Bizzard’s World of Warcraft Classic isn’t Vanilla WOW
Bizzard’s World of Warcraft Classic isn’t Vanilla WOW
Over time diehard fans of WOW have longed for a return to the old days, to replay the game before the cataclysm and re-experience “vanilla WOW”, prompting fan servers to be created, much to the annoyance of Blizzard. Last year, Blizzard forced many of these servers offline, later announcing that they were working on delivering players WOW Classic, planning to produce an authentic experience to their users while offering stability and reduced latency.
In their latest Classic WOW update, Blizzard confirmed that their project isn’t a mere attempt to capitalise on their legacy code, placing their archived data onto a server and calling it a day. Blizzard knows that their playerbase demand stability, which is something that cannot be offered by decade-old software on hardware and operating systems that they were not designed for.
This means that Blizzard does not plan to rerelease “Vanilla WOW”, as that idea would ultimately result in a sub-par product, instead opting to use World of Warcraft 1.12: Drums of War as a foundation upon which Classic WOW will be built into a modern, stable game that can deliver an “authentic classic experience”. World of Warcraft patch 1.12 was the last major patch that was released before the MMO’s first expansion, The Burning Crusade, representing the most refined version of the “Vanilla WOW” experience.
With World of Warcraft Classic, Blizzard wants to deliver a “Vanilla WOW” experience, not the original WOW codebase. The aim of the game at Blizzard HQ is to deliver the “Vanilla WOW” patch 1.12 gameplay, stats and world on a modern WOW backend. From a technical perspective, WOW Classic will not be Vanilla WOW.
Upon this foundation, Classic WOW will be modernised to run on today’s World of Warcraft back-end, delivering Classic WOW the same levels of stability and security that modern WOW players expect, while only using the data of WOW Patch 1.12. Blizzard does not plan to throw away the stability, performance improvements and “literally millions” of hours of R&D and produce Classic WOW on a back-end that is over ten years old, though that means that much of WOW 1.12 will need to be rebuilt for the new back-end.
Blizzard wants to create a Classic WOW gaming experience that is worth playing, which ultimately means that re-releasing WOW in its original 2004 state is simply not possible. Classic WOW will be designed to offer the same gameplay experience as the original while providing enhanced performance, modern anti-cheating mechanisms, and an optimised codebase to reduce potential latencies. Below is Blizzard’s mission statement fro Classic WOW.
All the work we’re doing will ultimately allow us to recreate an authentic classic experience on a platform that is much more optimized and stable, helping us avoid latency and stability issues. Additional improvements will include modern anti-cheat/botting detection, customer service and Battle.net integration, and similar conveniences that do not affect the core gameplay experience.
We are looking forward to the challenges ahead and share your passion for the classic game; every code check-in data conversion we make brings WoW Classic closer to providing that authentic experience you—and we—want. Thanks for joining us on this journey.
While Blizzard doesn’t plan to re-release WOW in its original state, we have to admit that this isn’t a bad thing, provided WOW Classic maintains the gameplay of its vanilla counterpart. Rest assured, World of Warcraft Classic will nit be a low-effort re-release.
You can join the discussion on Blizzard’s plans for Classic WOW on the OC3D Forums.