Theoretically, the main appeal of an MMO is that you get to play with a broad swath of people in a persistent game world.
But that persistent nature is also sort of an interesting wrinkle. In truth, one of the things that is remarkable about MMOs is the way that the game world keeps evolving regardless of your participation. Yes, the vast majority of content sits static - even though Illidan has been brought back and then locked away at the Seat of the Pantheon, there's nothing stopping you from raiding Black Temple and letting him monologue for a full minute before you can fight him.
But there is change, and that goes from systems to graphics to the world itself.
I spent a ton of time in Undercity on my rogue, and now, barring some Bronze dragon conveniences, he can't go home again.
In releasing WoW Classic, though, Blizzard is playing with the idea of, at least in the instance of the game's first era (I'd say expansion, but it's obviously not actually an expansion,) turning back the clock and allowing something to truly remain static.
On one hand, that undercuts one of the major appeals of an MMO game world. As good as, say, Skyrim is, after eight years of playing through Tamriel's northern nation, you sort of want to move on. You want to see where the story goes from there.
Yet at the same time, you don't necessarily want to lose what existed before. You might have loved Avengers: Endgame, but that doesn't mean you never want to watch, say, Captain America: The Winter Soldier ever again. It will be a different experience to go back and experience a work of art again, now knowing where things were headed, and you don't necessarily want to be robbed of the chance to reevaluate it.
While Cataclysm is the biggest culprit in removing what had been Vanilla WoW (I'd argue that it was a mixed success in bringing something better - they just painted themselves into a narrative corner by actually making it built around the current events of Cataclysm instead of making something perennial.) In the current game, there's no way for you to hang out in a peaceful Camp Taurajo or to ride along the dry and dusty canyons of Thousand Needles. What came after has value as well (I personally love the whole steamboat system in the "new" - actually like nine years old - Thousand Needles) but being forced to give up the old is not necessarily a good thing.
Now, there are arguments for the ephemeral in art - performance art, whether it's the stuff you'd see in a museum or some public venue or more traditional performances like theater or ballet, has an inherently ephemeral aspect to it, in stark contrast with something like film, where the only way to experience the work is in its "preserved for the future" state. Some prefer live theater because each performance is its own, individual piece of work, and once a run is over, you've missed it. But if you have seen it, you've seen something special, and been placed in a club of a very small number of people to have gotten a chance to see that as it was.
Does this apply to games?
Vanilla ran from 2004 to the very beginning of 2007 (I think Burning Crusade was the latest launch within what would be established as WoW's two-year expansion cycle.) Until the release of Classic, it largely existed solely within that frame.
Admittedly, its elements mostly remained through the run of Burning Crusade. There were a handful of added quests (particularly in Dustwallow Marsh, which was something of a dry run for the massive Cataclysm revamp about three years later.) But even though all of its instances still existed through the run of BC, the fact was that most players had moved on, and the system changes - like those for classes - meant that even if you did decide to keep running Blackwing Lair at level 60, it wouldn't exactly be the same.
So it's an interesting experiment to restore a version of the game that hasn't existed since roughly early 2007 (actually it might be more accurate to say late 2006, given that I think the 2.0 patch launched before the new year.) What does this say about the need to preserve video games in general?
It's something I've been thinking about a bit while playing through the remake of Shadow of the Colossus - another one of my all-time favorite video games. SotC's remake is extremely faithful, basically a graphical upgrade with slight adjustments to controls. But does that eclipse the need to preserve the original version? What value is there in keeping the 2005, PS2 iteration of that game when we have this new one?
Well, consider how much Star Wars fans have wanted to see the original trilogy in its pre-Special Edition form. Sure, George Lucas cleaned up the movie, but also added scenes and a bunch of then-state-of-the-art mid-to-late-90s computer graphics. Does the value of seeing the films as they were when they first released apply as well to old games?
And even if we want to be able to experience them as they were, is there also value to not being able to?
No comments:
Post a Comment