Legion on Valor already exists. Not as a promise in a roadmap, but as a running server: it is up, people walk around in it, quests get tested on it. It is just that nobody can get in yet except the developers. Below is what has been done there, how we judge whether it is ready, and why it is not opening tomorrow.
What a "second server" means and why we want one
The main Valor is World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — the familiar 3.3.5a with a level cap of 80. Legion is a different expansion: the Broken Isles, demons, a cap of 110, and completely different class abilities.
Running it is not a matter of ticking a box in the settings. It is a separate server with its own program, its own database and its own rules. It does not depend on the main one at all: different characters, a different world, and its own breakages.
Why bother? Because plenty of people want Legion and there are few good servers on it. We have people who know how to fix game cores, and we would rather make a server you can actually play through than one that gets launched and abandoned.
How we tell whether the server is ready
The classic failure of any old-expansion server is broken quests. You pick one up, walk to the spot, and the target is simply not there — nobody added it to the world. Or the item you need drops from nowhere. At that moment a player does not think "ah, a database gap". They think "this whole thing is broken" and leave.
Checking that by hand is impossible: there are almost twenty thousand quests. So every night a robot does it for us. It takes a copy of the game world and walks through every quest in turn, asking one question about each: can this actually be completed? Is the creature in the world? Does the item drop from anywhere? Is the chest standing where it should be?
Here is what it answered last time.
| What the robot found | Quests |
|---|---|
| Everything in place, the quest works | 13,272 |
| The target creature is missing from the world | 3,591 |
| Cannot be checked automatically, needs a human | 1,449 |
| The required item cannot be obtained anywhere | 1,182 |
| The required object is not in place | 109 |
| The server does not support the mechanic yet | 43 |
So: out of just under twenty thousand quests, a little over thirteen thousand can be completed. That is two thirds. A lot — and precisely why the server is closed. The third that breaks off halfway will ruin the impression faster than the working two thirds can repair it.
The useful part here is not the number itself but the fact that every failing line has a reason attached. "It does not work" cannot be fixed, because there is nothing to grab hold of. "This creature is missing from this spot" can be, and it is clear who does it and in what order.
The robot also compares today's result with yesterday's and counts two things separately: how many quests broke over the past day and how many got fixed. That is the guard against the most galling situation in this kind of work, where you fix one thing and quietly break three next to it on the way.
We open not when a date arrives, but when the server can be played without walking around the holes. While two thirds is two thirds, it is too early to talk about a launch.
What Legion will be like when it opens
There is no date, but the rules can already be described.
Levelling five to ten times faster than normal. Not so you can rush through the game, but the opposite: after all the fixes there is so much playable content that at normal speed the road to it would stretch into months. The sooner you reach the good part, the better the odds you enjoy it.
Hardcore where you have to eat and drink. In a normal game food is a way to top up health during a break. Here it becomes a condition of survival: your character genuinely gets hungry and thirsty. The habit changes — before leaving town you check not only potions and repairs but your food supply. What hardcore with no second chance feels like you can try right now on the main server; there is a separate page about it.
A level cap of 110 — standard for this expansion.
What is shared with the main server and what is not
| Shared | Its own |
|---|---|
| Launcher, website, account panel, chat | Characters and all progress |
| The team and its experience | Class abilities — they are different here |
| The approach: test first, open second | Our custom 3.3.5a content |
The main thing to take from that table: Legion is not a migration. Nobody is moving anywhere and no characters are being transferred. The main 3.3.5a server stays the main one, and its development is not being paused. How big technical moves usually go here is covered in our write-up of moving to a new core.
What we are not promising
We are not naming a date, because there isn't one. We are not going to invent a nice-looking one for an announcement either: we have postponed a release before and we know how that ends.
We are not promising the whole expansion will open at once. Two thirds of working quests is more honestly turned into nine tenths than into a press release.
And we are not promising that nothing the robot failed to see will surface after opening. It checks whether a quest can be completed, not whether it is any fun.
Here is what we do promise: when we open, it will be a server people play on, not a shop window. Dates and entry rules will appear in the news, and we will keep posting there about how it is going. You can start on the main server right now.
