I quit WoW in early Legion. What they did to the specs broke my heart (tease if you want to).
I knew the Classic servers were coming out, but I didn’t keep tabs on them. It wasn’t until a week ago that I learned they were live.
And damned if I’m not enjoying myself.
I really feel like the current iterations of retail destroyed class fantasy. That was such an important thing to me that it overshadows every other detail in Retail. There were some changes in Retail that were quite good, but I felt like I lost my character in Legion, and essentially lost my reason to play. With Classic, I feel like I finally have my characters back. They are Vanilla classes, and I think classes didn’t really come into their own until BC or Wrath, but Vanilla is more analogous to class fantasy than Legion or later.
There was one more benefit to Classic for me. It was the ability to play alts. With all the focus in recent years on how often people log in, it seems like running alts has become very difficult (esp if you’re OCD like me). Grinding endless resources is absolutely no fun for me, and it leaves a knot kn my stomach when I think about it. It’s nice that I can play alts again (without the knot).
It’s been a few months since Classic came out. I’m really curious if anybody has any stats for server population growth/decay over the past few months. I’m hoping it is growing, because I intend to stay on the Classic servers for a long time - much the the dismay of my new wife who never saw me play WoW before (haha).
I’m curious what everybody else likes about Classic.
I would say I enjoy the genuinely courteous interactions between a lot of the players. For example, passively adding a buff or blessing to others as you run by is such a small act in the scope of things, but I get the biggest kick out of it. People seem genuinely appreciative and usually reciprocate if they have the ability to do so. Offering to group with somebody and help them on an Elite or throwing some heals at somebody that might be one mob too deep actually feels like you’re contributing somehow. In comparison to retail, most everyone up until endgame is heirloom’d from head to toe and I feel like buffs, heals, etc. have lost their weight in value in open world interaction. I don’t know if I would say retail has no sense of community, but it definitely isn’t hard to go your own way and manage just fine.
The game has a sense of depth (maybe not a ton, but it’s there) and creates a pretty great journey from the beginning to the end game. I love 40 man raiding. I love grinding that takes time, but isn’t time-gated. I love an MMO that isn’t refined down to a series of daily quests. I love an MMO that forces you to group with other people to really emphasize the multiplayer aspect of the game. While at the time I viewed WoW as a neutered themepark experience (and still do compared to MMOs back when this one launched), it’s far and above anything being created today in the MMO space.
I love playing alts in WOW Classic. It feels like the leveling experience is different each time.
I feel much less railroaded by zones and quests. In Legion, I’d done all four zones on two characters and after that I parked the alts in their class hall using mission table XP quests because I couldn’t stomach doing the exact same sequence again.
Plus each class has class quests. Last night I got my rogue poison quest done grouping with another rogue, working together so both of us accomplished it. More than a few class quests are hard or impossible at the level they’re first given, and other players can help. In Legion they tried to mimic the class quest idea with the artifact quests, but those were both isolated and generally designed to be done at the time they were picked up.
Professions feel so much more rewarding. Iron buckles made by my blacksmith are used by my tailor and leatherworker. Leather picked up by my skinner is used by my tailor, leatherworker, and engineer. In Legion the professions felt sterile and not worth doing. (I maxed them on this gal, and ground to a halt on my first alt because I wasn’t interested in trying to get a dungeon group and trying to get that group to do an optional boss just to learn to skin something else. None of my other alts did I even bother.)
Perhaps more important than any of that, however, when I log in to WOW Classic, I feel like I have all sorts of options of what I might want to fill my time with. Do I want to do a dungeon? Do I want to push for a level? Do I want to fish? Do I want to go gathering materials and try to get some points in a profession? Do I want to watch or join into some wPvP? Do I want to work on the backstory on my RP character or go in search of some roleplay? Do I want to run to a new zone and get a flight path on an alt?
Back when I quit early MoP, I would log in and realize I didn’t want to do anything. I hated leveling (this gal only gained 1 level before I was done). I hated the questing. I found the zone frustrating to navigate. I couldn’t get much done on professions. The farm dailies were a grind that made me hate the place. When I quit early Legion, I had enjoyed the leveling the first couple times through, but repeating the same thing again and again and again had no appeal, so I found myself doing chores - log in on the max levels and do WQs, trade things for whatever for the alts to do mission tables, spam mission table quests for XP, and then either log out (nothing to do feeling) or go work on leveling a baby alt through Cata or WoD zones. I’m lucky I quit before they added level scaling to those.
Honestly I just like how much easier and simple it is compared to Retail and how much friendlier it is for a casual player like me.
In retail there is just SO MUCH to try and keep up with if you are a casual player like me. About a billion different reps to grind, multiple raids with multiple difficulties, titanforging, azerite, and everyone else around you likely has more time to grind away than you which makes it ALOT harder to get into raid groups even with your own guild. Because you just aren’t as geared as them due to your time constraints.
But in Classic it’s not like that. There isn’t nearly as much to keep up with and all you need to do to get a raid spot is find a friendly guild and there are always those around. And since Classic is relatively new compared to retail there isn’t as much of a time gap between those at the top and those just starting off.
There’s a lot of reasons to enjoy, I find it hard to describe well.
Professions are very meaningul.
Leveling doesn’t feel stagnant since mobs aren’t pushovers and leveling gives you meaningful new abilities alongside talent trees.
There are some basic grinds that are kind of nice to just get in the rhythm.
Gold is meaningful (somewhat).
Some PvP shenanigans in world which I think will get even better when BGs go live so it’s not so overly saturated by gank crews making lopsided fights.
I honestly have just enjoy leveling in classic and doing some of the 60 content.
I think for me the biggest appeal of classic is in the overall difficulty of content. Everything is more difficult for everyone and so chirping off quest by quest, skill point by skill point feels rewarding. It adds a true sense of accomplishment.
There is actual group content involving less than 25 players at a time.
Professions actually feel rewarding.
I can actually finish an entire zone without the quests going grey on me.
No jerks in full heirloom gear decimating every mob in the dungeon, spamming the meters, and whining about how they’re carrying everybody else.
Raiding is something to look forward to someday, and I might get around to it eventually. It’s not thrust upon me after rushing me through the best part of the game.
I like the familiar, pre-Cataclysm world. It’s a little like going back in time without the benefit of the modern technology we’re used to; we have to relearn lost skills, dungeon strategy, and survivability. Recognizing the names of people you’ve grouped with before is nice, too.
Being in the old world is really nice. I really missed it even tho i like new zones with new xpacs, its nice going back to traditional horde n alliance zones. This is especially tru when it comes to IF, that place is really nice when its full.
Ive recently enjoyed the wpvp in SS vs TM and BRM/SG, kinda the reason why i leveled in classic to 60, to do that (not so much for the pve aspects).
Its a nice shift in pace from time to time for me from bfa (which is my main focus).
