so, I have played before, but I was late to the game and have been off and on. now I want to play the entire game, in order. And by entire I mean the expansions as well. BUT I want to play them without whatever apocalyptic event at the end of a later expansion having happened yet, as in no massive scar from Deathwing until I get to that part of Cataclysm, etc. is there a way to do this? because it doesn’t seem like Chromietime quite does that.
There is.
I don’t say you will like it, or will choose it, but There Is A Way.
Your problem is the Classic zones. All of the other expansions are unchanged, or very little changed.
You could level through WoW Classic, which is available now. It will take MUCH longer than all the others put together, but it is still available.
Once you get past Classic, you can use Chromie Time safely for the other expansions. There are maybe one or two very small changes and removals, but most of the changes relate to the mechanics of the expansion, like the AP grind for Artifact Weapons in Legion, rather than any actual content, zones, quests, characters. The only changes I can think of are the removal of the post-Wrathgate scenario in Undercity, and the initial Vale in Mists.
If you are doing this, or something like this, I urge you to MAKE ONE ALT FOR EACH EXPANSION!
The XP in Retail/ChromieTime is absurd. Any character will get from level 10 to level 70 in a matter of hours. I think the world record is something like 3 hours. You won’t do that, ofc, but maybe 10 hours.
You can start an old expansion at 70, but it will be ridiculous. You can pull the whole zone at 70 and blow everything away, So use one expansion to get one character from 10 to 70, In fact, you will probably hit 70 two-thirds of the way through the zone.
This also gives you the option to keep several alts on the go, and switch between them for variety. And you’ll have a bunch of alts at 70 to choose from to level to 80!
Do please ask any follow-up questions if this is not clear.
so I can take my character from classic and move it to the retail version or whatever it’s called to continue past what’s in classic (that ends at Cataclysm, right?)? did not know this. but I was planning to do it all on a single toon in each faction using the XP freeze at 69.
No. Sorry if I misled you. Your Classic character would stay in Classic.
Well, you can, apart from Classic. I’m not sure you can still lock XP at 69. Check eoth other sources. I’m told you can now go to TWW at 68, so Blizzard may have disabled XP-lock at that level as well.
But I wouldn’t want to do all the expansions on one toon.
You simply can’t.
The only way you can experience expansions as they were, without chromie time, is to play classic.
There is no tbc-wrath experience currently, as classic was a progression project.
There is no announcement as of yet that Anniversary classic will be anything other than “Classic → TBC” because all that was announced was that fresh classic would progress to TBC while hardcore wouldnt.
There will soon be no cata experience as classic will have moved on to MoP, fully deleting the classic experience until DF classic as the classes and talent trees were streamlined from MoP-DF.
Your only option is to either hope that anniversary tbc progresses into wrath and cata, or hope they make an era server for each expansion which, with how stretched thin the classic team already is with Hardcore, era, anniversary, sod, and regular classic I highly doubt they would ever add an era server for each expansion without heavily expanding classic’s team.
The problem, is there is a lot more than just progression systems that changed when expansions rolled over. Currently, you do not have:
Here is a list of things that have changed, not counting pre-expansion events, special patch events, permanently changed zones as a result of events (like cataclysm, sha infused vale, etc.)
ht tps://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/World_of_Warcraft_evolution_guide)
Its either classic or retail for you. Locking exp also doesnt give you the 60-70 tbc grind, the 70-80 wrath grind, the 80-85 cata grind, the 85-90 mop grind, the 90-100 wod grind, the 100-110 legion grind, or the 110-120 bfa grind, because thats all been changed too.
You’re not wrong, but you are being a bit absolutist. I’m sure Greymare, having been around on and off since Cata, knows that classes and mechanics have changed.
OF COURSE you can’t play through TBC in Retail now as a mage in the same way you could in TBC. The whole mage class is different. How you learn your spells is different. The available gearing curve is different. Mobs always adjust to whatever level you are at. The grind feels different, and a lot shorter. There aren’t a bunch of other people also grinding levels beside you.
The whole experience is different. But almost all the same quests, the same NPCs, the same quest text, the same dungeons, are there.
The thing that I think most people who want to be completionists about old expansion miss is also a thing, I think: the story after the levelling zones.
For example, in Mists, after you hit max, there was what I thought was a great questline - too punctuated by rep gates, but still great - called Operation Shieldwall (Alliance) / Dominance Offensive (Horde). If you level 10-70 in Mists today, you will probably not stick around to do it. And you will probably not set foot on Timeless Isle, or grow Yoon’s farm.
yep, pretty much this. I last quit in I think Nov. of 2019, shortly before the level “smush”. For example Greymane and my other primary toons were all capped at I think 120 and were all in Kul Tiras/Zandalar. But I go back so far I still remember having to buy ammunition for my Hunter (which I thought would be a thing again in Classic, but apparently not, so much for crafting income).
Still, thanks for the advice. I mean I guess I’m basically looking for the story/loremaster, although I honestly don’t give a rat’s backside about achievements (I actually have a T-shirt I had made that says “I’ll get back to you when I’m impressed by that, how’s 2034 for you?”). Honestly, I’m not truly averse to going back where I can 1-shot everything as long as I see the story unfold the way it DID as each expansion was added, although that might change as the lack of any challenge becomes a thing. Although missing out on dungeons/raids that were a story element will be frustrating as hell.
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Who actually cares? They asked. I answered. It is simply not possible to do what this poster wants to do.
Until 2019 you didn’t even get anything but retail outside of private servers. At least now you can get the recreated experience almost entirely bug free and with everything scripted, but if you won’t bother to play it the second time (or now, fourth time counting OG hardcore) you clearly don’t actually want to do any of this that much.
I don’t know if you have ever tried playing private servers, but the VAST majority of them were unplayable due to bugs or scripted content just straight up non existing because the creators of that server took a repack, turned it on, and then did nothing with it.
You know what they say about assuming.
That should be obvious and self explanatory, and yet this thread, and its replies, exist.
No they aren’t. There is a comprehensive list of what’s changed. Even Classic Vanilla was different from actual vanilla, even 1.12 vanilla.