Two weeks ago, a new step was accomplished in the World of Warcraft legacy servers history by presenting all the work the Nostalrius team did at Blizzard HQ. The tremendous work done included an overall presentation of our post mortem documentation and a feedback from the survey related to legacy servers where more than 50,000 players participated.
These statistics are something we are willing to share with you and will be available next weekend. It will help the gaming community, and more specifically the World of Warcraft community to understand that legacy servers in a MMORPG context are much more than the will of a few nostalgic players for a short amount of time. Legacy gaming could take an increasing importance in the game-makers strategies, the success of Old School Runescape being only a precursor.
Long term and successful MMORPG games like World of Warcraft aren't only "another game", but are truly part of the memories of million of players, and belong as such to the history of humanity. Players chose legacy realms not because they are Free to Play, but rather because they consider it as a different game compared to the one it has become, especially when strategics choices made over 10 years changed the core audience of the game.
Legacy servers should be considered as a possibility at all levels of a MMORPG development (marketing, software architecture, configuration management, etc.), starting from the specification. If the game is successful for more than 3/4 years, and if changes or evolution are being done to the game through years, then a need for legacy can be identified and adressed.
Expect additional news from our team during the following weeks.
Best regards,
Nostalrius
