I played on some private servers and it was good fun but I left within a week. I mean Classic WoW is good fun but are you really going to be playing for a long time in a 00s old game?
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I never played Vanilla.
There’s a lot I think I will enjoy about it, but there are also many things I’m not sure how I feel about. I won’t know how invested I’ll get in the game until I try it.
So I couldn’t give you an estimate of how long I’ll end up playing, not that you seem to be genuinely asking for one given the tone of your OP.
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Till Skynet shuts down the servers.
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2-3 years at the very, very least.
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Yes, i will play it a lot. Age doeant matter if a game is good. I still have lota of old consoles to play old games on. Some of them a lot older than this
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I’ll probably stay awhile. I really miss the slower, more chill pace of WoW’s older days. Everyone is always in such a rush these days on Retail WoW.
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I started in Wrath a month or so before they added the LFG finder.
I’m hoping I’ll still be playing past Naxxramas. All depends what they decide to do with Classic afterwards I suppose.
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Probably 2 years, until Diablo 4 releases.
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Yes.
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I would’ve said, “I don’t know,” to this question three weeks ago. But I played the stress test, and that answered the question for me.
I played Vanilla. I played ALL of it. I mean, sure, there are going to be things I find in Classic that I never did or saw–individual quests or maybe areas I don’t remember ever seeing before. There will be little discoveries…but there won’t be any big ones.
I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. I’ve done it. I remember it fondly, but until the stress test, I wasn’t sure if it would light me up and make me want to play obsessively like I did back then when it was new.
But I do know now and the answer is, “yes.”
It still has that magical spark. It grabbed me from the beginning, and I didn’t care that I had to run on foot. I didn’t care that the mobs would kill me if I pulled more than two. It didn’t matter that I got from 1-15 in the time it takes me to get to 30 on a retail alt. And…it didn’t matter that I’d done it all before.
I want to do it again. I have a large group of the same people I played with in 2005 and some new folks I’ve only been playing with for about a year and a half.
It’s going to be AWESOME. I will play as long as my people play with me…and I might dabble in Classic even if they abandon it.
It’s that good.
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I played on the same TBC server for 5 years. Would of kept playing if classic wasn’t coming out this week.
Game is just fun.
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Can you tell me what it is, specifically, that you love about it?
Though asked with an answer in mind, it is a valid question.
I’m not sure. I am one of those who has pined for vanilla since Cataclysm. But my life is different now. On the one hand I utterly despise the shallow repetition and purposelessness of retail. On the other hand, I’m not prepared to sink huge amounts of time (often in one sitting) in order to progress.
I think that the answer is that MMOs are no longer really for me. Heroes of the Storm is really more my style now, not least because of the beloved Warcraft characters. But, I will certainly enjoy dabbling with a close recreation of a game that I loved so much. I anticipate that I will dabble for a long time. 
meh we’ll see. could burn out in a month.
I am quitting retail for Classic. I probably should have quit back in Cata. I don’t know why I came back.
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I quit retail 8 months ago but bought 6 month sub for classic
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Most likely. In fact, to pass the time, I’ve been playing Stronghold Crusader, a classic from 2002 that I have played since I was 10 (I’m 25).
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Forever Mmorpg until the genre fixes itself and provides something better.
Looking slim
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Playing slowly but will stay permanently. Live is where my life is at but classic will be a good break.
You know, we talked about that, because it’s hard to pin down. I don’t think it’s a particular one thing. There are a couple of broader reasons we honed in on (“we” being the small group of guildies and friends–and my husband–who were doing the stress together).
First, there is nostalgia. We all spent roughly two years in this content back in the day, and we had a lot of seriously fun times in it.
Second, there is some kind of dopamine hit with leveling in Vanilla that doesn’t exist in the retail game. It’s likely because the sensation of having “worked for it” is greater. Like, that yellow aura goes up for the ding, and you feel more in response to it.
Third, beyond the level grind, there is a seriously deeper immersion into the world. You feel the RPG nature of it more keenly even though the graphics aren’t as good and the armor is pixelated garbage from the aughts. The running everywhere makes the world utterly massive. The space between Goldshire and Eastvale logging camp actually feels like a couple of miles on foot. The mobs being more powerful is tedious, but it also gives the world you’re playing in more weight. This immersion gets more powerful as you move through it into other zones. It’s definitely a crucial piece of the puzzle.
Fourth, the community is just different in Vanilla. Because of all the aforementioned things, people are compelled to be a better version of themselves than they are in retail. I’ll give an example.
When leveling an alt in retail, I start in the same place. I just finished out my 120 holy paladin. I rolled her at level 1 recently enough that I recall zoning in to Northshire Abbey. Same building. Same zone. Same place. I immediately decked her out in full heirlooms, got on my motorcycle, and rolled up to the wolves and kobolds and goblins. I paid no attention to the other players around me because none of us had to work to get here. We were all working to get out of here. All of us were on mounts. All of us were literally one-shotting and two-shotting the mobs. When I leveled my retail priest there, I could pull 5 or 6 at a time with shadow word: pain, which I automatically received upon dinging 2 or 4 or whatever it was, and all of them would be dead before they reached melee range of me.
No weight. No work. I didn’t even have to run over there.
In the Vanilla stress, I paid attention because people had to run all the way to that grape field. They had to carefully clear a path to the grapes. If I stole a mob from them, it was a bigger deal. It would be somehow much ruder to disregard my fellow player in that field than it was in the retail version. These mobs were deadly. The person next to me got here first. They had to work to clear a path to that bucket of grapes, so if I go and take it while they’re finishing off that last mob in front of the prize…it would actually mean something.
I don’t know how else to explain it, but that is how it starts. That sense of “we’re in this together” started right there in the starting area and grew exponentially more prevalent as we leveled through the zone. By the time I was running through Westfall, it was natural to buff everyone I ran by, throw renews on people, help finish off a mob when they’re struggling (even though if they tag it…I get nothing for helping), etc. People were /s apologizing if they accidentally took a mob. Mages were just randomly walking up to people and offering water/food.
Sure, this was a stress and people were happy…but I remember all of these behaviors from real Vanilla in 2005.
The community is different, and it’s the world that makes them different…not the players themselves.
Anyway. That’s the best I could come up with.
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