Blizzard will discuss WoW legacy servers only after Blizzcon 2016

With BlizzCon 2016 just around the corner, the World of Warcraft community has been eagerly waiting for Blizzard to announce their plans for official legacy servers. However, the gaming developer has revealed that the team will not be discussing the issue until after the event.

"We've seen some talk among the community that you might be expecting to hear some news on legacy servers at BlizzCon," J Allen Brack, executive producer and senior VP at Blizzard Entertainment, said in a post on the WoW forums. "We just wanted to take a moment to let you know that while we're still discussing the possibility, and we won't have any updates to share on that until after the show."

In April, Blizzard issued a cease and desist letter to the team behind Nostalrius, the independent World of Warcraft server hosting a "vanilla" version of the game, forcing its closure and sparking a fierce backlash from the community. At the time, the group had 800,000 registered users and 150,000 active players.

A petition calling on Blizzard to allow Nostalrius to continue garnered over 270,000 signatures and the support of former WoW team lead Mark Kern who promised to personally deliver the petition to Blizzard president Mike Morhaime.

Since then, Blizzard Entertainment has had talks with the Nostalrius team, inviting them to the company's Irvine, California, headquarters to discuss the issue. However, the company said while they do respect fans who enjoy a classic Warcraft and have been discussing the possibility of classic servers "for years", they have a responsibility to protect their intellectual property.

Dubbing the upcoming BlizzCon a "golden opportunity for [Blizzard] to announce their plan for legacy realms", the Nostalrius team called on the WoW community to stand out at the event and wear T-shirts representing their campaign.

However, after months of radio silence, Brack said the development team has been busy working on the launch of WoW's sixth expansion, Legion, getting the Return to Karazhan patch ready and prepping for BlizzCon.

"You've heard us say that the launch of Legion was just the beginning of the story we want to tell in this expansion. What we will focus on at BlizzCon is how the team is committed to making sure we bring you a steady stream of content going forward, and we can't wait to share what's next for Legion."

The Nostalrius team said earlier this month that Blizzard was well aware of the need for official classic servers, noting that players were also ready to pay a subscription.

"According to the discussion we had since our official meeting at their headquarters, they now have everything in their hands to fulfill the large community request for Legacy servers, solving all the previous technical issues they highlighted during the feedback they provided," the Nostalrius team wrote in a post earlier in October. "As a consequence, if Blizzard doesn't make an announcement to honour their own core values, be sure that we will.

"In the end, pleasing the community is the only thing which should matter."