The past few days have been a bit weird for me. I haven’t actually been playing much of anything video game-wise, but have rather been waiting around for the release of one game: World of Warcraft Classic. Stranger still is that this game has been released once before back in 2004, almost 15 years ago. So why on earth have I been spending the better part of my free time thinking, reading, and planning about the re-release of a game that will be old enough to get its driving permit soon? I’m not alone either, a quick visit to r/wowclassic will show you hundreds of posts of people preparing for the servers to launch. People stocking up on junk food and energy drinks for the grind, nostalgic art and sketches being drawn, guides and theory crafting being discussed, and nostalgic moments and videos being shared and remembered.

The excitement is at a boiling point. Launch is just a few hours away as I am typing this, and if anything, writing this article is just a diversion to keep my mind off the wait. Nowadays game releases are not all that exciting for me. Maybe it’s because I am now thirty years old and have grown more patient. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you can order a game online and have it shipped to you on release day (or even download it straight from the internet). Either way, game releases have become less of an event to be excited about and more of a checkbox in the yearly calendar, so again I find it strange that the past couple of days my free time has been spent in nervous excitement about a decade year old game. But why? What is so special about this game?

To set the story properly, I have to go back almost 20 years to just before the original World of Warcraft release. My friends and I at the time were all-in on PC gaming mostly due to Counter-Strike, but Warcraft 3 had been slowly taking over our free time. World of Warcraft had been announced back in 2001, but it wasn’t until I picked up the October 2003 issue of Computer Gaming World that I really started to get excited.

The October 2003 edition of Computer Gaming World. Remember gaming magazines? You can find scans of old ones online if you want a blast of nostalgia.

You see, I had been playing on PC pretty much from the start of my life. I still cherish the memory of playing through Myst with my dad in our basement, being taught cheat codes by my older neighbor in Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, and puzzling over how to make anything work in Simcity 2000. At one point my brother picked up Ultima Online which was my (and most of the world’s) first taste of what an MMO could be like. Eventually we got into Everquest, which is probably the first truly realized 3D MMORPG. During the ruins of Kunark expansion my brother and I were hooked, clogging up our landline for hours during the days where 56k was still the standard internet connection, while chopping into hordes of various creatures and blasting Pearl Jam.

Our computer could barely run this back in the day.

This was also the first time I was introduced to PC building, as my Dad installed a new video card into our Gateway 2000 so we could run the Shadows of Luclin expansion. Regardless of how poorly the game ran for us (loading screens were often 5+ minutes), I was fascinated by the MMO concept.

RIP old friend, you did your best.

So back to 2003, I see this preview for World of Warcraft and I freak out. The Warcraft series had long been some of my favorite games (Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne is still my favorite game of all time) and now I see this 10-page preview of what looks like my dream video game come true. For the next year I spent a good amount of time wondering about the possibilities of the game and trying to sell my friends on it. Games like Everquest had built up a stigma of being antisocial to the point of being dangerous, so it took a lot of convincing to get someone to sign up (especially considering the subscription fee). That summer I was lucky enough to get into the stress test and played for a few days as a Night Elf hunter. The game was incredible, and so much more engrossing than anything I had ever played before. To say I was excited was an understatement, this was the most hyped I had ever been for a game release.

Eventually the wait was over; a core group of friends were interested and we all set up accounts and logged in. The launch was an absolute disaster. Blizzard had underestimated the demand for the game greatly, and the first month was plagued with server crashes, latency issues, and long queue times to log in. But when we finally got on and made our characters the game was absolutely magical. The server issues were merely a speed bump in our quest to explore all of the wonders that Azeroth held. We were hooked right away. Leveling your character took months, and every quest, dungeon, and zone gave more and more ways to experience the game. Along the way you joined up with random people online, which often times led to a budding friendships. Eventually these small groups coalesced into guilds that banded together to take on the games toughest content. The game was a massive success, and shaped the development of every single online game since. World of Warcraft was and still is one of the most important projects in video game history, influencing the lives of millions of gamers, with over 10 million people subscribed at its peak.

Estimates on subscriber numbers from mmo-champion.com

Fast forwarding through the next few years a lot of my and my friends time was spent online in WOW. We also took to hanging out at the local comic book store 3rd Universe Comics (which is still around today) which had some desktops set up for us to play computer games on LAN in between sessions of Magic the Gathering and Warhammer. For those of you who weren’t nerds in high school, this was essentially our safe haven; a place for kids to be kids without having to stress about the social Darwinism that was high school life. A good amount of my lifelong friendships were forged in the fires of weekends eating junk food, playing cards, and gaming hidden away in this small hobby shop. My wife and I even played WoW together back when we were dating as a way to squeeze in more hangout time. WoW was a way to connect with friends and family, and oftentimes people would log in just as a way to hang out together.

An ungodly amount of pizza was consumed here.

Over time, World of Warcraft has changed significantly. As new expansions came out, more and more ways to experience the game were introduced to cast a wider net over the gaming community and keep subscriptions high. My friends and I slowly lost interest over time. As most of us attended college the old guilds dissolved and aside from a dedicated few most switched to new games, or stopped playing video games all together. Some of us got married, moved away, or had kids. In other words, we grew up, and so did World of Warcraft. As someone who has dabbled in World of Warcraft through the 15 years since release, I saw the game play become more and more streamlined with every new patch and expansion. Gone were the days of farming for weeks to gear for raids, which used to take 40 people several hours to complete. Legendary rewards felt less epic as they were handed out like candy to everyone willing to put in a few hours a week. Difficulty tiers were introduced to raids so that even the most casual of players could beat the final bosses. Overall I grew less and less enthused. Whether or not these changes are good or bad for the game is an interesting debate, and I won’t try to argue that here, but for me the game no longer had the magic that it used to.

In the past week of waiting around for Classic to release, I have been trying to figure out just what exactly was so magical about Vanilla WoW. World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth in its current state still offers amazing environments, epic quest lines, incredible art, music, and atmosphere, and (debatably) great storytelling. And having played as recently as last year, is still a pretty enjoyable experience. But there is something missing, and the massive hype for WoW Classic might just point to what that something is.

Looking past the nostalgia of my younger more carefree days, disregarding the phenomenal backstory, and ignoring the at the time revolutionary gameplay, I think the heart of what makes Vanilla WoW special is the building of a community. Online gaming nowadays has become a delicate balance of giving players just enough rewards to keep them hooked while only requiring a few hours a week of dedication. This streamlining has also led to a decrease in the need for social interaction in the games community. Back in 2004, you had to put in actual days of play time to even come close to end game content in WoW. The grind to 60 was a massive endeavor, and so creating your character, choosing your professions, picking talents, and gathering gear was a big commitment. The game also often required you to team up with other players in the pursuit of better gear and exciting boss fights. What this ended up creating however was an amazingly complicated social community. Guilds and players gained reputation on your server simply for having cool looking gear. Players who could make the rarest items through their profession were known and sought after server-wide. Clearing hard bosses was rewarded with a city-wide buff to players who were there to celebrate the achievement. Ninja looters (players that stole items off of bosses) were publicly blacklisted and were shunned from group activities. Each server had its own economy, politics, rivalries, and celebrities. The game was not only about gaining loot and leveling up, but gaining social standing and reputation among your fellow players.

This is actual footage of my old guild ‘Zerglings’ raiding back in the day (I’m the little undead warrior named Undeadgdid). And yes 5 hrs to clear a raid used to be relatively quick back then.

I think this is the essence of what makes people want to play Vanilla WoW again. While yes the grind is long, and the effort to accomplish anything in game is much more than modern games require, it is this time and commitment that allows for such an amazing community to develop. Characters cannot just be re-rolled, names and identities cannot be easily changed, the time spent gives your character a sense of permanence in the world, and from this permanence friendships, guilds, and communities flourish.

So here I am hours away from a game launch which I have already experienced nearly 15 years ago and I am just as excited as I was back then. I’m not sure if it is the right answer, but I think the reason I am so hyped up for this release is the chance to participate in the magic of the Vanilla WoW community again. Some of this community has already begun to develop. You can see it in the hype on the WoW Classic Reddit. Entire webapps have sprung up devoted to reconnecting with old WoW friends. In the past few weeks, I personally have reconnected with several of my friends from high school over discord, and our list of people planning to play has ballooned to over 24. The old 3rd universe gang is back! While nostalgia might be a large factor, I think gamers miss the sense of community that old school MMOs provided. That community is the thing that made World of Warcraft so magical back in 2004, and that is what makes this release so special today.

This is who I will be for the next few weeks, real life will be on hold. Jump on the Skeram server and say hi!

I think WoW Classic is a stepping stone back towards games rewarding players not only in loot, but in the experience of being a part of building a community, both in and out of game. It will be interesting to see how game design may change in the coming years.

Even if you are new to World of Warcraft, consider jumping on board the hype train today, and maybe you can experience the spark that made Vanilla WoW so amazing.

One of us! One of us!

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