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 26th,
and the day before, Sunday the 25th
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!
