Leaderboard: What type of WoW Classic player are you – is there a disconnect between the playerbase and the game?

MMO blogger Wilhelm at The Ancient Gaming Noob came up with an amusing rubric for different types of WoW Classic players, perfect to pass the next couple of hours while you wait for the servers to roll out this evening. He’s got a poll going on his site, and I thought it would be fun to run a similar using his categories plus a few more to compare and contrast because his poll results struck me as aligning with my gut but not with the vocal community, and I want more data on this.

See, the Nostalgia Tourists are winning by a lot in Wilhelm’s poll, followed by the Fresh Starters and Live Purists, with the Classicists being a tiny minority, which surprises me since the Classicists are the loudest group right now, and it seems clear that Blizzard is catering heavily to them. Something about that disconnect sent a little pang of panic through me, like when you’re on a roller coaster that’s going a bit too fast around a tight curve and you wonder whether it’s about to jump the rails.

I had a similar jolt of panic when putting together our launch roundup: I suddenly remembered a few years ago back when Blizzard was referring to these servers as “pristine” servers. I’d forgotten all about it, but that kind of terminology was quite intentional and an early warning sign that Blizzard was going to pander directly to purists. So the cynic in me wonders whether “pristine” WoW Classic is Blizzard’s way of seeming to benevolently oblige purity nostalgia rather than finding some middle ground for fully developed progression servers as so many other MMOs have done, which would be tantamount to an admission that the live game is a bit of a mess (and this is Blizz, so that’s not going to happen).

But the worrier in me wonders whether an eager playerbase is about to run headfirst into a game that genuinely doesn’t want most of it.

Then again, maybe the poll results just make sense for the kinds of folks who read MMO blogs and are aware that games beyond World of Warcraft exist (or for that matter, that hardcore/classic MMO servers have existed since at least 1999 and probably before)! What type of WoW Classic player are you?

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