My dear Blizzard, I've been a good boy...and it's been 2 months!!!!!!

[FelPlague]

I'm curious what kind of development you guys think is required for a game THAT ALREADY EXISTS.

1. remaking all the code and data
2. setting it up to work with the battlenet launcher
3. bug fixing
4. code fixing
5. optimization
6. making sure the security is more tight
7. intergrating systems that were not in that will need to be in like as i said battlenet chat and real id
8. setting up the servers, website, dev team, payment plan, launcher, addon API
9. testing
10. phsyical server settup
11. gm staff and dev staff specificly for this project
12. office space and set ups for this system type
13. many other things


you are legit stupid if you think this is a thing they can just go "ok we are gunna make vanilla servers" then they flip a switch and it is done
because it does not exist, it was patched out and over many years ago, it was changed tweaked and sundered.

they really have no reason to keep a complete backup of every single x.x.01 patch years after it was made.

[frogger237]

If you played a private server then you weren't a good boy this year. So you might have to wait till next Christmas.

[Heeresman]

I'm not sure why it would be unlikely. Don't they beta all the new expansions? Or at least open a PTR for them.

Every new PS that opens has both an alpha and beta phase.

Internal testing as in no external beta.

Devs and family testing only.

Unlikely.

[Chakah]

Or in other words... a remaster. Lol.

Maybe only developers or nerds care, but no.

I'll just leave these here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porting#Porting_in_gaming
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remaster#Video_games
https://gaming.stackexchange.com/que...red-and-remake

We know Classic is not a 'remaster' as new graphics aren't necessarily coming, nor are they necessarily the only changes coming.
We know Classic will at least be a 'port' based on J. Allen Brack's interview https://www.pcgamer.com/this-is-how-...a-wow-servers/ This would likely be the purest version. (A potential Classic port is closer to an engine port than a platform port)

Classic could be a 'remake', we just don't know yet. This could open the doors to QOL or other changes. Stay tuned.

[llubtoille]

Be cool if they did documentary of it, like doublefine style.

[Nomads]

Maybe only developers or nerds care, but no.

I'll just leave these here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porting#Porting_in_gaming
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remaster#Video_games
https://gaming.stackexchange.com/que...red-and-remake

We know Classic is not a 'remaster' as new graphics aren't necessarily coming, nor are they necessarily the only changes coming.
We know Classic will at least be a 'port' based on J. Allen Brack's interview https://www.pcgamer.com/this-is-how-...a-wow-servers/ This would likely be the purest version. (A potential Classic port is closer to an engine port than a platform port)

Classic could be a 'remake', we just don't know yet. This could open the doors to QOL or other changes. Stay tuned.

They said "We want to recreate the Classic experience without all the server issues players experienced at launch." I'm pretty sure everyone who isn't deluding themselves in some way knows what that means. It's really not this big mystery... Private Servers have found ways to do it for years. Blizz is even working with the most popular "blizz-like" private server devs to make this theirs. We know what it will look like.

[rewhaha]

It should be done by April of this year. Just load the discs of the original game. I could have done it by now

[Piesor]

My guess: they will bring it in Q2 2018 when people are burned out from Antorus. This way they will keep the community together. They got everything they need. Embedding Classic in the bnet structure should not take a long time.
The release date is a tactical decision. The development status does not really matter. Perhaps they will also choose a sweet spot after the first "burnout" from BfA in late 2019

[Chakah]

Yes, i absolutely do. For two reasons:
1) Stress testing. Everybody knows that Classic will be packed the first two weeks. WoW had >100M players over its lifespan. Depending on the exact payment method it is not completely unrealistic to expect 5-10M players for the first two weeks. Which means they will have two times the stress on their servers+b.net than during an expansion launch. They NEED to test that. There is no company or government on this planet able to provide an adequately running service able to handle this amount of clients without an extensive beta phase.

Unless Classic is Free to Play (heaven forbid), there is no conceivable way it will add 5 million additional players once its live, much less 10. If its included in the WoW sub and has no box fee, and is during a mainline content lull, then maybe I'd buy that number.
Have you noticed Blizzard doing a lot of stress testing on Beta or PTR lately? No? Thats because their new infrastructure is much more scalable that it was in 2004. I'm sure they can handle the additional load of Classic servers. Even if its a huge hit.

The biggest problem imho will be the actual way servers work. I, and i assume Blizzard as well, anticipate a gargantuan influx of players for the first two weeks and then an incredibly harsh decline until it stabilizes at some amount. Nobody wants X-Realm features for Classic. Server integrity, knowing people...that is VERY important for Classic. You could argue it is the single biggest difference from Classic > live. How do you manage the first two weeks? Do you open up 20-25 servers, knowing only 5 of them will survive the first quarter? Community integrity is the most important thing to get right with Classic. I bet they have no idea how to bring this together right now. And whatever they do come up with eventually will require testing.

This is exactly why Blizzard introduced sharding into WoW. I suspect Classic will include the sharding technology without the cross-realm links. You end up with fewer and more stable 'servers'. They could conceivably use the same backend infrastructure to host mainline shards and Classic shards, nicely balancing out the load for both.

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My guess: they will bring it in Q2 2018 when people are burned out from Antorus. This way they will keep the community together. They got everything they need.

Thats the purpose of the pre-order bonus release of Allied races in 7.3.5.

They have everything they need, except an actual product... lol. People need to stop dreaming that Blizzard is just going to deploy the Nost code.
Q2 2018 is impossible.

[Forogil]

This is exactly why Blizzard introduced sharding into WoW. I suspect Classic will include the sharding technology without the cross-realm links. You end up with fewer and more stable 'servers'. They could conceivably use the same backend infrastructure to host mainline shards and Classic shards, nicely balancing out the load for both.

Yes, I agree that one of the changes will likely be adding sharding technology to the classic servers.

[Deleted]

I bet there isnt much more than just the idea for classic servers right now, nothing concrete yet.

I agree that it will likely come out late 2019, when people are well into BfA.

[xcitng]

Yeah, can't see it happening until there is a slow period during BfA....

[Forogil]

they really have no reason to keep a complete backup of every single x.x.01 patch years after it was made.

Having the source code in a source code repository and backing up that regularly is normal practice for any software company.

Actually being able to build from that is a different story, it's likely that some part needed for building is missing.

And additionally they also have a lot of art and map-data and those are often a pain to handle in that so they might have lost some of that.

[Nomads]

I bet there isnt much more than just the idea for classic servers right now, nothing concrete yet.

Bahahaha... they have the whole world designed and made already. It doesn't get more concrete than that. They aren't building it from scratch, writing quests, programming NPCs, coding mechanics, etc... It's all done. They're just porting all that to their new software...

My guess is it will be out before or released along side BfA.

[Battlebeard]

Smart marketing would be to release this BEFORE Battle for Azeroth.

The reasons are many,

Firstly, Antorus will bore people, it will risk being a new Dragon Soul/Siege of Orgrimmar/Hellfire Citadel, meaning a raid that last very long. I liked those raids and Antorus is okey, but most people get bored. Releaseing Classic would keep people interested in WoW as a whole and keep them playing Blizzard games (speculation ofc).

Secondly, the hype is still big now. If they delay it too much, people might lose interest and look elsewhere.

Thirdly, I loved vanilla with all my heart and I can't wait. BUT it's a big difference from todays game. A lot of people will try Classic WoW and realize it's not for them. They will miss much of todays convinience. Me and many others won't care for this and play Classic reglardless BUT many will quit. This means, that if they quit a WoW version (classic) for reasons like "It's not as good as retail" then they might get more hype and get excited again for regular WoW. Classic release will motivate people to go back to Retail cause they think classic sucked. A win for Blizzard too as it keeps them in Blizzard games.

Forthly, face it, the mmorpg genre is not that popular as it was years ago. Who knows how long WoW will last, let alone the genre. The sooner they get another mmorpg game out (I count classic as a new game in this sense), the more they can milk from the genre before it dies. It sounds horrible and greedy but that's how things work.

Fifthly (is fifthly even a word lol), this is a good way to say "we promise, we deliver". I don't think Blizzard want this "sigh, typical Blizzard to delay everything as usual" label. For once, they should show the players that they are an effective and motivated company.

[Deleted]

There whouldn't be much for the team to acually do right now or in the distant future untill Classic is released. The most they have to do is to deal with the servers and get the acual core from the Nostalrius Devs.
Once Classic acually launches they have to have gotten some CMs & GMs and train them for the Classic project.

You'd have to be extremely dense to think that they would ever touch anything from Nostalrius. It's a hacked up job of MANGoS with duct tape all over the place

[Nomads]

You'd have to be extremely dense to think that they would ever touch anything from Nostalrius. It's a hacked up job of MANGoS with duct tape all over the place

They literally said they were playing with the Nost guys on their server to serve as a baseline and refresher. So yes, they did "touch" it already.

[Deleted]

They literally said they were playing with the Nost guys on their server to serve as a baseline and refresher. So yes, they did "touch" it already.

Yeah for shits and giggles, not as a "baseline"
There's a reason they're doing prototypes of their own past builds and have to rework the entireties of it to suit modern computers.

[Echocho]

Smart marketing would be to release this BEFORE Battle for Azeroth.

Actually it would be way smarter to release it about 2-3 months after BfA launches. Imagine if the subs jump up to 10 million like they usually do at the start of an expansion and then quickly fall down to 5 million. Preventing those 5 million players from unsubscribing for just one more month to try out Classic is more money than Classic would bring in on its own in at least a year.

They literally said they were playing with the Nost guys on their server to serve as a baseline and refresher. So yes, they did "touch" it already.

No what they literally said was:

The unofficial servers were clearly a huge factor in Blizzard's decision to return to vanilla WOW. Am I right in thinking the Nostalrius team provided you with access to their build at some point?

J. Allen Brack: Yeah, they did. We did a dungeon run with some of the folks, it was an old school Scholomance run. It was interesting.

How far into this process are you? Do you have a build that you can actually play, internally, and figure some of this stuff out?

J. Allen Brack: We've got some infrastructure stuff in place. We've got an old build that's up and running that we're using for reference.

[A dot Ham]

1. remaking all the code and data
2. setting it up to work with the battlenet launcher
3. bug fixing
4. code fixing
5. optimization
6. making sure the security is more tight
7. intergrating systems that were not in that will need to be in like as i said battlenet chat and real id
8. setting up the servers, website, dev team, payment plan, launcher, addon API
9. testing
10. phsyical server settup
11. gm staff and dev staff specificly for this project
12. office space and set ups for this system type
13. many other things


you are legit stupid if you think this is a thing they can just go "ok we are gunna make vanilla servers" then they flip a switch and it is done
because it does not exist, it was patched out and over many years ago, it was changed tweaked and sundered.

they really have no reason to keep a complete backup of every single x.x.01 patch years after it was made.

Sounds like all the bullshit excuses as to why it couldn't be done in the first place. Makes one wonder how and why so many private servers pop up given the resources required for such an undertaking.

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yes, there will be, you do know there was a beta and alpha for wow when it first came out right?

You're taking this purist thing a little too far I think.