Ex-Blizzard developer Mark Kern AKA Grummz is in the gaming news again. Along with Kabrutus and others, Kern is co-leading a gamer revolt against the forces of political correctness that have hijacked the video game industry with their neo-Marxist diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideologies.
For decades, Mark Kern has been one of the few video game developers who’ve stood up to the forces of censorship and tyranny that have taken over American and European video game studios. In an industry riddled with radical progressive politics, Mark always tells it like it is and is a rare voice of sanity and reason backed up by a resume of authentic accomplishment.
Kern is one of the very few video game developers who supported Gamergate and has spoken out against wokeness over the years. And, for his trouble, Mark has had a target on his back and been the undeserving recipient of a relentless barrage of scorn by a small group of cry bullies, alphabet perverts, and demented weirdos.
Mark Kern is to video games, as author J.K. Rowling is to fantasy literature. I suspect the very same community and their allies make up the majority of his detractors on X right now. But his critics are woefully ignorant of what Mark Kern accomplished that will forever cement his legacy in the annals of video game history.
Stay awhile and listen, friend.
In the Beginning, There was Azeroth
In the vast landscape of online gaming, few titles hold the cultural significance and enduring popularity of World of Warcraft. For over a decade, millions of players have ventured into the fantastical realms of Azeroth, embarking on epic quests, forging friendships, and engaging in legendary battles.
Yet, amidst the ever-evolving landscape of gaming, even WoW faced the challenge of staying relevant to its dedicated fanbase. As the team of original WoW developers such as Chris Metzen, Rob Pardo, Jeff Kaplan, and Alex Afrasiabi was moved to the upcoming Project Titan, a lesser-skilled team at Blizzard took the reigns of Azeroth.
The gaming world would soon learn that the new team could not replicate the magic of the original and the first two expansions. In addition, the pernicious influence of Activsion’s Bobby Kotick, who put profits ahead of sound gameplay began to take its toll with Blizzard attempting to broaden the demographic of WoW players. In attempting to please everyone, they orphaned their core demographic and the result was mediocre expansions and fewer subscribers which translated to lower profits.
Let’s go back to 2015 A.D.
The Rise of Nostalrius
The cleverly named Nostalrius was a popular private World of Warcraft (WoW) server that gained significant attention for its emulation of the game’s earlier versions, particularly the “Vanilla” version of WoW, which refers to the game as it was before any expansions were released. Nostalrius aimed to recreate the experience of playing WoW as it was during its initial release and early stages free from all of the “innovations” that the MMORPG suffered along the way.
Tired of the increasingly dumbed-down nature of WoW, Nostalrius emerged as a beacon of nostalgia for Warcraft veterans longing to revisit the glory days of Vanilla WoW. With meticulous attention to detail, the Nostalrius team recreated the immersive experience of early Azeroth, capturing the essence of what made WoW a gaming phenomenon.
Nostalrious and other privately run WoW servers attracted a large community of players who were nostalgic for the original WoW experience or who preferred its gameplay mechanics compared to later expansions. Many players appreciated the challenge, simplicity, and sense of community that Vanilla WoW provided.
However, operating private servers like Nostalrius is against Blizzard Entertainment’s terms of service, as they involve running unofficial versions of the game and can potentially infringe upon Blizzard’s intellectual property rights. In April 2016, Blizzard issued a cease-and-desist order to Nostalrius, leading to the shutdown of the server.
Despite its closure, Nostalrius left a lasting impact on the WoW community, sparking discussions about the possibility of official “legacy” servers from Blizzard that would offer similar experiences. This eventually led to the development and release of WoW Classic, an official Blizzard-run version of the game that allows players to experience Vanilla WoW content on official servers.
Mark Kern’s Tireless Advocacy
At the forefront of the movement for legacy servers stood Mark Kern, a former lead developer on World of Warcraft. Kern’s passion for preserving the spirit of Vanilla WoW propelled him to spearhead a petition urging Blizzard to embrace the legacy server concept.
Through his advocacy efforts and dialogue with Blizzard leadership, Kern amplified the ignored voices of countless players yearning for a return to Azeroth’s roots and the fundamentals of WoW’s original game design.
Kern’s Fateful Meeting with Morhaime
In a pivotal moment that underscored the significance of their advocacy, Mark Kern had the opportunity to meet Mike Morhaime, one of the co-founders of Blizzard Entertainment, at Blizzard’s headquarters. This meeting provided Kern with a platform to convey the sentiments of the WoW community directly to Morhaime, emphasizing the widespread desire for legacy servers and the profound impact of Nostalrius on the player base.
The volunteer members of the Nostalrius dev team had a secret meeting with Blizzard about a week later as is detailed in the following video:
Blizzard’s Response
The groundswell of support for legacy servers could not be ignored, and Blizzard heeded the call with the much-anticipated announcement of WoW Classic. J. Allen Brack was forced to eat some humble pie with vanilla ice cream à la mode.
This official reincarnation of Vanilla WoW represented a watershed moment for the franchise, marking a return to its origins while simultaneously charting a course for the future. With meticulous attention to detail and a commitment to authenticity, Blizzard delivered an experience that resonated deeply with both veteran adventurers and newcomers alike.
The Resurgence of WoW
Since its release, WoW Classic has surpassed all expectations, reigniting the passion of players old and new. The revitalization of the franchise has been nothing short of remarkable, with WoW Classic emerging as the most popular offering in the WoW universe for the past few years. Challenge was back on the menu! The allure of reliving memorable quests, conquering fearsome foes, and forging lasting social bonds has proven irresistible, reaffirming World of Warcraft’s status as a cultural phenomenon.
Conclusion
The creation of WoW Classic from idea to fruition was an unlikely journey with a slim chance of success. No one person can take credit for it because it took hundreds of people to make it happen. Ultimately the gamble paid off big for Blizzard and WoW fans and this is why I feel it’s important to acknowledge the contribution of the Nostalrius team and Mark Kern who both amply demonstrated that the demand for WoW Classic was substantive and ultimately financially viable.
The success of WoW Classic shocked the WoW live team. Its rebirth also had the unintended consequences of causing the live team to pause to reflect on how they had dropped the ball and failed to uphold the original values of their venerable MMO. This epiphany at Blizzard even made it possible for the return of veteran Chris Metzen who is now back in charge of the lore for WoW.
WoW fans owe a debt to the Nostalrious team and Mark Kern for their heroic efforts that would unexpectedly keep Blizzard’s World of Warcraft franchise alive and well in the years to come. One wonders what would have happened to WoW if the classic server movement had not existed to inspire Blizzard to look inward and do some serious soul-searching as to the failing trajectory that they were taking the franchise in. Even Mike Morhaime deserves credit for giving WoW Classic the greenlight before he resigned.
WoW Classic may very well never have happened without the personal intervention of Mark Kern and his petition initiative. On Wokepedia, they have wasted no time attempting to rewrite history and minimize his role in the birth of WoW Classic.
In the annals of gaming history, the tale of how the Nostalrius team and Mark Kern revitalized the World of Warcraft franchise stands as a testament to the enduring power of community, passion, and nostalgia. Through their unwavering dedication, they not only preserved the legacy of Azeroth but also ushered in an undiscovered era of adventure and excitement for new WoW players.
–Wolfshead
I urge all gamers who care about the integrity of the video games they play to follow him on X and subscribe to his channel for $5 a month. This will help him continue to fight the ghouls that want to destroy our hobby.
It’s indeed pivotal this whole event with Nostalrius, because without it Activision would have never bowed down to players and released WoW Classic. I even played some of it in August 2019 when it released, although I quickly realized there is no magic in it and cancelled my subscription after about a month and went back to Vanilla private servers.
I think Activision, now Microsoft, did not pass the chance to taint even Classic with their woke degeneracy by changing the Male/Female body types to Type 1/2. I think in line of that, quest text in the game was also changed to reflect the woke rules for referring to NPCs and players.
Nevertheless, it was important that the most popular MMORPG’s leadership took their heads out of their asses for a second and realized what they have done to the game is not that liked at all and Classic was a way for them to steal some people from private servers, mostly some scared goody-two-shoes who are too afraid to play on a private server and risk getting SWATed and then getting the death penalty by thousand cuts. It was also Activision’s only way to fight private servers, because every time the force one server to shut down, 5 more would launch in its stead.
In my opinion, the private servers for MMORPGs everywhere are the best place to experience the game, not the official “legacy” versions, because they are simply not the same.
In my experience, having played Vanilla WoW for thousands of hours, I know that the difference between Classic (referring to the Activision-Microsoft version) and Vanilla (the private servers in general) is there, some base values are different, as well as Classic has made further changes to some gameplay mechanics to make it less Vanilla (or Classic) and more dumbed-down and more noob-friendly.
Another example is LOTRO and their legacy servers and how different it is compared to the private server Echoes of Angmar, which runs on a client with content from 2008, the SSG (Standing Stone Games) version, runs on the bloated, broken Retail client with slow loading times, constant FPS drops and stutters, horrible server lag and the way it tries to emulate the old times is by locking zones and content so they are inaccessible and until recently difficulty was easier, now they have some sort of a difficulty scaling system where you can choose between 7 or 9 difficulties with 1 being Retail easy and 7 or 9 being almost impossible, which could be cool, but it still isn’t “Vanilla”.
It is also well known that there are other private servers of other MMORPGs, in whose case, the original game has been shut down and the private servers are the only means for the dedicated players to continue playing the game, ones like Tales of Pirates, ArcheAge and many other lesser known Asian F2P MMORPGs.
In conclusion, I think that Nostalrius and Mark Kern are important for showing the significance of the old versions of MMORPGs, but with or without it, Vanilla private servers would have still ran and even Activision very well that unless they launched their own server, some private server troupe would have launched another Nostalrius in a country outside of their jurisdiction and they wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop them. The lesson learned is indeed important, but seeing how insignificant WoW Classic has become, how it has fizzled out and how they are now launching Cataclysm Classic, which many WoW players find questionable, it diminishes the meaning of the word “Classic”.
I think it will be nice to talk about, in my opinion, the most intriguing WoW private server – Turtle WoW and maybe even have an article piece on it. In my personal opinion it is what I always imagined the future of WoW would have been, this was back in 2006 when I started playing WoW and there were still no expansions and I would lay on my bed, look at the ceiling and fantasize what the future of WoW would be. Funnily enough, it was about 80% of what Turtle WoW are doing – expanding the game horizontally – adding changes to existing zones, adding new zones in areas that were made inaccessible in the original game and then never used, new quests, professions, class changes… all this without making the game less Vanilla, only more Vanilla. My only desire would be if they add questing zones for characters level 60, but without increasing the level cap, just having mobs up to levels 65 or something that would increase the challenge and promote grouping. My only gripe with WoW is that for me personally, the adventure ends when my character hits level 60 – it stops leveling, gaining new abilities, more power, all there is left to do is grind dungeons, raids, PvP and gear up the character, at one point it’s so “complete”, there is no reason to log in with it anymore. My desire for the perfect MMORPG was something that plays like Vanilla WoW, but doesn’t have an end, you never reach max level, or at some point you can reset back to level 1, keeps some stats/perks and level again to max only slightly stronger and you can do this reset infinitely, if you like playing your character, you can keep playing it forever.
Thank you for giving Mark Kern some much needed recognition, he deserves it. It is also quite important to preserve how things happened, because the Wokies like rewriting literally at Wikipedia and framing events in their favor as the develop.
I also never ever thought this would happen. I also wonder that its success is way longer lived than I anticipated!
Some things I see differently: How shocked was the WoW live team by it? Yeah, they were shocked. But how much of a lasting impression did it have on the team?
Shadowlands, Battle for Azeroth and to a lesser extent Dragonflight were peak awful for expansions, the first two at least making even Cataclysm look good in comparison.
They also mark the departure from classic WoW lore origins, something that Warlords of Draenor (which I loved, but most didn’t like it. It was an uneven and flawed content release expansion but when I joined late, the pre-Legion content with the last raid and the Tanaan Jungle adventure zone were wonderful) and the lauded Legion, I played and loved both, connected with. The Burning Legion storyline with Orcs and demons was always my favorite, liked that even more than Arthas Vader in Northrend, as most people do according to various rankings.
Now I see Metzen returned, but classic WoW lore not so much yet, but I am not in the loop and not playing right now, so might be wrong.
I also see who got hired to strengthen the Wow Classic team. Holly Longdale was very reputable, but by now I only think of her as Miss Pride Month. I am not sure they hired the right people with veterans that are IMO of questionable value for their previous participation in EverQuest.
Classic WoW is right now also endangered. It is rewritten and changed. Carefully, slowly, … so far. I know who is at the helm of WoW Classic and at Blizzard right now, Metzen is high in the hierarchy as executive creative director, but it is him against a company that is already rotten with wokeness and bereft of talent and many great people that made WoW a success, among them the ousted and defamed Cosby Suite people like Afrasiabi.
Kern apparently also monitors Helldivers 2, a surprise smash hit that is now doing a literal Helldive from incredible heights downwards not only due to the latest blunders. I already deinstalled before as they nerfed literally everything I like to use, it is kinda showing how game companies sometimes, for a brief moment manage to capture lightning in a bottle, and then start to lose the magic more and more.
It is very optimistic to hope that the current generation of designers can escape cultural limitations and bring back the golden age of video gaming I experienced in my youth. But there is always the chance that magic happens, I know so many people who wouldn’t mind a new MMO home that is as inspiring and invigorating as WoW was.
WoW Classic is nice for people who want to experience again, but it rather makes me sad, sorry to say. I want that spirit conserved and put forward in modern games and design. No, that doesn’t mean woke, in some unlikely case some woke designer just read this … haha.
I am reading so many older books and playing older games, it brings me great joy but also remembers me of the dire state of the gaming world and culture in general right now.
P.S. back in the days we speculated and discussed a lot game design that would work with horizontal progression at level cap and so on…! These were the days!
Special thanks to Allwynd and AnonEntity for your exceptionally thorough and astute observations. I felt it was necessary to give Mark Kern and the Nostalrius team the recognition it deserves.
I believe I’m one of the few veteran voices in web media who is a counterpoint to all of the woke industry hegemony, so it’s critical that our side steps up to the plate and chronicles what is going on. On the video side, we have many more allies, and most of them cover film, comics, and video games.
I need to make an article that lists sympathetic voices to our cause. I’m hoping our community can also give me suggestions too.
You are usually far ahead when it comes to finding great people worth listening to, I am going to post you some you might not know yet. I was lately much more into the political side of things than gaming though.
BUT… just may an hour ago… I was thinking about WoW Classic after seeing a classic talent calculator. Which I could not resist fiddling around with.
I still remember how a “free horse” at level 40 for Paladins and Warlocks was a thing. And how much I admired UNENDING BREATH for 10 minutes diving and 20% faster swim speed. I really liked diving around at the Drowned Reef, between Wetlands and Arathi Highlands… ooooh the memories!
I could play WoW Classic, but it would so feel like an re-enactment for me. Sweet memories turning quite bitter thinking about where the game headead in future expansions.
I also can’t shake off that Western Civilization is going down a path of destruction, too. Back in the days this was not at thing.
Graphics and game design have advanced for the better in quite some aspects, but sadly they no longer have designers and creators with a vision.
See what Abrams and Kurtzman could have done with the oodles of money they had/have for Star Wars and Star Trek and what unmemorable … that word would probably not get through… they produced.
Sigh!!!!!!!!!!!!
To reply to both of you @Wolfshead and @AnonEntity,
Regarding Chris Metzen returning to WoW, I don’t think him being there is anything more than a PR stunt, he won’t change anything and he won’t make WoW less bad, because they have to delete everything since Vanilla and start from there and they won’t do that. Also I think Christ Metzen said he retired to focus on his family and I believe he was also part of a studio that was about to develop tabletop games or something old school like this. I’m guessing that didn’t pan out as well as he though and maybe spending time with his family wasn’t as fulfilling as working on WoW, probably his magnum opus so returning to WoW was, IMO, for the most part him asking to be brought back and Microsoft-Activision being happy to have him back out of desperation due to how they keep finding new ways to make WoW more shallow and unenganing.
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In regards to the surging of critics to the wokeness tainting everything in the entertainment industry, it’s bound to happen, but the sad part, as exposed here in articles such as the one about Bell* and Asmo*, it made me realize how little I knew and how many of these “content creators” I never knew have already taken a side, and they’ve taken the wrong side too. Them not talking about those issues, by either avoiding them or beating around the bush is not helping. The sad part is where money play a big role, people sell themselves out and the responsibility they have towards their audience makes their audience complicit in this selling out, because they would rather sink with the ship (the content creator they idolize so), than to be true to realize they no longer agree with this content creator.
Recently I have noticed a content creator known as AVGN or the Angry Video Game Nerd, being in a similar situation – he lost his mojo – namely the people around him who were crucial to his success and now he is waddling in mediocrity, refusing to acknowledge he blew it, but there are still some of his most diehard fans who will never leave his side and it’s bad for the creator, because they maintain his delusion and it’s bad for them, because they refuse to face the reality that the content creator they used to like and enjoy has changed and is no longer entertaining and they don’t agree with him anymore.
Anti-woke critics and content creators do have a small, but loyal following, but largely they are ridiculed, mocked and put down by other, more popular creators who sold out to the woke agenda and their followers usually are the one leading the charge to spread more ignorance on this matter. It’s essentially a game of cat and mouse between both sides, so far it’s unclear which side will prevail.
You are right about Turtle WoW. I need to experience it for myself and give it its due in an article. I believe I installed it but the constant death messages ruined my immersion and there was no way to turn them off.
Part of the problem is that video game devs are working in a pressure cooker. They are forced to create new expansion content at a frenetic pace. When I was working hardcore in the industry I had no time to read blogs or articles. I was working so much that I had no time to do anything except work, eat and sleep.
I think the Blizzard WoW devs fell into this trap as well. They were working so hard, they could never see the big picture and kept trying to add more features. They lost sight of the magic of vanilla WoW. Then Vivendi sold Blizzard to Activision and the rest is history.
I’m fortunate in that I do not write articles for clicks or to gain followers. I’m just doing it for the intellectual and creative challenge.