Blizzard Announces World of Warcraft Classic, Official Vanilla Server

[Guest]

World of Warcraft Classic, the official "vanilla" server from Blizzard, is currently in development.

Blizzard Announces World of Warcraft Classic, Official Vanilla Server : Read more

 

[takeshi7]

This had better work on my PowerPC Mac. Otherwise it's not really the vanilla WoW experience.

 

[Wolfshadw]

Got all excited and then a tiny piece of me died. I misread the article title and was thinking of the original Warcraft: Orcs and Humans!

:sigh:

-Wolf sends

 

[smackndh]

They need to amke sure that all the new addons dont work as well

 

[Martell1977]

The most fun I ever had in WoW was on Kharazan runs with the guild I was in. That raid was just awesome.Then WoLK came out and the gear level up so high I can clear it alone on my hunter.

Sold my account about 2 weeks before Cata dropped and am all the happier for it. IMO, they destroyed the hunter by making the resource system like a rogue...which was the main reason I didn't like the rogue.

 

[jossrik]

I miss the 40 man raids. I'll be interested to see how vanilla they keep it, It wasn't very casual player friendly to begin with.

 

[Borisblade7]

I play the living crap out of a private WotLK server for the past 5 years. So this is cool to see. I have played some on Nostalrius back when it first launched (private vanilla server) and it was cool. But you really learn how bad people's rose colored glasses have made them forget just how bad the game actually was. Many classes had just one spec that actually worked, and so much of the game was just a complete unfun pain in the ass. Its cool to some extent, but it had sooooooo many problems that people forget about. The pvp was a hot mess with most classes having but one usable spec, not good, just usable, and for many it was heal or nothing. The scaling was horrible, balance terrible, and it was a contest of who could kill who in under 5 secs first, if not nearly global them at high gear levels. And dont get me started on the rank system that was purely based on amount of continuous, non stop playtime and nothing more. The questing was also terrible with sparse content at best as you leveled up further, making grinding on just mobs a real thing. Again, some aspects were cool, but it was overshadowed by so many problems that it will be hard to keep current players interested in a game riddled with issues in 2017. Burning Crusade was really where the game should have been at launch, vanilla was like a very long beta.

 

[Martell1977]

@Borisblade7 - Agreed, BC was probably the sweet spot for the game. They balanced things a bit, eased up on raid difficulty a bit and the game was fun. Only down side was darinei and blood elves, which IMO was a massive mistake.
I really liked that you have to gain reputation with different factions to get into heroics and get certain things. It meant that people actually had to learn heir class before jumping into a heroic or raid. Getting the key to Khara or that Orc heroic (forget the name) was a long quest chain, but it made getting it all the better.
Every class had a purpose and the heroics/raids weren't massive cluster f***s. I remember having to actually get good at trapping with my hunter for certain Heroics and most Raids.

 

[berezini]

Kara is a BC raid not Vanilla... Martell1977

 

[kenjitamura]

I wonder if they're going to take a "remastered" approach to this. Where the classes, mechanics, levels, maps, etc. are all vanilla but it will be using the modern day graphics and engine optimizations.

 

[Martell1977]

Kara is a BC raid not Vanilla... Martell1977

I know, I just brought it up because BC was a lot more fun to me. They missed the mark by 1 xpac, lol. But, they will never be able to please everyone. I played WoW for 4 months after launch, then lost interest. Went back after BC and stayed until 2 weeks before Cata.

I play Ultima Online on a freeshard now. No quests and total freedom to do whatever you want, when you want. Started as a swordsman but decided you don't like it? Just change skills and train. No need to make a new char to try other roles.
http://ultima-shards.com/

 

[Martell1977]

I wonder if they're going to take a "remastered" approach to this. Where the classes, mechanics, levels, maps, etc. are all vanilla but it will be using the modern day graphics and engine optimizations.

It's more than likely that all the upgrades and patches they did over the years will be intact. There were a lot of stability patches and I seriously doubt they would return to buggy code.

 

[sather.mac]

Have all the editors on Tom's Hardware been fired? I can forgive having to pause the same video on every page twice but the lack of proofreading is inexcusable. It's a shame to let my favorite tech site go.

 

[southernshark]

It would be better if they came out with Vanilla WoW with an expansion, a new 40 man dungeon.

 

[termathor]

Sorry if this is a retarded question (never played WoW in the first place, but how could this thing be in development at all ?
Just restore the old code (surely was backed up before each major update) et voila ?

Missing something ...

 

[Martell1977]

Sorry if this is a retarded question (never played WoW in the first place, but how could this thing be in development at all ?
Just restore the old code (surely was backed up before each major update) et voila ?

Missing something ...

While they more than likely have the old code, the equipment that it originally ran on has long since been upgraded. Plus, there have been tons of bug and security fixes. Not to mention graphical upgrades.

So the original code may exist, they need to make tons of changes to make it usable.

 

[targetdrone]

I'm surprised they still have the source code.

Sony deleted the Pre-NGE source code as soon as NGE went live.

 

[Martell1977]

I'm surprised they still have the source code.

Sony deleted the Pre-NGE source code as soon as NGE went live.

It's a good idea to keep it for copyright reasons, but it's very possible that they could use the current software and take the time to disable all features from BC and forward, then tune everything for the goal time frame. I'm not sure which would cost them less. However, Ultima Online free shards have been doing the latter. Taking the latest software and re-tuning things to the target time, then adding custom content.