Alright, since Blizzard announced World of Warcraft: Classic servers, I wanted to open a discussion about it. Sure, the servers won't be released for years, but since Blizzard is committed to release them eventually, we need to start thinking about how we'll handle it.
For this discussion, I created a few example pages and categories:
- Elwynn Forest (classic)
- Defias Ambusher (not really a new page, more like rehabilitating a redirect)
These pages were created by, in the "Elwynn Forest (classic)" case, taking the original 2010 version of Elwynn Forest, cleaning it up, and carving out things that are identical to the modern Elwynn Forest page. For the "Defias Ambusher" I did about the same thing, taking the original version of the Ambusher page back before the Defias were dissolved and the mob was renamed. I think the Defias Ambusher is a good example because a lot of mobs were similarly renamed in Elwynn Forest and Stratholme. Note that currently "Elwynn Forest" and "Ambusher" do not have links to their classic pages, because these are only test pages for now.
I also created the matching categories to contain my pages.
- Category:Elwynn Forest (classic)
- Category:Elwynn Forest (classic) mobs
- Category:Elwynn Forest (classic) objects
First, what do you think about the pages and categories I created? Several questions are coming to my mind right now:
- Should we destroy the "(original)" namespace entirely, replacing it with "(classic)"?
- Should we create classic pages and categories for every single zone, dungeon and raid of vanilla?
- Should entities that exists since vanilla and were never removed exist both in modern and classic categories?
The reason I want to launch this discussion ASAP is that, if Classic servers are coming back, I want people to stop doing the whole {{removedfromgame}} + "|doc in template" + "remove from all categories" dance. I'd rather have them put a {{classic}} template and move the page to classic categories instead ;)