Last week, the massive Thunder King update stormed across Pandaria and the World of Warcraft servers, bringing a new raid, daily quests, gear, and a questing island area using a server-wide content unlocking system. The patch marks the 16th major update for the reigning champ of the MMO genre and its nearly eight years of activity. After a prolonged focus on balances and the endless content churn, Blizzard Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street feels (via IGN ) the patch is a return to the sense of wonder and danger of Azeroth's early years.
The new questing zone, the Isle of Thunder, recalls the faction-wide events of old—such as the gate-opening ceremony for the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj—by unlocking one time as the Horde or Alliance progresses deeper into the island after establishing a beachhead. It's ripe for hotspots of open-world PVP—another pined-for memory from classic Warcraft—especially because of the zone's interesting no-fly restriction.
Street explains it's all an intentional throwback to the game's roots. "Somewhere along the way, we'd lost the sense that being outdoors in the world was kind of a dangerous thing," he says. "Walking around and fighting mobs is basically the heart of World of Warcraft, and we had lost a little bit of that and wanted to make it fun again."
"It's great to give ex-players a reason to come back and try it again, and appealing to their nostalgia is a good way of doing that," he adds.
For those enjoying the Thunder King's good graces, what do you think of the new island? Is it a valid return to the Warcraft of yore?
