World of Warcraft’s new character-select screen made me emotional

World of Warcraft celebrates the twentieth anniversary of its launch later this 12 months, and like all long-running recreation, it’s seen some huge modifications in its time. The largest of those usually arrive within the “pre-patch” updates that usher in main systemic modifications shortly earlier than a brand new enlargement goes reside. Previous pre-patches have reworked all of the questing on the sport’s authentic continents, squished the stats on each merchandise, decreased character ranges, reworked expertise timber, and mainly restructured the whole recreation.

The pre-patch for the tenth enlargement, The Battle Inside, simply dropped, formally shifting WoW to model 11.0. With the brand new replace got here the primary full redesign of the character-select display within the recreation’s historical past — a seemingly minor replace that also triggered my coronary heart to leap into my mouth.

Let me clarify.

Certainly one of a few huge systemic modifications arriving within the 11.0 patch is Warbands. WoW developer Blizzard is shifting a whole lot of development within the recreation to be account-wide, moderately than particular to a single character: For example, motion fame will now be shared throughout all of your characters. It’s a recognition of the truth that lately, a whole lot of WoW’s viewers performs a number of characters (or “alts”), and doesn’t essentially wish to do the identical grinding again and again. To simplify this course of, Blizzard created Warbands, a grouping of all of the characters on an account — even when they belong to opposing factions, or reside on completely different servers. (You’ll be able to learn extra about Warbands on this official Blizzard weblog put up.)

To visualise your Warband, WoW’s character choose display now teams all of your characters collectively, no matter server — and exhibits the highest 4 characters hanging out collectively round a comfortable campfire. (Beforehand, WoW would simply provide you with a person hero shot of every character in opposition to a background applicable to their race.) Blizzard says it plans to introduce new Warband scenes in a while, probably making room for greater than 4 characters.

It’s arduous to clarify to somebody who hasn’t been taking part in the identical online game for 20 years, however attending to pose 4 of your alt characters — any of your alt characters — subsequent to one another on this method is sort of an enormous deal. It made me emotional. These are avatars I’ve spent years of my life with, however I’ve by no means been in a position to put them in the identical house collectively earlier than. As a result of they’re all on the identical account, and to play one, I’ve to log off of the others, they’ve by no means truly met. Now I can watch them chilling collectively round that little campfire, and picture them telling one another tales about their adventures.

It’s greater than that, although. To me, these characters characterize not simply completely different eras of the sport, however completely different instances in my life, and completely different teams of buddies. There’s my first troll warrior, who I tanked with within the recreation’s earliest days, and who made mechanical squirrel pets for each member of my authentic guild. There’s my night time elf druid, the one Alliance character I spent any time with, who I used to play with my oldest pal Rob when he was residing on the different finish of the nation. There’s my troll hunter primary, who’s been with me since not less than The Burning Campaign, and who had a quick raiding profession within the late 2000s. Right here’s my Tauren monk — an inherently hilarious race/class mixture — who I made to play with my spouse after we moved in collectively, when sat subsequent to one another and gamed on blissed-out lazy Sundays.

Twenty years! Any recreation you play for that lengthy turns into a part of your life, and your life turns into a part of it. These are actual recollections, hooked up to actual tales and actual individuals. WoW’s new character-select display is sort of a treasured photograph album, bringing these moments collectively for the primary time. I like it.