So it hasn’t been long since World of Warcraft launched a new set of WoW Classic servers, except this time it’s WoW Classic Classic, which is just… really dumb. Not the name of “Classic Classic,” which is itself dumb, but just the whole concept is kinda dumb because they’re actually less classic than the classic realms already operating with more substantial changes from later in the game’s lifespan, producing a whole lot of deeply dumb debate. And some people are having a lot of fun with it, which is… great, actually. It’s always good when people are having fun with things.
But it brought to mind something tangential, which is how aggressively people defend against the slightest hint that maybe what’s driving them to this game is nostalgia.
Let’s be clear about something: I’ve talked in the past about how there are, legitimately, things that were different in WoW in the past that it is valid to like on their own merits, and while I’ve stated for the record the the whole “Classic Plus” thing is probably never happening that’s while also noting that the idea of keeping the game in some crystalized state of amber was never a good idea. But this isn’t a WoW column, and what interests me here isn’t the specifics of this but that reaction, the strong reaction to the idea that nostalgia has anything to do with one’s desire to indulge in a nostalgic product.
A subversion to this, for example, is Justin’s recent column talking about how the new version of the game isn’t just a dose of nostalgia. Key word there? “Just.” Not because it’s short for Justin (it isn’t), but because that word alone makes it clear that nostalgia is a component. Of course it is. We’re talking about a version of a game that came out two decades ago. Nostalgia is going to factor into things!
Nostalgia is, in fact, going to factor into everything. Some of my affection for Final Fantasy XI and City of Heroes is absolutely based on nostalgia because these games had a huge impact on my personal and professional life. Heck, it’s not just MMORPGs. I can remember how to clear Final Fantasy (the first one) more or less from memory and I have played that game front-to-back many times now. Yes, it is a good game. Yes, I am also nostalgic for it, and playing it fulfills that nostalgia.
People get very defensive about the idea that nostalgia factors into their decisions, which has always struck me as weird because nostalgia isn’t inherently a bad thing. It’s not inherently a good thing, either; it’s just inherently a thing. You don’t get to choose what you have nostalgia for, but it’s ultimately just a part of your life and your psychological makeup. It means that, say, for a lot of Americans McDonald’s is a casual treat food with a lot of historical familiarity. You remember going there when you were a kid, and so part of you associates the specific flavor of McDonald’s with childhood. That’s just a truism.
Growing up, my father and I bonded over the movie Willow. I had games I really loved playing like Phantasy Star IV, Shining Force 2, and Final Fantasy VI, some of which I didn’t get for a long time so they had a bigger status in my mind. I enjoyed Transformers and Sailor Moon and Star Trek. Am I nostalgic for these things? Yes. Absolutely. My feelings toward these properties are based, in part, on nostalgia.
So why do people get defensive about nostalgia? Well, two reasons. The first is that people don’t like the idea that their emotional reactions to things could in some way be wrong, and the second is that “you’re just nostalgic” is the clarion call of people who are really quick to dismiss the involvement of emotional responses like some sort of irrational Godwin’s Law. It’s the sort of argument that says that the only reason you like FFXI is because it was the nexus of your social scene back in the day, and stripped of that it’s just a bad game, full stop.
But I don’t find the latter interesting because it’s just another form of bad-faith argument, and people who want to make bad-faith arguments will find ways no matter what. It’s the former that interests me more because… yeah, not every game I loved when I was nine was actually very good. Some of them were downright bad.
Nostalgia gives us a starting point to like a thing, but sometimes when we start critically examining things as adults without letting nostalgia override our judgment, it turns out that these things we loved actually weren’t great, or at least not as great as we remember. And that’s not something anyone really has fun with. No one is happy to watch a once-beloved film only to realize that the jokes in it have aged poorly, or finding out that a lot of the central jokes are actively offensive compared to when it first came out. Or to find out that a game you loved was actually tedious or boring or just kind of bland.
It’s easier to take the building blocks of our identity as objects of faith. You already know that these things are good, so why re-examine them? You don’t need to engage with this stuff as if it were new. You loved EverQuest when it first came out; therefore, that was the best version of it, and any subsequent changes are what made it bad, and – oh, look, now nostalgia has become a problem.
Except the observant among you will realize that it’s not nostalgia that’s causing a problem here. Nostalgia is the impetus for someone to override their own critical thinking and discard the ability to evaluate things in the abstract. That’s related to nostalgia, sure, but it isn’t nostalgia alone that’s the problem; it’s giving nostalgia veto power over the part of your brain that can recontextualize things.
Personally, yes, I reject this. I try to re-examine the things that I’m nostalgic for. Sometimes that means that things I loved and part of me is still nostalgic for turn out to be… well, not as good as I remembered. Oh, sure, there’s no world where I stop being nostalgic for Final Fantasy VI, but I can look at the game and acknowledge things like the fact that the plot really does stop moving for the second half of the game, most of the interesting character beats are just implied by the conclusion, and the game’s balance is (generously) nearly nonexistent.
But I still love that game. Is some of it nostalgia? Yes. Absolutely. Not all of it is, and I can point to parts of it that are genuinely good. But it doesn’t do me any good to pretend that nostalgia doesn’t play a role at all; it does, it just doesn’t override my ability to see what parts of the game are still good and which parts I’m willing to forgive because of that nostalgia-based dopamine hit.
And if we’re going to be honest about what parts of older games still hold up? We also need to be honest about the fact that our nostalgia for the games does shape our opinion. And that’s not a bad thing either.
Sometimes you know exactly what’s going on with the MMO genre, and sometimes all you have are Vague Patch Notes informing you that something, somewhere, has probably been changed. Senior Reporter Eliot Lefebvre enjoys analyzing these sorts of notes and also vague elements of the genre as a whole. The potency of this analysis may be adjusted under certain circumstances.
