I think it's time to finally discuss this as I've seen no one else brought up the real problems.

Both sides, who are against and and for those who favor it have both arguable opinions. So I thought I would start a new thread about it, listing all the pros and cons at the bottem of this post that I have gathered from various threads over the year.

As for my introduction and part of this discussion. I would first off state that I started in Cataclysm, having no nostalgia towards vanilla WoW as I simply have not played it. However due to not being able to play it at that time I still was awestruck when people talked about it and I was stuck playing RuneScape, that I have to say.

I don't know if it's capable of Blizzard to run a realm of a previous expansion, nor do I have the knowledge of the costs and programming running this realm. It could be said that it might cost Blizzard more than one could know. Although it can also be said that Blizzard can do it since they have a lot of dead realms occupying the realm list.

I would also like to list that WoW has been recoded many times, as is seen with the removed hunter spell "control beast" as they have removed it and could find no way to bring it back into the game. So there is a problem atleast to why Legacy servers can be more of a hassle to add.

If Blizzard still has the back-up of previous expansions in their possessions, I would like to add that it is unfair to me, with the redesign of Cataclysm that the world before the Burning Crusade got revamped and that it saddens me that I will never be able to experience it. The true legacy content in it's state, the raid difficulty, the roleplay mechanics and the dungeon environment that I as a Cataclysm player had never experienced, and probably never will.

I'd like to add, that if Blizzard somehow sees this (and probably took in record already way before me) that various game designers still allow sale off products that of old age, contain old dated game mechanics and graphics, but are still put up on sale because people take interests into their games.

I can name the Elder Scrolls, with fantasy depth and lore the same as of WoW who still sell their old games like Morrowind and Oblivion, even though they are outdated, more clunky to play and look horrible to the obvious better looking Skyrim. Although take in moderation that Bethesda doesn't need to run a server for it full time 24/7.

As a sidenote, it should be said that the roleplaying part of this game has been heavily diminished and for the most part, forgotten, which the previous expansions did seem to offer more, which believe it or not appeals to people more than the gameplay or the graphics.

So, as I've said I would list the pros and cons, as good as I can. If someone wants to add something, feel free to reply and I will read it and maybe add it. Depends on what it brings as an argument.

Pros:

-Nostalgia (obviously)
-People who want to see previous content that they have never experienced
-People who are bored or feel finished with the current expansion
-People who want to experience said expansion on it's current difficulty

Cons:

-It could cost Blizzard more than can be said
-Blizzard can have problems with the coding
-Blizzard can have problems with running the realms and not having bugs, crashed or glitches that impact the game heavily
-People can get bored and leave the server sooner as the current expansion
-PvP can be very, and very hard to implement

Possible solutions

I've seen people countlessly post about legacy servers but for some reason do not add solutions or come up with a plan to make it happen. Though I am sure if Blizzard plans on legacy servers in the future, that they have already thought it true, so take into moderation about all these solutions or plans as we don't have the knowledge Blizzard does.

It could be possible to let Legacy realms advance into expansions, for example, release a vanilla realm, let it advance into The Burning Crusade after a period or time (or halfway retail WoW progresses onto the next, as I'm sure Blizzard doesn't wanna take away people from their current expansion)

It would create various races of guilds trying to crush world records on content clearing raids and PvP. It could create more competition among the playerbase.

Legacy content discussion list