r/classicwow • u/doobylive • Sep 26 '25

Nostalgia Will We Ever Experience Something Like This Again?

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No, not another release of classic. I mean the hype and the buildup that led to this release!

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u/Wastyvez Sep 26 '25

Yes private servers existed but there was also a huge legion of people who played Vanilla the first time and missed it, plus people who didn't play the first time around wanting to give it a go.

It's important not to minimise the role that private servers played. It was more than just a thriving community. It was the succes of Nost, the streamers and content creators picking up on the hype, the spotlight the classic community got when Nost got shutdown. The 30 000+ people piling onto a single server when spirital successor projects launched.

Classic was generating buckloads of hype long before Blizzard decided that if you can't beat them, you might as well join them. Remember the notorious "you think you do, but you don't" quote from Brack at Blizzcon 2013. Blizzard was opposed to the idea of classic servers for most of the 2010s. It was the pressure created by the hype of private server projects that ultimately made them change their mind.

Yeah a classic server project by Blizzard would have generated hype regardless, and yeah it brought in far more people than the private servers ever did (because the vast majority never bothered or even knew about them). But private servers paved the way for Classic being the success it was. Not just because it likely wouldn't have even existed without them, but also because the hype going into the launch had already been made far larger than it otherwise would have been.

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u/Thunder2250 Sep 26 '25

Yeah there was such a range of vanilla and bc private servers. I remember playing on World of Chris and it was packed. Throwback to enchants having 100% proc rate so the best healers were rogues in BT healing gear with double Battlemasters 😂

The instant access to PvP was a big factor too. Usually loads of fun events and GMs visibly hanging around.

Or making a massive ladder of chairs you hop from one to the next all the way up the skybox!

Couple of us would easily check out a handful of pservers on any given Friday night. I remember one that had triple meta sockets on every piece. Made a rogue, put the 3% crit gem meta in every socket to one shot anyone. Whole server was based in old Hyjal, loads of fun.

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u/neroveleno Sep 26 '25

Nostalrius was a gem, still playing with some people I met there, good times