In vanilla World of Warcraft, as in life, skeletons were built to last. If you died somewhere and your flesh decayed to bone, your blanched, skinless husk would stick around for so long that you could die again and produce another right next to it. If you’ve spent more than several seconds around those of the game-liking persuasion, you will not be shocked to learn that a lot of people did exactly that. WoW Classic, however, won’t allow it.
This might strike you as a betrayal of everything WoW Classic stands for. It is, after all, supposed to be a resurrection of the pre-expansion “vanilla” WoW experience. But Blizzard is modernising that experience in subtle ways, and this is one of them. In a recent Reddit AMA, one fan noted that long-lasting skeletons used to serve a purpose, with big ol’ bone piles organically indicating dangerous areas. Senior test lead Josh “Aggrend” Greenfield agreed, but said that the feature was ultimately too abusable.
“While we understand that this was a flavorful part of Original WoW and the earlier expansions, individual players leaving multiple player corpses and skeletons throughout the game world can lead to behaviour such as spelling out advertisements, hate speech, and other negative messages,” Greenfield wrote. “As such, this will not be a part of WoW Classic.”
It’s a shame, but at the same time, I do remember seeing a lot of advertisements for illicit gold farming services spelled out in skeletons back in the day, so it’s probably for the best. For now, then, I suppose we’ll have to settle for leaving our own real bones in piles that vaguely spell out messages for passersby. It is, I’ll admit, a little old-fashioned, but isn’t that why we’re excited about games like WoW Classic in the first place?
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