Blizzard Wants World of Warcraft Legacy Servers, Says Nostalrius Manager

Back in April, Blizzard shut down a pirate World of Warcraft server that featured the MMO's early days before it received any expansions. Blizzard met with the team behind Nostalrius recently, and now we know what they talked about and where Blizzard stands on the subject of legacy servers.

"After this meeting, we can affirm that these guys WANT to have legacy WoW servers, that is for sure," said project manager Viper on the Nostalrius forums. "We did everything we could to make this presentation & discussion as professional as possible, which was something that clearly was a pleasant unexpected surprise for the whole Blizzard team, [CEO] Mike Morhaime included."

The meeting was scheduled for less than two hours, but it ended up going for more than five hours. Viper says that Blizzard was "very interested, curious, [and] attentive." Those in attendance included Morhaime, executive producer J. Allen Brack, and game director Tom Chilton. Viper notes that the Nostalrius team was "very surprised about the deep respect and admiration they all had for" the legacy server work they had done.

The discussions that took place included the pirate server's history, how it was made, and other technical details like the anti-cheat system the team created for Nostalrius. However, nothing in regards to bringing official legacy servers to life was confirmed.

"First of all, don’t forget that, in a big company, nothing can be decided in one meeting and they have the right to announce any official yes or no themselves," Viper wrote. They added that Blizzard does have the source code for "Vanilla WoW," and it would take "tremendous work" to get up and running.

"In addition to the technical aspects of releasing a legacy server Blizzard also needs to provide a very polished game that will be available to their millions of players, something existing unofficial legacy servers cannot provide," Viper wrote. You can see what technical work would need to be done over on the Nostalrius forums.

Viper finished his post positively, saying that Blizzard is "now well aware" of all the player who want to play World of Warcraft on legacy servers, thanks in large part to a petition with over 250,000 signatures. They added that Brack wants to keep in touch with the Nostalrius team.