Blizzard won't talk WoW legacy servers at Blizzcon, despite Nostalrius campaigns

With Blizzcon 2016 kicking off in a matter of weeks, the World of Warcraft community is gearing up to hear about the future of the MMO. Of particular interest is Blizzard's plans for legacy servers, which became an issue earlier this year when the studio shut down a custom vanilla server by the name of Nostalrius. This naturally angered participants, but it also lead to a discussion regarding official support for those who want to play vanilla WoW.

The Nostalrius community had its fingers crossed that some announcement would happen at Blizzcon. On the server's official forum, a spokesperson wrote that "if Blizzard doesn't make an announcement to honour their own core values, be sure that we will". Whatever that's meant to imply, it sounds like the community won't be getting what it wants this time around, because Blizzard has ruled out any announcement for now.

"We’ve seen some talk among the community that you might be expecting to hear some news on legacy servers at BlizzCon, and we just wanted to take a moment to let you know that while we’re still discussing the possibility, we won’t have any updates to share on that until after the show," a post on Battle.net reads.

"...What we will focus on at BlizzCon is how the team is committed to making sure we bring you a steady stream of content going forward, and we can’t wait to share what’s next for Legion."

That announcement does point to ongoing discussions about legacy servers, and "after the show" could point to a matter of days or years. The take away, I suppose, is that Blizzard hasn't forgotten about the situation, but whether that will appease hungry vanilla enthusiasts for the time being is yet to be seen.

Shaun Prescott

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.