I see the argument continues to spin its wheels in the mud and while I am firmly in the no changes camp, I am also cursed by both the ability and willingness to examine both sides of the argument.
There is the one indisputable point that guild banks were not in the game prior to the release of The Burning Crusade. For some, that point in and of itself is all of the justification needed for their exclusion and it’s not an unreasonable position to maintain given Blizzard’s stated goal of creating a museum piece. The argument then breaks down as cost cutting and technical changes being considered blur the line on just how committed Blizzard is to a faithful recreation of the original. This is not helped by Blizzard’s unwillingness to state a definitive position nor by its inconsistency with regards to how strict they are in abiding by their own rules.
Another point of contention has been the issue of security. For me, this is the weakest argument that’s been presented. Those inclined to steal will steal regardless of the system being used. The log says nothing more than who took what and that means nothing given the taking was permitted by the guild bank level access assigned by the guild master. This is perhaps the occasion where Blizzard’s unwillingness to follow their own rules muddies the water the most.
Convenience is also hotly debated, often in concert with the tech changes but also with the concepts of either the “spirit” or “feel” of the original Warcraft. There is no doubt that guild banks would make large scale inventory management more convenient. Equally there is no doubt that the game thrived prior to the addition of guild banks. However, as I see there does exist the seed of potential for a counter to that argument and it goes thusly: Blizzard has always been reactive to players, their wants, needs and play styles. Even if the examination is limited in scope to the 1.X.X time frame you can see that Blizzard was monitoring systems they felt were somehow lacking and adjusted them accordingly going forward. Inventory management was one of those systems with Blizzard making changes to stack sizes of some items to allow more inventory to be carried not only out in the world, but also stored in the banks. The danger to the counter lies in the fact that taken to extremes, Classic more and more closely resembles modern day Warcraft.
Finally, we come to the most subjective of points: the “spirit” or “feel” of the original Warcraft. (Disclaimer: My personal WoW experience started in TBC, shortly after release but well before the great XP nerf) However, I hope that most will agree that the spirit of WoW depends largely on when one started playing. If one’s original memory of WoW is a certain version of AV, the spirit of WoW is closely linked to the game at that time. The same applies to end game, PvP, etc.
Perhaps this is the strongest example of my no changes bias because this is the cause of greatest concern. While Blizzard may have once been a game by gamers for gamers, that is no longer the case. Player comments and feedback are either in the process of being or have already been totally replaced by metrics. At the very least this hints at the idea that Blizzard’s original vision for Classic could be altered by whatever their metrics tell them is causing the player count to drop. Again, Blizzard does themselves no favors with the silence and inconsistency.
So, in the immortal words of Sonny and Char, The Beat Goes On.
TLDR: Vanilla Warcraft was different things to different people. These variations in perception allow justification for both strict adherence to the past and changes that share conceptual connection to the original. Let the debate rage on.
P.S. My personal take on the subject is to let Classic launch without guild banks and see how the game progresses because if they are ever added to the game players will most certainly exploit them to the fullest. Alex, I’ll take One Man Guilds for a thousand.
![:joy:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/joy.png?v=6" ":joy:")