Thousands of World of Warcraft fans voiced their desire for vanilla servers earlier this year. The shutting down of Nostalrius, the most popular of classic servers, quickly became a blazing hot topic that forced a response from Blizzard. While that response wasn't supportive of free servers, and Nosalrius' passing resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of characters, its death wasn't as permanent as many thought.
A team of Nostalrius fans have been working on what they call the Elysium Project, an ambitious undertaking to deliver the world's most accurate vanilla World of Warcraft experience. It's currently wrapping up years of testing with an anticipated launch date of December 17th.
Its launch announcement was made with a trailer, which can be seen below:
This free server is a direct representation of the early days of World of Warcraft, which is remembered both in fond and hostile terms. Those who have played on Nostalrius or Elysium's test server have been surprised by just how rudimentary vanilla World of Warcraft is, with a shortage of quests and imbalanced class designs. But there was something strangely charming about it all. If nothing else accomplishments meant something much greater in those days.
Elysium's creators have encouraged server meet-ups during testing, and will continue to do so after the official launch this month. In this regard, the server replicates the spontaneous and social open-world interactions that defined the early days of World of Warcraft.
You can read more about the Elysium Project here.
