World Of Warcraft Classic: 10 Reasons Why J. Allen Brack Was Right

At Blizzcon 2013, the then Executive Producer for World of Warcraft, J. Allen Brack, infamously responded to a fan's question regarding the widespread appeal for legacy servers with "you think you do, but you don't".

Brack was proven just how wrong he was when the WoW player base more than doubled its size at the launch of Classic WoW and the game remained on the number one spot on Twitch for several weeks. But is Classic WoW really all that we had hoped it would be?

For many of us, WoW was our first ever MMORPG and the magic of Classic, as I remember it, was the mystery and sense of wonder that it instilled in the player. Back then, Azeroth was as of yet a world unexplored, vast and teeming with possibility. The mountains of Dun Morogh were tall and the jungles of Stranglethorn Vale dense, and the forbidding peak of Blackrock Mountain was only seen from afar, out of reach, its pathways unwalked and its secrets withheld.

Despite being the same game, the experience that Classic WoW offers is very different from the one that we once knew and fell in love with 15 years ago. In this article, we look at just how different it is.

The realization of Classic WoW was first and foremost an achievement of the fans and yet instead of bringing the community together, it acted to divide it in two.

On one side you had players of the current version of the game and on the other you had veterans who had either stopped playing or played on private servers which still supported WoW in its 'vanilla' state. Each party, of course, had their own demands.

The private server community was of the mind of keeping the game exactly as it was back in 2004. Referred to as 'purists', they authored many a 'no change' thread on the WoW forums and were regarded as the stiff-necked greybeards who were stuck in their old ways.

The retail players or young whippersnappers pushed for what was termed as 'quality-of-life changes', which they argued would improve the game while not directly affecting its gameplay. These included the ability to change your name, race, and server and even use modern-day graphics in the old world.

You can probably guess where all this went and the two communities continued to butt heads all the way up until launch and beyond.