Earlier this year, one of the biggest legacy WoW servers was forced to close its doors. Nostalrius was hit with a cease and desist by Blizzard and so had to close, causing the players who used it to ask Blizzard if they could consider doing some legacy servers of their own instead if they couldn’t have an unofficial version. Blizzard’s response was of interest at first, but as time went on with no more news people began to wonder. The announcement that it wouldn’t be covered as a topic at this year’s Blizzcon seems to have signalled to a few of those waiting that legacy servers, if coming, were not going to be a priority for Blizzard.

Now the people behind Nostalrius have announced that their legacy server is coming back online, hosted by the Elysium Project. From December 17th, the server will be back and as it’s using the same server code and database that Nostelrius was using before it was closed, all of the characters on that server will be transferred over. Apparently stress tests of up to 10,000 concurrent players have already been done and they’re ready to get back online. Elysium have also announced that more information would be on its way later on this week.

Just what Blizzard’s response to the return of the biggest unofficial WoW vanilla server will be interesting to see. They’re already had to closed down once, and might take harsher action this time if pushed. As mentioned previously, Blizzard have shown a willingness to work with people to get up some legacy servers officially, but the lack of a more immediate response seems to have convinced Nostalrius that they would have to wait a long time for them. Not surprising given how Legion is currently ongoing in the official WoW lore and servers right now.

We’ll keep our eyes on this story and bring you more if things develop.