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Online gaming nostalgia is about to be big business
A couple of significant things happened in the world of online gaming over the first weekend of November. At its BlizzCon convention in California, Blizzard devoted quite a lot of time to World of Warcraft Classic<\/em> \u2014 the nostalgic, retro version of its 19-year-old massively multiplayer game \u2014 and revealed surprisingly ambitious plans<\/a> for Classic<\/em>\u2019s future. At the same time, Fortnite<\/em>\u2019s servers were melting under the load of its biggest day ever<\/a>, which was all down to the launch of Fortnite <\/em>OG, a special season bringing back the game\u2019s original map and 2018 gameplay.
All of a sudden, in the proudly impermanent world of online gaming \u2014 where change is always good, and if it\u2019s not, never mind, because here comes more change \u2014 winding back the clock is big business. It\u2019s a kind of paradox: Because online games are always evolving, a sense of scarcity and intense nostalgia forms around the way they used to be. If you can find a way to bring that feeling back, especially for an audience that\u2019s getting jaded, then you\u2019re on to something.
Blizzard initially seemed reluctant to get on board with a growing movement in WoW<\/em>\u2019s community that wanted to go back to the way things were in 2004-2005. It squashed unofficial \u201cvanilla\u201d servers and prevaricated over creating an official alternative for years. In a way, it\u2019s understandable: If you have spent many years of effort on (in your eyes) modernizing and improving your game, why would you want to indulge this rose-tinted exercise? Isn\u2019t World of Warcraft<\/em> just better now?
Of course, that\u2019s a value judgment \u2014 but what\u2019s undeniable is that WoW <\/em>is now extremely different<\/em> from how it used to be. And that\u2019s exactly what makes Classic <\/em>a viable and interesting, if slightly old-fashioned, alternative. After Classic <\/em>arrived in 2019, included in a standard WoW<\/em> subscription, it became a roaring success, partly because of the strong contrast between it and the two unloved expansions (Battle for Azeroth<\/em> and Shadowlands<\/em>) it launched between.
But what\u2019s really<\/em> fascinating about Classic<\/em> is where Blizzard is taking it next \u2014 because Classic<\/em> is an online game, and no online game can stand still, even a throwback. It began as a relatively faithful version of the original MMO with smart tweaks: It moved through content patches at an accelerated rate, while locking to a single iteration of game design and balance. Then it bifurcated, with some servers moving forward through classic expansions, while others stayed in the \u201cvanilla\u201d era. This year, it acquired a third track, something completely new that WoW <\/em>had never had before: a permadeath Hardcore mode, which turned out to be a game-reviving innovation<\/a> that was quite brilliant in its simplicity.
From its showing at BlizzCon, Blizzard is doubling down on morphing WoW Classic<\/em> into its own game. The expansion servers are moving on to Cataclysm<\/em>, which is probably the point at which \u201cclassic\u201d becomes a misnomer: Whatever your feelings about this divisive expansion, its sweeping rewrite of the \u201cold world\u201d questing experience is the point at which original WoW<\/em> died, and is still represented in the game today. Blizzard is going even further than it has before in tweaking and fixing this expansion for Classic<\/em>, accelerating leveling, adding quality-of-life features, and throwing in new dungeon difficulties and loot.
But that isn\u2019t even the headline. Blizzard \u2014 drawing inspiration from sister series Diablo, as it did for the Hardcore mode \u2014 is also introducing a fourth track to the WoW Classic <\/em>servers that seasonally remixes the original \u201cvanilla\u201d game. Season of Discovery, which launches on Nov. 30, seeds entirely new content across the original world of Azeroth in the form of Discoveries, which producer Josh Greenfield said at BlizzCon were a way to disrupt the \u201csolved nature\u201d of original WoW<\/em> and restore a \u201cfeeling of adventure and exploration.\u201d It also offers a Rune Engraving system that endows classes with entirely new abilities, even allowing them to switch archetypes (you\u2019ll be able to create a tank Warlock or a healer Mage, to name a couple).
The game is furthermore being broken up into level-banded phases \u2014 the initial level cap will be only 25 \u2014 and interpolated with all-new endgames, one for each phase. The first of these reworks the classic leveling dungeon Blackfathom Deeps as a 10-player raid, but Blizzard is also teasing adding unfinished or cut content, and even all-new dungeons, to Season of Discovery. It\u2019s not just a new way to think about classic WoW<\/em> \u2014 it\u2019s a new approach to structuring MMOs, borrowing liberally from across the online gaming landscape. It\u2019s pretty exciting.
That Blizzard is going to all this effort shows that WoW Classic <\/em>is working both for the business and for the WoW <\/em>community. It also demonstrates that for an online gaming nostalgia mode to succeed in the long term, it needs to evolve away from being an emulation or restoration of a bygone experience, and become a (sort of) fresh game in its own right. (Or, in Classic<\/em>\u2019s case, four games.)
Currently, Epic has no plans to keep Fortnite <\/em>OG going past its current monthlong season, which sprints through six seasons of the game\u2019s Chapter 1 in a matter of weeks instead of months. The branding clearly allows for OG to return and revisit later chapters, but given the enormous surge in interest, Epic would be foolish not to be considering ways to keep some of these new or returning players in the fold permanently.
It\u2019s true that WoW<\/em> and Fortnite<\/em> are very different games with, crucially, different business models. Splitting the game\u2019s audience might be more of a worry for Epic than it is for Blizzard, which is presumably happy as long as all those players stay within the one subscription-paying bucket. But WoW<\/em> has proven that a big online game \u2014 especially one with a history \u2014 can support a family of sub-communities enjoying different flavors of the same game. Indeed, that might be the healthiest way forward for a game of that sort, certainly one approaching its 20th anniversary.
More importantly, perhaps, what WoW Classic <\/em>and Fortnite <\/em>OG <\/em>demonstrate is that the history of online games doesn\u2019t have to be consigned to the scrapheap of memory. There\u2019s a genuine hunger from players to turn back the clock, which, when met by an inventive studio that understands what was special about what it created but is willing to take some risks with it, can create something vibrant and sustainable in the long term \u2014 a kind of multiverse of paths not taken for your favorite old multiplayer games. What\u2019s next, Vault of Glass in modern Destiny 2<\/em>? Sign me up. <\/p>\n