The George Lucas Method of Preserving the Past

Time may change me

But I can't trace time

--David Bowie, Changes

One thing I’ve discovered about Northrend is that the questing cadence is quite different from Outland (TBC Classic) and the Old World (Vanilla Classic). I suppose that you could say that Northrend is the first area that contains the “Modern WoW” quest design, where you get quest chains that are: 

Quest 1 -> Quest 2 [-> Quest 3 Optional] -> Mini Boss

in flow. TBC Classic had some quests like that –and Vanilla Classic as well—but you find it in abundance throughout Northrend. Since I started playing WoW back in Wrath, I never realized that there was anything other than that style of quest design, but having seen the progression from Classic -> TBC Classic -> Wrath Classic, I can now see clearly how Blizz zeroed in on that questing style after fumbling around with a variety of different designs in Vanilla. 

Which also explains why I’m so used to that cadence throughout the MMO-verse, especially those that are called “WoW Clones”. 

***

Of course, doing things in threes isn't exactly new. Aristotle --yes, that Aristotle-- had a triptych about communication involving three steps:

1. Tell people what you're going to say.
2. Say it.
3. Tell people what you just told them.

The first time I encountered that triptych, I was in college and part of a team working on a project for an Engineering Design Seminar. Everybody had a part to play on the team, and I got drafted (they pulled my name out of a hat) to present the team's findings in class. I remembered my old Speech class back in high school providing me some basics on how to lead a meeting, but it was only when I was putting the report used with the overhead machine did my professor suggest the triptych. 

Ah, those were the days.
You know, before PowerPoint.
And computer presentations.
From Wikipedia.

I always thought the triptych came from Mr. Rogers --again, that Mr. Fred Rogers-- but only when I looked it up for this article did I discover its true origin.

Regardless, the triptych highlights the importance of the cadence of three things at a time, and one that Blizz* has embraced in their quest/story design.

***

Remember the long, meandering questline for Marshal Windsor --or for the Horde, their even worse Onyxia questline-- and how it sometimes took forever? Or the Green Hills of Stranglethorn? Yeah, those questlines would never get made today, and I recall Soul telling me when I first started encountering those missing pages for the Green Hills of Stranglethorn that even Blizz admitted that the quest didn't work the way they wanted it to. 

But you know, I was fine with that. It may not have been a streamlined experience, but it certainly had character. 

***

Being a Wrath baby, I had no idea just how much the Old World --and, consequently, Outland-- already had been altered from its original state when Wrath dropped. I was aware of the "Feats of Strength" achievements, for things that were no longer in the game, but since most of the people I interacted with in-game had begun in TBC or Wrath, I never knew about some of the quests and achievements that lurked out there. Such as Marshal Windsor. 

Or that the original Hemet Nesingwary quests in Nagrand didn't involve killing 12 animals per quest, but 30.**

Or just how many of those older quest zones --such as in Silithus or Burning Steppes-- began life with all those mobs as elites, not the normal mobs I encountered. 

Or that some of those roaming world bosses in places such as Burning Steppes were true world bosses, not the "rares" as they turned into when the Dark Portal opened. 

By the time Wrath came along, enough of the Old World had changed that some of those old zones were closer to the 1997 Special Edition Star Wars releases than the OG versions I thought I knew. 

Some of the changes were simple, such as allowing riding inside the ring and chains areas of Blackrock Mountain, which was how I remembered it when I first poked my nose inside. (Because Wrath, you know.) The same goes for allowing some of those high end (Vanilla era) raid/dungeon Summoning Stones allow summons for up to L80, an increase from TBC's more stringent requirements. 

Of course, the fact that Summoning Stones actually, you know, SUMMONED people without the need for a Warlock being new to TBC was bit more of a dramatic change to the environment.

Yep, a lot like that.
From WoW's Facebook page.

Or the questing additions to Dustwallow Marsh, which effectively doubled the quests in the zone and completed the mystery questline as to who caused the fire at the Shady Rest Inn. 

Oh, and the change of Tabetha from a mysterious character of somewhat unknown origin and purposes (and age, let's face it) to just another Mage with some apprentices hanging around was also significant. To a non-Mage, that might not be a big deal, but to me... Yeah, it's kind of a big deal. The Mage questline to make a wand in Vanilla Classic was hard to do at level, because you were outnumbered and outleveled by everything nearby. You either had to band together for mutual defense or you spent a lot of time and effort getting there and back to her farm, not to mention actually doing the quests. Even finding the farm was an adventure, because there was no path there and nothing to indicate you were nearby until you were practically on top of her shack. Yes, it was quite a rite of passage for a Mage if you tried to do it at level without an assist from a much higher level toon.***  

Even Horde Mages sought out
Tabetha. Also, note the name of 
Tabetha's apprentice in the screenshot:
Garion. Someone at Blizz was likely
a fan of David Eddings' The Belgariad.

That's not to pretend that Cataclysm wasn't a blowing up of the Old World entirely, it's just an acknowledgement that what I thought I knew wasn't the case. 

***

There are times when I simply don't understand George Lucas.

His historical reluctance to never release the original trilogy in their original form is totally at odds with his reverence for the movie serials of decades past. I get it that he paid homage to those movie serials with Raiders of the Lost Ark and the eventual Indiana Jones series of movies, just as I understand his desire to see Star Wars as he originally envisioned it come to life on the screen. I also understand that he wants his wishes as the creator of the work to be respected. 

That being said, the original Star Wars has significant historical importance from not only a fan's perspective but a filmmaker's as well. It's not just that the special effects were ground breaking --they were****-- or that the cinematography and editing were all well done, but the entire product is a film that can be studied by future students to appreciate the significance of A New Hope. (And yes, I'd be fine with the "A New Hope" scrubbed from the titles, but I realize that is likely never gonna happen.) As much as George studied those movies and movie serials of the past, future filmmakers should be allowed to study his movies as well.

From quickmeme.com.

Right now, people will look at Star Wars: A New Hope decades from now and wonder just how much was modified over the years, and how much was left alone.

***

Admittedly, video games --and MMOs in particular-- don't quite have the same problems. If you'll recall when discussions surrounding Blizz creating an "official" Vanilla version of WoW first began in earnest, the biggest question was "Which release version of Vanilla should Classic be?" Wilhelm Arcturus weighed in on that more than a year before Blizz officially announced WoW Classic, and others did too. Trying to figure out what release version of an online game --even if it were just an exercise among friends relaxing on a weekend, remembering the "good old days"-- is bound to raise some passionate responses among any fan base.*****

This isn't going to devolve into a "no changes" versus "some changes" argument, because I'm not interested in that. It's just that I wanted to point out that in WoW at least, there really never was a static "Old World" that I thought existed once TBC and Wrath released. I'm not even talking about class changes and whatnot, because that's been tweaked from the beginning, but I meant the world itself. Blizzard didn't have to blow up the Old World to make things better in Cataclysm, because they already had tweaked it a bit in TBC and proven that "some changes" could be done without ruining everything.

I guess it says something about Wrath Classic that my very first impressions about the expac were what changed in the Old World versus a return to Northrend itself. Having seen firsthand how the class changes in the prepatch suddenly felt overpowered compared to TBC Classic, I can understand now how some people felt Wrath wasn't what they were used to, raiding and other things notwithstanding. What I thought was an unchanging world definitely wasn't.

*And other software development houses, to be fair.

**When that changed in the Wrath Pre-patch, my jaw dropped.

***One, that I might add, I did not accomplish at level. 

****As much as 2001: A Space Odyssey broke new ground in special effects in 1968, the overall feel of those effects was to emphasize the cerebral nature of 2001 as a film. Lucas expanded on those designs and integrated them seamlessly into an action movie format in a way that still feels concrete today. I look at the average Marvel, DC, or Star Wars product today and think that I'm watching a comic book rather than an actual film. There's a certain amount of Uncanny Valley feel to them, where in the back of your head you comprehend that it's all computerized special effects, and there's nothing that people can actually reach out and touch.

*****If Bioware wants to bring back "Classic" SWTOR, I'd be on board with playing! I remember how much harder things were back in the day, and how convoluted certain things were (commendations on a per planet basis, anyone?) But I also remember going through just about every quest on every planet because you needed all of the XP and gear and whatnot you could get. The people who blitzed to the end, WoW style, then filled chat with "I'm bored" moved on very quickly, so these servers would most definitely not be for them.