Want to experience World of Warcraft exactly the way you did when it first came out? Blizzard has started up a new thread tree to find your old friends and guild mates, just ahead of the upcoming release of World of Warcraft Classic.

Serving like a multi-branched personals section, the tree serves to find old guildmates from the original vanilla run of WoW, from 2004-2006. All handily linked, you start by choosing whether you were Alliance or Horde, then the type of server you were on–normal, role-play, PvP, or RP/PvP. Within each type of server are listed all the different server names, each linking to its own thread where can post your old character information (no personal information, for safety’s sake), what guild you were a part of, and specific people you’re looking for, if any.

It’s an interesting upgrade to an old fashioned idea: using the personals section in the newspaper to find someone. It appears to be just as effective. Part of the problem rests with the users; you have to remember the information. You’re much more likely to find the specific friend you want to reconnect with if you can remember your guild name, your character name, race, and class, and their character information. It’s easier to remember if these people played a large part in your life, but most posters have forgotten things over the past fifteen years. The threads are semi-successful, with some able to reconnect with old friends. But most server threads have posts in the single digits, their searches unanswered.

It’s fun to read the posts of those who have reconnected. The nostalgia is real as they talk about other guild members, and even some big events and raid that happened. There’s even a few apologies from those who played when they were younger and in their teenage years.

The tree is well built as well. The servers within each area are all organized alphabetically, all with functioning links, and a link in each thread back to the beginning, so it’s easy to restart if you had characters in different factions and on different servers. It’s very clean and professional looking, and well organized.

Though the “personals tree” hasn’t been an explosive success, it has lent to some friends reconnecting. And those few rekindled relationships are well worth the effort put into such a big project.

World of Warcraft Classic goes live worldwide on August 27.