Dear Blizzard,

I am writing this on behalf of the community of the Nostalrius Begins vanilla pr

ivate server.
Let me start out by talking about the version of the game when released
back in 2005. Immediately from release, the game captured the attention of many
gamers around the world, gaining 6 million subscribers within a year. There were
realms for different languages and locations all over the world catering to pla
yers interested in PVP content, PVE content, and RPPVP content with seperate ser
vers dedicated to each of the three. Each server even had its own unique reputat
ion and community that are still talked about to this day, even though they were
all realms for the same game. This was one of the most incredible aspects of Va
nilla WoW.
The World of Warcraft in its original form was incredibly challenging, t
ime consuming, community-oriented, and vast beyond belief. Players undoubtedly b
onded with one another and created friendships that extended beyond the MMORPG w
orld due to the fact that the game not only required this for the most successfu
l outcome, but essentially promoted this sense of community. You could not be a
top end player, whether it be in pve or pvp, without full cooperation of a team
of players. For pve content specifically, after passing through the monotonous a
nd vigorous pre-raid gear farming, one was finally able to join a raiding guild
with a team of 40 players that scheduled multiple sessions weekly to spend hours
wiping and progressing on difficult content to get the best gear in the game. V
entrilo, a voice communications application, became a household name thanks to W
orld of Warcraft as guilds theorycrafted, communicated, and just hung out with e
ach other. One of the great things about Vanilla WoW is the amount of time and e
ffort it took to reach the level cap alone. This ensured that each player at lev
el 60 had a solid base of knowledge of their class and truely cared about their
character, much more so than today's game. This version of your game is still un
paralleled to this day, shown obviously by the attempts to recreate the experien
ce through private servers.
I remember being introduced to the game shortly before the Burning Crusa
de expansion was released, never experiencing end game vanilla WoW while it was
still retail. The Burning Crusade was even a bigger hit, getting up to 10 millio
n subscribers as you well know. Different aspects were added such as a complete
new zone with an exciting new story line ("You are not prepared!"), the best que
sting World of Warcraft has ever seen along with new daily quests, heroic dungeo
ns, arenas, flying mounts, the first neutral major city of Shattrath, and two br
and new races for players to play as. End game raiding remained challenging and
unique. While some argue between the two, these two versions are by far consider
ed the best versions of World of Warcraft over any other expansion by those who
have played them all.
Trying to convey this to players who missed out on the beginning expansi
ons but joined World of Warcraft later is nearly impossible. One of my favorite
things about Nostalrius was when retail players would come to play Vanilla for t
he first time. Many were amazed and intrigued just as the world was when we were
first introduced to the game in 2005. Your newer players can only find this out
by playing the original game itself, which currently is unfortunately impossibl
e legally. This leads to your current and new subscribers with a lack of underst
anding of the origins of the game they are playing, whether if they were interes
ted or not. As your retail product moves further and further away from the game
that it started as, players are beginning to look to alternatives. There have be
en countless requests for legacy servers and you continuously ignore the request
s of your loyal fans. This, in my humble opinion, is why you are losing so much
support. There is the infamous response one of your engineers has to this questi
on being posed at Blizzcon, "You think you do, but you don't" want legacy server

s. A company is only as good as its consumers, especially in an instance such as

this where the consumers provide the community. A company not listening to its
consumers is not a very good company at all. It is this aspect of your public re
lations that is losing your business, not the private servers "stealing" your cu
stomers because they make up for your lack of competence.
As a result, people have taken matters into their own hands with numerou
s private legacy servers spawning from groups of friends who wish to experience
World of Warcraft as it once was. There are many realms that change your game ad
ding different experience rates, pay to win services, along with many other alte
rcations. This is a shame. All of these private servers are an attempt to recrea
te what we once had, what you once offered. Nostalrius is one of the few servers
around that created a server almost exactly as you had it, doing the game immen
se justice. They even added some major improvements to your game. They increased
the server size to over 7 times that of a retail vanilla Wow server, while addi
ng a dynamic respawn timer so the population could quest and farm with similar c
ompetition as it was in Vanilla. They made one big realm where people of all nat
ionalities interacted, adding a new element to the community. There were constan
t raids going on, constant battlegrounds going on, and always a lot of people yo
u would see out in the world (one of the things people loved most about WoW in i
ts early stages, and one people miss most about it now). This further increased
the sense of community that was once so incredible. It even enhanced it. They di
d all of this AND dealt with the lag that it initially brought through creative
problem solving.
There is a reason "Blizz like" servers for vanilla and TBC WoW are stri
ved for. If you look which I am sure you have, these startups by small groups tu
rn into servers such as Nostalrius, which had 15000 people on at one time at its
peak on only the PVP server. Think of the above topics of vanilla World of Warc
raft and how challenging and time consuming it is. Then think of a private serve
r and the instability, professionalism or lack thereof (though Nostalrius had gr
eat professionalism), and illegality that comes with it. When you consider those
topics, it truely defies the statement of your engineer that your consumers don
't want legacy servers. People are willing to risk spending weeks of their time
knowing full well that it can be taken away just like you are doing now with Nos
talrius. This is completely your right as it is your product.
With that being said, it is becoming more and more clear that you just a
re not listening to your most loyal fan base. Arguements are made that the serve
r was popular mainly because it was free to play, but from personal experience I
can tell you every single person who spent that amount of time leveling to 60 w
ould have paid money to be able to play a game that is ten years old, and that i
s only people who are playing the game illegaly. Imagine the new AND renewed int
erest a legal legacy server would bring. Nostalrius has gone to show that there
is still immense interest from not only nostalgic gamers, but also gamers of new
generations that didn't get to experience Vanilla WoW when it first came out. I
f an illegal offshoot of your game grabbed the attention of almost 1 million acc
ounts, then why do you deny that the interest is there? The staff of Nostalrius
has no doubt done an amazing job to reproviding this service, and they have gone
to show that it can be provided and even improved!!
I strongly reccommend that you reconsider your position on making legacy
servers. The interest is most obviously there, as well as the support. If a tea
m of 30 people doing this for nonprofit with the risks they have taken and the t
ime they have put in, can create a community as passionate and alive as Nostalri
us, imagine what you could do. The creation of legacy servers does not admit tha
t your current version of the game is broken. Rather it recognizes the different
stages involved in expanding a game, and recognizes the importance and differen
ces in each expansion, allowing for comparisons to be made. It is a way of payin
g respect to the greatest game ever made, that being the Vanilla and TBC expansi

on of World of Warcraft. Instead of an admission of the game currently being bro

ken, creating a legacy server would be honoring the work that you have done in t
he past. It is an injustice for the most amazing game ever created to not be pro
vided. Providing legacy servers while working on a retail product is not mutuall
y exclusive. There is support for both, and it is incredibly easy to see. I hope
before long, you can see the situation as your current and past consumers view
it. I think it would bring an incredible and needed boost to your company as far
as WoW goes, especially in terms of fan support, which is the most important as
pect of a community oriented game.
To the staff of Nostalrius, thank you so much for providing this service
. Even if Blizzard truely never does support a legacy server, the work you have
done has been life changing for those who were involved. The selflessness you sh
owed by dedicating the time you all dedicated did not go unnoticed. Blizzard you
would be wise in turning to the staff of Nostalrius in helping you create this
legacy server, as they have already proven their capabilities. I really hope you
reconsider your position, and I hope the community of World of Warcraft is once
again invigorated like it was in Vanilla Wow and like it was with Nostalrius. S
peaking for all of Nostalrius I can only imagine how much more amazing the proje
ct would have been and the interest it would have garnered had it been Blizzard
sponsored, and that is saying alot because the project itself was simply incredi
ble.
Thanks for taking the time to read a humble gamer's opinion on this matter.
Best wishes,
Snneaky
level 60 gnome rogue.