Nostalrius weathers stampedes and DDoS attacks to begin World of Warcraft all over again

It happened: Nostalrius has begun all over again, reopening on Saturday having been shut down by Blizzard earlier this year.

There were teething issues as people poured in, the transplanted Nostalrius PvE and PvP servers - on which people's saved characters were resurrected - buckling under the strain. The Elysium team now in charge of the service capped concurrent player numbers at around 5000 meaning queues to play were common.

There were even reported DDoS attacks that took the servers down, causing all kinds of problems.

But Elysium's Nostalrius servers are back up and running. I tested them this morning for myself. There is a tiny, tiny queue on the PvP server, which is the more popular of the two. As we get towards the evening I expect numbers to balloon.

But if you can get in: wow. This is World of Warcraft as I remember it 10 years ago. I rolled a troll and trekked to the Horde capital of Orgrimmar; the auction house area was once again a jam-packed parading ground for people and their spoils. Even the starting zones were busy.

How well Elysium's Nostalrius service holds up over the busy Christmas period remains to be seen. Will there be in excess of 10,000 concurrent players, as the Elysium team hopes, or will the servers collapse?

Remember, there's a fresh-start server planned for a later release (it's not clear exactly when) where people will not already have transferred level 60 characters.

If you want to get involved you do so against Blizzard's wishes, remember. There are straightforward instructions on the Elysium website, and there's no fee attached - though you can contribute to server costs if you like.