With the World of Warcraft Classic launch coming on August 27, players are already buzzing with excitement. However, there is one change involving skeletons and player corpses that isn’t pleasing the community.
In the original World of Warcraft, a skeleton appeared when a player died. As you repeatedly perished, more skeletons would appear and pile up in a chilling fashion. The sight of skeletons served as a warning for other players that they were about to enter a dangerous region and should be cautious.
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But World of Warcraft Classic is going to take a different approach to this. Instead of seeing the skeletons pile up as you die, you only leave one skeleton behind and it will disappear after your ensuing death. According to WoW Classic’s Senior Test Lead Aggrend in a Reddit AMA, this was a conscious decision to fight player abuse.
“While we understand that this was a flavorful part of Original WoW and the earlier expansions, individual players leaving multiple player corpses and skeletons throughout the game world can lead to behavior such as spelling out advertisements, hate speech, and other negative messages,” he explained. “As such, this will not be a part of WoW Classic.”
Many players expressed their disappointment for this decision, saying that it ruins game immersion. Skeletons served as a telltale sign that a big battle had gone down and often represented hard-earned victories as well. Player corpses were littering the lands, telling others that a massive PvP battle just took place. However, skeletons and player corpses were also used by some players to write foul messages or by farmers to advertise their websites.
Some of the comments on the Reddit thread said that this is “a horrible decision,” suggesting several ways to keep the original approach in the game, such as randomly re-positioning the skeletons or removing them after the character has logged out. Blizzard is yet to follow-up on this matter, but it’s doubtful that you’ll get to see World of Warcraft Classic skeletons behaving like they used to in the original game at launch, at least.
