If you’ve been following the classic scene, you’ve definitely noticed that private servers are making a big comeback as the major way to play the game and it’s really easy to see why. 

What Are Private Servers?

People love classic fresh and Blizzard’s been way too slow rolling out Season of Mastery 2. But if you’re an official Server Andy Detected, you may not realize what these servers are doing and why they’re so popular. 

I’ve been researching as much as I can and I’ve been talking to friends who love these servers, so I can tell you the five reasons why private servers are the future classic at least unless Blizzard gets their act together. 

Private Servers Are Better At Classic Plus

*First up, private servers are just doing the plus experience better. If you’ve been looking for the Classic Plus experience with new Zones quests and Dungeons. Servers like Turtle WoW are just doing it better and faster than Blizzard.

My personal favorite Classic Plus system might just be the glyph (Glyph of War) system. That system enables distinct challenges, like the hardcore mode where your character actually gets deleted if you die and we might see that we get some small tweaks here and there on classic servers, we’ll never get Classic Plus the level of Turtle WoW.

*Private server developers have so much more freedom to innovate and actually do what people want and that’s one thing private servers are just doing so much better right now - Innovation.

Innovation In WoW Classic

Isn’t it weird that every made major private server aims to improve and innovate to make the classic experience better? Getting a really simple feature like cross realm battlegrounds took nearly four years from Blizzard and while the popular Cataclysm server Whiteman already offers new features like cross-faction gameplay, Solo Arena Queue and even a PVP Spectator Mode.

And Turtle WoW offers new dungeons that perfectly fit into the leveling experience and that’s on top of the new zones, professions, titles and even music. The simple features like dual spec are no-brainers for Turtle WoW while Blizzard might think about adding them in some sex and this complete lack of short-term innovation is really going to hurt Blizzard long term. Think about how much more interesting Classic Cataclysm would be if Blizzard was committed to innovation as much as they were back in 2004.

Players Are Calling The shots

*But that leads to my third point with private servers. Actually, players are making all the decisions. 

If you’re looking to maximize profit, it’s really easy to lose sight of what’s good for the players. Unfortunately, private servers have really exposed how out of balance things have gotten. Things like the massively imbalanced servers leading to the paid faction transfers and, of course, there’s been the massive rising popularity of GDKP.

Even though I do run a few and I personally suspect they left the about wrath racial, just so they could sell a few race transfers. But on the other hand, you can easily find private servers like Maelstrom where GDKP is banned. Racial can be swapped in an NPC and the idea of a Pay to Win cash shop is absolutely laughable.

*Really, just imagine how fun classic could be if you could implement Turtle Wow’s Turtle mode. It all comes down to the fact that these new private servers have developers like Turtle WoW Shang, a long-time fan of Hardcore WoW and a classic WoW addict.

I played hardcore for three months straight in Season of Mastery and all I got was an icon. But since the developers of Turtle WoW love hardcore, they implemented a title, a tablet and a mount for hitting 60. And having long time WoW fans like Shang as your administrators helps a whole lot with the sense of community.

Related: WoW: What Blizzard Should Do To Make Season of Mastery 2 A Successful Launch?

*I see somewhere along the way Blizzard forgot how passionate GMs’ excellent support is and events can make the in-game experience so much more special.

If you read the pitches from recent and upcoming private servers, there’re no coincidences community. It’s all about how there are real humans that will assist you with your issues within 24 hours. If you make a mistake getting the wrong item, they’ll help you. If you’re hosting a big server event, GMs will actually help you to spawn mobs and objects in the game and turtle wow even offers custom Guild Housing if your Guild’s been active for at least three months.

Blizzard has left some massive holes where private servers are taking over. The private server community has happily gone ahead with new expansions and even new game modes. And servers like Turtle WoW thriving with the Classic Plus model peaking at over 4,700 players. Within the next few years, if you want to play Classic Plus, you’ll have to play it on a private server and that’s why unless something changes, private servers are the future of Classic WoW. Though the short-term future of Classic WoW is Season of Mastery 2.