From an engineering point of view this is not a big effort, at least not in principle (Blizzard can always make the effort as unnecessarily complex as they wish).

[Mosotti]

As a small number of volunteers on their free time. And the majority of that work is something Blizzard does not need to do—they don't need to reverse engineer anything since they have the original code, designs and content. From an engineering point of view this is not a big effort, at least not in principle (Blizzard can always make the effort as unnecessarily complex as they wish).

Do you even have any idea what it takes to start working on a huge 15 old project you've never seen before? What is your experience as a software engineer?

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Considering the information they gave that a dedicated team would be on in i wouldnt be surprised if it was out mid 2018.

Actually the team is very dedicated, so prolly it will be ready next week

[Emeraldon]

Classic will NOT be released in 2018. There is no way they'll launch it at the same time, or just before or just after BfA launches. Mid to late 2019 at the earliest.

[voidillusion]

Do you even have any idea what it takes to start working on a huge 15 old project you've never seen before? What is your experience as a software engineer?

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Actually the team is very dedicated, so prolly it will be ready next week

Dedicated team to classic, as in they will only do that as announced in one of the first interviews. When you look at what ppl say with ill intentions you end up making a fool out of yourself.

Quoted from http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-big-questions

"Are these going to be separate development teams? One working on Battle for Azeroth and one working on WOW Classic?

J. Allen Brack: Yeah, so it was really important for us to be able to answer the community honestly. How many raids is this going to cost them in Battle for Azeroth? The answer is zero. We're going to hire people specifically for this effort. We already are."

[Ezekeel]

People don't understand. Think like this: You love old cars and you see some people still riding them. However, they only make small modifications. New tires, new mirrors, etc. What Blizzard is trying to do is like changing the frame and the engine of that old car. The new engine's layout does not fit the current frame and it uses jet fuel. So yeah, running just a private server is much less complex.

[Mask]

My guess is it'll be Nov 23rd 2019, the 15th anniversary of WoW and 25th anniversary of Warcraft as a whole.

This will also, incidentally, be when BFA's patch cycle has wound down and it's in it's content drought stage.

This thing isn't coming in the next year when they haven't even begun hiring for the team yet. They've announced it's begun development last month, that's all. It'll be two years, which is perfect both to fill the gap between BFA and what comes after, and to be timed perfectly to hit two major milestone anniversaries.

This is my guess as well. It lines up so perfectly. There will probably be some kind of open beta happening in early 2019, but the release launch will be the 15 year anniversary. When I posted this exact speculation in the Reddit thread where people guessed what the release date would be it got downvoted to hell, though. So many people delusional thinking it will be coming out in the next few months lol.

[owbu]

The ETA depends on so many things we dont know (but have very strong gut feelings about), that everything beyond "I assume (!) they wont launch it in the same month BfA launches" is just armchair developing. And even thats based on the assumption that they believe that there is an overlap between people who want vanilla and people who want BfA.
Making predictions on how long is usually takes blizzard to get from "We have are in the planing phase of this game" to launch doest really work, because they dont need to develop the zones/dungeons/art - something they said takes most of the dev time.
Making predictions based on "because its just coding work" doesnt really work, because A: We dont know wether or not they have to integrate their code into their current code or just make a version that runs on current computers. and B: we dont know how compatible those codes are, how complicated fixing the bugs is and what new bugs will show up.
Predicting how long player testing will be doesnt really make sense, because all we know is, that they will "listen to the community". If that means asking some questions on the forums and a quick internal beta based on that feedback or having a public beta or something entirely diffrent isnt known. We also dont know long they are willing to make changes based on that feedback and how close to perfect their first version will be. A typical wow beta takes 6 month. But this isnt a typical wow beta. So thats also not helping.
The two things we do know is that they are still hiring key members of the team and that they were still in the planning phase ("We have a reference model running and thats it) last month. So it wont be soon (no tm), whatever that means. Blizzard doesnt really have predictable times they take to finish a game and like I said, this isnt even the same kind of work they usually do.

So in the end the more accurate your prediction is, the less you probably know about making computer games.

[Aggrophobic]

It's not only about the time it takes them to get it working it's also about what will get Blizzard the most subs.
There is no way that they will release this anywhere close to a retail expansion.

They'll either get it out in a month or two (very, very unlikely) or they'll wait for another content drought after BfA and thats years away (much more likely).

[Deleted]

If the rumours are true of Blizzard developing another MMO, then the end could be near for WOW - at which point it would make sense to implement a classic server.

[Mosotti]

It's not only about the time it takes them to get it working it's also about what will get Blizzard the most subs.
There is no way that they will release this anywhere close to a retail expansion.

They'll either get it out in a month or two (very, very unlikely) or they'll wait for another content drought after BfA and thats years away (much more likely).

Don't worry, they won't have a product to deliver any time soon. We are talking about Blizzard quality, not random (shitty) private servers with thousands of known bugs. Now I'm not really bashing private servers, what they achieved is really great (the good ones I mean, not the really shitty ones), but it's something completely different from the original product.

[rda]

Most people think we won't see Classic come out for 1.5-2 years. But why? The only thing that comes to mind for development is -

*Deciding which Vanilla build to deploy (or a version that's been tweaked to, I guess you could say, a generic Vanilla build)
*Compatibility with newer hardware and software
*Integration within Blizzard client
*Internal testing
*External testing

Really, the only thing in my mind that would take months and months is the first item. Just what do they want the initial release of a Classic client to look like. And I admit, with as many opinions, usually emotionally charged, floating around, that could take some time. But overall, 1.5 years? I just don't see it. Maybe it's a mixture of ignorance on my part and. I assumed it would be a cash grab on their part for that void between 7.3.5 and BfA.

But too many people are sticking to the 1.5-2 year frame and I'm inclined to believe it, but would like an explanation. What don't I understand?

This is a hilarious list.

The real list:

* Hire a team.
* Write the code wrapping the existing vanilla server to make it work with modern infrastructure.
* Test it all out, then release.

All three items are proceeding simultaneously in reality to an extent.

The most important item is obviously the second one. How long it is going to take *a new, unknown team* nobody knows. It can take ~6 months or it can go nowhere and just never complete.

"Deciding which Vanilla build to deploy" is trivial - since they won't be able to switch builds (well, everything is possible, but it would be really hard = a very strange target to pursue on the first take), they will likely simply choose the build that contains all vanilla features = the last public vanilla build. "Compatibility ..." and "Integration ..." are the same thing.

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They are rewriting it from scratch on top of current WoW engine (both client and server). It requires a lot of modifications of the current engine to allow two different game mechanics with the same code base, it requires review of the old LUA codebase and adaptation it to the new WoW client (remember how much addons are broken with each WoW release? WoW interface is just a bunch of addons really) or adaptation of the current interface to turn off a lot of unwanted modern features. I'm sure that they won't realase it for two years at least. And even then it'll be staged release to allow extensive testing with limited resources, so classic won't be dreadful pirate-like experience with half-working world full of glitches. I expect classic to realase between BfA and the next addon after BfA to fill the void.

No, they aren't doing that.

If they were plugging classic servers on the code level, we wouldn't have the new, separate, team - a separate team cannot do this.

I am almost certain they are keeping the old vanilla server unchanged and are writing code around it, forming a virtual environment. The environment is going to let the server believe it is talking to the old infrastructure while in reality it will talk to the new infrastructure, the I/O requests will be translated. That's why this can be done by a separate team - they don't have to change any WoW code, neither that of the old WoW, nor that of the new WoW. They are writing a middle-man interacting with both layers to a spec.

[Deleted]

Do you even have any idea what it takes to start working on a huge 15 old project you've never seen before? What is your experience as a software engineer?

Yes, and extensive.

[Mosotti]

Dedicated team to classic, as in they will only do that as announced in one of the first interviews. When you look at what ppl say with ill intentions you end up making a fool out of yourself.

Quoted from http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-big-questions

"Are these going to be separate development teams? One working on Battle for Azeroth and one working on WOW Classic?

J. Allen Brack: Yeah, so it was really important for us to be able to answer the community honestly. How many raids is this going to cost them in Battle for Azeroth? The answer is zero. We're going to hire people specifically for this effort. We already are."

I know it's a dedicated team, but it will also be a NEW and SMALL team. They are looking for software engineers proficient in C++, Oracle and Lua, so they intend to do some more serious changes to the game, not just repackaging an existing version. It also says there "working with designers to", that means maybe they are thinking about doing some game changes as well, otherwise why would the software engineers work with game designers? Things are not as easy as "meh, 3 people made a private server working in one week, Blizzard should be faster"

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Yes, and extensive.

Right, it shows, you work very well and very fast. No bugs. I think you should apply for the job then.