classic-servers
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The Game Archaeologist: Classic servers and you
Sometimes players don't want progress into the future; they want to regress into nostalgia. I've always seen this undercurrent of desire for classic servers run through the MMO community, manifesting in lengthy discussions about how cool it'd be to play a game the way it was "way back when." I also imagine developers reading those discussions with a combination of shared nostalgia and anxiety over the work required for such a project. I can understand this desire. We form attachments to MMOs based on several factors, not the least of which are when we started playing the game and what we remember most from it. While we generally applaud the change brought about by content updates, bug fixes, expansions, and the like, there's always a part of us that won't let go of the past. That's where classic servers come into play. Here and there, studios have recognized and responded to this desire for gaming the way it used to be by creating servers that deliberately call back to the past. It might seem to fly in the face of common sense, but I don't think it's that strange when you look at the larger video game community and how strong nostalgia gaming has taken root there as well. So what do classic servers have to offer you and where can you find them?
RuneScape is bringing old-school back
There ain't no school like the old school. RuneScape players have spoken, and Jagex has listened: It's time to bring back a touch of nostalgia to the game in the form of pure old school servers, with the exact mix still to be determined. A recent announcement confirms that the servers will be coming back and reminds players to keep voting to determine the makeup of these servers. All voters will receive the first month on the throwback server for free. For those who want more hard information from the development team, a special live forum chat will be held on Wednesday at 3 p.m. EST. Players can also begin posting to a forum thread tomorrow to help give the developers some advance idea of what to expect. If you're one of the 160,000 players who wanted to party like it's 2007, it looks as if your wish is coming true.
Level 60 Love pines for the olden days of Azeroth
We've heard the idea of "classic servers" passed around before -- some players believe that things were better way back at level 60, when Molten Core was the beginning of the endgame, Tier 3 was as high as things got, and you had to coordinate a whole 40 man raid (shudder) just to pick up a few epics. Blizzard has already said no -- they think it would be trouble to run two different versions of the game at a time, and you have to wonder if they have the capability, as much as the game has changed, to run an old server anyway.But that hasn't kept some players from continuing to ask -- someone has even put together a whole site called, cleverly, "Level 60 Love," designed to convince Blizzard to re-offer the vanilla game again. They've got a mission statement, a FAQ and forums, and even a few ways to "help" out (though you could question how signing a petition helps, but we guess every little bit counts).It's not too farfetched -- as they point out, Dark Age of Camelot once hosted "classic" servers, and the idea of legacy raiding is something that's already happening in game. But of course it's up to Blizzard -- even if they feel the demand is there (and it sounds like it would take a lot of demand), they might just see it as a sign that they need to justify the newer content and do more things like the recruit-a-friend and quicker leveling.
