But the title has changed significantly in 16 years, so creator Blizzard
re-released an early version of the game back in 2019.It's called WoW
Classic, and faithfully recreates what it was like to play the game in
around 2006.
Now WoW Classic is reaching the end of its storyline, so fans are now
awaiting the re-release of The Burning Crusade expansion.The Burning
Crusade came out in 2007 and added loads of new content to World of
Warcraft, including new playable races, zones, dungeons and raids.
A recreated version of TBC is now about to be re-released, letting
gamers relive the epic expansion in the modern day.Ion said that Classic
TBC simply doesn’t need the same level of tutorials as modern “retail”
WoW.“A part of the importance for greater tutorialisation has been in
the increase of the pace and accessibility of the game over time,” he
told The Sun.
“In 2004, it took months, hundreds of hours. In the modern game, we’re
delivering content at a faster pace, and that requires more
tutorialisation.”Ion referenced the fact that in the Classic version of
the game, you would get a new ability and have two hours or more to
learn how it works – before eventually unlocking something else.
And he also said that there’s a mini tutorial system for players who
boost their character to level 58, to remind them how core parts of the
game work.“Some folks thought it would be a flash in the pan, go check
it out, recoil in horror and never return.
“But what we saw rapidly was that it developed a passionate intense
community of its own.”He added: “It has served to expand the larger
World of Warcraft community.
“So we realised a few months in that we have a tonne of people here who
are passionate about the game, enjoying the journey, looking forward to
the next step – but that journey’s going to come to an end after
Naxxramas.Better performance overall, our servers have much larger
capacities so we can fit more people into Azeroth or Outland.“The game
is more responsive. There used to be I think a 400ms delay on processing
events; that’s now down to 10ms. So when you’re going to interrupt a
cast, you’ll have a more responsive experience.
“We have given Paladins a new ability.“Originally Horde Paladins had
Seal of Blood as their capstone ability, and Alliance Paladins got Seal
of Vengeance.“These were different abilities with different mechanical
impacts.“What the community discovered back then at the end of TBC was
that Seal of Blood was just better.
“So Horde was just better objectively. So if we let that stand, we
would’ve seen a lot of competitive players feel like they had to go
Horde even if Alliance was their faction of choice.“So what we did was
given Alliance and Horde Paladins access to both Seals.”
Ion explained that this would recreate the original design intent,
viewed through the lens of a modern player base that knows better.He
said if WoW was still in Classic, the change wouldn’t have been made –
but the philosophy has changed.“There’s every reason to think the
original development team would’ve made these exact same changes, had
they seen the entire player population saying we all need to go Horde
now because of this ability.
