As many of you are aware the WoW: Classic demo was playable on the showfloor at Blizzcon and in our cozy rooms at home – thank you Blizzard so much for letting us play and have a piece of the Blizzcon pie for those who couldn’t attend, huge respect on that end. Anyways, without further ado let’s talk about my experience with World of Warcraft: Classic.
Oh my god is all I really have to say in regards to Classic WoW and I am not really sure where to begin. Do I begin at the part how amazing it felt to feel the nostalgia once again and remember what it was like being a Dwarf Hunter killing Defias Pillagers in Moonbrook? Or do I talk about the hardcore and small RPG elements that vanilla WoW had before the game became a lot more simple? Either way, both would be great starting points.
Most of you are probably wondering how did the leveling experience felt like and is the scaling of mobs, hit points and stats felt reminiscent of vanilla WoW? And my answer is a big fat yes for the most part. While it was a demo and we were not really allowed to explore anything other than Westfall if you’re Alliance or Barrens if you’re the Horde it still made me realize how much different the game really was back.
World of Warcraft came out in the year of 2004 and it was just an insane phenomena and this was before the age of YouTube or any kind of social media.Vanilla WoW was a social hub for many people including myself. it was a game that got people out of depression, and it was a way to escape our dark realities and live in a fantasy of magical dragons, mages, kings and so on. Many people met their future loved ones in World of Warcraft and even friends who later became almost like family members.
World of Warcraft back in the day was like living a second life where you had a mission or a goal to complete where people knew who you were and respected you or hated you for whatever you did or how you behaved and treated others in a server. Servers felt like true communities, if you needed the top tier blacksmith on the server you would know his name because that guy or girl is in the top tier raiding guild that has a lot of gold and a ton of rare materials that no one else has on the server.
When I logged in to World of Warcraft Classic at first I felt very turned off and just kind of confused because at this point in my life and my WoW career I was so used to the current game and how much faster it played. World of Warcraft: Classic is obviously a much slower game and to be honest it took me quite a bit to get back into it. However, once I did I started remembering all the cool things that made World of Warcraft so special in the first place.
It was absolutely hilarious to look at the old inventory and backpack system and find an ammo pouch filled with bullets for your rifle as a hunter. Or look at all the food and water you have in your inventory to feed your pet and eat and drink every time after combat encounters. While it was funny to look at all those things, it also felt very nostalgic and brought a smile to my face along with many fond memories.
I’ve also looked at the character’s skills and talent trees and when I saw the old talent system I just kind of froze up a bit and I could not realize if I was living real life or if I was in a different dimension, it was just so surreal because it just instantly brought me back and gave me a brain freeze in a good way.
The weapons skills are of course back as well, so if you wanna feel like a boss on your server when WoW: Classic launches in Summer of next year and brag about how you leveled up every single weapon skill to max then you more than welcome to do so.
Let’s talk a little bit about the combat in WoW: Classic. When I started shooting mobs with my dwarf hunter and sending my boar to charge them to death it took my mind a good chunk of time to realize how much longer it took kill regular mobs back then..If you had 2 mobs on you as a hunter you we’re somewhat it already started getting a bit hairy, but since hunters have pets you could just off tank one of the mobs using the pet while taking the damage from the other mob.
However, if you had 3 or more mobs on you then good luck because your pet wasn’t hitting as hard and they just aren’t as powerful as modern wow pets. Also your character is a lot weaker in WoW: Classic and its not because of your low level but because stats worked much differently back, especially the scaling.
Grouping for quests and adventuring together with friends or nobodies also feels very rewarding, fun and much more personal than it does in modern WoW. In today’s game, you can practically solo level the entire game and solo all the quests in existence if you really wanted too. Meanwhile in WoW classic I was trying to complete my killing quest called People’s Militia where you have to kill 15 of Defias Pillagers and 15 Defias Looters. That is a total of 30 mobs to kill and these mobs not only take a lot longer to kill but they also hit a ton harder so the amount of time it takes you to complete a quest is actually much more time consuming than what you’re used to in modern WoW. W
hile some may think this is kind of lame, its kind of one of the parts of what makes vanilla WoW so special in the first place. Questing in WoW Classic actually feels like a real adventure as opposed to going through the story content in World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth. Don’t get me wrong I love both versions of WoW for different reasons, but as I’ve said previously they’re just 2 completely different games.
All in all after I did few of the quests that involved Westfall’s main-story line with the Defias brotherhood I was transported back immediately to 2004 because it felt exactly how it was back then and that was absolutely magical. Blizzard so far did an excellent job at recreating this experience and making it feel true to the original.
Now I know a lot of you are probably asking right now, is Vanilla WoW better than current WoW? And to be completely blunt and honest it’s just simply a different game back so in a nutshell it;s not better or worse than modern WoW its just its own thing and you either accept that or you don’t. To someone, it may be better than current WoW to others not so much, you also have to realize that vanilla WoW players now are a lot older and are living a completely different live and the younger generation has no clue what vanilla WoW is.
At the end of the day, I wanna say thanks to Blizzard and I commend their team on their hard work on being able to bring back the blast from the past. You will now be able to relive these magical moments once again and play it forever to your hearts content in the Summer of 2019.
The developer released a 30 minute gameplay footage.
A Switch trailer was also released.
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is nominated for Game of the Year.
According to its listing on SteamDB.