Home / Software & Gaming / Thousands gathered to bid fairwell to Nostalrius vanilla WoW server

Thousands gathered to bid fairwell to Nostalrius vanilla WoW server

Despite an active player base of more than 150,000 people, Blizzard forced the final shut down of the Nostalrius, fan-run, vanilla World of Warcraft server this weekend. To mourn this loss and send it off in grand style, several thousand people came together in the hours before the server died, forming lines, gatherings and groups, as the world disappeared for good.

At more than a decade old, World of Warcraft is very different today than it was when it began. But that's not something everyone likes, which is why close to a million people spent time playing in Nostalrius, a server that ran version 1.12. That was the last major patch before Blizzard launched the first WoW expansion, Burning Crusade, in 2007 (as per Kotaku). [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s2lq7QXDQo']

But that's not something Blizzard was happy with and with a server that popular, it's no surprise that it was well aware of it. We heard the news last week that the publishing giant was forcing its closure, despite a fan petition with more than 40,000 signatures.

So to pay their respects to the fallen server, players gathered in their thousands in giant gatherings of orcs, trolls, humans and every other race under the sun, to bid farewell. Several videos were captured of the game's final hours and minutes and not only is the scale of the collective impressive, the lamentations as they all say goodbye are genuinely sad. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu-JMqNTn-M']

The hope from many is that Blizzard will come around and perhaps even run its own legacy servers one day. Some studios already do. Square runs a handful for old servers for Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 characters and Jagex offers ‘Legacy Modes' within Runescape.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Do you think Blizzard should offer Legacy servers to its players? Balance might be a difficult, but perhaps players wouldn't be too bothered, since they'd be willingly playing an older version.

 

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17 comments

  1. SE does not have any real 1.0 legacy world when 2.0 came out they lock all of us 1.0 players in legacy world. Due to us having way to many money in the game. Most of us had over 100m so new players can enjoy the game without the market price of item being so high and feeling like there so behind. They made normal world and we us lock to legacy world but it was pretty much 2.0.

  2. it blows my mind that Blizzard sh*ts on 150k active players, like they are fictional …

  3. Simona Draksaite

    there were 800K people playing on and off on that server and they even said “we’ll pay you sub Blizzard if you give us a vanilla server” and Blizzard was all like “nope, I’m shutting down the unoficial one instead >_<"

  4. what a bunch of idiots at Blizzard….Im still pissed when they removed the fun of 40 man raids….

  5. Søren Chr. Nielsen

    I both do and do not understand why they did it. On one hand they’ve got somebody else (as I understand it) running a server for a game, which Blizzard owns and has the sole rights to host. It’s their IP, they can do with it what they want.

    On the other hand, however, I don’t get why they’d not find a way to support this and make money off of it. If people are willing to pay for that they already have, it’d be the easiest money ever made. If people are willing to accept some set of terms, that state that Blizzard will be providing no additional support, then Blizzard’s back would be clear, the fans would be happy (or so I’d assume) and everybody wins.

  6. The problem with Actiblizz is that they have there heads so firmly up their own asses they truely believe they know what we want better than we do and when we say what we want they say “no you dont” , just like at a blizzcon when asked will they ever provide legacy servers and responded with a firm “NO” and “you only think you want them you don’t really”

  7. I played Runescape in its hey-day and they went along with the pay-for-vanilla idea. It’s quite popular and I actually did pay for a month of it awhile back just to go back and check it out again. I would honestly do the same for WoW and I’m pretty bummed I didn’t know this server existed until it was too late because I would have totally been on it.

  8. Its crazy how millions of people would pay more to have something old again. I would for sure resub if they did an HD remake of WoW. Just dont go free to play model. Ever.

  9. Unchain Yourmind

    This is about blizzards bottom line, They know many will go buy the expansion now, Many has played since the beginning and will keep playing. Just wondering if players was offered free server transfers, I have played MMOs and had years of time invested. It is not easy to just walk away. But blizzard also still has a 5 million player base, all you can do is see if you can get a million or so die hard large clans to cancel and stop playing for a few months. That will get blizzards attention

  10. lostmanindetroit

    Blizzard shows us yet again how little they care for their monthly subscribers.

  11. Blizzard “WoW is dying mmm. Oh look that vanila server over their let’s go shut them down it will totally not fasten the process of WoW dying”

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  13. If they’re not on official Blizzard servers, then they’re not active players to Blizzard. Is it cost-effective for Blizzard to create and maintain a vanilla server? Probably not, though, having said that, RuneScape do run multiple servers with servers for the older versions so it may not be entirely out of the question.

  14. It would actually slow the process down. They do not play on official WoW servers, so anybody interested in Vanilla server isn’t actually interested in WoW and is not helping to keep the game alive. By that server being open, the more popular it gets, the more people leave WoW to play on that server which only harms their game more.

  15. Some people who played on the vanila form. Actually are subed to WoW. Because you need a WoW sub to post in WoW forms on most parts. Guess how many people posted on the forms requesting a vanilla server? Alot. All of them removed of course by blizzard. Some people probably unsubscribed.

  16. Mads Furnes Kristoffersen

    The only hope that is left is if nostalrius dev relaunch the server is russia or something, or, if activision blizzard them selves decide to lauch a vanilla server. That’s it, no other realm will even compete.

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