Blizzcon gets bigger every year, but while there has always been one request on players minds it hasn’t been satisfied until now: World of Warcraft Classic is on its way. The news has probably got a lot of people lined up to start paying subscriptions again, Executive Producer J. Allen Brack spoke with Eurogamer in an interview and had this to say when asked about whether the game would take months or years to recreate:
“This is a massive effort. This is a very, very significant effort. I would not expect it to be soon. We actually don’t know when we’re going to release it. I know that’s a generic answer that we give for all of our Blizzard titles, but with this one, we don’t actually know how long it will take.”
While it’s no surprise that a Blizzard game is slated for “soon™,” the fact that they’re doing more than just throwing up the old version of the game in a separate launcher means that they’re doing more to the game–and that’s a good thing. Brack also spoke about his time with the Nostalrius team in which they ran the original Scholomance and even said he would love Daemon and Viper (the leads on the Nostalrius project) to be involved in the creation of WoW Classic so long as they can navigate visa concerns.
Brack even reassured players who are considering coming back solely for World of Warcraft Classic, and had this to say when asked about how long the servers would run:
“Both, I think. One of the things we do know is that by announcing this, we’re in the WOW Classic business forever. Once that starts, there’s a commitment on our end that we’re going to continue maintaining those servers for as long as there is a World of Warcraft. I think there will be people that come and do the nostalgia trip, they go to the Barrens and find Mankrik’s wife, and then they’re done. That’s fine. Some amount of people, however, are going to create a new Classic community and that’s what we’ll be providing.”
That means that our families and partners won’t just be losing us to the clutches of Classic WoW for a few days or weeks. You can check out the announcement trailer from Blizzcon here, or for the future, you can read more about World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth– WoW’s next expansion here.