Nostalrius Shutdown noticed in one of germanys most popular Newspapers

Okay, also translated page 2, here we go.

A classic-gamers writes in the comments of buffed: "The book which has been written is de facto inexistent. Except in memories. There is no other possibility to play the WoW, what it used to be." Not every gamer feels like that. Some of them find the progression of the game is in the bag. But for this particular community, which is playing on private servers, its about those memories: About the first big raid, old acquaintances, the feeling to be a part of this movement 12 years ago. "Vanilla Warcraft is a mystical ideal", wrote the author and WoW gamer Luke Winkie last year about the fascination about Nostalrius, "Its a place in our minds, on which we cant return. But we can try."

Beside the search and demand for nostalgia, the debate is also about something different. Its about the question if and how onlinegames could be preserved. Around the world there is a movement, which is busy finding a way to archiv and preserve videogames. Until now especially gaming machines and console games have been in the thick of things, games which are very dependent on special and hard to obtain hardware. If it vanish, whole games could vanish or only be kept alive using emulators, mostly inofficial replicas running on computers.

The private server as a historical site

Onlinegames like World of Warcraft are volatile on a different level, because they are developed further by their developers over the years. Automated updates override older versions, changing the virtual world and characters, the mechanic , improving graphics. What makes the game attractive for gamers on the one hand is for the others a falsification of history, because it overrides the reality of the game at a point in the past. New gamers couldnt experience WoW the way it has been 10 years ago, unless they play on private servers like Nostalrius. Archivists like Jason Scott of the Internet Archive believes that such projects could be historical sites someday, enabling gamers to demonstrate others how it "used to be back in the days".

The People in charge at Blizzard spoke against official private servers in the past, although there is even an internal interest at it. That there is another way, shows everquest: For the online roleplaying game from 1999 there is an official rubber-stamped fanproject, bringing back the first version of the game. John Smedley, one of the heads of Everquest, said recently about fanprojects and emulators in general: "I always respected the people, which are doing this."

/r/Nostalrius Thread