We have a foothold on the official forums!

[Vaulken]

Another battle is won: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20743204221?page=1

They are not discussing legacy servers but pointing out all the strengths of Classic and the weaknesses of Retail. Which is why this thread has not been locked but is still in the vein of the cause. That's a win for Nostalrius, the official forums are are no longer a deaf haven for Blizzard!

[PeaceHammer]

Excellent post. Lists many of the reasons why I will forever love Vanilla.

[XxGokuxX]

The guy who responded with the "wall of no" basically summed up why the legacy server is a nice idea, but won't happen

[RedTempest]

and it's gone.. shame really, was only done reading page #3 and up to that point it was a nice thread with good arguments.

[Dr. Doom]

The guy who responded with the "wall of no" basically summed up why the legacy server is a nice idea, but won't happen

The Wall of No is an excessively long copy/paste to just point out 3 and a 4th attempt-at-argument that are easily debunked:

1) Blizzard doesn't have the code for Classic. Quite likely a lie or at worst a minor issue considering how amateur, unpaid volunteer teams could reverse engineer it, not with perfect accuracy, but with a high % of accuracy.

2) Moneyz. If Nostalrius proves anything is that there is enough demand to have a couple servers be populated enough to cover for their operational costs as well as leave a profit for anyone hosting them. 150k active accounts. Let's assume that only 1/4 of them (conservative number) will actually subscribe. That is 37.5k people. Now add in all the people that would pay to play Classic but don't know, or don't agree with private servers. Given how marketing was never done in Nostalrius and how the shadow of breaking ToS scares people, we can add in conservatively 10k more people. These are 50.000 people, assuming a ratio of 1/25 (probably lower than the real one, but let's go with this to please skeptics) is online at any given time, and how the average online population in retail servers oscillates between 2000 and 3000 people (skipping Low pop servers for argument's sake), this is enough to populate perfectly 2 classic servers.

3) Dev / GM split. Work on Classic only requires setting up, start-up time commitment, followed by periodic maintenance as there will be no patching/tweaking. This will in no way get in the way of the R&D department (or however they refer to it) and new projects being developed, once the setting up process is complete. If the argument is having to hire several GMs, I have to ask, does the act of hiring a dozen level 1 costumer service employees break Blizzard's work schedules? Their cash flow? If yes the company is in a really dire situation and should consider filing for government support soon. If no, then it's a non-factor.

4) Something about going forward rather than backwards.

Newsflash, chronology isn't normative. What existed in the 1970s isn't by default better than what existed in the 1910s. If a simpler product, from an older time, gives people more satisfaction than a visually cluttered new product, people will prefer the previous copy.
Software development isn't anyhow different. There's a reason why people hated Windows Vista and always praised Windows XP. It's pretty rhetorical to say: "Have to keep up with the times, man", but really ponder about it, is there any real reason for which chronology must result in quality? There isn't.

If the issue, as I quite suspect it, is not this rhetorical nonsense but rather pride from the new developers who don't want to lose the spotlight by older versions being revisited, then it's time for the Human Relations Department to step in and remind them that they're not hired to feel nice about themselves but to provide work and results for a company, if they don't deliver it secondary routes have to be taken.

[Kadmium]

Your last paragraph nailed it, that is the biggest issue.

These people working at Blizzard right now, are not the ones who made Warcraft Starcraft and Diablo. They are a bunch of passionless, mindless workers who are there for the 9am-5pm salary, admitting vanilla was better means admitting they have not done a good job (in their head thats how it appears, because of their ego). Some of their current fans have the same problem, they are scared to admit that their predecessors had it right, they are scared to explore the real potentials of wow and the mmorpg genre, so they hold on to this caricature and defend it with dear life.

They can still save the genre, still explore the endless possibility of community driven virtual worlds filled with 13k players like Nostalrius showed us with such limited time and resources they had. But they refuse to.

It is so sad, I would not want to be these guys, they disrespect their audience, they lie to them and themselves, but most importantly, they have no respect for their craft. It is the same as a classically trained composer writing songs for Justin Bieber everyday and lie to the audience "you dont want real music, this is modern and better"

[Corked]

The EU official forums actually have a thread called "Classic Realms" going, and it's been at the top of the General Discussion board for days now. I'm guessing it was allowed because it's actually a thread from 2011 with a blue response.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/872818/

[Vaulken]

It's not over! http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20743054300

[Drain]

"This topic is unavailable.".

[Docholy]

Just a matter of time before it was deleted.