Upcoming Vanilla servers...

[packersville]

I may mess around on Kronos while waiting for Classic Warcraft to launch. But Kronos really rubbed me the wrong way with that 7xp thing.

Whats the 7xp thing? Or are you saying 7 x xp? Aka level at a faster rate.

[Desolace]

classic warcraft servers are located in EU so GL same fate as Nost.

[PeaceHammer]

classic warcraft servers are located in EU so GL same fate as Nost.

Not true. I was on IRC with the devs. They haven't made a decision on the server host. Obviously they are aware of the Nostalrius shutdown and they'll look for the best way to avoid the same fate. Russian hosting maybe? I think RU doesn't give a fuck about american laws.

[Mymbel]

I would also say not to give up and keep rerolling on other Classic servers. This is something that Blizzard denies, they consistently state that there's no interest in Classic and other insulting and patronizing things to their fanbase. I can imagine that at the next Blizzcon there's going to be more questions that make them uncomfortable and we might even see some Orwellian scenes with security guards removing screaming fans.

In any case, if it can help, don't think of the whole levelling thing as a grind and don't get into the trap of believing that there's an 'endgame' you need to get to. I've been playing games a very long time (late '80s) and I can tell you that was a very different world of games where people wanted difficulty, challenges, what the masses call 'grinding' and so on. I remember spending countless hours on games like Zelda and Ultima just exploring every nook and cranny. Before that it was Wizard's Crown on the C64 and other roguelikes. My first foray into online gaming was on a text-based MUD where it took about a year or more to get to max level 'endgame' but all along the way there were appropriate and challenging puzzles and dungeons that took sometimes weeks to complete. Back in the day there were no guides online as well and you really had to figure things out yourself or wait for the monthly magazine you subscribed to with tips (if your game was popular enough).

World of Warcraft in the early days filled a niche for a lot of people and that's what the current devs at Blizzard don't get. From the perspective of an aging nerd (I'm getting close to 40), WoW, Everquest and Asheron's Call were like heaven for us. We could game with our friends several times a week instead of trying to fit monthly D&D parties in and schedule them around work, school and families. The grind in WoW was NOTHING compared to a lot of the older games and in fact trust me when I say that from an older perspective it's not really a grind at all, it's always about the journey.

Some things you can do to combat the conditioning you've been submitted to by our jingle jingle, casino like gaming culture that we have today:

1) Seek out and find hardcore crazy games like Unreal World to play in your spare time. You want to seek this one out for sure anyway. It will teach you all about survival in the wilderness and you will quickly keep rerolling characters and trying to survive as long as possible despite the time investment it took to get all the things you wanted. This one's free to play but you can give the guy money for it on his website. He's just a dude from Finland who's been doing it for years for fun and there's a huge community.

2) Keep rerolling new characters on WoW private servers. It's amazing to see that there's 150,000 active accounts and 800,000 registered on Nostalrius, because it shows that there's almost a million people interested in Classic WoW, just on one server. If many of those keep rerolling and spreading the word that Classic still exists, more Classic players will come back for the experience too. There's so many blogs out there with old jaded gamers who miss WoW. At some point probably in a year or two we'll be nearing the 2-3 million mark of Classic players and then Blizzard HAS to react. At some point I can even see this going to court in a class action as many current in-training digital rights lawyers are also becoming aging, jaded gamers. Blizzard will either be forced to open source their code and lay off the private servers or they'll make legacy servers of their own. Don't let the dream die!

3) Think of ways to make the 'journey' exciting for you. Everyone has their different tastes when it comes to WoW, mine's WPvP, so I'm going to actively seek a server where there's a guild like Red Dawn who wants to level up through HK all the way, or I'm hoping Red Dawn will make an attempt to relocate to a server as a group. For others it might be dungeons and raiding, so any of the raiding guilds could be rebirthed on other servers and you could all level together and do all the dungeons and elite quests together, preserving your community and fun.

I've gone through a few phases with Nostalrius dying and as an older person I can tell you that it's a lot like losing a close family member. I'm smiling a bit as I noticed all the 'stages of grief' in the last two days but sped up. I'm now okay with it and glad I discovered that there's still hundreds of thousands of players interested in this. Nostalrius created something huge. Never would I have imagined I'd be playing a game with constant battles going on everywhere in the fantasy world I love the most and you can be sure you'll see some iteration of my crazy feral PvP druid on a new private server. I've also played Retail for almost 10 years now and with WoD I decided I'm not going to play it any more, even though I have several characters at level 100. I haven't renewed my account since last December and don't plan to either, after really thinking about it. I'm just going to make new characters on private servers and do that in my spare time when I'm not managing real life.

HAIL to the Red Dawn! Hail to the Alliance! And be sure you'll see me murdering your scrubs wherever I can and ranking my way through while leveling in every area I can find.

@Dr Doom. You're a really cool guy. I didn't like you when I first met you but after talking to you in guild and reading your posts on the forums I've decided to check my ego and reevaluate you. Would be swell to see you on the same next server as well as Voroshilov and the entire crew of Red Dawn.

Oh, one other thing. Nostalrius was also great because of the truly international community. I mean, think about it... where else but private servers would you see people from poorer parts of the world like Kazakhstan playing World of Warcraft? That's another thing about Blizzard and other corporations; they never tailor their subscriptions regionally. I lived a time in Eastern Europe and when a CD or computer game represents 50%-100% of your monthly income, do you wonder why people pirate stuff?

Like others have said, we're going through an age of greed but it will soon be over as technology advances.

Keep at it, Vanilla guys. Don't give up!

[PeaceHammer]

I would also say not to give up and keep rerolling on other Classic servers....

Great post!

Yeah, I will continue rolling on Vanilla servers, until it is no longer my fav game. Though it just might remain my favorite till the day I die. Vanilla WoW is truly a masterpiece.

[Abathur]

-Snipped-

[Plask]

Why?? So i can spend another six months building up a character......just to loose him? No thanks.

I've talked to the lead dev of ClassicWarcraft on IRC and they are aware of this, they're planning to do all they can to prevent the same thing happening to them. What does that mean? I dunno. There must be several countries immune to this though.

We should have known that French always surrender

[Dr. Doom]

Why?? So i can spend another six months building up a character......just to loose him? No thanks.

I've talked to the lead dev of ClassicWarcraft on IRC and they are aware of this, they're planning to do all they can to prevent the same thing happening to them. What does that mean? I dunno. There must be several countries immune to this though.

We should have known that French always surrender

I honestly suspected this would happen, and not because of WWII jokes, but because of the current political relation between the US and France.

Since the times of Sarkozy, no other country in Europe goes to such an extreme extent to please Washington.
One of the most disheartening things I saw living in France, was how a previously great country has become this defeated, decadent pawn of greater actors, relinquishing the possibility of changing history, to just become a log in the American river. Depressed not only a few French people I came to befriend, but anyone who hopes for a world that isn't just a gigantic Wall Mart.

[Jellytime22]

Valk, Kronos, Alixium, Rebirth... If we just chose one, even if it were low pop, we could make a good server out of it. I guess it comes down to bugs and stability of the server.

[Keldan]

I would say if you liked Nost for the x1 blizzlike thing, go for TheRebirth.net (and then classicwarcraft.com when it pops out ?).
If you want a big pop right now go for Kronos.com or on one of those big WOTLK servers.