Vanilla WoW Servers - Remembering the WoW of Yesterday

Mists of Panderia has been live for nearly a month now and many players have already finished a majority of its content. These days, new content in an MMO usually equals a weekend of furious play that ends with new raiding content so a person’s gear score can go up. For an aging MMO like World of Warcraft, the most people can do when they reminisce about a time when they or someone they knew achieved a legendary thing. MMOs are quickly becoming the preverbal bench on the park where two old men sit and play chess and talk about yester-years and the WoW that used to be.

These were the good old days... Priests could mind control people off of cliffs, Warriors were op and there was an every-present threat of open-world pvp. In those old days, even the raids were harder. Players couldn’t solo Molten Core, they had to work for weeks, even months to attune themselves to give it a chance. There wasn’t any need to form a retro guild to go do old content that has stayed in the game. There are thousands of trends in MMO gaming that used to define this game as we moved from the World of Everquest to the achievement farming it is today.

Somewhere before WoW became the Farmville Pokémon that exists today, the old gamers who came from EverQuest to play in the world of Warcraft 3 claim that the old ways really were the best. WoW made you work for those victories, WoW made you leave town and enter the lonely, harsh world of Azeroth. But were they right? How can you know? MMOs can be depressing to play because the ways that once were are always lost on patch day and once the patch is live there is no turning back time to replay…or relive them.

But yet, at least for World of Warcraft fans, there are an ever-growing number of free to play WoW servers set at different points the game’s development. Take, for instance, this “Vanilla” WoW server. On the Emerald Dream you can still play WoW when in its first iteration. This WoW is before the coming of the Lich King, before the Burning Crusade, and before the Breaking of the World. World of Warcraft version 1.12.1 was a patch released shortly after release and adjusted the riding skill needed for mounts and really set the stage for what you could expect from Blizzard in terms of support http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_1.12.1.

But this is not all the vanilla servers have to offer. They often boast unique traits and hardships that the hardcore gamer crowd loves. Take Emerald Dream for example.

Emerald Dream opened its server on August 25, 2012 and promised several things to limit how quickly people progress:

1x Experience Rates 1x Profession Rates 1x Drop Rates Fully Scripted Dungeons and Raids Battlegrounds World PvP Pathfinding Gradual content release No gear rewards

Reportedly, there are approximately 1500+ people on at any given time. Raid guilds and even just guilds are still relatively new buy should be forming soon.

Emerald Dream is part of a server group called Feenix Server. This group is a closed-source haven for stable, private, free to play vanilla WoW servers. With the opening of Emerald Dream, there are currently 4 servers available with differing customizations.

The other 3 servers in the Feenix group include 2 other Vanilla servers and a Burning Crusade one:

• Warsong 1.12.1
• Vanilla Wow Realm
• Perks
• Highrate 12x leveling
• Blizzlike raiding
• Naxxramas Progression
   
• Al'Akir 1.12.1
• Vanilla Wow Realm
• Perks
• Instant 60
• Blizzlike raiding
• BWL/AQ40 Progression
   
• Archangel 2.4.3
• Burning Crusade Realm
• Perks
• Highrate 14x leveling
• Blizzlike raiding
• Karazhan/Gruul's Lair progression
• Season 1 Arena (Season Ladder)

To apply and play on these servers, head over to: https://www.wow-one.com/ and register for an account. The WoW client and your account will all be free to download and subscribe.

Here is a video from one of the Feenix Servers and their first AQ40: