Skip to main content

From hurdles to Mankrik’s wife, here are the best bits from the WoW Classic AMA

Image used with permission by copyright holder

We’re just seven days from the release of World of Warcraft Classic, and the dev team has kick-started the grand countdown with a lengthy Reddit AMA. Eight staffers, from the Executive Producer to the Principle Software Engineer, lined up to answer over 2,000 questions from nostalgia-hungry Redditors and there’s a lot to go through.

As expected, plenty of questions regarding log-in times came in early, to which fans were reassured that new servers can and will be added if necessary. On the subject of how else they could combat potential overcrowding, the game’s Lead Software Engineer stated: “…while [realm caps and queues] are tools we have at our disposal, we don’t want to rely on them exclusively, because they keep people from playing the game.”

Recommended Videos

But perhaps the standout part of the whole AMA was less about the game and more from the tales of returning software engineer Ogronz rediscovering code they’d written all those years ago. When asked whether work they anticipated to be difficult turned out to be easy, Ogronz mentioned how their experiences of the early days were one of the “biggest benefits” in ensuring that nothing was “incredibly hard”, and that “as someone who has fielded 3am calls”, the benefits of using the modern World of Warcraft systems to rebuild Classic led to “a huge boost to productivity” compared to the vanilla days.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Principle Software Engineer ZoidWoW would eventually field a similar question. In their eyes, the Hunter class was “one of the most complicated classes in vanilla” and took “a huge amount of work” to restore.

Between all the talk of old code, fixed bugs from earlier stress tests, and confirmation of in-game holidays returning unharmed, one of World of Warcraft’s long-since dead memes was brought back into the limelight – Mankrik’s wife.

Mankirk's wife WoW Classic AMA
Image used with permission by copyright holder

For the uninitiated, players were once tasked with finding the deceased wife of an NPC named Mankrik. Mankrik’s wife, or her remains, were hidden far away, with her name obscured to the point where she was just another body out in the wild. This led to a steady stream of new players asking for clues of her whereabouts only for bored veterans to send these wide-eyed adventurers to completely random locations.

When asked whether they would move her position to recreate that initial experience, they simply responded with their go-to mission statement of “No changes”. The meme of Mankrik’s wife will return as it was before the Cataclysm expansion scrubbed it from the game.

The promise of “no changes” continued throughout the AMA where it became obvious that World of Warcraft Classic wouldn’t have vanilla veterans experiencing the game anew. Instead, it’s more about reliving the past.

As for who out of the attending dev team will hit level 60 first, Kaivax is planning to steal the win from Aggrend and Pazorax by “distracting them with offers of delicious meats and cheeses.

If you want to know more, you can read up on the whole thing here if you have the time.

Josh Brown
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Josh Brown is a UK-based freelancer with devoted interests in video games, tech, film, and anime/manga. Just don't talk to…
World of Warcraft development paused amid Activision-Blizzard harassment lawsuit
A party attacks a red dragon in World of Warcraft.

Following an explosive lawsuit filed against publishing giant Activision-Blizzard, development on World of Warcraft has been paused according to a senior designer working on the game.

Taking to Twitter, World of Warcraft senior system designer Jeff Hamilton didn't mince words, saying "I can tell you, almost no work is being done on World of Warcraft right now while this obscenity plays out. And that benefits nobody -- not the players, not the developers, not the shareholders."

Read more
World of Warcraft Classic: How to level a boosted character from 58-60 fast
wow classic how to level boosted character 58 60 fast leveling guide featured

Leveling up in World of Warcraft Classic was no easy feat: A bitter reminder of just how little time players of the original game have in adulthood. If you were able to stick it through, you're likely all set to venture through the Dark Portal as Burning Crusade Classic launches in early June. If not, there's still hope. A one-time paid boost can take a character of your choice to level 58. But with level 60 still being the goal, you don't have much time to get there. Here's how to level a boosted character to level 60 fast in WoW Classic.

Further reading:

Read more
World of Warcraft Classic: How to race to level 60 fast
Characters fly on mounts in World of Warcraft Classic.

Playing World of Warcraft Classic can get frustrating if you don't know how to level up to 60. Many twists, turns, and blocks prevent you from getting to the next level because you either lose money or you lose a life. To make your game go a bit easier and get farther along, this guide will help you level up to 60 in no time.

There are two main ways to level quick in WoW Classic: Questing and dungeons. Questing is generally the more fruitful of the two, so that's where we'll start. However, you can also level quickly by farming dungeons with the right loadout.

Read more