Tobold's Blog
Monday, July 29, 2019
 
WoW Classic

A reader asked me about my thoughts on WoW Classic. I'm not planning to go anywhere near it. I'm simply not interested at all. I am even convinced that a good number of players who are interested in WoW Classic will be thoroughly disappointed. Because you simply can't turn back time.

We had a great time in World of Warcraft when it was still young, 15 years ago. But we were 15 years younger as well, and very enthusiastic about this new experience, unlike anything we had played before. And that enthusiasm made us willing to do things which in hindsight are a bit crazy: playing long hours, organizing our lives around raid schedules, accepting all sorts of bugs and inconvenient game mechanics as well as weird rules on how to distribute raid loot. Today we still remember how we first brought down Onyxia, but we don't remember so well what we had to go through to get there.

I think that people will flock to WoW Classic to try to recreate those experience. Some are already planning their Molten Core raids. However for a lot of people that will end up with the realization that you start WoW Classic at level 1, and that it takes bloody forever (compared with today's WoW leveling speed) to get to level 60. Most of your friends are gone. And that even if you arrive at "putting the band back together", that band now consists of a bunch of grumpy middle-aged men, who aren't willing to take the same shit as 15 years ago.

Comments:
Assuming it's the same XP curve, the fastest I ever did it was 5 days. Considering that people can get to 120 multiple times in 5 days /played, quite curious as to how this hold people's attention PAST the niche.
 
I played in the beta. It was amazingly fun, especially compared to current WoW. It confirmed that, in fact, I didn't change, it was WoW that changed for the worse.

You may well have burned out on the classic experience but it was exactly what I miss in an MMO -- a world, not a theme park single player experience.
 
It's funny. I was pretty excited about it, but I wasn't in the beta and after playing retail for a month or so my interest in Classic pretty much evaporated. I might check it out, but at least a little of that interest would need to return.
 
My wife and I are really looking forward to playing Classic again. The current experience interests us not at all... we wandered back during the recent "Return to Azeroth" event and felt no pull. But to actually quest, wander, explore... yeah, looking forward to it.

Should be well received. Certainly all the EQ classic servers have been busy, from what I've seen when we dropped in.
 
I asked originally, but I find your response interesting. I also don't have big interest in raiding 3 nights (or even more), but the level 60 journey in itself is fun (if I remember correctly you also mentioned your wife leveling a lot of characters and never participating in group content) and the game itself is also much more fun/diverse than it is right now. It's much more an actual RPG and feels like a real "world" and not just a quest hub.

I have played a lot of private servers over the last years and, especially for Vanilla/Classic, the most fun I had is starting the journey anew with a new class and getting to know people on the way to 60. My interest usually petered out when it came to starting actual raiding, but that can take several months. And who cares how long it takes to get to 60 as long as it's fun. :)
 
Tobold, you really have a tendency to beguile yourself into a binary-state safe zone, where you seem to feel more comfortable lately. One would imagine that a game - that has well served you, and the many thousands of your readers over the past decade, would garner a little more than this latest brush-off of a post. Your archives alone are enough to prove that you had tremendous fun in Vanilla WoW, or else the multitude of blog posts you made about the game over the years would not have been inspired.

There are plenty of "us" out here who long for a chance to play Classic - free from the forced grouping and all inclusive state of gameplay that WoW now finds itself representing. A place where Guilds will mean something again. A place where servers and the players on them can police themselves and build real teams of people who choose to be a part of that team and have a vested interest in achieving goals/milestones/success. A place where poor performance or poor attitudes will invoke accountability - a word that certain generations dare not be threatened with.

But I get it, I really do. "TIME" has always been a subject that you love to lament as it pertains to WoW, and at times I have often agreed with your assessments on how to make things better, but I had my most fun moments in Vanilla, and time was never a factor for me because I could be immersed in the game world on a level that no other MMO has ever been able to recreate, and I hope to relive that experience in Classic.

I was 40 when I first started playing WoW, and even now at 55, my expectations haven't changed one iota about the Vanilla experience.

Most of your friends are gone

Meaning? Are you so certain that new friendships cannot be established and maintained in Vanilla?
 
We'll see. I also think that once the nostalgia wears off most people are going to realize that MC was really long and really boring, and that gore tusk liver collecting is also crap. Without the delusion of meaningful accomplishment I doubt most people will tolerate it for long. All those stats on the gear are going to seem very very tiny these days.

But NoGuff, really, binary state safe zone because he doesn't want to play WoW? In what way is WoW, Classic or Not, exiting a safe zone? It is the safe zone.
 
Well, after spending all day/night Thursday, and most of Friday playing Blizzard's Test of WoW Classic. I can say with certainty that it was a major success. Thousands of people were commenting how social and nice people were during the test. My jaw dropped in awe as I went to kill a quest boss in the starting zone and people were actually lined up waiting their turn for a respawn. No one jumping in front, breaking the line or whatever, and many had actually made 5-mans to help speed up the process. What was most hilarious were the BFA players, and those who never played Vanilla who were constantly dying and crying that the mob fights were too hard or took too long. Damn those Defias! Heh.

I made it from Level 1 to Level 8 in the 3.5 hours before the server reset for some bug fixes. That 3.5 hours flew by, and is a testament to how important immersion is - as many other people affirmed in chat.

It takes time to have fun. -NoGuff. =)
 
NoGuff. Let's see where we are in three months when the shine is off. Every MMO is packed and everyone has the time of their life for the first month.
 
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