Much like the notorious "Barrens Chat" that was once a haven for douche-baggery and provided an outlet for many less-than-stellar opinion givers, World of Warcraft's earliest days were as simple as they were simply teeming with exploitable features and mechanics used for all manner of ill-intended - shall we say - interactions.
One such feature was the way WoW handled player death, and how skeletal remains would be left behind when a player's character kicked the bucket. Functionally, a pile of bones was a good way to let passer-by's know that something bad went down, and that they should either avoid the area or exercise caution. However, for as many players as this feature helped prevent an untimely death, there were just as many that would be exposed to its misuse.
With enough time and resolve, one could potentially turn their graveyard of bones into an elaborately spelled out word or phrase simply by allowing themselves to die over and over in a pattern. As you can probably imagine, this could yield some highly offensive language being left laying around for unsuspecting bystanders to see, or for those a little more enterprising - be used to advertise a less-than-legal gold selling business.
With the upcoming release of WoW Classic - Blizzard's latest attempt to repackage nostalgia in order to sell memories back to players - the developers are preparing for the worst and shutting that sh** down before anything bad can come from it. In response to concern over the block potentially compromising the authenticity of WoW Classic, Senior test lead Josh “Aggrend” Greenfield expressed that it was ultimately for the best.
While we understand that this was a flavorful part of Original WoW and the earlier expansions, individual players leaving multiple player corpses and skeletons throughout the game world can lead to behavior such as spelling out advertisements, hate speech, and other negative messages.
Perhaps there is a better way for the developers to prevent misuse without doing away with the feature entirely, but if it has to be one way or the other, I'd imagine that its omission from the game does significantly less damage to the overall experience than its inclusion being weaponized to offend others. After all, do we really need reminders of our expired mortal coil littered about when we're already so dead inside?
