Blizzard said this would not be a thing because the don’t have access to most of the old map data. But they must now as classic WoW will be bringing in all the old zones, and that is honestly my primary interest in Classic WoW. However a recent interview said that they can probably port eye of the beast from classic to live. So could they do the same with the pre-cata zones? Give us an npc to visit them? At least the one’s drastically altered by the cataclysm? It’d be the same way they’ve done it for post cata zone changes such as seen with darkshore, and tirsfal glades. Talk to a dragon and get ported back? Obviously these zones would have flying disabled but it’d be cool to be able to explore and such on the live server rather then having to deal with the headache that classic will be. In addition I’d also like to see a flashback npc for the Vale in pandaria.
My guess as to why they haven’t done something like that is because it’s not as simple as flicking a switch. There was a lot of stuff changed from WotLK to Cata, so prior to when they started working on Classic, there was really no incentive to go back and reassemble all those old zones just for the sake of nostalgia.
New portal in CoT. You do a small quest chain for Chromie!
Talk to Chromie.
Get stuff from a few old dungeons/raids.
Talk to Chromie.
Go visit NPCs in a couple old zones.
Talk to Chromie.
Got to portal and defend from those who want the past “untainted” while she does stuff.
Portal opens!
Portal is now available for all characters on the account. Go through once to go to the past. Go through again to go back to the future.
I know, I said that in my OP. Which is why with the new ability to port old data it is now possible to do it.
I think the big give away is a lot of the zones have a time travel NPC that takes you to the pre cata version.
That is why.
Also, it probably isn’t as simple as “well, they did it for classic!” They stuffed the Drums of War code, which actually required hiring people specifically to do that (if you looked at their application site at the time, it was actually funny, literally saying that … ) into basically modern Wow. So they could not really take THAT, then just add in Zidormi to take you back there. It would probably be another thing to convert that old zone stuff to NOW, THEN have Zidormi to take you back there.
Then you’d have the question, “Why would we do that?” They probably just would not want to bother.
There is nothing to “convert” 1.12 is on the BFA client. So all they do is transfer the files for the old zones into a separated zone ID which is accessible through zoning into them by talking to a specific designated NPC. Maybe a bit more then some interns to pull it off properly but it’s not exactly going to be that hard when it is 99% done already just with classic existing. It likely wouldn’t be able to be done until after classic is as polished as it is going to be. So after it releases. But if they can port the code for a long lost spell they can port the code for a zone.