Welcome to ‘Wait, What? Wednesdays’, our weekly satire article!
While many hopeful players are stressing about the final testing and August 27th/28th launch date, hardcore gamer Cody Koplin, age 18, is worried about how Classic WoW will coddle gamers.
Vanilla Together visited this long-time player who fell in love with World of Warcraft in 2014 when he picked up the critically-acclaimed Warlords of Draenor expansion.
Cody was nice enough to invite us into his cozy 170 square foot New York apartment and let us interview him. While he has never experienced Classic or Vanilla WoW, he knows earlier renditions of games are less challenging.
“This is all basic marketing that I’ve learned in my first-year college course. When you create a game it needs to be easy or people will get scared away. You need to attract everyone possible. I see why they are making Classic accessible, but I’m glad they have increased the difficulty every expansion.”
Once called “no-lifers”, hardcore gamers have risen to levels of importance equal to Taylor Swift, Martin Luther King Jr., and getting to bed at a reasonable hour.
“I just like the challenge, you know? The modern game makes you think,” he says, tapping his head which made one of his glasses lenses fall out. “You’ve got obstacles in your way like the Heart of Azeroth, Island Expeditions, and of course the lore, but you need to create your own fun.”
Firing up his Macbook, Cody apologized and said he would need to get his authenticator. By attaching it to a chicken in the communal garden on top of his building, he gets exercise and adds to the difficulty of the game.
“I don’t like things being given to me on a silver platter. Some days I see a tantalizing world quest on my Warcraft App, but I can’t catch the chicken,” he yelled while climbing outside his window, “and I’m pretty bummed I won’t be getting heroic gear doing really fun objectives.”
He then quickly followed up that he sometimes lets the chicken play, “but just for LFR, when the excitement of getting an item titanforged becomes too much”, and he needs a break to browse the In-Game shop for new mounts.
We chatted about his concerns for Vanilla WoW while he wall jumped in Boralus. He loves finding bugs and reporting them and is thankful for the Beta experience he constantly gets to play. Noticing us looking at his “Always Challenge the Brain Muscle” post-it on his laptop, he explained how next-level retail can get.
“In Classic you just wait for gear to drop and then your guild says how happy they are for you. First, yuck. Second, you won’t ever be satisfied if other people tell you to be happy.” Cody then explained how retail has fixed this. When he gets a drop there is zero emotion (“I admit it took some training.”) and plugs weights into his simulator which he learned C++ to make. By resisting his urge to feel joy and using cold logic, he can determine the level of happiness he should allow himself to feel.
We have asked Cody to be a guest writer on Vanilla Together. His first article will be “How To Trick Your Mind Into Entering A Flow State & Start Enjoying BFA”.
We will be protesting Classic with the resurgence of #realgamersriseup on Pintrest.