Having successfully resurrected the popular Nostalrius vanilla World of Warcraft servers following last year’s Blizzard shutdown, Project Elysium gives players a chance to take a fresh stab at old school player-versus-player with a brand new vanilla PVP server. It’s going to be so crowded.
World of Warcraft has come a long way since it launched back in 2004, and while plenty of players are happy with the latest official developments from Blizzard, many feel that the game was at its best during the first couple of years, back when things were much more difficult and complicated. When Blizzard shut down Project Nostalrius in April of 2016, the popular free-to-play vanilla fan servers had some 150,000 active users spread between two servers.
After Blizzcon 2016 came and went without a Blizzard announcement about official vanilla servers, Project Elysium brought the two Nostalrius servers back, and now it’s expanding. Saturday, January 7 marks the launch of the Elysium PVP server, a completely fresh start for folks who enjoy their leveling with a side of getting ganked. The server is scheduled to go live at noon Eastern time on Saturday, after which point the project’s ability to handle a massive influx of players will be put to the test.
The free-to-play fan servers are definitely not Blizzard-sanctioned, so play at your own risk. Knowing that a shutdown notice could come at any time is part of the excitement.
Check out the Project Elysium website (via Eurogamer) for info on what you’ll need to do in order to play some old school World of Warcraft this weekend.