I spent labour day weekend doing nothing but playing World of Warcraft Classic, and it’s everything I could have hoped for. It’s almost just like the first time that I played the game.
Actually, I never played vanilla, having started playing WoW back in the Burning Crusade days after seeing my Uncle and Cousin play and explore the Outland, but that was back when expansion packs were expansion packs, and not overhauls to the entire foundation to the game. I’m looking at you Cataclysm. And every expansion to follow Cataclysm. Cataclysm ruined everything. And the Pandas made it worse. And then time travel. And giving the Burning Legion a do-over. And now why do I have to jump through that many hoops to be able to use my flying mount in Kul Tiras? I already have it, and I’ve paid mountains of gold to use it everywhere else you let me. Ugh.
Still, everything I’ve seen so far is just like what I went through from levels 1 through 60. It’s fun, it’s challenging, and there’s a real sense of community. Not like retail, where I can breeze through levels in a matter of hours by my self. Sure, I’m 120 and can solo any dungeon from the previous expansions, but what’s the point? No challenge, no fun.
Classic dropped on August 26th, and from the time I got off work (3 hours after it went live) I waited in a queue of 20k people, and could only get in the next morning. Thank “Bob” that Blizzard let us reserve our names two weeks before launch, and I could secure my place as the Night Elf Hunter “Goldbow” on the Grobbulus server. Yeah, I know, the name is pretty basic, but I’m trying to recreate my first character, including the name I came up with when I was 11. Give me a break.
In the week and a half Classic has been going, I’ve only hit level 21, but in that time, I’ve had more fun on the game since Wrath of the Lich King. It’s been great running quests I haven’t done in a literal decade, grouping up to defeat mobs like Hogger, and getting buffed by random druids and priests and I run down the road of Westfall. I even did what and everyone who has ever rolled a Night Elf must do: the run. At level 10 no less. And I didn’t even die once, but that was probably due to my pet pulling the aggro off of me while I ran away.
I even love the fact that they’ve even kept some of the old glitches and (harmless) exploits, like the wall jumping used to get under Stormwind. I’ll be headed to Ironforge Airport soon enough, and maybe I’ll even finally be able to get up to Mount Hyjal. Exploring Azeroth was always one of my favorite things to do.
As of now, I’m just starting to enter Duskwood, and Elune willing I hit level 60 in a few weeks. I’m not trying to race to the end, I’m just trying to have fun. But I need to be prepared to fight any Horde scum that dares enter the lands of the Alliance. Grobbulus is an RP-PVP server after all.
Also, I bought the grobbulus.wtf domain, and I don’t know what to do with it. I have an idea, but I’m not so sure that it will pan out how I want it to. And finally, huge thanks to the Lutris team for enabling me to play World of Warcraft on Linux. Who needs to keep a Windows install around anymore?
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