World of Warcraft is a universally known entity as a massive MMORPG that brought the genre into the twenty-first century on the back of the brilliance of Blizzard Entertainment back in late 2004. After six expansions across seventeen years, it remains as one of the most popular MMOs in terms of concurrent users with roughly 7 million players currently subscribed.
Blizzard bringing about World of Warcraft Classic in mid-2019 was yet another stroke of brilliance, allowing the studio to offset the time between expansions to the standard title with the drip-feeding of expansions to the Classic title. Players then get to experience what World of Warcraft was before the "Wrath of the Lich King" in all of its glory while not necessarily stressing over item-levels and pushing the bleeding-edge of Mythic Raids. The bots, however, traveled into World of Warcraft Classic along with a slew of players, and some are looking for some respite.
That respite is coming on March 5, as more than 1,300 players pledge to re-roll their characters entirely on a low-population server to ready themselves for the World of Warcraft Classic: Burning Crusade expansion. Blizzard confirmed the expansion to be arriving sometime in 2021, yet opted to not dedicate to an official release date for the release of the expansion onto Classic servers. The community endeavor currently includes seven guilds on an international scale.
The server that has been chosen is not going to be revealed until closer to March 5; the community doesn't want to show its hand early and meet a slew of bots that it is attempting to stymie, nor encourage players to jump in early and grab a head start resulting in skewed levels on the first day. The community has currently reached 1,758 members, and is planning on spreading out to both the Horde and Alliance factions in the PvP server.
The community of gamers still notes that botting will likely continue to be an issue in spite of the fresh start, although players may have an advantage on the bots for the first few days until a heft of scripters note that the server has drastically increased in population. The less populated server, however, doesn't experience the inflated WoW economy that massive servers do and should offer the community an "even playing ground" compared to others.
The core concern from the players is the runaway economy, brought about by the GDKP dungeon runs that have players bidding with gold for items, and crafting materials being a cutthroat market thanks to botting mats and undercutting other bots. After seventeen years, Blizzard is clearly still struggling with gold farmers and scripts that wreak havoc on legitimate players, but this doesn't mean the love of World of Warcraft needs to suffer.
World of Warcraft Classic is available now for the PC.
Source: Eurogamer