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After years of fan clamoring, Blizzard has announced it’s working on World of Warcraft Classic, an official recreation of original version of the game, often called “vanilla WoW.” Players have been hosting unofficial versions of vanilla WoW on private servers for years, though Blizzard has shut down popular ones to protect its copyright, most notably fan server “Nostralius,” which shut down in 2016.
We spoke to World of Warcraft executive producer J. Allen Brack and senior game designer Jeremy Feasel at Blizzcon 2017 about the intricacies bringing a 13-year-old version of the game back to life, and what players can look forward to when the World of Warcraft Classic is (re)born.