The Classic version of World of Warcraft will do a few things differently than the current retail version – for example, it will have different names for places.
The beta of WoW Classic has been running for quite a while, but the German player community has been asking one question for some time: Will the Classic version of World of Warcraft also use the “old” names? In the past, places like “Ironforge” were not yet known, as they simply had the English name “Ironforge”.
After a long silence, Blizzard’s localization team has finally responded and clarified: Yes, WoW Classic will also use the old English names!
Localization has changed over the years: The way World of Warcraft is localized has changed significantly over the years. This is also explained by the Community Manager Toschayju in the German forum:
Throughout the history of World of Warcraft, our localization process has changed significantly. This includes translating certain words and phrases. For WoW Classic, we want to retain the original localization of the game as much as possible and create a player experience that feels authentic and true to its origins. For example, you may visit Bloodhoof instead of the village of Bluthufe, and you will encounter the dwarves of the Stormpike Expedition instead of the dwarves of Sturmlanzen.
There were discussions back then: Just before the release of “The Burning Crusade”, Blizzard decided to fully localize the game into the respective languages to create a linguistically uniform game world. This resulted in many places and terms being “Germanized”. While this barely went unnoticed for some names like “Whisperwind” (which became Wisperwind), it was more obvious for names like Proudmoore (which became Prachtmeer).
So the name remains “Thunder Bluff” and not “Donnerfels”.
This did not please everyone and already sparked fierce discussions back then. For some, the original names were something important, they were considered “proper names”. Others only understood why the world had previously been translated half-heartedly and were happy that finally all places and names had a German term.
Do you think it’s good that these details return from WoW Classic? Or would it be more sensible to have the game “fully” in the German language?
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