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+--- Thread: News - Blizzard has its own classic World of Warcraft server in the works (/thread-83702.html)
News - Blizzard has its own classic World of Warcraft server in the works - xSicKxBot - 11-07-2017
Blizzard has its own classic World of Warcraft server in the works
<div style="margin: 5px 5% 10px 5%;"><img src="https://www.sickgamedev.win/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/blizzard-has-its-own-classic-world-of-warcraft-server-in-the-works.jpg" width="200" height="200" title="" alt="" /></div><div><p>Alongside the announcement of a new <em>World of Warcraft</em> expansion at Blizzcon today, Blizzard Entertainment revealed that it will be launching its own classic <em>World of Warcraft</em> server at some point in the future.</p>
<p>A ‘vanilla’ version of <em>World of Warcraft</em> is something that longtime players of the game have been requesting for years. A classic server would offer those players a way to experience the game as it was in 2004, before expansions and updates permanently altered both the landscape and content of the game itself.</p>
<p>There have been numerous fan attempts to create such a server in the past, many of which have been met with threats of legal action from Blizzard since such running such a project requires, among other things, unauthorized use of Blizzard’s IP and reverse-engineered source code.</p>
<p>One of the more infamous attempts at doing so was the private vanilla server <a href="https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/270165/Blizzard_shutters_popular_private_WoW_server_with_threat_of_legal_action.php">Nostalrius, which shut down in 2016</a> after Blizzard threatened to take them to court over copyright infringement. At the time, Nostalrius representatives said that over 150,000 actively played on the unofficial classic server.</p>
<p>The latest effort to do so was the fan-project Elysium (which was born out of that shuttered Nostalrius fan server), but that project itself shut down in mid-October following its own internal management complications.</p>
<p>Other online games like <em>RuneScape</em> have already taken to maintaining an official classic server for nostalgic fans. In that case, <em>RuneScape</em> developer Jagex says that <a href="https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/287877/Why_Jagex_maintains_two_legacy_versions_of_RuneScape.php">maintaining both classic and modern versions</a> of the game is something that helps it meet the desires of its community.</p>
<p>Blizzard has not announced when the server will go live, saying only that it is currently in development.</p>
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