WoW Classic and Beyond

Blizzard has finally released World of Warcraft Classic and I want to talk about it.

A bit of background first. I started playing WoW in 2004, two weeks after launch. I played all the way through the first expansion, The Burning Crusade in 2007, the second expansion Wrath of the Lich King in 2008 and through the third, Cataclysm in 2010. That was when I finally burned out.

I had taken breaks from the game, sure, but I always came back, until I couldn't do it anymore. The game had changed too much while at the same time it was too much of the same old. I canceled my subscription and moved on with no regrets after 6-7 years of playing.

When the fifth expansion Warlords of Draenor was released in 2014, Blizzard gave away the fourth expansion Mists of Pandaria (2012) for a fiver, and I went back, but quit again after a few days. It completely failed to excite me. Since then Legion (2016) and Battle for Azeroth (2018) have been released. I basically know nothing about them, but Blizzard changed things around and now you get the entire game sans the newest expansion, in this case BfA, if you subscribe.

So, Classic. When they announced it I was a bit excited and then I lost interest. Then I got some interest back and lost it again, so on and so forth. Classic went live on August 26^th, and the day before, Sunday the 25^th I was still feeling pretty cold towards it. As the launch timer slowly ticked down towards zero, I went to Twitch.tv to have a little look. It turns out that I wasn't the only one. 1.2 million people watched Classic go live, which was pretty crazy. I watched as my chosen streamers intro camera zoomed across the undead starting area and we could see a literal army of undead swarming across Deathknell (undead starting area).

Most of the starting quests are either 1. Kill X amount of Y monsters, or 2. Collect X amount of things that drop off Y monsters, or 3. Find and gather X amount of Y items that spawn around the map. There must have been ten players per monster. It was a glorious madhouse, a cacophony of chaos and I do not understand how anyone could stand to play like that.

The following day however, I subbed and jumped into World of Warcraft Classic. It wasn't as bad as day 1, but it was pretty rough. It has since evened out.

I've played a week now, and to be perfectly honest, it's a mixed bag. It is a lot of fun, but it is so insanely old school in design.

It's hard to find where you need to go as the map is little help. I rely on memory more than anything else.

It's hard to make any money, and you pay for everything. Hitting a new even level and having to train four new spells at 15 silver a piece when you have just managed to get two gold together is rough. Want to fly from Orgrimmar to Stonetalon? 5 silver please... it's hard. Add to that the fact that on level 40 you get to pay a total of 100 gold to get a mount and the money troubles are real.

The combat is slow, you have a lot of downtime getting health and mana back. My undead mage must have died a dozen times before level 20. The slowness is also compounded by the amount of players. Blizzard have put up a ton of PVP servers, but only three PVE servers so it is hard to find all the mobs you need, especially named boss mobs. Some areas are lousy with players desperately trying to grab that named guy to complete the quest. Luckily the players are so nice.

Seriously, the player base on my PVE server at least are super friendly. People are helpful, polite almost to a fault, and even generous. A warlock gave me a wand for free, just because I gave him an intellect buff. So while the game is slow and grindy, the players are great. Sure, I've run across a couple of jerks, but nowhere near how it used to be.

So what are the good parts? Well to be honest it's mostly nostalgia, but there is a kind of purity in it as well. It feels clean and all the things that annoyed me about Cataclysm and forward are not there. It's how it used to be and in a sense how it should be – but only in a sense.

On Saturday, my wife and I became curious and wanted to know what regular WoW is like now. So we jumped over to retail and rolled up a couple of characters. After all, it's all included in the subscription.

I have to say it's weird and intimidating as hell. Everything has changed since I played last and I understand nothing. But in order to be fair, we actually played a bit and it's super fun. At least on low levels. My paladin is almost level 20 out of 120, so I make no comments about what the later game is like. It might be awful for all I know.

The thing is though, without playing Classic with no rose tinted glasses on, I wouldn't be able to see retail for what it really is. It also helps that I'm on a brand new account so all the emotional baggage that my old characters have is not there.

All the things my wife an I complained about when playing Classic are gone in retail. The map shows you where to go, there is no competition to kill named mobs, training is free and automatic, but the server economy is insane. Inflation rules the roost and even low level green items go for hundreds of gold a piece.

I'm glad I played Classic, and I'm going to play some more but to be honest, I'm having more fun in retail (at least on low levels).

I've gone on seriously long enough so until next time, have a great week!