World of Warcraft Classic is as identical to 2006’s patch 1.12 version of the original WoW as developer-publisher Blizzard can manage. While it runs on WoW’s modern engine, you’d never know it while playing: everything about the experience rings true from how the game was almost exactly 13 years ago.
Back then, World of Warcraft was a groundbreaking smash. It revolutionised massively multiplayer online games in the West, where audiences had never topped more than about half a million in the EverQuest days. Parent company Activision-Blizzard doesn’t release current Warcraft subscription numbers, but while they’re certainly down from the glory days of 10-12 million, most estimates put them well into seven figures. 15 years after launch, World of Warcraft is still going strong.
One reason for that popularity was the accessibility that WoW brought to the genre. Everything from exclamation points over quest-givers’ heads – so players didn’t have to talk with every single NPC to find out which ones had missions – to the idea that it was possible to level by just doing quests, rather than endlessly ‘grinding’ by killing monsters over and over again, helped drive brand-new MMO players into WoW’s loving embrace. The game’s bright colours and mildly cartoonish aesthetic helped to emphasise that openness, that concept that anyone could play, and play they did.
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