Cody's Library
World of Warcraft Classic, Is it Really the Answer?
Author: Cody Ray
“You may think you do, but you don’t,” these words were spoken J. Allen Brack when first asked about possible World of Warcraft (WoW) legacy servers. However, Blizzard has since changed their minds and announced that they are working making vanilla WoW a reality. This I can only assume is to try and reclaim many of the old player base that had once had but lost. However, is classic really the answer to their problem? I say no. Brack was right when he said people were looking at it through rose colored glasses and that really didn’t want it. Vanilla had many problems that were not addressed until later expansions, some of which were major problems. If Blizzard gives them the same old Vanilla they will get maybe a year out of it, but after a few months the number of people on classic will drop. What people really want is the style of game by that vanilla had.
What I mean when I refer to its style is the games core foundations. The core of the original WoW is what it made it so great. It’s what it set it apart from the rest and allowed it to reign as the indisputable king of mmo’s for years. However, the beginning of the end for the original WoW began in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion and officially died in the Cataclysm expansion. What we play today is the new WoW that rose from the originals ashes.
The core of the original WoW was its community aspect. In the original game, everything was designed in such a way to get players to group together, interact socially and rely on each other to fully experience the game. Mobs were harder, if you wanted to safely quest or grind you had to group, otherwise you would have to be extra careful while soloing. Some quests were even impossible to complete on your own and had to find a group to do them. Dungeons were harder and more intricate, they required players to communicate and cooperate to complete the dungeons, and LFG did not exist so one had to spend a long time manually finding a group for the desired dungeon, this encouraged players to form a circle of friends and join guilds to efficiently accomplish this task.
The core of the new WoW however, is the opposite. After Cataclysm, everything began to become more isolated, mobs became easy to solo, there are no more quests that require groups and dungeons are short and simple, requiring little to no communication and the new group finder feature takes away the need to find a group of friends. The entirety of the game can now be fully experienced by yourself. It is because of this that WoW has become just another game and its once loyal players abandon it in mass. An indication of its downfall while horrible, would be lack of WoW addicts. In the past, there were numerous stories and accounts of people playing the game so much that essentially abandoned their lives to the point that some deaths were even reported. Now? While it’s not bad that people’s lives are not being ruined, it is an indication that WoW just isn’t as fun to play as it once was.
Why or how is one might as this happened? It’s because Blizzard failed to follow its own advice, “You may think you do, but you don’t.” WoW’s player base is largely made up of introverts. People who are comfortable with being isolated and alone, so when a number of them complained about being “forced” to cooperate and group up with others, blizzard complied.