Real Talk on the Official Classic World of Warcraft Servers

Over a week ago, Blizzard announced that they are doing official Vanilla servers for World of Warcraft.

I'm saying this here, in this post, and that's all I'm going to say on the blog about it until there's solid information about how the developers--who are a wholly separate team from the Live servers--are going to approach the topic. That said, I already forsee commercial realities intruding on the purity spiral dreams of the Vanilla private server users itching to come out of the shadows.

• You're going to get full Battlenet integration. There is no way all those new features announced at BlizzCon won't be in Classic.
• They are foolish to not use the new characters models, new character animations, and as many new zone layouts as they can. Some they can't for obvious reasons (this is all pre-Cataclysm), but if they can use the Live version then they will.
• They won't make you pay a separate subscription fee. They want it to be used, so it will--at most--be a separate client. The worst to expect is that, like the Starcraft remaster, it's a one-and-done addon to your account. Why? To justify the investment.
• The mechanics will be a bug-fixed form of Patch 1.12.1. The aesthetics will be as close to Live as they can get. So, in effect, Vanilla Remastered is what to expect.
• It will never be as popular as Live, but it will justify its existence and be the safety value for Live when Live has a content drought; this is, in effect, the biggest retention mechanic for subscriptions that the company has yet to attempt. Classic will go up and down in participation inversely to Live servers having relevant content to do. So long as overall sub rates are acceptable, this is fine.
• If this succeeds, expect a follow-on for The Burning Crusade. Classic should go live in 2019, when Battle For Azeroth hits its first big lull, and if it succeeds then the TBC follow-up will be two years later.
• Expect a lot of the bitchwork of the Classic era to get nerfed or gutted. People want the challenge, not the tedious bullshit.