World of Warcraft Classic aims to bring back the magic of vanilla WoW in late August, but some select players were lucky enough to gain access to the test servers starting on May 15. The devs have gone to great lengths to recreate the performance and experience of the original MMO release, apparently including a number of features that need to be specifically called out as "not bugs."

Anyone who has played World of Warcraft in recent years is well aware that the game has made enormous strides since its initial launch in terms of quality of life and balance improvements. Battle for Azeroth may not be the most well-received expansion to date, but there's no denying that the game's user experience has improved since the early days. That said, many players are eager to revisit those early days, warts and all. Blizzard is asking for feedback from the early testers, but some of the vanilla features keep getting misidentified as bugs.

This prompted Blizz to take to the forums and share the first version of the "not a bug" list. The full list of features that have frequently been reported as bugs by testers follows...

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As we’ve discussed before, the nature of WoW Classic sometimes invokes different memories for different players, and this leads to certain misconceptions for some about what is or isn’t working as intended.

"The following is a list of commonly-reported gameplay in WoW Classic that is not actually a bug, and is working as we expect it to:

  • Tauren’s hitboxes and their melee reach is slightly larger than other races.
  • Being critically struck while using /sit to sit does not cause abilities like Enrage, Blood Craze, and Reckoning to activate.
  • Using the “Automatic Quest Tracking” option does not auto-track newly accepted quests. (It instead will start to track an existing quest once progress towards an objective is started.)
  • Warrior health Regeneration is working at the expected rate.
  • Quests objectives and points of interests are not tracked on the map or minimap.
  • Completed quests are marked on the minimap with a dot. (and not a “?”)
  • Feared players and NPCs run fast.
  • Standing on top of other players while facing away allows spells and attacks to be used.
  • Creature respawn rates are much slower than in Battle for Azeroth.
  • NPCs which offer multiple quests may inconsistently display them as a dot or a “!” on the available quests list. They were inconsistent in 1.12, and we’ve reproduced the exact inconsistency they had back then.
  • Quests that are too low level for do not show up as a “!” in the game world.
  • Available quests do not display a “!” on the minimap.
  • On level up, the message: “Your skill in Protection increased to 15” was added in 1.12.1, and we’re intending to keep that."

The Blizzard post is getting a ton of attention in the WoW community and reactions vary from excitement to "told you so." Once WoW Classic actually releases, it will be very interesting to see what kind of playerbase the Classic servers pull in after the initial hype dies down. It seems likely that this type of experience is going to appeal to a niche audience, but certainly won't be for everyone.

Be sure to check back throughout the testing period for more updates and news about World of Warcraft Classic.

World of Warcraft Classic releases on August 26, 2019 for PC.

Source: Blizzard forums