World of Warcraft Classic is it What We Expected?
Like many others, I was patiently waiting for Blizzcon this year to learn more about what was planned for World of Warcraft Classic. While Blizzard was keeping it hush hush
for the most part. We did get a few blog posts on the project explaining some difficulties.
If you didn’t get a chance to be at Blizzcon or didn’t get the Virtual Ticket this year. You missed out on some interesting info. They went over coding challenges, graphical challenges and getting it to work as it did when it first launched. This included re-adding bugs that they would have fixed at the time, however they stated they would not due to that would not make it accurate.
Finding the Pieces
Blizzard spoke in depth, about how they had the back up via SVN, and what they had to do was comb through all the data and find where they were going to start. Something that is pretty interesting is World of Warcraft and Warcraft III is built on the same engine.
While they found the data they needed to fit it together with the database. As they are using the updated database not everything fits as it’s been updated over the years. So with that, they had to come up with a way to get it to work together with WoW’s current database. While it was a challenge they seem to have a bit of trouble because of new terrain or art assets.
1.12 Terrain Data
| Terrain Height | |
| Water | Grass |
| Object Placements |
1.12 Engine
| Terrain Height | |
| Water | Grass |
| Object Placements |
Modern Engine
| Terrain Height | Object Placements |
| Water | Grass |
Challenges, Models, Animations and More
So while Blizzard was plugging in data, they found some issues. For example, the dam that was destroyed by Deathwing was broken or missing. Yet the water was still held back. Other issues were missing textures for lighting and objects. Part of the reason is when they originally set the materials they set the default missing texture to white.
While white can work, if a light is missing a texture or a white cloak or robe it may be missed. Anyone who has ever worked on 3D Models with Textures is being taught to use a different color than white. Most times it’s a checkered pattern that you will see. Blizzard now uses a purple color for this detection.
Now, because some of the lights and models showed as white originally, Blizzard has restored them to white with actual textures. Now, keep in mind not everything will be 100% accurate as hardware has changed as well as software for Rendering. With that in mind, from what I have seen from the demo they have done a great job!
Content Release Plan
While the game will be based on 1.12 as the foundation. Blizzard is attempting to recreate the feeling you had when you first played. So they will be doing Gated Content. That means you will be able to re-experience content as it opens instead of having everything unlocked.
- Stage 1: Molten Core, Onyxia, Dire Maul, Kazzak, Azurgos
- Stage 2: Blackwing Lair, Battlegrounds and PvP rewards, Zul’Gurub
- Stage 3: Ahn’Qiraj (including opening event), Tier 0.5, Silithus content, Green Dragons
- Stage 4: Naxxramas Raid, Scourge Invasion
The Big Nos, and the Maybes
So Blizzard has officially stated there will be NO FLYING, NO DUNGEON FINDER, NO GROUP FINDER, NO CROSS REALM. As the goal is to make this as close to Vanilla World of Warcraft as possible. Now with that, some content has made it into the game, for example, the ability to trade items to people you were in a raid with. According to Blizzard, this is to allow for a quicker customer Service turn around as some people accidentally looted items and then opened tickets to send to the correct player.
Now that feature has been met with a large amount of backlash from Players on Private Servers. They believe this is breaking the game, however, I can see where Blizzard is coming from on this. I believe the ones who are upset are the “No Changers” as well “Ninja Looters” as they can’t say oops. As for the No Changers they were never going to be truly happy with any version of Classic that Blizzard came out with.
There will also be some slight changes to the mail, where you should be able to collect more mail/send more. The timer will be persistent meaning it may still be faster to take a flight path or boat to whoever you are mailing it too. The next thing is how will you pay for the game, many wanted it to be free2play and I strongly disagreed with this. As Blizzard still has to pay its developers to maintain the content and servers. The game will be rolled into the current sub with no extra charge. Meaning if you currently are subscribed for the $15.00 ($14.99) you will have access to it when it launches.
While we still have a long way until the game is released, expect to find out more by the summer of 2019. I am patiently looking forward to the release so that I can re-experience the game as well as experience things I missed during Vanilla.
Recommend0 recommendationsPublished in Games, MstSage Entertainment