“We were at one time internally discussing the possibility [of creating a classic World of Warcraft server] fairly seriously, but the long term interest in continued play on them couldn’t justify the extremely large amount of development and support resources it would take to implement and maintain them. We’d effectively be developing and supporting two different games.”
~ CM Drysc, February 2008
Sometimes when progress happens, when change happens, it makes us yearn for simpler times instead. That’s never so true as it is with MMOs. These games expand and add on and change like crazy, but for all of the good that that can bring, it also can make things too complex and remove us from what we used to love about them.
Every once in a while you’ll see a blogger muse about a vanilla World of Warcraft server — a classic 2004-era dealie. The good ol’ days. Of course, that’s a loaded hypothetical, for many reasons:
- Blizzard has stated time and again that it has no intention of making a classic WoW server. And as we all well know, Blizzard does not go back on its word unless it’s profitable or amusing to do so.
- The code for the 2004 version just might not exist any longer. Blizzard updates its servers and has gotten rid of its old hardware. We don’t know but it’s unlikely that the studio’s kept a pre-Burning Crusade backup around somewhere.
- Nostalgia often overpowers reality. We may say we want something from the past, but in actuality, we might not really flock to it. Or, far more likely, everyone will flock to it for a week and then leave once their curiosity is sated.
- No matter what you’d create now, we’d be coming at it from a 2013 perspective, not a tabula rasa-fresh perspective.
But let’s go with the hypothetical and play with it a little before letting the dream go. So let’s say that Blizzard decides that a vanilla server is just the thing to rope back in old players. There’s a lot of decisions to be made here.
Pricing. The studio’s not going to do it for free. So it’ll probably charge a standard sub. Would players pay $15/month for a lesser version of the same game they get now? Or pay at all while there are plenty of F2P games out there?
Then what, exactly, do you release? WoW has benefited from a ton of bug fixes, so ideally we’d have the technical improvements of 2013 WoW but in a content-restricted 2004 WoW. I think most vanilla WoW hopers would want the version of the game that was just prior to TBC’s launch so that the old world was the most fleshed out. But would you include newer features? Achievements? Transmogs? New races? Updates to classes? Class balance? Old talent trees? Practically any new object drops they now have for old world zones? You can see how this would be a serious headache from their side.
I mean, we can’t forget that making a vanilla WoW replica today by modifying the current game will be impossible with the current game maps post-Cataclysm. You’d really would have to find an older backup, kind of how RuneScape did for its 2007-era server.
So let’s say that it happens. Blizzard figures out how to put out a vanilla WoW server and the price is agreeable. What would it be like?
I think it’d be a serious shock to our systems. All of the changes of not just WoW but all MMOs over the past decade have gradually been added in while we gradually adapted to them — to the point, I think, where we honestly have a hard time remembering life without them. To suddenly dive into a game that jumps us back in time, stripping away all of those changes in one go, would be tougher to swallow that some might acknowledge.
It’d be a slower game. There would be some fun as people spent a lot more time in the old world lands that they once loved, and I’m sure that there would be a pretty hardcore community that would develop. But some of the people who would clamor for such a server would find themselves becoming very frustrated with its limitations: the very narrow endgame, the lack of casual-friendly content in higher levels, not getting a mount until 40, and so on.
But for the record, if Blizzard put a vanilla WoW server out, then yes, I’d give it a try. It could be really interesting if done right, and I think that there was a genuine magic to the original game that the expansions have eroded even as they’ve added new features.
Bio Break 
Honestly as much as this sounds like an awesome idea… and lots of players would probably love it. I feel as though I have just reached a point where I am done with World of Warcraft in general. I might come back occasionally but it is for the people not the game. I would rather have my rose colored memories of “vanilla” than actually go back and have those tainted by seeing just how primitive that era really was compared to what we are used to. Going back to vanilla means giving up so many things that improved the game-play experience, and I feel like rolling back all those things would be a bitter pill for players to swallow.
I would throw money at my monitor if Blizz offered a classic WoW server. And I suspect that if they offered a single server, it would be overwhelmed. Something strictly pre-TBC would be nice, but I wouldn’t complain if it was a TBC/pre-WotLK. No achievements. Old skill trees. No dungeon finder.
The technical problems are surmountable and the effort would probably be paid for by the renewed subscriptions. Unless they are just tragically bad at code source control, they ought to be able to go back to older revisions. I speak as somebody who worked for a company that wasn’t very good at that sort of thing, but was able to go back and build the OS/2 version of our product from 1997 when a customer waved enough money in our face. The main technical issue would be operating system compatibility. The 2006 code base, when vanilla was about settled, would have to be updated to ensure support with Win7, Win8, and various Mac OS updates.
The big problem is that Blizz, as a company, has a philosophy of always moving forward. No matter how many times people ask for an older version of the game, they will just stare in incomprehension and say things like, “But we fixed all the stuff you complained about. The new one is better. Just play the new one.”
I’d do this. I mean, I completely quit out right at Burning Crusade, so being jarred back in time would probably be non-existent for me. That being said, I’m not sure if a subscription would be justified to myself for such an investment. With so many alternatives out there, there’s little incentive for me to pay unless I was really getting something out of it and actively playing, rather than being casual about it.
I’d do it – but only if it comes with a time machine to put me back in 2004. No time for that now.
No I wouldn’t return. We are all damaged goods, We will look upon Vanilla WoW with jaded eyes I think. Out of Nostalgia I returned to DAOC, and it just wasn’t the same.
I’d do it, there’s not question about it.
The question is how long I would stay. That’s the one I don’t have an answer to.
Like many others here, I think I’d poke my head in. But I don’t know how long I’d stay. Testing out the Panda starting area of MoP (before most simplification is actually noticeable, imho) was like stepping backwards from more modern games. I’m afraid I’ve moved on. Like Belghast, I’d prefer to just keep the memory, I think.
Yes, because I never played Vanilla WoW in the first place so it would be an entirely new game. It’s very much a myth that all long-time MMO players must have played WoW, olet alone have played it from the beginning.
When WoW launched every MMO player I knew (and back then that was a fair old number) had just moved from EQ to EQ2, or stayed in EQ and said goodbye to those of us who were leaving. Within six months every single one of them had stopped playing EQ2 but only one went on to WoW and he lasted about three months. I lost touch with most of them after that but as far as I know they either went back to EQ or stopped playing MMOs altogether.
I didn’t get round to trying WoW for five years and it even that was only in a brief period of ennui after Mrs Bhagpuss and I had tried every MMO we could think of and finally gave in and decided to see if WoW really was as bad as everyone we’d ever talked to about it said it was. It wasn’t. It was quite good. We played for about three-four months, then something else came along and neither of us has ever played it since.
I do marginally regret not trying it sooner, perhaps when we gave up on pre-Scott Hartsman EQ2 and went back to EQ for a year, at which time WoW was around six months old. I’d give it a Vanilla server a go now, although I doubt it would even be a three-monther for me at this late stage.
I would come back for Vanilla WoW. I would however ask them to keep 2 major things:
1) All the work they’ve done on the graphical engine to date
2) Keep the new player/monster avatars (the player ones aren’t done yet, but hopefully sometime this year all the older races will get graphical refreshes).
Everything else I’m somewhat flexible on.
I was a long time WoW player and ran an end game guild for 3 years. Since Pandaria came out I finally quit the game. Just saying so people can see where I am coming from.
I have often thought of the idea that a vanilla server would be a great idea. However on long thought about it I don’t think it would be a sustainable project. The problem is gamers always want something new and exciting, think of all the games you played, if single player what was the replayability of the game, you stop playing games once you have thrashed the campaign every way possible. For multiplayer, once you are “king of the hill” or whatever, you stop and move on.
People would go to it for nostalgic reasons and initially it would have a good number of players, but this would dwindle as players maxed out and then wanted more. The game would get boring and worse the players would know there is more content out there. Of course there would be some hard core players but not a lot. It would be one of those servers where guilds are constantly trying to find enough players for raids. Constantly combing well geared and undergeared players for end game, all the time with players knowing they can get higher and better gear elsewhere in what is essentially the same game.
I may roll a character, but I don’t see it as a long term investment of time. Without a good and dedicated playerbase the game would be too difficult in end game. This would lead to frustration and boredom.
There are over 25+ Vanilla private servers that have been running for many years now. They are highly populated and still have issues. If Blizzard were to release a single or multiple Vanilla servers they would be packed.
To keep everyone entertained they would only have to gate each Raid Dungeon. Alow for a realistic AQ gate opening etc. Which couldn’t be hard they already wrote the content.
And for long term standing on the server just release the new pvp battle grounds and arena’s into the Vanilla server. And keep the vanilla pvp gear where it can be used to raid and raid gear could be used to pvp.
I would return in a hearbeat. Not playing since start of mists, I hate this expansion. Played through all of the previous ones, and through original vanilla. Without doubt I can say, even with the f*cked up balance of the game and grindfest as it was – I want it back. Many of my WoW playing friends feel the same way.
Bring back vanilla wow, it was the best because you worked so hard to achieve your gear.
Vanilla wow will add more money to blizzard because players can maneuever in the past and back to the new wow, so they will never get bored, once they get bored of the play style of mop, YES the playstyle, that’s what old and new wow is about, the playstyle… when they get bored of new, they will go to old, then when bored of old, go to new. Its the perfect way to play wow. Think of it as an addition, and maybe increase the price by only abit, not too much.. probably add arena 2v2 etc for the vanilla wow.
Ive been playing feenix for years now, and the pvp is more balanced in a different way, more skill but balanced, now its too easy, the new wow is more balanced in the easy combat skill style, the old wow is more balanced in the harder skill style, so you cant compare.
old wow takes more effort and the satisfaction is higher, I do agree that the new wow is better in terms of the new raids and dungeons and the new content of instances that you can do but. Its not fun when everyone has full epics. You get your items easy now, back then there weren’t as many places and getting to them was work, so you felt good about your gear because not everyone had epics and u felt good you achieved it. It doesn’t matter how many achievements I get in new wow , I have 20,000 points, I feel its too easy and none of them were satisfying..
People also are sick of being stabbed in the back by working so hard for their gear and then the 85 or 90 epics because useless and grey because they leveled to 95 next expansion and all that work was for nothing, that’s the main reason why vanilla wow > new wow, because new wow keeps going, and majority of ppl excluding the ones who want more content and never ending levels, majority of ppl want to stay at one level and perfect their gear. That is better than the whole egetting your gear all over again. Thatst he main reason why ppl say “im quitting wow after this.” not because of vanilla, but because they just don’t want to keep having to be forced to get new items after 2 years.
I mean keep being forced to level and get new higher items
I will admit though, if u bring it back, ppl will get bored, but they will keep transitioning back to it, after they have nothing to do on new wow (MOP etc)
as long as wow keeps making new levels ppl will quit more, ppl quit more because they have to do it all over again and their gear becomes useless and they cant be bothered killing themselves, not working and wasting their time and money to get the epics for the next expansions level all over again.
This is the main problem that makes wow players quit.
SOme players want the opposite, they don’t want the game to end
BUT WHY?? not make the fix for both sides so you get more subscriptions??
make the old wow to the ppl who don’t want to level and perfect at 60
and make the new expansions for the ppl who want to continue
that is the best idea for blizzard in the future
I think the OP is too pessimistic, not about the type of issues he raised but about their impact. I feel the success of such an initiative would overwhelm all expectations. I am a long time gamer, and I have never seen any game come close to WoW Vanilla in the heart of so many people.
People might get bored yes. But first, it depends a lot on hype. Should a Vanilla server be packed, people would keep playing, because the feelings came not only from the world as it was back then, but also from the cooperation it required and the life it was fulfilled with.
Secondly, a Blizz-supported Vanilla server would offer far more perspective than some isolated private Vanilla server relying on a smaller hardcore community. This would not necessarily end with Naxxramas; everything would become possible – a t4 raid, a new battleground, new items…
Thirdly, the features rollback would easily be dealt with. What would really be missing? Automatic dungeon queuing? Come on. Achievements, transmogs, new races? I don’t think any of those really matters for someone who is interested in Vanilla.
The endgame of Vanilla was massive, and yes it was more of a timesink than it is now. But guess what, it is precisely what fed the epicness of the adventure, the feeling of accomplishment, it was such an incentive for people to cooperate and get to know each other.
So yes, it could be a profitable operation for Blizzard. It could especially attract far more people than the general skepticism about nostalgia usually expects. The main reason why it’s still likely not to be done though, is that Blizzard has more reasons to be afraid of the success, rather than of the failure, of such an initiative. I wish someone able to bear this kind a risk would take control of the company.
People always say, “Oh you just remember vanilla being great because it was new…rose colored glasses, blah blah.” True, the nostalgia factor is there, but there is more to it.
I remember when I (finally) hit level 40 and was able to get my frostsaber. Looking at the monitor, as I mounted my new cat, I felt a genuine sense of accomplishment. Yes it was a grind, but I did it. And honestly when I play a game like WoW, I want to be immersed. I want it to consume my time. I want an accomplishment to feel like an accomplishment. I don’t want everything handed to me, or to be able to “buy” my way to the top. For me, it’s not the destination, but the journey that matters.
Also, just google “wow vanilla servers”…they do exist!
“Nostalgia often overpowers reality. We may say we want something from the past, but in actuality, we might not really flock to it. Or, far more likely, everyone will flock to it for a week and then leave once their curiosity is sated.”
-hahaha go play it againhttps://www.emeralddream.com/info i have been playing for months and im hooked. screw blizzard for not making a server but other people are doing because of that reason.
“The code for the 2004 version just might not exist any longer. Blizzard updates its servers and has gotten rid of its old hardware. We don’t know but it’s unlikely that the studio’s kept a pre-Burning Crusade backup around somewhere.”
-they have all the code for every patch ever realeased since 2004.
“No matter what you’d create now, we’d be coming at it from a 2013 perspective, not a tabula rasa-fresh perspective.”
-again go play https://www.emeralddream.com/info you will find nobody talking about current events. seriously. nobody was talking about myspace in wow in 2007. date doesnt matter.
“It’d be a slower game. There would be some fun as people spent a lot more time in the old world lands that they once loved, and I’m sure that there would be a pretty hardcore community that would develop. But some of the people who would clamor for such a server would find themselves becoming very frustrated with its limitations: the very narrow endgame, the lack of casual-friendly content in higher levels, not getting a mount until 40, and so on.”
-I wouldnt be a slower game it would progress better. i never played vanilla until this and i love it. there is no limitations haha so what if i get a mount at 40 gives you more time to enjoy the game and not rush… the game isnt a rush fest
To Antonio E. Diaz – I totally agree with all your responses to those topics. And do agree that Blizzard itself should make a classic wow server, or a few of them.. Because I personally don’t think one will be enough.. I have been playing on the Feenix owned servers, between both the higher rates and the 1x, and I love it.. Sure does remind me of those good ol’ days back when I started.. I mean there is a few nit picky things about vanilla wow, ya.. so what, Look how many there is today, compared to back then, that is if you played in that era. There’s tons more! I actually played all the way through vanilla, TBC, and most of WoTLK. I ended up coming back in late Cata and staying until Pandaria. After Pandaria I quit for good as far as I care. Because I spent maybe a month playing Pandaria and ended up with 5 level 90s.. Once the dungeon finder came out, I quit for a while. After that I felt little social interaction because of the dungeon finder. And I just felt like the game was rushing… Dungeon finder allows players to pretty much rush through the game, and who wants that besides noobs that always want to get max level in what… 50 hours playing time? and get epic’ed out in another 10 hours of playing time.. And now you can pretty much buy your way to be the best, this is so pointless. During Vanilla and TBC I felt like I achieved something when I got my first mount, and when I dinged 60.
So yes I think they should bring back classic wow.
To anyone who says they don’t have the files for vanilla, your probably wrong.. Considering I have actually looked at the wow private server’s source codes (I know, private servers and actual wow is two different things, don’t lecture me.), and they are actually rather small.. and vanilla itself is only 5GB, the engine to run it is only like another 500mb.. I am pretty sure they have extra spare storage on one of their thousands of hard drives to store that…
Also to people who nostalgia is a factor. Well It isn’t for me, and seems to not be for a lot of other people. I just basically loved everything about old wow.. It was the greatest game I have ever played..
And one more thing, people who say they probably wouldn’t make money off this.. I would be pretty sure they would make money off this.. Considering there’s probably about 10-25 larger vanilla wow servers at the moment. Feenix being the largest, I’d imagine they make a killing.. PEOPLE PLAY VANILLA, JUST GOOGLE FEENIX VANILLA! They would defiantly make money off this, and off me as well. Current vanilla private wow servers have thousands of players online night and day.. And they are only going to get larger because the new advancing wow sucks, and people want that old type of game play style back.
I would most definitely pay to play on a vanilla server. I would also pay to play on a TBC and WOTLK server as well. I feel like if Blizzard could offer these options, multitudes of players who left would come back especially if they could play different expansions as they’re mood changes. In my opinion Blizz is missing out on a huge market at this point.
I have played retail, have the disks up to Lich King, and then went private… didn’t want Cataclysm. I would rather play Blizzard Classic than private classic… and would definitely pay to do so. I don’t think Blizz wants the comparison of old to new… that is why they don’t have classic servers. The classic game was starting to spread throughout the world when they went to Burning Crusade. It was a trip to play on other countries servers too!
Im one of those people who plays on emeralddream… wow was my first mmo, and while we enjoyed it at the time, discussion with friends we eventually came to the conclusion that the thrill we might have thinking about vanilla wow afterwards, was probably just due to the fact that it was new and exciting at the time. This is all wrong, it’s still as good, and still as exciting.. yea you know where to go now, you know how to play more time-effectively, but honestly it doesnt take the thrill away from your first raid, your first epic, even just getting to lvl 60. Yea it can be boring if you have all the raids on farm, but personally I decided not to take that route, so to experience the content in a more slow pace, building a whole new guild from scratch… and you can still do this, many new players arrive all the time, and they get addicted, just as we did back in 2004-05, and as back then 1/3 of newcomers takes a break during lvling and never reach lvl 60 🙂
Blizzard would have absolutely no problem getting a vanilla server up… There’s HUNDREDS of them that have existed for years and are being run by hobbyist. If Blizzard couldn’t figure out how to do the same thing a small group of people in their spare time can but with their own software it would be pretty pathetic. Blizzard is coming up with excuses, as usual. This is not the same Blizzard that created some of our favorite games like Diablo, WC, Starcraft and WoW. Blizzard has been taken over by greedy men and young, thirsty developers ready to feed from the money dripping Blizz Tit. Your Blizzard products will never be the expected epic adventures they once were… Look at Diablo 3 and the new WoW. Enough said, seriously!
I play on Emerald Dream and it’s fantastic. It’s vanilla WoW and it feels GREAT to go back to Vanilla. Retail is just a cluster fuck of WTF these days. It’s no where near the same. It’s terrible IMO. My roommate still plays it, I can’t do it though. ED’s private server has over 16000 people logging in almost daily. There’s even a 1 min queue sometimes during peak hours. The AH is so much better than retail too because we don’t have gold farmers destroying our economy. If ED had just a fraction of the money, advertisements and man power Blizzard does, this server would be so big it would need multiple realms. I promise that.
Seriously, play Emerald Dream. Welcome back to WoW.
Hell yeah, I would return in a heartbeat! Vanilla and TBC were amazing ! I would replay those dungeons for at least a couple of years.
By the way, I find it a joke that folks think ‘they don’t have the code’ – of course they backed up the code ! All major companies back up their key data for 7 – 10 years (or even longer).
Does anyone know about another populated, STABLE alternative to Emerald Dream? ED crashes so much – very frustrating to play these days.
Yes. I would. No need to was poetic.
Well, shit. *wax
Plenty of us play regularly on private vanilla servers. Despite the considerable number of bugs, it’s still very obviously a better game experience than the pay-to-face-roll servers. Now that isn’t because it is such a wonderful game, although it is pretty wonderful. It is because the upgrades eliminated all the interest as challenge. My last experience with WoW was Mists of Pandaria, where I rolled a monk and levelled to L10 while web surfing on my second monitor. It was only at level 11 that I realised that I failed to get the key bindings right and had auto-attacked with my little stick all the way through, without dying or even noticing. Visually it was nice but the baby had left the bathwater years ago.
I would play on a vanilla WoW server if they decided to make some, I don’t expect them to though. I loved the old school feel of vanilla WoW and how you actually had to communicate to do a dungeon, these days it’s just hit the LFG/LFR button, wait a few mins and charge in spamming buttons = win epics!!
I’m waiting for kronos-wow.com, a blizzlike vanilla private server with great quality that’s hopefully going to be out by the end of the year.
I would definitely play the old version. It was harder and everything felt more worth it. Nowadays gear is so easily obtained and profession progression is so easy that it doesn’t feel as bad ass anymore. With the dungeon finder the amount of socializing declined among the server, which was in my point of view very important to the game. Finally, by making one walk instead of handing a very cheap mount at lvl 20, one is forced to take his or her time to actually take in the huge amount of time the designers put in for the actual game. The road to 60 was amazing, the instances were harder, the raids was amazing (40 people to take down a boss made them seem like real bloody obstacles). I found a private vanilla server Emerald Dream (wow-one.com check it out) and I can’t stop playing it. I hope vanilla comes back, newer is not always better and the old vanilla is by far the most fun game I have ever played.
Happy new year folks!