Tuesday, August 04, 2020

AQ Drama in WoW Classic

The Ahn'Quiraj phase started in WoW Classic recently. This phase starts with the War Effort to unlock the gates in Silithus. It also has the race to be the person who unlocks the gates and gets the title of Scarab Lord.

And so we have drama. So much drama.

Check out the WoW Classic forums and reddit. Horde and Ally guilds colluding. Guilds interfering with each other. People being forced to farm so their GM gets Scarab Lord. People mass-reporting each other. Guilds acting like a mafia and controlling the pace of the opening. Half the guilds want to delay the opening so they can have more Scarab Lords, and the other half insists the gates open early so that there are more chances to get loot from AQ40.

You can see why Blizzard took steps to reduce all this drama. 

And yet, the drama is what makes it fun and entertaining, even for those of us not participating. You have actual server communities with guilds who know each other and are fighting and cooperating with each other. There are known personalities on each sides. Check out this video from Grobbulus:


In some ways, there is more "life" in this one event in a replica of a 15-year-old game than there has been in the last five years of Retail WoW.

Perhaps drama is the most attractive point of the MMO genre, what makes it special. And in removing anything which can cause drama, MMOs become just another game.

2 comments:

  1. I wonder how many people are going to be annoyed that they don't get the Scarab Lord title in Classic? The title was actually added in The Burning Crusade.

    For me, as someone who has the consolation achievement (Veteran of the Shifting Sands), none of this was that exciting. Too much was already known and prepared for ahead of time. It doesn't feel like a server event because it was too efficient, too fast. I guess for me, there's no going back to make this a major event.

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    1. I'm not participating, just reading the forums and reddit. But there does seem like a lot of drama and different stories on the different servers.

      For example, on Sulfuras PVP server, there was an Alliance guild who tried to mass-report Horde players going for Scarab Lord and get them banned. After the bans were sorted out by Blizzard, the entire Horde combined to spend 10 hours locking down the NPC during the window and prevented Grizzly from getting it's own Scarab Lord.

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