Over the course of the next couple of weeks, World of Warcraft will take players on a journey through time as they pack their bags and once again visit past expansions with a new event called Turbulent Timeways. During this event, players will head back to the time of the Burning Legion, the Lich King, Deathwing, Pandaren, the Iron Horde, and once again, the Burning Legion. But players won’t have the opportunity to relive the charms of Vanilla WoW—and they think they know why.
Inspired by recent time travels, one player started a post on WoW’s subreddit discussing why Blizzard Entertainment never treats us to a Vanilla-themed Timewalking event. Although everything the player could come up with was a wild stab in the dark, they might have actually discovered two main reasons why you can’t run Deadmines and Scarlet Monastery for some real loot.
Unlike other Timewalking dungeons, which are short, sweet, and easy to navigate, the large majority of Vanilla dungeons like Sunken Temple and Upper Blackrock Spire can feel like a never-ending maze in which you can never find your way unless you’re in a party with Vanilla connoisseur. There are, however, some dungeons like Scarlet Monastery that were redesigned and tick that short and sweet box, but they are more of an exception than a rule.
In addition to that, Vanilla never featured Heroic dungeons, and all Timewalking dungeons are typically played out on Heroic difficulty to still pose a real challenge for players. So, with no Heroic difficulty dungeons on the table, this would mean Blizzard would have to take time to redesign each and every Vanilla dungeon and increase the difficulty.
Related: The Turbulent Timeways schedule in WoW Dragonflight
Although Vanilla dungeons are known for robbing you of time, namely dungeons like Maraudon and Uldaman in their original iterations, many players would still be more than happy to run most of these dungeons. If not, each dungeon can be broken down into two to three bite-sized instances that will combine the delights of Vanilla with the practicality and fast-paced tempo of Dragonflight.
In a nutshell, Vanilla dungeons don’t meet two of the most important criteria all other Timewalking dungeons meet, and transforming them into an evergreen piece of content revisited every couple of weeks would take a lot of time and effort from Blizzard.
