Discussion over the development and balance of Classic World of Warcraft is becoming heated. A handful of conversations on the Battle.net forums yesterday devolved to the point where community managers were forced to step in, locking threads and threatening to only make forums available to posters with active game subscriptions.
WoW Classic servers threaten as much grind as they do nostalgia.
The relevant threads focus on the issue of class balancing in Classic World of Warcraft. While development on the re-vamped version of the ‘vanilla’ version of the game is still in its very early stages, certain discussion points, including whether or not certain classes should be tweaked to allow them more relevance, are hotly debated.
For the record, most posts seemed to be against making any changes, with the general consensus seeming to suggest that to make any changes would detract from the ‘Classic’ experience. However, it would seem that conversations arguing that point of view, often from people posting without an active game subscription, was rarely constructive, and two lengthy threads were eventually closed by Blizzard community manager Ornyx.
In a closing comment issued by Ornyx on this thread, they say “we’re seeing a huge increase in outgoing forum moderation and punishments for harassment and toxicity from people who are participating in this forum without an active subscription.” They go on to say that they’d like to keep it open but “I am not opposed to flipping the switch and returning this forum to subscribers only.” Shortly before, another thread had been closed due to a lack of constructive conversations and players “deriding your fellow posters” and members of the community team.
It’ll be a long time yet until players will get to return to vanilla Azeroth, as Blizzard have only just started hiring for World of Warcraft Classic, and few details are known about how that classic experience will play out, so expect plenty more heated discussion over the coming months.