Sorry, Drizzt180NoScope. Your name is already taken in World of Warcraft Classic.

Damn, I really wanted to use that name.

As long as RollingWithMyGnomies420 is still free…

I had a guild called Gnome Depot.

I still to this day say the best guild name of all time is “Ghouls Gone Wild”.

This is incorrect.

The best guild name ever was < JAWESOME > on Stormreaver/Horde. They only accepted Undead characters with missing lower jaws, IIRC.

Is this literally just Blizzard pushing out an earlier version of WoW?

Why is this a thing? What am I missing?

Because they’ve destroyed everything that used to be fun and engaging about the game with an endless series of machined-smooth Skinner boxes that actively deter players from engaging with one another?

I may be bitter.

A whole bunch of WoW oldies thought it would be great as they talked about the olden days of WoW like it was some awesome thing with 40 main raiding and crap. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, and I expect it’ll go over like Brad McQuiad’s vision for Vanguard being that of, “fun,” from queuing for dungeons and spawn spots.

@inactive_user this is not in reference to you, rather to my old guildies who pummeled me with email to rejoin based on the announcement of it. I’m not up for all that again.

Because WoW is now a very different game from what it was. Some mixture of nostalgia and genuine design beefs led to a groundswell of demand among users for a way to play the original version of WoW without relying on private servers. Blizzard decided there was enough demand to justify the expense of building this, so they built it.

I am one of those who are a) nostalgic about WoW and b) have no interest in its current iteration. I might try WoW Classic if I can carve out the time for it (which is far from certain). As someone who routinely plays games from decades ago, and sometimes prefers them to new ones, I am generally unmoved by the line of argument that “as soon as you see an old game’s graphics/interface/design etc. you will lose all interest.” I love the fact that I can still play Unreal 1998 whenever I want, because no game released since then puts me in the same headspace. It makes me sad that WoW 2004 has been essentially a ‘lost game,’ at least from an official standpoint.

Whether WoW Classic retains enough subscribers to justify the expense of keeping it running, is something that the market will determine. I mean, you can still play EQ1 and Ultima Online, although admittedly not their 1990s incarnations (as far as I know).

The difference there is EQ peaked at 600k players and WoW was somewhere north of 15 million. The most popular WoW vanilla private server had 150k accounts.

I think this will find an audience, and will certainly have several hundred thousand players in the first week. As always, the question is how many stick around until day 91.

Actual WoW Classic thread is this-a-way, folks.

I agree with this statement. And I don’t predict it will do well launch +6 months. The problem with old sentiment is just that, it’s old. People have notorious rose colored glasses for things like this. As an example, early WoW had the nerfbat swinging one direction or another, many, many times. Where will they place the pendulum for classic? Is it time locked? It’s built using patch 1.12 which was pre-ANY-expansion. A lot of things were different.

I don’t see it having the staying power that an ever-changing WoW has had. That’s just my opinion.

Sorry, Menzo. I’m just being an old blowhard anyway. I won’t junk up that thread with my grumblings.

You should, because you bring up valid points that could be discussed!

I’m ecstatic that Blizzard is releasing Classic World of Warcraft. I absolutely loved WoW and I played it from its release up to the Wrath of The Lich King expansion. I’d return sporadically over the years for a week or two but it never grabbed me again - the magic was gone.

I find modern WoW to be a bloated, turgid mess. It has a problem that’s very distinct to games as a service. Over time, in an effort to improve the game all the rough edges get smoothed away. Unfortunately it’s exactly those rough edges that make the game fun to play.

I played the stress test over the weekend and it was absolutely awesome. The vanilla incarnation was a triumph of game design. It’s an old school MUD but with Blizzard graphics and polish. There is a reason why it conquered the competition - it’s a beautiful game.

The classic community is absolutely buzzing and it’s not even launched yet. I expect it to be a moderate - large success.

That was very well put. I might add: there isn’t a game out there like it… in terms of scope, world building, means to progress and foremost: MMORPG gameplay. It’s gone.

Yep.

I would say that, on its face that makes sense, but Private Servers have had huge communities that have lasted for years and years. These classic servers have demonstrated the staying power and community for their old game. There is money to be made here.

I think it will be interesting what they do to evolve the game. Private servers have moved from Classic to TBC to WotLK, and thousands of people play that. I mean, 15$ a month times 150k ain’t bad at all. I mean, that is over 2 million a month in subs for something that isn’t actively being developed on the scale of the retail game. Even if they had 50k people subbing just for classic, it is difficult to see why they would want to turn down that income.

As someone who has seen people dabbling on private servers, I was super excited to give Blizzard my money, and re-subbed a month or two ago and picked up the latest X-pac to pass the time. Classic got me to shell out 95 bucks already (3 months + expansion). I mean, it is a win all around.

Hell, the name reservation launch was a cluster-fuck. Herod, the server I am rolling on, had a queue of 10k people to reserve names.

I suspect that this will be niche, but it will be popular. I hope they end up doing TBC and WotLK, but I really would find a Classic+ situation even more fascinating.

Didn’t they do a similar thing with Lord of the Rings Online with “Legendary Servers” although it sounds like there were far less changes with LotRO than WoW over the years.

With WoW, I have no doubt it will make money. Its longevity that I wonder about. $15 a month is still $180 a year for a static game at that point.

Wasn’t the draw of private servers the lack of payment required?

Not that I will say that I have ever used a private server, but the draw for me was playing the old game. I would gladly pay for classic Wow.

I am sure a good portion of that player base will never pay money, but I know some private server people excited about playing with the real game.

If my ex-guildies are any indication, the initial draw is VERY strong. Many of them are re-upping just to play classic.