World of Warcraft: Classic will require commitment, patience and friends

In 2004, World of Warcraft was the biggest MMO around. The game continued off the success of Warcraft 3 and streamlined features from other MMOs like EverQuest, becoming the title that ended up defining the genre.The game has been updated with expansions continuously since The Burning Crusade in 2007, and every expansion streamlines and improves the game further. As the years went by, fans wanted a return to the original Azeroth and at BlizzCon 2017, Blizzard announced it would release World of Warcraft: Classic(WoW Classic Gold). A demo of the game was included with the BlizzCon 2018 Virtual Ticket, and while I appreciated the blast to the past, I found the demo to be more than a little painful.

World of Warcraft: Classic demands a player’s complete attention. Pulling more than one enemy is risking near certain death. Your map is not marked with objectives; you must pore over the quest text and then head there yourself. On Battle for Azeroth’s toolbar, your abilities flash and glow when it’s the right time to hit them, a luxury Classic players are not afforded. Individual battles take time, resources are rare, there’s none of the flash and pomp that goes into a slickly designed and animated Battle for Azeroth ability rotation. 

As soon as I walked into Moonbrook, I winced every time I heard the cry of alarm from a Defias Pillager, and the crackling of a fireball he was summoning. Each strike would take half my health, and I was dry on mana from constantly using my abilities to stay alive in every fight.It’s those rougher edges that define World of Warcraft: Classic. Polygon sat down with World of Warcraft game director Ian Hazzikostas and senior game producer Calia Schie at BlizzCon 2018 to talk about the return to classic WoW. Despite the difficulty of the demo, Hazzikostas said he isn’t concerned.

“This is a product for everyone,” he said. Veteran, new player or anywhere in between: Classic is an artifact of a past time, and Hazzikostas acknowledged that people may “run away screaming,” but there’s a certain charm to the old ways that the updated, polished retail experience can’t capture. The game is set to launch on Patch 1.12, the Drums of War, which is the “final” iteration of Classic’s class balance and improvements.“I’m excited to go back and play through it for the first time,” said Schie. “It’s an experience I’ve heard so much about, but I’ve never seen it.”

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