That was until BlizzCon 2017, when Blizzard announced the introduction of World of Warcraft Classic. Here’s everything we know about World of Warcraft Classic, including release date, gameplay and development rumours.
World of Warcraft Classic: UK release date rumours
Of course, the biggest question following the announcement of World of Warcraft Classic is “when will it be released?”. Unfortunately, the team is still in the early stages of development so a release date is still quite a way off. “We want to reproduce the game experience that we all enjoyed from the original classic WoW without the launch experience,” World of Warcraft executive producer J. Allen Brack said on stage during BlizzCon 2017. The team is still deciding on early development decisions like which engine to run the Classic servers on, so don’t expect a polished game ready to play until at least 2018, maybe even later depending on development issues. Until then, you can take a look at our list of the best MMORPGs of 2017 to keep you occupied.
World of Warcraft Classic: Gameplay and development rumours
So, what do we know so far about the development and eventual gameplay for the upcoming World of Warcraft Classic servers? Sadly, we don’t know as much as we’d like so far – in fact, apart from hints given at BlizzCon 2017 and in interviews, Blizzard is staying tight-lipped on the status of development and what exactly the end goal is. What we do know, however, is that the Blizzard development team has found a way to bring back the vanilla servers and make them play nice with the game’s modern technical infrastructure. In an exclusive PCGamer interview, WoW exec J. Allen Brack explained what that means for those of us at home. “The infrastructure is how we spin up instances and continents, how the database works. It’s those core fundamental pieces, and running two MMOs of that size is a daunting problem. But now we think we have a way to have the old WoW version work on the modern infrastructure and feel really good.” In terms of development decisions, there’s no word yet on whether the Vanilla servers will offer any connection to the live servers, nor whether there will be dedicated servers for expansions other than the vanilla WoW. What we do know, however, is that Blizzard has an internal build of the game that is playable, and that the company is in the process of hiring new employees for the project. We’ll be sure to update this article with new information as soon as we receive it, so make sure you check back soon for the latest World of Warcraft Classic news and rumours. Lewis Painter is a Senior Staff Writer at Tech Advisor. Our resident Apple expert, Lewis covers everything from iPhone to AirPods, plus a range of smartphones, tablets, laptops and gaming hardware. You’ll also find him on the Tech Advisor YouTube channel.
