Hey all. First off I’m gonna preface this by saying that I think WoW: Classic will still probably be fun to play still, and that this post might get rather long, I don’t know how much I will end up typing by the end of this. If it turns out to be a long post I’ll try and add shortcuts for you to easily navigate. Anyways, on to the meat of the post.
-------------Why Classic WoW Won’t Be Like What You Remember --------------
Over the years World of Warcraft has seen many changes, and gone through even more. So much so that it’s not the same game those of us who started back in vanilla remember anymore. Now, for a lot of people this is a good thing. If it wasn’t, WoW sales and it’s playerbase wouldn’t boom at the start of each new expansion. However, for a lot of people this is a bad thing as well, as each new major content patch or expansion drives the game further and further away from what made us fall in love with it back in vanilla. What follows is just a few things that I personally feel has changed in WoW that will adversely effect the Classic experience for a lot of people.
While Blizzard has said that Classic will be the vanilla content we remember, they do seem to be making several changes that alter vanilla at a fundamental level. I think this is a terrible idea as classic is going to be a big nostalgia trip for a lot, if not most of the people who are going to opt in to playing it, myself included. If you start to mess with peoples fond memories of things, they’ll turn on you fast. People don’t want to have the fond memories they had from their childhood bastardized by some terrible addition that really didn’t need to be there in the first place. Really the only things I think should be changed are the game breaking bugs. If it can be solved as easily as hearthing back to your last rested inn, or logging out and logging back in again then I say don’t touch it.
People also don’t realize though that the game isn’t going to be the same as it was in our memories for the simple fact that, just like how the game has evolved and changed over the years, the community for the game has as well. Those of us who grew up during vanilla(I was a junior in high school when it came out) don’t think and harbor the same types of thoughts and emotions that we used to back then. We’ve been tempered by life and our likes and dislikes have changed over the last 14-15 years. The stupid, immature things we found funny back then aren’t funny today, and the things we thought were fun back then aren’t things we particularly find fun now a days. The times have changed, and we’ve changed with them. Then there’s the whole new wave of people who have never played vanilla that will be coming into classic along with us.
Those who have been spoiled by the modern conveniences of the post Burning Crusade days. The Wrath Babies and the Cata Kids and so on and so forth. Trade chat is going to be flooded with people complaining about having to run from Darnassus to Ironforge just to get to Stormwind because they didn’t have the gold required by mages to get a port, or the people who will refuse to make the run from Stormwind to Scarlet Monastery because WoW has made them entitled. I think all of the whining is going to be the first thing that starts to sour vanilla players experiences in classic.
Then there is the PvP. Some classes were very overpowered back then(I’m looking at you, Windfury Shamans), and some were laughably bad in both PvP and PvE(Hello, Buffadins) in general. Do you plan on going into classic with the mindset of being your servers best PvPer? Well, get in line because there’s a whole list of people in front of you waiting to get their Grand Marshal rank. I remember trying to get Grand Marshal and it requiring that I join a server-wide queue of people who are also wanting that rank because each faction could only have one Grand Marshal/High Warlord per server, and so you had to swap people out so it’d be fair to everybody. And don’t even think about just doing it by yourself because the grind was so real you needed peoples help for it.
I think the above paragraph will sour a lot of newcommers to classic. The veterans like me think it sounds fun right now, but at our ages we simply can’t(unless you’re Asmongold or someone who plays WoW as your job) afford the time required to do that kind of stuff anymore. Raiding 5 hours a night 6 days a week? 80 hour weeks of grinding nothing but battlegrounds for your ranks? Yeah, good luck doing that while still trying to pay your bills or feed whatever family you may have. This is another thing I think will sour people away from classic.
Also, if you can’t handle being called something, then classic ain’t for you. I remember Mages being vending machines and Paladins being Buff (Insert expletive deleted here). Then of course if you played a rogue in PvP, all the shade people would throw at you for being able to keep them stun-locked for the entire duration of the fight, or being a Mage or Hunter that would kite Warriors with ease. Or the Warrior who knew enough about his class to be able to get his hands on a Mage or a Rogue or a Hunter long enough to put the hurt on and kill them. Ooh the salt in store for you. On a similar note, Hunters, be prepared to lose your precious ranged weapons to Warriors and Rogues. And Warriors, don’t get mad when a Hunter gets the the two-handed weapon you’ve been hunting for over a month for.
Ganking is going to become a thing again. No more hiding on your flying mount safely up in the sky. Young Night Elf, you want to make the journey to Stormwind to quest with your friends? Well be ready to spend the majority of that trip in spirit form, either from the high level monsters that’ll aggro from miles away onto you when you run through Arathi Highlands or the Wetlands. And don’t be surprised when you die out of nowhere to a fully geared High Warlord Horde player because you’re travelling through contested zones. A lot of veteran players think this is part of the fun and appeal of classic for them. What they don’t remember is all the times you’ve spent cursing out that guy for being too cowardly to fight people his own level, or begging and pleading with any high levels in your guild or zone to come save you from being camped.
------------------- Memories of the Past-------------------
The community, like I’ve stated previously, has changed drastically in the last 15 years. Everyone is more hostile towards one another then they were back then. Everybody is more isolated and prefer to play alone unlike back then as well. As such, even though your server listing will say your server is at maximum capacity, you’ll still have a hard time finding a group for things because not a lot of people now a days have the social skills to put themselves out there and be vulnerable long enough to find groups and make friends. Heck, most guilds no a days don’t even talk to one another. Every guild I’ve been in within recent years has had a group of people in the guild that wont talk to anybody else in the guild unless they are a part of their clique. What’s more still is most guilds are ghost towns until the popular person in the guild logs on, then chat becomes lively, but quickly goes back to being a ghost town again after that person logs for the day/night. That’s the kind of stuff you can come to expect in classic too. It’s just how the community has evolved over the last 15 years.
What made vanilla WoW great were the memories we created playing it. A lot of the stuff I have already stated we look back on fondly, though to relive them would be a hassle to a lot of people. But between what the developers are doing and how the community has changed over the years, the memories that have lived in the minds of the veterans like myself I don’t think can be remade. Nobody is going to hold an in-game funeral for a friend of theirs who died on any server that’s not a RP-PvE server anymore. They may have a moment of silence in discord or what have you, but the days of gathering your guild to go raid said funeral are gone. Even if you could manage to do it, people are such sensitive snowflakes now a days that everyone who was responsible in the assault would probably have their accounts perma-banned.
Now, even though I say all of this I still hold out hope that there’ll be moments like when the Horde and Alliance finally met on open fields between Southshore and Tarren Mill and turned that place into a bloodbath long after battlegrounds were finally released.
The PvP wont be nearly as bad as it was back then either because unless your grandmother is playing, people don’t keyboard turn or click on abilities all that much anymore, and in vanilla that was a lot of the open windows characters had to exploit in order to get the advantage in a PvP fight. Now that people have grown to the point where they can turn on a dime and don’t need to click their abilities to use them, those windows of opportunity will be gone, so PvP will feel different, even if you can’t place why.
-----------------------------Closing Statement-------------------------
This was a super long post. A lot longer than I originally planned it out to be in my mind. I would do a TL;DR version, but I feel even that would be super long.
Bottom line though is that between the changes the developers are making, and the changes in the players, both new and veteran WoW players, I think the magic of what made vanilla so great in our minds is lost for the most part. There are some aspects that can still retain their magic of course, but for the most part it’s relegated to the past. I will play classic though despite saying all that. I just don’t expect it to be the god-tier game we remember it being.
![:upside_down_face:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/upside_down_face.png?v=6" ":upside_down_face:")
![:roll_eyes:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/roll_eyes.png?v=6" ":roll_eyes:")
You don’t know me, son. So don’t try to make crap up. I’ve said time and time again why I ended up on this character. And it’s Blizz’s fault with the new forums when they stuck me on this character and I wasn’t grinding forum rep again.