The main reasons why I would waive on the possibility of playing on a vanilla server once classic hits have already stated.

The uncertainty and security thing as well as the right to complain as a customer.

Another one I might add is that I choose my pserver stay to be temporary, that means playing a bit different: trying and experimenting more, don't grind big reputations like CC and don't leave guild to move up in game progress or don't commit that much to the PVE progression.

For me there are 2 reasons.

- My characters will not get deleted (unless Blizzard stops Classic). I can make all characters in a range of multiple years and slowly but surely enjoy leveling them and playing with them. I am in the position in which I do not plan to play more games than Classic, so I would like to keep my character "till the end of time".

- I am prepared to pay subscription fee for a good service with clean management behind the game. I feel that I would enjoy the game more, if I can trust the gamemasters and developers are doing their job properly and without 3rd party interfering (gm boosting, gold sellers approving, etc).

...why not just stay on private servers? When Classic comes out will most of you move over to the official servers? Is there much of a point?

feel like blizz could be shooting themselves in the foot here.

There is no reason to stay on them. The majority of them will start losing players fast. I already have a group on a private server that is quitting as soon as classic comes out and I will do the same.

You can never be sure that server will stay around long term. So most don't want to waste that potential time.

It’s also very likely that, legally, it’s going to be harder for vanilla private servers to exist. From what I understand, one of the main things saving private servers from consequences is that Blizzard doesn’t have active servers for that version of the game. Light’s Hope for example is closing when classic launches and they’re starting a TBC server.

Which actually, if you think about it, is a really good thing and here's why:

TBC is typically the second-most popular version of the game private servers try to emulate, though there are big Wrath servers. I've played private servers since 2011 and the coding, organization, quality, and stability have all improved dramatically because more and more people were interested in playing. And it's from this experience that people got to experience the game in a fair to good level of quality and it's from here that the Classic movement got any steam. Without private server players, this whole thing is likely not happening.

But they helped set expectations and knowledge about the game across a number of former and potential players.

An influx of decent quality TBC servers innovating off of one another would help educate a lot of former and potential players in the same way, and would allow Blizzard to understand both the size of a potential TBC playerbase and their expectations.

Many people have mentioned security related reasons -- loss of characters, server shutdowns, etc., but something that is not as noticed, but I feel quite important to note is that the data on private servers are very inaccurate. Creature spawns, their event AI (simple mobs spells, etc.), spell proc rates, drops and the drop chance of those items are all mostly best guesses -- private servers never really had accurate data to build off of, especially vanilla. Some parts are scrapped from retail, but many are simply best attempts at replicated the data based on what is on the internet -- old forum posts, WoWHead comments, etc.

I think it'll be interesting to see how many people are surprised at how different Classic will really play. People already reported a few 'bugs' on the BlizzCon demo that were actual 1.12 functionality. So while many private servers try to replicate "blizzlike" experiences, the neat thing is that nothing will really be more blizzlike than the actual product they put out again, based on the data from the real game.

I'm just glad after 9 years of wanting classic realms I can pay to play them. I always preferred a real experience delivered from them, even with a subscription cost.