Classic Era Servers are in for a rocky future if Blizzard have its way. But a growing community of people are demanding change, well, restoration to allow them to just play the game they love.
“You think you do, but you don’t”. It’s a great quote, but people did want it, albeit with a few quality-of-life changes. Classic Era was a huge success, and while “Classic” WoW has moved on to Cataclysim, a small, but dedicated group of players continue to fight for the Classic Era servers that they wanted to begin with.
While Blizzard has mostly left Classic Era alone in recent months, that changed on July 9th when Blizzard announced a set of changes that would alter Classic Era
Classic Era is Changing, and not for the Better
Before we get into it, let’s take a look at what Blizzard are doing:
• The Guilds user interface has been updated to provide more ease of Guild management.
• Alliance players now have access to the Might of Stormwind, to a version of the Warchief’s Blessing world buff effect. This new buff is gained for turning in a new quest “End of the Dark Horde” in Stormwind and is mutually exclusive with Warchief’s Blessing.
• The Songflower Serenade and Dire Maul Tribute buffs can no longer be dispelled by enemy players.
• Druids can now train and use polearms.
To catch anyone up who is reading this and thinking, “sure, but these seem like minor changes.” It’s worth remembering that, this isn’t Season of Discovery here. This Classic Era, the realms that are left up from the Classic Era of this new wave of Classic WoW. These servers, bar a few changes here and there have been left alone. And, from a point of view of actually making changes they are the same as they were all the way back in Vanilla.
But, that’s changing, and we’re honestly not sure why Blizzard even is doing it. The Classic Era community is tight, and what Blizzard appears to be doing is, just simply going over the head of these dedicated players. We’re sure if they were consulted, they’d have had the same reaction as they have in the Change.org petition “leave Classic Era Alone”.
Change(.org) is Coming
Now comes the community reaction, and it comes in the form of a Change.org (www.change.org/ClassicEra) petition for Blizzard to step back, and revert these changes.
“We the people demand Activision Blizzard honor the initial promise that was made to us, and immediately revert Vanilla WoW Classic Era back to its original design with no changes other than Chronoboon and never attempt to change Classic Era servers again. Blizzard has gone too far. If you love Vanilla WoW kindly sign this petition and show your support. Let’s go back to #NOCHANGES and never look back.”
This is the message that closes out the petition, and it makes it clear, leave us, and our server alone. It’s a strong message, but, as the petition highlights it’s exactly what Blizzard stated in a news post about “Making Choices in WoW Classic”:
“Players will be provided the option to play their character on the new Classic Era realm just as it was as of the last day before the patch…”
That’s a clear as it gets, really. You can stay on the Classic realms, and be left alone.
The Future
As we hit publish on this article, the petition is just shy of its 2500 goal. Will Blizzard take notice, that remains to be seen. But the community is pretty clear in what they want, and if Blizzard is true to their original word, then they should revert the changes, and leave this section of the legacy community alone.
David has written for games media outlets for the last ten years. With his first major esports role being with Esports News UK covering mostly UK League of Legends. David is also a member of the British Esports Association and is an advisor to them on World of Warcraft Esports. More recently David has worked for Esports Insider and Red Bull as an esports journalist.
David later became Editor at ESTNN and now leads the current team.
