Can Classic WoW Be Faithfully Recreated With The Meta-Knowledge and Community We Have Now?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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I remember the first day I installed World of Warcraft. I was sitting at my ancient little laptop, in a dimly lit, shoe-box bedroom watching the installation progress slowly tick by for the cue to put in the next disc. It was nearly Christmas in 2004, a bitter cold weekend even for upstate NY, and I was eighteen years old; home for the holidays from my freshman year of university. I was a different person then, the internet was a different place, and MMOs were a different genre. In many ways WoW was revolutionary, albeit standing on the admittedly broad shoulders of Everquest, and it was most player’s first foray into an online virtual world. How old were you in 2005? Had you played any MMOs before WoW? For some of you, perhaps (hello 40+ year old veterans!), but not for most. What made WoW so revolutionary wasn’t the classes, or the graphics or the coding. It wasn’t the server stability or loot tables or PvP mechanics. It was the scope. WoW reached millions of players. What made WoW so revolutionary was the people; the community. If WoW had been a single-player experience I doubt many people would have made it to level 60. It was the vibrant, living world that drew people in and held them there fastidiously.

Even if Blizzard could meticulously and faithfully recreate a Classic WoW server, I would posit that it is impossible to faithfully recreate a Classic WoW experience because the experience was far more about the community than the coding. And that community has changed.

We possess too much Meta-Knowledge now. There are no mysteries remaining. We have theory-crafted, calculated, postulated, mapped and demystified every quest, stat, mechanic, loot table, boss fight and profession.

The MMO genre has changed. It is no longer about forging friendships, exploration, shenanigans and leisure. The genre is hyper-focused on speed, efficiency, min-maxing, best-in-slot, ideal raid comps, competition, ranking and “firsts”.

Internet communities are no longer welcoming, supportive, inclusive and adventurous (although one could argue they never were). In retail people go out of their way to interact with strangers as little as possible; blocking all chat channels except guild and whisper, doing ten LFG dungeons in a row without a single word being typed in chat, running right by each other in the world with not so much as an emote. Trying to get into PuG groups for PvP or PvE tends to be an exercise in achievement links, raider io scores and relentless meta-hunting.

There is literally no reason to believe that recreating Classic WoW servers will be able to miraculously “flip the switch” on 15 years of personal, genre and internet maturation. The beating heart of 2005 World of Warcraft was the community - the naivety and inexperience and sense of mystery and wonder. Meticulously recreating that body without that heart is a hollow, senseless plea to nostalgia that is destined to underwhelm.

We think we do, but we don’t?

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I didn’t play during vanilla, and I’m planning on creating/joining a guild of people who want to discover how the game works instead of looking at guides or video tutorials.

I have some wow experience since I started playing at the last months of TBC, so it will not be completely a new experience.

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Of course it cannot re-create the experience of 15 years ago.

Life has one direction: forward.

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Of course it won’t be the same experience. That’s impossible.

But… that’s not what people want. They want the game they fell in love with years ago, back. And with it, intrinsic to the game, comes new experiences and new friends.

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No. And that’s okay. We aren’t asking for a frickin time machine.

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Nope, right off the bat folks are going to correct past mistakes, starting with the class selection screen during character creation.
/evilgrin

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What’s the point of this? We’re getting what we want.

Where we go from here is a choice Blizzard leaves up to us.

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No, but we can get an authentic as possible museum piece with a few modern trappings like a modern client and BNet integration.

I think we all knew we couldn’t recreate the initial experience, but many people asked for Classic anyway as this game has the game mechanics they love.

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Exactly. This is not to say we cannot enjoy something again in a different way. Heck, there are some books I like so much I have read them multiple times. It will never be the first time again, but it is still enjoyable.

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I’m 39, at the time I was 25. Nothing can replace the feeling of your first mmo. I started in UO back in 1997. The idea of being in a world with thousands of other people was unreal. Around 02/03 I got into FFXI which was amazing. Different races, amazing classes, just an all around awesome experience. In early 05 when I decided to try the new game, World of Warcraft, I was hooked. Having the hot bars changed the way I looked at MMOs. So WoW was, in its own right, and ground breaking experience for me. The graphics were amazing at the time. A bit cartoony, unlike FFXI, but very rich.

Can 2005-2006 be replicated? Probably not. None of it is new to me. None of it is unknown. I’m not going into a big world I’ve never seen before. It can, however, be its own unique experience. We’ll go home to where it all started. We’ll remember tiny details that we’ve long since forgotten. We’ll forge new friendships, celebrate our triumphs, and fight to be recognized on our servers. We’ll be excited to down each raid boss, even if we’ve done it before. While we have these new experiences we’ll reflect on the old ones together.

The original feeling can never be replicated. But we can still create a community, experiences, and have victories that we’ll remember fondly for years to come.

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I never did wow until mop so I’d be interested!

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You can’t recreate the experience but you can recreate the community behind it.

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I would like for blizzard to release a server list so I can make a post and get more people. Or on release, make a post about the server I’m in, we’re going to progress at a slower phase than hardcore players so there’s no need to speed level.

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I disagree with this assessment that its an either or scenario. There are nuances to an experience, ultimately its about how you feel. I believe you can recreate some of the experience of vanilla wow, all of us that were a part of vanilla will have bits we have forgotten and will get to re-experience in classic. Those little nostalgia moments of a long forgotten questline, an extremely long flight/spawn or obscure bit of dialogue. Maybe its a charge, knockback or patrol that pulls adds in a dungeon, designed to make you wipe.

For me the goal of classic is not to recreate the exact experience but its a nostalgia drum. There will be TONNES of little experiences I have forgotten or did not experience the first time but its not all positive for me, the greatest shame I see with classic is that early progression tiers will exist in their 1.12 “polished” (nerfed) catch up state, without taking into account increased player power from talents/abilities debuff slots etc.

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Any idea what faction and the type of server it will be on yet?

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Lol, people act as if there was no math or theorycrafting done back then.

People knew what the good items were in Vanilla.
People knew what the good talent builds were in Vanilla.
People knew what the good farm methods were in Vanilla.

And really, for the average player it’s not going to be all that different. And there will still be people that have to figure things out and don’t know the best ways to do everything because they don’t do the research that other people do.

The only real difference I can see is that some players won’t make some of the same mistakes they did in Vanilla, and that makes sense. But it’s not gonna be anything groundbreaking if you ask me.

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@Title, yes. Recreating the game is not the same as erasing memories and knowledge.

All this nonsense about meta knowledge and the MMO genre changing is utterly irrelevant to recreating the game.

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I will play on the alliance as a warrior/tank since I have friends that like that faction, and for the type of server, I would prefer pve, but if people want to play on a pvp server. I’m ok with it.

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This comment stems from the fact that everyone from vanilla beyond those who started at a later expansion and has barely done anything that was in vanilla will have knowledge or access to knowledge already available.

This part of the experience cannot be recreated much yet alone the euphoria that was present at the start of the game and each expansion thereafter. Hence why the community is the only thing in terms of experience is the only thing recreatable from that time period.

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The heart of Classic is that it is just a very good game and a very social one. Arguably the best MMO ever made.

Several things about Vanilla/Classic are not a solved problem. The game has too much depth and possibility for a cut and dry answer key like that to exist.