It's a very common misconception that Crestfall is challenging other emulators in terms of replicating the same experience and offering the same product. It is not. All the emulators as mentioned (Kronos, Elysium, Nostalrius) work off a MaNGOS or CMaNGOS core. They share the same bugs and flaws on start up and then proceed to fix the bugs and scripting as best they can interdependent on each other.
If they all cooperated together and shared their bug fixes then MaNGOS would the definitive vanilla client. But they don't. So each of them get their product up to a decent standard but as all of you will have noticed, it's far from perfect.
The combination of Elysium and Nostalrius bug-fixing should bring about a superior product, especially if they retain what seems to be a decent pool of staff. Unfortunately, and in my opinion, there will remain a number of issues that can't or won't be resolved. It would be rude to discuss this on the Nostalrius forums so we'll just reiterate the positives about Crestfall once again..
1. CF will use its own core emulator based on a Summit/Trinity hybrid. But a huge amount of work has been put in to get the core right. That's important to point out because unlike with MaNGOS they haven't gone about taking somebody else's mostly finished product and fixed things as they went along (that is, after release). They know their core, they know what fixes have been applied. In MaNGOS, you have hundreds of fixes by hundreds of different people, some good, and some bad....
2. The max population on any server will be ~6000. There was a hell of a lot of grief over this because people think that having 10,000 players on any one time is a good thing. Clearly these people never played vanilla wow where populations were capped at 2500. More importantly, the entire game was based on those kinds of populations. The limits may have been set in place owing to 'broadband' speeds and graphic cards in 2004, but that also defined things like the economy, spawn rates, PvP, quest hubs, reputation and pretty much everything that makes vanilla, vanilla. The CF perspective is that if the demand is there, then they will just launch more realms, just like Blizzard did. Now if you like population max servers and don't want to be on one with a limit of 6000 then that's fine. It's called choice.
3. Ban on VPN connections. So there are still issues to be resolved here before launch because it has some unforeseen circumstances. But essentially, this is a method to reduce the amount of gold farming as much as possible. People have indicated that this is anti-Chinese. Well it's not, because on the table for some months now CF has offered that community their own, VPN accessible realm if the demand is there. Chinese gamers are really good, they love their warcraft (as the movie sales testify), but it doesn't work on realms where all standard communication is in English. The unfortunate side-effect is the gold farming and selling. If this is/was an issue for you, as well as multi-boxing, exploits of bugs etc, then Crestfall gives you that alternative.
4. Launch PvE and PvP realms at the same time. PvP is a no-brainer. PvE never gets the love being the ugly second cousin. Well, there's a very large PvE community out there. A lot of them would like the idea of a fresh PvE server. Because these people tend to focus on details, they notice the bugs and bad scripting more than most. So not only do they get their very own realm, but they get one that should appeal to their immersive and particular tastes. This also makes it ideal for those that like RP'ing. As for the PvP realm, we now for the first time have a genuine competition for server firsts. Who is better at PvE in raid content? PvP or carebears? With the both realms launched at the same time, we can put that argument to bed once and for all.
5. Progression Through Expansions (PTE). Whereas PS (private server) vanilla is about 80% there in terms of the finished article (we'll rely on CF to raise the bar), PS TBC is not in a great state. All the vanilla servers have talked about progressing to TBC at some stage but this is next to impossible using a MaNGOS core as the current state of PS TBC proves. Crestfall was developed specifically to enable progression because they wrote their own core. So imagine this, you play on a vanilla server that is adequately scripted, has a good population, and end game content is so-so. 18 months go by. Now what do you do? Well, you can choose to stay there, or you can go to another fresh vanilla server and repeat the same process, that you've already done before many, many times.
Or you could play on Crestfall, keeping the same characters, friends, enemies, guildmates and resources for years and years, dropping off at the expansion of your choice.
Crestfall is not offering the same product as other vanilla emulators, because it's not a vanilla emulator. It's an emulator of World of Warcraft, starting in vanilla and progressing through to TBC, WotLK and then by popular demand.
We don't want to compete against Nostalrius, because with the greatest respect, we don't want the fanboise who jumped from Kronos to Nostalrius, then jumped to Kronos, then jumped to Kronos II, then jumped to Elysium, then jumped to Nost again. We don't want realm-hoppers. We want committed, intelligent, mature players who have tried these servers and now expect more in terms of quality. Players who want to progress through to TBC and beyond. Players who can offer constructive criticism and work with a community with a common goal.
If this sounds like you well:
http://forums.crestfall-gaming.com/