Is World of Warcraft Classic, Bringing Back Social Gameplay?
With the August release date fast approaching, the internet is abuzz with people excited about World of Warcraft Classic. I include myself in this group of people, and I have noticed lately, many people are excited about something specific. The cross-server play that we have in Battle for Azeroth is not in Classic, which leads this man to wonder, is Classic bringing back the social aspect of WoW?
To clarify Cross-Server play includes tools like Group Finder, Raid Finder, and Cross-server guilds. These features did not exist in vanilla and won’t be available in Classic. That means people will have to socialize again, more importantly, it means how you socialize will matter.
Like many others, before the cross-server play became a thing, I was in a guild. I don’t mean a hardcore Raid/PvP every day guild or a group of unified strangers who are just there for guild benefits. What we were was friends, or at least the closest approximation of friends that a group of people who have never met can be. Not all of our players were good at the game, some were hard-headed, but we all had fun. We got to know each other’s strengths, weaknesses, and personalities. We would raid and PvP for sure, but we always made sure to have a good time. This is something that feels lacking in modern WoW which is sad because the social aspect is what made the game fun.
The guild I was in started with me signing a charter for somebody. They said we could stay in the guild or leave, but thanked us for signing. There were me and 3 others left in the guild after that. We started to do things, and as we did, we find new blood. People like us, just playing to have a good time. When we met new people who were nice and fun, we asked them to join us. Of course, that was not only how our guild recruited, but how you got groups to do things back then too. Which leads me to my next point.
A strong social need for gameplay led to the building of groups made of nicer people. If somebody was toxic, the party leader would kick them. If the leader was toxic, the other players would leave the group and reform without the original leader. Same would hold true for loot trolls. Without the ability to just hop back into the group finder tool, a person’s choices to piss off the other players carry weight.
The weight of choices doubles down because you can quickly become famous/infamous on a server. If you establish your character as undesirable, you will be hard pressed to find a group to do end game content with. On the other hand, make friends and you will have people around all the time.
This level of social interaction has disappeared from modern WoW. There is a guild I joined on one of my characters because of the name. The guild was named unified strangers, which seems to be a fitting description for the social component of WoW. It is a far stretch from the near familial social interactions before cross-server became the norm.
Whether or not Classic will be bringing back that social closeness or not remains to be seen. However, I think it stands to reason that Classic will help the developers and players form a better feeling social environment in the future of World of Warcraft.
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Originally published at Dungeons, Delves, and Dice.
