When Classic was first announced, the idea of essentially going back in time was very appealing to me. I’ll admit to having the “rose-colored” glasses on. Certain parts of vanilla stuck out in my mind, and they were all good times. There are some things that had me a bit twisted at first. Most classes are very slow and boring to play at lower levels, and the game almost feels like it’s unjustifiably difficult. But I realize this is because I’ve become so used to being on retail, where WoW has been turned into a session game. You log on, do a world quest, run a few islands, maybe do a wing of LFR or a run a key, and then log off for the rest of the week.
There’s no real time commitment to anything in the live game. There are pros and cons to this system. It’s not as difficult to find groups to do things. But the drawback to this is that everything starts to feel disposable. You pick up a group for something, often never saying a single word to any of the others, and you typically never see any of these people ever again. Therein lies the problem with the live game, in my opinion. That social aspect that made WoW feel so special is gone.
This is where Classic has really won me over. I never played on any private servers, because I knew they would eventually get shut down. I didn’t feel like it was worth investing time, and possibly money into something that could go away at any moment. But an official version of the game felt more secure, so I wanted to check it out. If for no other reason, than to just prove to myself whether vanilla was as good as I remembered it being. To my surprise, everything that I thought would bother me hasn’t. After being able to fly everywhere I want for so long, the idea of having to walk everywhere seemed awful to me. I thought I’d last a week or two and just get sick of it and go back to retail.
But I realize that having to walk everywhere opens up a whole social experience to the game that has been missing for well over 10 years. People aren’t clogging up the cities floating in the air, totally oblivious to everything and everyone around them. Quest hubs and towns are teeming with players from both factions. The world feels alive again. Questing and doing dungeons feels more enjoyable, because there is more social interaction. No cross realm zones, so everybody you run into out in the world, horde or alliance, is from the same server as you. That’s a really cool feeling.
When I’m out in the world, and another alliance runs by me and throws me a buff or a heal. Picking up a group of people in a town, and moving out together to do a quest or run a dungeon. These are things that simply do not happen on retail. The nature of the group finder system has given the live game a very throw-away feeling when it comes to content. I can honestly say that I have not had this much fun with WoW in a very long time.
So what say you, citizens of Grobbulus? What are some of your awesome moments so far?
, I can see why people who enjoyed vanilla are against flying. There is something to be said about everyone being on the same level, literally, with not very many ways to get out.