World of Warcraft celebrates the twentieth anniversary of its launch later this 12 months, and like all long-running recreation, it’s seen some huge modifications in its time. The most important of these sometimes arrive within the “pre-patch” updates that usher in main systemic modifications shortly earlier than a new enlargement goes reside. Previous pre-patches have reworked all of the questing on the sport’s unique continents, squished the stats on each merchandise, diminished character ranges, reworked expertise timber, and mainly restructured your entire recreation.
The pre-patch for the tenth enlargement, The Struggle Inside, simply dropped, formally transferring WoW to model 11.0. With the new replace got here the primary full redesign of the character-select screen within the recreation’s historical past — a seemingly minor replace that also triggered my coronary heart to leap into my mouth.
Let me clarify.
One of a pair of huge systemic modifications arriving within the 11.0 patch is Warbands. WoW developer Blizzard is transferring quite a bit of development within the recreation to be account-wide, quite than particular to a single character: As an example, motion repute will now be shared throughout all of your characters. It’s a recognition of the truth that as of late, quite a bit of WoW’s viewers performs a number of characters (or “alts”), and doesn’t essentially wish to do the identical grinding again and again. To simplify this course of, Blizzard created Warbands, a grouping of all of the characters on an account — even when they belong to opposing factions, or reside on totally different servers. (You’ll be able to learn extra about Warbands in this official Blizzard blog post.)
To visualise your Warband, WoW’s character choose screen now teams all of your characters collectively, regardless of server — and reveals the highest 4 characters hanging out collectively round a comfortable campfire. (Beforehand, WoW would simply offer you a person hero shot of every character towards a background applicable to their race.) Blizzard says it plans to introduce new Warband scenes in a while, probably making room for greater than 4 characters.
It’s arduous to elucidate to somebody who hasn’t been enjoying the identical online game for 20 years, however attending to pose 4 of your alt characters — any of your alt characters — subsequent to one another on this method is kind of an enormous deal. It made me emotional. These are avatars I’ve spent years of my life with, however I’ve by no means been in a position to put them in the identical area collectively earlier than. As a result of they’re all on the identical account, and to play one, I’ve to log off of the others, they’ve by no means really met. Now I can watch them chilling collectively round that little campfire, and picture them telling one another tales about their adventures.
It’s greater than that, although. To me, these characters symbolize not simply totally different eras of the sport, however totally different instances in my life, and totally different teams of mates. There’s my first troll warrior, who I tanked with within the recreation’s earliest days, and who made mechanical squirrel pets for each member of my unique guild. There’s my night time elf druid, the one Alliance character I spent any time with, who I used to play with my oldest good friend Rob when he was residing on the different finish of the nation. There’s my troll hunter essential, who’s been with me since no less than The Burning Campaign, and who had a quick raiding profession within the late 2000s. Right here’s my Tauren monk — an inherently hilarious race/class mixture — who I made to play with my spouse after we moved in collectively, when sat subsequent to one another and gamed on blissed-out lazy Sundays.
Twenty years! Any recreation you play for that lengthy turns into half of your life, and your life turns into half of it. These are actual reminiscences, connected to actual tales and actual folks. WoW’s new character-select screen is sort of a treasured picture album, bringing these moments collectively for the primary time. I find it irresistible.
