When World of Warcraft launches, the world stops to pay attention.
The recent release of WoW Classic didn’t just pull in hundreds of thousands of players onto ever-expanding servers — it also became the talking point of the MMO blogosphere. Everyone seemed to either be playing it or sporting an opinion of it. We’ve done three opinion pieces ourselves – a top 10 list, an impressions piece, and even a roleplay piece.
Now we’ve compiled a mega-compilation of thoughts, first impressions, last deaths, nostalgia goggles, directions to Mankrik’s wife, complaints, exclamations, joys, and trials for you to digest here. So let’s dig into it!
“For now, Classic is a nice distraction. It has its flaws but, for the time being, a very active community and tons of people playing. I will probably keep you updated as I keep playing this game but I’m not sure if I have the patience to get all the way to level 60. I guess time will tell.”
“To current WoW fans, blissfully unaware of progression servers or the experience of relived expansion servers in other MMOs, the idea of rolling out TBC/Wrath is a binary question – do they or don’t they? However, in the decision tree of that process, it is the first step of many.”
“Perhaps the better question is, am I having fun? It’s the oddest conundrum, because yes, and no. I’ve been trying to put my finger on it and just when I think I’ve figured it out, I find new things about both versions to love and hate. You see there are things I like about Classic WoW that I LOATHE about live WoW. So why would I enjoy the mechanic in one game and not the other?”
“However if you have to tell a story about how you weaved your way through a camp carefully body pulling enemies, and then getting completely overwhelmed right before you got to the final boss. That is a tale of defeat but it is an interesting tale nonetheless, and I have already had several versions of this tale in my memory.”
“So what do I remember that is still awesome? The world is huge! I mean just the thought of running from place to place, scares me. The starting area has the best music, the quests are still fun. Very basic gameplay here, but it’s been 15 years, not to mention none of us wanted it to change at all. We got the exact carbon copy of what the game was like then.”
“It started raining in the game yesterday and someone said in chat, “It’s so beautiful” – I couldn’t have agreed more. And that’s the other thing – the starter zone chat has been amazing. It’s clear people are excited about being back. For some people of course it’s their first time. Many were asking how to do such and such and experienced folk were being helpful in return – actually answering questions!”
“There is beauty in the simplicity of those quests, and how while doing them you can focus more of your attention on the tiny details of the world you are playing in. This is all especially true in a themepark MMO like WoW, where the core gameplay loop is simple and enjoyable, but the real ‘meat’ of the game is the social aspect and doing all of your activities in a virtual world.”
“WoW Classic launched… and I was there. Stayed up until midnight, logged in without problems 3 minutes late and managed to get to Level 6 after 2:30 hours. Today I also mostly played WoW Classic and finished Mulgore.”
“I am mostly playing with the old graphics. Not sure which settings I’ve tweaked. But the shadows are original WoW Classic. Just one blob under the character! I remember that around that time back then, games appeared that had more realistic shadows and I always thought: I don’t need them. The blob is fine!”
“After logging on, I spent a couple of hours questing, I had no problem in the staring area but I did learn not to take on more than 1 mob at a time, occasionally a second mob would join in and while manageable, I did need to be careful and heal myself.”
“WoW now is very different from what it was in vanilla and also very different from what it was when I started. I look forward to seeing the old Azeroth again, how it was pre-Cataclysm, leveling and gearing like it used to be. Everything is so easy in WoW now, you can level up so fast, it is easy to earn gold, the map will tell you where the quests are and you don’t have to do much to get good gear.”
“I’d never play Classic in favor of retail. And only in case of a lull or after a day’s worth of raiding I’d launch it to have a braindead, relaxed gameplay. Clumsy, ugly, tedious gameplay. Exactly a tourist mode – nothing more, nothing less.”
“It’s great seeing so many people, but general chat is already getting annoying. It seems like there is a huge swath of people who dislike the retail version of the game and are very vocal that no one should still be playing it because it’s absolutely horrid.”
“Perhaps I’m the ideal audience. I both like the gameplay and would play it and enjoy it had I never experienced it before. And I also get very strong nostalgia vibes. I suppose I acquired a mastery 14 years ago that wouldn’t have otherwise had any relevance and certainly doesn’t carry over into the modern retail game.”
“Let us all hope that our designers take an interest in Classic and pick up some ideas on what made the original so exciting to play. Then you’d come home eager to log in because you had a plan of things to get done!”
“Going back to WoW, visiting those zones… it would just be sad for me. Those friends are gone and even if I could find them, it’d be like that awkwardness you feel at a school reunion. People change over time.”
“Other than that, a lot of things were fun. Animations were excellent and I couldn’t help thinking the spell effects were bigger and more impressive than I was used to on Live. That can’t be true, surely? I also spent five minutes or more watching a rabbit. It had unpredictable and non-repetitive pathing, sprayed snow as it hopped and left a varying trail of paw prints. That seems incredibly sophisticated for 2005. Anyone know if it’s authentic Vanilla bunny behavior?”
“It’s possible that I was one of the first to be assigned to a fresh layer, as it seemed like there were more people as time went on, and chat became livelier. One positive about the chat is that people seemed disinclined to talk about current WoW. Another amusing thing about Mulgore chat is that people keep losing the ghost wolf for the Rite of Vision escort quest, and have to be directed by chat to the cave with the quest.”
“I don’t know if this was simply RP server behavior… lots of people in line had set themselves to walk rather than run, so we did so as well…or if this was a manifestation of what I have observed in other retro server experiences, where everybody is simply so happy to be there that they feel cooperative, but we were willing to go along with that.”
“I saw the seething masses of people in the starter zone. I recorded some video. I took some screenshots. I saw the ‘launch day spectacle.’ I’ve sated my curiosity. But mostly I wasted 15 bucks. I’ll log in from time to time but I can’t even imagine playing this game long-term.”
“One thing I noticed far more was the sound design. Along with the fantastically spooky music and muffled screams of the the intro, the entire zone pulses with a super low heartbeat which you don’t notice until you stop and listen for a few moments. The subtle tension that adds is terrific.”
“My memory of WoW’s game systems kicked in at some point and I remembered how much more of a thing weapon speed was back then. My poor Paladin’s two-handed hammer was very, very slow at 2.98 seconds per swing. So his chance of a mob remaining untapped while he wound up to swing at the thing was very poor indeed.”
“I don’t know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn’t to burst our laughing. There was something just so funny about the sheer amount of characters running around. I joined the crowds for wolf slaying. Fighting for each spawn to collect a meager 8 meat. After 20 minutes I returned with my hard-won prize and settled in to do some more.”
“I was in a queue of over 6k people and somehow got in within the first five minutes. I had to log out for a few and hopped on later to try to play but the lag is so terrible that I couldn’t even play. Things will settle down in time. My son has gotten quite a bit ahead of me but maybe I can catch up tomorrow! It is quite annoying not to be able to really play but it is nice to see classic WoW so well received. ”
“Finally, the last question: am I enjoying myself? Yes. Absolutely yes. Active –and chatty– zones, old school finding of quests, difficult combat, and random kindness of strangers is a wonderful thing to see. Active guild recruitment is another thing that’s nice as well, even though I haven’t exactly pulled the trigger on anything yet.”
Every day there are tons of terrific, insightful, and unusual articles posted across the MMO gaming blogosphere — and every day, Justin reads as many as he can. Global Chat is a sampling of noteworthy essays, rants, and guides from the past few weeks of MMO discourse.
