I am super surprised by this.

Shortly after the BlizzCon opening ceremony on November 2 (on or around 1pm PDT), players will be able to download the same in-development BlizzCon WoW Classic Demo that will be playable on the show floor. Players will have a chance to explore and enjoy a limited questing experience through a pair of classic early-level zones—one Horde and one Alliance—and experience firsthand our recreation of the original Azeroth.

Once the demo is live, you’ll be able to play until 10am PST on November 8, giving BlizzCon attendees a chance to check it out again once they get back home.

Not much more info than that, but it should be curious to see what those crazy people are up to. I have a feeling that these zones are going to be packed for this, even if you do have to pay to get it. If they don't have the current shared-tagging of enemies systems, it'll be fun to see how long it takes to get your Kobold candles in Elywnn Forest.

Something about the concept of putting out a demo for an old game/sort of remaster comes off as really strange to me. Like, who will be interested in this ? I would think the appeal of classic WoW is the fully packaged experience for the vast amount of people interested. Also, it's not like this demo will offer anything of significant difference from what people can get out of private servers.

Lots of people are interested for the sheer novelty. I also think the drop-off within an hour of play will be staggering. This is all predicated on WoW Classic being essentially the same experience as Vanilla.

Really curious how they're going to handle all the skill and talent stuff. There is absolutely no way they just roll out that old talent tree and call it a day. How much can one fiddle with the old model before it stops feeling like vanilla WoW? If this actually comes out one day I'll definitely give it a go. Would be fascinating to see how this realistically impacts the player base.

@zomgfruitbunnies: That's my biggest curiosity. I'm more interested in just having the world be vanilla WoW rather than rolling back all the quality of life updates and new classes, etc. I'm fine with experincing the new balance between users; I just want to experience the world and community life as it was before the expansions.

There are many ways they can go about this correctly and incorrectly. Give me any one of those correct ways and I just might be interested.

@zomgfruitbunnies: I don't think they can touch up on skills and talents without having to dive deep. No matter what they would be trying to "fix" it would just eventually lead to pulling the thread more and more. Vanilla might be flawed, but the options are really just leave it as is or complete redesign.

Would having two different versions of Classic servers be an option? Classic and Classic Plus. I could see them not having enough resources to support more than one version of Vanilla though. I guess the amount developers they can allocate to Classic depends on how popular Classic will be.

I really dislike the new WoW skill trees if you can even call them skill trees it's more like pick these extra skills, Really hoping i can make a Reckbomb paladin http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Reckoning_Bomb

I am okay with them keeping the free switch talents don't wanna pay 10 g :D.

@soulcake: Reckbomb is already patched out with the version they're going with

Sixty Five dollars though? That seems kinda crazy to me.

I don't think you can do things like switch talent trees or make any real changes, no matter how small, because they could have a significant impact on changing the game. People said they wanted vanilla WoW and as far as I know Blizzard said it will be vanilla WoW. I'm pretty sure they already said which patch it will be.

I can't see them going for a warts and all approach to this. That's crazy. The game was riddled with bugs and bad design decisions back then. I'd wager rolling back all the QoL changes would make it feel unplayable to a significant number of players who never experienced vanilla. Or maybe that's good, because it would give them some perspective and appreciate just how far we've come since launch.