As the saying goes, “The turtle has gone off into the sea.” And so it goes for Turtle WoW, the famous and infamous WoW Classic emulator that drew in thousands of players, became quite well-known (in part due to advertising), and dared to charge amply for its services. After coming into the legal headlights, the Turtle WoW team is shutting down its servers, and Blizzard continues to clear the path for its Classic Plus announcement later this year.
However, aside from simply removing competition and a copyright thief, Blizzard has an opportunity here to take some of the best features that Turtle WoW developed and transplant them into Classic Plus. Here are six of those ideas that would be quite welcome in an official home.
Bring in additional races and combos
One thing that’s not debatable is that the character creation screen in Classic is a bit skimpy on options, especially with races. Turtle WoW made a big point out of bringing in High Elves for the Alliance and Goblins for the Horde. And whether or not Blizzard follows suit with those exact picks, the studio would be wise to explore more races in the future.
After all, more races increase incentive for players to roll up new characters and play through the game all over again — an important effect, as Blizzard surely wants to extend the lifespan and engagement of Classic Plus. Plus, more races give the studio the opportunity to create additional class/race combinations down the road.
Speaking of which, Turtle WoW opened up the field for more combinations at character creation. There were Tauren Priests, Dwarf Warlocks, Orc Mages, Dwarf Mages, Gnome Hunters, Undead Hunters, Human Hunters, and Troll Warlocks in this unofficial version of the game.
At the very least, Blizzard should aim to expand each race’s options by one additional class, if not more. Some of the races in Classic are underserved by the number of available classes. The studio could mete these new combinations out a patch at a time, even, drawing out the excitement as it gradually builds up the roster potential.
Introduce transmog early and often
I know, I know that transmog is a hotly debated topic among the Classic Plus fanbase, but I’m unapologetically “pro” this feature. We have so painfully few ways to visually customize our characters, and outfits long have been one of the big ways that World of Warcraft allowed players to express creativity and personality.
Bringing in a transmog system to the vanilla world would be huge and give gear acquisition more of a punch. Heck, there are starter outfits that look great… until the stat upgrades require you to trade them in for ugly replacements. So why not keep looking fabulous? I’m all for it, even if it’s a very basic transmog system.
Open up guild quarters and vaults
I think that shared bank vaults for guilds is a no-brainer — and I know that Blizzard does as well, because the studio crammed these into Classic Anniversary earlier than expected. It’s a feature that simply makes a lot of sense for social outfits that want to collaborate and help each other.
However, I was intrigued to see that the Turtle WoW team was experimenting with something called “guild quarters.” The idea here is that a guild could rent any tavern in the game to make it a guild home for a while, offering guildies an additional rested XP bonus if they congregate and log out there. I like this idea a lot because it wouldn’t require any additional art assets but would encourage guild members to start and end each session in the same place so that they physically hang out together a little more. Steal this idea, Blizz!
Explore new professions
Turtle WoW had a lot of fun coming up with some interesting professions that had a profound impact on a player’s journey through the game world. I was most impressed with Survival, a profession that would let you make items that could assist with your day-to-day journeys. There were fishing boats for big fishing bonuses, camping tents to give you a quick rested XP boost, and campfires, torches, and lanterns for more spirit bonuses.
The team also brought in gardening, a profession that’s pretty much self-explanatory if you’ve played any other MMO or video game with a similar system. Plant, water, grow, harvest in temporary planters.
Add in more leveling challenges
To me, this is a huge no-brainer, especially in light of how successful hardcore mode’s been in Classic already. Turtle WoW added even more optional leveling modes to its world, including a “slow and steady” challenge that halved XP, a challenge where you remain level 100 and try to do as much as you can, a challenge where (yes) you only kill boars, and a vagrant mode where you can’t wear any gear better than poor or common quality. All of these were tied to titles and other rewards, which add incentive to try them out.
Fleshing out the world
And finally, the obvious takeaway from this project is that players were quite keen on getting new and improved zones to enjoy. Adding in more zones (and quests!) would give us a variety of leveling options to a world that we know perhaps a little too well at this point.
Stepping back into the MMO time machine of WoW Classic, Justin Olivetti offers up observations and ground-level analysis as a Gnome with a view. Casually Classic is a more laid-back look at this legacy ruleset for those of us who’ve never stepped into a raid or seen more than 200 gold to our names.
