Wat?

"World Coherency" is a brand new term!

It is my attempt at capturing what exactly makes Vanilla feel real. Like, really real. You feel it too, don't you?

If I asked you what makes Vanilla feel real, you could probably give me a whole bunch of examples. But could you dig under all of those examples and show me a unifying theory upon which all MMORPGs operate?

Sounds ridiculous. I tried to do it anyway.

Across 99 pages of passion, I've compared the inner workings of Vanilla WoW to Retail WoW in order to discover how they differ in "world coherency". More to the point, I explore how Retail lost its "world coherency", and how Vanilla feels more real because it retains more of its "world coherency".

Youtube Video

Timestamps are in the YT description

Background

Linked above is a video essay comprising the introduction. I created it so that people would have a much more appetizing avenue with which to get into my work. It features lovely music, crisp wowmodelview green-screen, and mushy emotions.

The full document can be accessed here. (Google Docs)

"World Coherency // A Pseudointellectual Treatise on A Neglected Aspect of Game Design in World of Warcraft"

TL;DR on what "World Coherency" is, please?

World Coherency n. 1. The measure of a video game playing field’s corresponsive persistence between all players and across all time. 2. The independent integrity of a video game world as one single world, where different objective experiences of the same entity or event effectively creates a variable amount of worlds, which are dissonant with each other. 3. The state of being world coherent.

TL;DR on what you scrutinize of Retail?

The topics are as follows:

Personal Loot Level & Proximity Based Scaling Megaservers, shards, cross-realm, et al. The Cash Shop Differential Instance Grading (LFR, heroic, mythic, et al.) Personal gathering nodes and world objects Zone Phasing Heirlooms Attribute Invisibility Between Classes Transmogrification

Who are you?

My name is Volx. On Nostalrius, I mained a dorf priest named Boulda.

I am a long time fan of Warcraft and MMOs in general. I played vanilla from launch to the end of WotLK, and then resubbed in the middle of Legion. I quit BFA shortly before Tides of Vengeance.

I also have personal experience with Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, EVE Online, Age of Conan HA, Planetside 2, Archeage, Runescape, and WildStar. While I was not active for the rise of MUDs, Ultima, Everquest, Tibia, and other old school MMOs, I have learned about and respect them deeply. I also enjoyed Nostalrius for almost its entire run, and have dabbled in The Rebirth and Feenix servers.

I roleplay, I theorycraft, I tank, I heal, I explore, I lead, and I follow.

Having spent so much of my time in MMOs, I've been gradually building and refining my thoughts on what I truly value in MMOs. That thing turns out to be "world coherency". So I wrote about it.

And on a very kind recommendation, here it is on Classicwow.live!