for years but technical problems prevented them from implementing them. Consequently, the Nostalrius team released their source code to Valkyrie-WoW, another long-standing private Vanilla WoW server, hosted in Russia, and the Nostalrius servers returned on December 17, 2016, under the name of Elysium Project, with the player database as it had been just before the shutdown in April. On November 3, 2017, at BlizzCon 2017, the then-Executive Producer of World of Warcraft, J. Allen Brack, announced Classic on stage during the WoW panel. Details of the project were further revealed in interviews: it was going to be a faithful recreation of the original version of the game, but running on the modern infrastructure. A developer blog post published on June 15, 2018, further detailed the technical implementation, and a panel was held during BlizzCon 2018 that explained the development process behind the game. To create Classic, Blizzard ported the original 1.12.1 game data and assets to their modern server and client infrastructure. This allows Classic to share much of the source code between the modern version of the game, which removes the development overhead of maintaining two different versions of the game, and also means that Classic will have all the performance and security improvements added to the original game server and client that were absent in the 2006 version. Burning Crusade Classic In March 2020 Blizzard sent out a survey to Classic players gauging their interest in a Classic Burning Crusade game. After positive reactions it was verified in February 2021 and in the last week of May it became available for download leading up to its release on June 1. Wrath of the Lich King Classic In April 2022, Blizzard announced Wrath of the Lich King Classic, scheduled for release later in the year. On July 25, Blizzard released a trailer with the confirmed release date of September 26. Reception PC Gamer scored Classic an 80 out of 100 and wrote, "WoW Classic is more than just a new version of an iconic game, it feels like a window to a time where interacting with people online still felt novel and exciting." Polygon praised the difficulty of Classic and its overall design to nurture "social connections" in comparison to its modern counterpart, calling it a "faithful snapshot of a moment in time". Since launch, Blizzard has faced some criticism from players for their use of layering technology for