Finally responding to fan demand for the past several years, Blizzard are officially bringing back vanilla World of Warcraft. We don’t have much detail yet, beyond the snazzy cinematic trailer, but executive producer J. Allen Brack says “we want to replicate the game experience, not the launch experience,” presumably meaning to avoid launch era server woes.
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In an interview after the opening ceremony, Mike Morhaime suggested that development of WoW Classic has been an ongoing challenge, saying “you can’t just go back to original code.” For now, Blizzard’s official site just says “we’ll have more information to share in the future,” and it seems they aren’t speaking at all about a release date just yet.
Controversy over the unofficial vanilla server options has been heightened in the past year, with Nostalrius shutting down after contact from Blizzard and trying to encourage players to avoid digging into unofficial options. The Elysium Project successor shut just a few weeks ago amid accusations of corruption, and its seems the Lights Hope project which was set to follow it up would now be facing official competition.