Not much has been said about the World of Warcraft "classic server" project since its announcement at last year's Blizzcon. However, Forbes has an enlightening interview with J. Allen Brack and Jeremy Feasel about the project and some of the vision that developers have. The clear message from Blizzard through this interview is that feedback and input from the classic community is integral to the project.
The interview covers a lot of ground, but here are some of the salient points:
- work has already started, though it is a "larger endeavor than people imagine"
- announcing classic servers early was intentional to get the community involved to work with the team on the specifics of the project. "We want to hear their feedback in terms of the direction this should go."
- the community will help decide things like whether or not updated models should be used, but the goal is to provide the classic experience
- Blizzard wants to make sure it's "maintainable" -- classic means that the company is "effectively like us managing two MMOs"
- "We're going to try to run the classic WoW on what we think of as the modern WoW infrastructure"
- "Nostalgia is a thing. Rose-colored glasses are a thing. Human brains are not designed to remember pain. And so you might remember the good things. You don't remember the pain." This is what makes bringing Classic to a new era difficult.
You can read the full interview at Forbes, though fair warning that you'll have to disable your ad blocker to do so. Or you can head to MMO-Champion where a poster copy/pasted the entire interview in the comments section of the forums.
Further, you can keep up with the ongoing community discussion on the World of Warcraft community forum dedicated to Classic WoW.