70 PCWorld OCTOBER 2019REVIEWS WOW CLASSIC
THROUGH A DARK PORTAL
I believe WoW Classic is most helpful for the
ways it shows enough time has passed that
players are ready to once again embrace the
system design of the original game. Rather
than releasing Classic, though, I wish Blizzard
had simply experimented with reintroducing
old systems into the next mainline
expansion—although I well remember the
blowback when Blizzard tried to reintroduce
crowd control-heavy dungeons in the 2010
Cataclysm expansion. And now that Classic
seems like a hit—although I’m intensely
curious to see what the reception will be like
two months from now—maybe some of those
ideas will still spill over.
But I worry the damage has already been
done. WoW Classic is already splitting some of
the community. Aside from copyright issues,
“classic” servers were fine when they existedonly on rogue platforms
like Nostalrius Begins,
but hosting them on the
official client opens an
entirely different can of
worms. From a personal
angle, I have one friend
who’s been playing the
mainstream game
constantly since 2004
who now says he’s
“switched over full time”
because he likes Classic
a “billion percent more
than current retail.” Classic essentially
introduces another faction rivalry aside from
that of Alliance and Horde—the Classic players
versus the mainstream players—and so slips a
little too neatly into the modern proclivity
toward tribalism.
The next time WoW has an unfavorable
content patch, people may just say “to hell
with it” and play Classic instead. That means
we may see the end of the WoW community
that, much like people in the real world, has
stuck together through the good and the
bad times and held out hope that better
things await down the road. As for me? I
prefer to look forward rather than behind.
I have little doubt that Classic will be a
financial success. But as for World of
Warcraft’s place as an evolving and
relevant cultural phenomenon? We may
be looking at an end.The “good ol’ days” included such fun as going AFK for hours so you could
level your weapon skills with auto-attacks. Photo from 2005.