World of Warcraft Classic was released just over a year ago, and between August 2019 and February 2020 the release of Classic servers helped double WoW’s waning subscriber base, which peaked all the way back in 2010 with 12 million active subscriptions.
Blizzard recently released a survey intended to gage fan hopes and opinions for Burning Crusade servers, the first expansion to World of Warcraft which took players to the shattered world of Outland, formerly the home of the Orcs and Draenei, introducing the latter along with the Blood Elves as new playable races. Here are some reasons Burning Crusade servers in the WoW Classic model could be exactly what the game needs.
The Burning Crusade was the first WoW expansion, and as such it is one of few that actually feels like it purely expands on the base game without changing too much of the original experience. Cataclysm, for example, shook up the entire vanilla world and created a big timeline inconsistency in World of Warcraft‘s history where players would start in the Cataclysm world but then travel back in time to Outland, then to Northrend to defeat the Lich King, and then finally back to the originally point in time they started with.
Not only does the Burning Crusade not mess with the chronology of events, but outside of Outland the changes made to the game were far from invasive. Alliance and Horde players now each had access to one race which could play as the other faction’s once exclusive class, Paladins for the Alliance and Shamans for the Horde. The popularity of the Blood Elves for the Horde also helped address a factional imbalance on many servers, which saw the more aesthetically pleasing Alliance races as far more popular, damaging the dynamic world PvP which characterized WoW’s early years.
Some exciting new features which would later be damaging to World of Warcraft were also introduced in Burning Crusade, but it would not be until later expansions that these features got out of hand and the long-term negative effects were truly realized. Flying mounts, for example, were only able to be bought and used in The Burning Crusade‘s Outland and not in any of the zones in the original game.
Not only were flying mounts expensive and hard to get, making achieving flight extremely rewarding, but the lack of flying on Azeroth helped keep the game’s main world feeling huge and exciting. When flying mounts were added to Azeroth in Cataclysm, the world felt a lot smaller as players zoomed over whole zones and could make it from one end of the continent to another with relative ease, avoiding all combat along the way. This led to the devs trying to have less flying in Warlords of Draenor, as it came a the “expense of gameplay.”
One frequent criticism of the Burning Crusade was that top-tier raid gear from vanilla was rendered instantly obsolete by green-tier quest rewards in Hellfire Peninsula, the first zone in Outland. However, before heirloom items were introduced which used the models of vanilla raiding gear, the most difficult gear to find in vanilla was still instantly recognizable, and players could wear it in cities if they still wanted to show off. Ultimately, the devaluing of old raid gear is another WoW mistake Blizzard made with The Burning Crusade, but one which would only really become pronounced in later expansions.
Overall, The Burning Crusade represents a sweet spot in World of Warcraft’s history. The game was still very difficult to master at higher levels, World of Warcraft raids were still epic and intimidating, the vanilla world was still relevant and flight was exciting and new instead of shrinking the world. With Blizzard likely working on Burning Crusade servers, WoW could see a second wind the coming few years that takes nostalgic fans back to the game’s heights.
World of Warcraft Classic is available now on PC. World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth is available now on PC.
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