If you’re worried about Blizzard ruining Classic World of Warcraft, I’d like you to blame this guy.
This is Gurgthock. He is a simple Orc. According to the website Warcraftrealms, Gurgthock was created on December 14th, 2004. This character is 14 years old. He was created almost a month after the release of World of Warcraft.
Gurgthock during his time in World of Warcraft has accomplished many things on the Mal’ganis server, which was one of the original servers. Gurthock was the leader of the guild Elitist Jerks, but who are they?
Elitist Jerks opened the gates on Mal’ganis, the 11th US server, and 2nd PVP server to open the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj. The person who opened the gates on the Mal’ganis server? That was our Orc friend Gurgthock.
Elitist Jerks were also the first U.S Horde guild to kill Nefarian. They were the first US Horde guild to kill C’thun. The first US Horde guild to kill Thaddius.
Elitist Jerks and Gurgthock the Orc have a vast history with Vanilla World of Warcraft. Gurgthock has accomplished things that many haven’t even dreamed of accomplishing.
For those of you who don’t know. Gurgthock, went on the work at Blizzard. He’s now the game director of World of Warcraft. You know him as Ion.
So am I worried about Blizzard drastically ruining World of Warcraft classic? Not really. The person who is in the room, designing the philosophies ran one of the most successful Horde guilds during Vanilla and was a Scarab Lord, a title everyone envies to this day.
I’d rather have Gurgthock in there leading the show as opposed to someone who wasn’t there at all. Now does Ion remember everything? Most likely not. But people on various forums keep acting like the sky is falling. When we’re in a really fortunate spot considering who is in charge.
Hopefully this quells some fears.
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Gurgthock also says he knows sharding is “antithetical” to Classic but he’s putting it in anyway. I don’t see how you can trust him. Really though we have no choice so why stress about it?
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Because sharding is NOT as simple as you’re making it out to be, and it’s not confirmed to be in yet.
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He’s a corporate man now. Hes playing both sides of the field. But money always wins. His career will always win.
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Sharding will be required to start unless you want to end up with 50 “dead” servers after the hype dies down.
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None of that particularly reassures me. Ion drives me batty when he tries to talk up systems in BfA, with an apparent blind spot for anything not the game he’s envisioning.
What WAS reassuring was Ion talking at the BlizzCon panel on WOW Classic. He is not treating it as a development project. He even talks about how the stuff he normally does is NOT what he’s doing here, because all of that work was done 14 years ago.
I don’t like the sharding. I hate the fact it was slipped in as a non-answer to a legitimate question. I won’t be playing for the first month or so because of that one “feature”. However, overall I do feel Ion is mostly hands-off as far as not coming up with ideas to “make Classic better”, and that means a good chance of getting a high-quality Classic that delivers that authentic vanilla experience.
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Thank you about time someone posts this. Love you buddy
given the current management team and developers… my expectations are low
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Indeed. “You choose one of four roles and everything else is completely cosmetic, then you wade through some meaningless crap, not bothering to read quest text or worry about contradictions, inconsistencies, or characterization, and then you raid forever, with completing a raid meaning you get access to the same raid with higher numbers!” is Modern; it’s also the logical endpoint of the perspective Elitist Jerks always made it clear they had, in which the tiny minority of endgame raiders was the only part of the playerbase that actually mattered. Am I supposed to be surprised or reassured? I’m neither. I am, as I was before this thread, hopeful that Ion Gurgthock understands that Classic is for not him and will keep his raiding-uber-alles editor’s pen away from it…and there’s nothing else I hope for from him.
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He is also the one responsible for the current deplorable state of the game. You know, the game more players have bailed from in the last three expansions than have stayed.
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That’s nice and all, but I can’t imagine anyone that actually has played the last two expansions is going to be enjoying vanilla WoW for the same reasons I am.
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It’s worth remembering that that was 14 years ago, and people change.
There was a time when there was someone who rallied against hybrids in Everquest, and he is often blamed for the state of hybrids in Vanilla(even though he wasn’t a class designer).
That person is Jeff Kaplan(better known around here as Tigole), who is now the lead designer for Overwatch and his opinions on game design are very different from that guy decade and a half ago who hated hybrids in a MMO.
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We’re not worried about him. We’re worried about the CEO, the CFO, and their immediate underlings who are going to demand changes be made to increase profitability. Changes like loot trading, changes like sharding, changes like right click report. We’re afraid of changes like account services, and a real money store. We’re afraid of tokens. We’re afraid of character boosts. We’re afraid of decisions being driven by profit rather than a dedication to producing an authentic experience.
We’re not afraid of the person steering the ship. We’re afraid of the person telling him what course to set.
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I’ve been around this game since November 2004, was a decently-progressed hardcore raider in vanilla, and I am a completely different person than I was over 14 years ago. A lot of things I thought about the game have changed and evolved.
Do I think Ion wants to intentionally ruin the game, even BFA? No. However, just because someone experienced the content back then, doesn’t mean they have the right ideas to preserve it. I mean, a lot of the QoL changes in the modern game were asked for by the same community that played back then too.
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I’ve no idea why anyone would think this would assure me at all. There are hundreds of vets from way back who still play and who LIKE the direction WoW has gone.
The whole idea is to hand development to one who would undo all that has transpired.
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Exactly. I was squeeing with glee when both flying and lfg were added. People change. Design doesn’t, much.
https ://goo.gl/images/9MD95V
That’s all well and good n’ all, but if you have blinkers on, sometimes you don’t get to see what is really going on around you.
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I’m not worried about them ruining Classic since their the ones who created wow. Also you have to remember its a major under taking working from old data. What would truly ruin Classic is anything added from current retail. Keep it close to vanilla as possible and skip the sprinkles please.