Nostalgia and World of Warcraft Classic

/

World of Warcraft Classic. It was the first MMORPG to truly break into the mainstream, growing to 12 million players by 2012. The game was seen as a giant of the genre, and no matter how many “WoW Killers” released, the game is still going strong.

A common question when it comes to old games is if they measure up to the same standards we hold them to today. It’s an interesting social experiment when a company like Blizzard decides to release the same game we’ve been playing in its original 2004 incarnation. This is what Classic is. Concepts in games that seem to be old and washed up such as grinding mobs with long travel times are coming back, it feels like it’s 2006 all over again.

This game can seem daunting to most - especially when looking at a screenshot of a max level player raiding Molten Core.

raidframes.jpg

This image tells an undeniable truth about this old game. It is complicated. I can only imagine how confusing this looks for someone who has never played the game before. By design, this game will waste your time for virtual rewards time and time again. Seriously, every single one of those buttons does something and the player has to know how to use them.

So why do people still play it?

A lot of players might say that the current game (World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth) is missing something crucial - the sense of adventure and expansive world.

LAKYBmU.jpg

Before you even come close to setting foot into that 40 man raid, you will have hours upon hours into days upon days of walking, questing and slaying mobs to do. It’s almost a little obnoxious, how much time a player has to spend getting to level 60.

A central concept in WoW Classic is that time directly correlates to meaning. This is the main difference between this game and something that would come out today, in 2019.

So the main question here is: why do people come back to this game? Is it nostalgia? Or does this old design philosophy of the game actually present something worthwhile to players? I think the numbers speak for themselves.