World of Warcraft Classic

I dunno.

After 15 years, my Wife and I resubscribed to standard, and included my kids, 13 and 9. This was a many year promise that came true this summer vacation.

It seemed the places were about the same. We leveled up in Elwynn forest and Loch Modan. We took the griffin. Hogger was there. The pig in the Redridge Mountians was there. Ironforge was Ironforge and Stormwind was Stormwind, but bigger with some boats.

We had a really fantastic time, after a few days of leveling, even went to the Deadmines with the kiddos, which we both remembered as the “Van Cleef” dungeon. It was different, but great!

The graphics are better than I remember for added things. Skills, slightly different… but mostly the same. Warror gets cleave. Mage gets a water elemental pet. Paladin can heal…

What is the appeal of classic? Sincerely, everything different we have seen from 1-40 has been an improvement. A slight improvement. It’s the same damn game already!

Playing as a family by the way? Oh. my. god. Incredible.

edit: sorry, got lost in the story. Question: why is this a thing? If it was available a few weeks ago I would have subscribed to it, but kinda glad we didn’t…

This is going to be the kind of thing that almost everyone will sub to for a month, remember what a pain in the ass old-school WoW was and just as quickly unsub.

I wonder how many of those who clamored for Classic WoW and insisted that it be exactly as the original was have played the original WoW and are aware of all its “warts.”

LOL I will be right there with you. And I can command myself to take a day off…

I should probably mention that originally the stress test had 15 servers up. After a little while, they announced that “the servers weren’t stressed enough” so they closed some of them. In the end, only two servers were up, so everyone was crammed on to just those two. Presumably launch will actually have more servers.

The allure of classic for me, isn’t to solo your way through content you’ve probably done 20 times on alts, it’s that there will be people to actually group with, and they won’t be decked out in full heirloom gear and one shotting things. It will be difficult to do the dungeons, and require teamwork, CC, communication, all those things that make MMOs great, and not just glorified single player games (which to me, is what WoW became).

I’m looking forward to it for the social aspects of it. I’ve done the content so many times, if that was all the appeal was, it would be a hard pass. EQ is much the same way, the reason those progressive/start over servers are fun, is because there are actual people to adventure with.

Everyone is different, but for me, the only good thing about MMOs is the interaction, and friends you make. The gameplay is repetitive, boring, and takes way to long to get anywhere. Trying to do it solo always puts me to sleep. I look forward to wiping in monastery, because I’m pretty sure that will happen a lot. People are used to burning through old WoW content in extremely overpowered gear, it will at least be good for a chuckle watching the mayhem.

If only there was a thread where people had posted their thoughts on this, archived on the Internet for anyone to read at their leisure.

Anyway, stress tests are always the worst to participate in. And frankly given the already proven state of private servers, it seems obvious to me that the march of technology has made the question a lot more about “what player density can we support with our design” than “oh God how far can we push this thing before the silicon melts?”

Classic is included as part of your regular subscription. You don’t have to subscribe to it separately.

I have to hand it to blizzard…making money off a 15 year old game that most people quit playing 12 years ago…(well the cool kids did after TBC…the last great expansion…it went downhill fast after that)

For me, the ONLY reason to play it, is for the battlegrounds…those battlegrounds will be released in phases…as a matter of fact, there will be NONE on day one of classic…it’ll be 3 months before WSG gets ‘released’ and even more more months before all of them are available…its to keep you subbed as long as possible

well played blizzard

and yes, I too wonder how long till people realize the ‘issues’ with a 15 year old game gets to you where modern mmo’s have ‘fixed’ all those things…i give it 2 months before people go back to whatever modern mmo they play now

There are definitely some people who really love vanilla WoW and will play Classic for years.

But my guess is that most people who long wistfully for it are just remembering a time in their lives, 15 years ago, when they were younger, weren’t tied down with families, and had the time to dedicate to the game. These are the people who will be most disillusioned by what they get with Classic.

DING! Totally agree and I fall into this category. I had a similar experience when I was fondly remembering Everquest. Holy cow is that game non forgiving of my rose colored glasses…

Classic dungeons being difficult is a common misconception. They were difficult at the time as we didn’t have 15 years of WoW experience but it’s been quite illuminating seeing how easy they are in streams. In fact, some of the classic player base were wondering if the mob hp values were set too low early in the classic beta and Blizzard clarified they are correct. Modern M+ BfA dungeons, especially at 10+ and beyond are way more difficult and require much more coordination.

What is definitely harder in classic is leveling up. In modern WoW, pulling many enemies on each pull, and when I’ve leveled as tank spec sometimes pulling 5-9 at a time – being more limited by mob rubberbanding than character durability. While in classic pulling more than one enemy is very risky. Pulling three accidentally usually means you had better start running and praying.

Lack of tools was a lot of it.

Pull 4 guys? Better hope you can CC 2-3 of them.

Original WoW in a nutshell. Guess I got my answer.

So I saw that character creation opens on August 13th for players with an active sub. WoW Classic itself will launch in North America at 3 pm PDT August 26th. Blizz says they will have more information about realm names as we get closer to launch.

I guess I will resub on the 12th so I can grab a name or two. If some of us plan to play together we should coordinate and pick the side we want to play and at least share the classes each wants to play. I know Horde much better than Alliance but I am willing to play either side.

We can create up to three characters each for Classic.

That’s quite a drop from the 50 character total across all realms that we had previously. Didn’t WoW have a 50 character limit when it was first released? If so, WoW Classic isn’t as true to the original as all those fans demanded.

I suspect he means for the early character creation…?

From Blizzard’s lips to thine ears:

If you’re eager to claim your character name in WoW Classic, take note: we’ll be opening character creation on Tuesday, August 13.** Players with an active subscription or game time on their account will be able to create up to three characters per World of Warcraft account. We’ll have more information on realm names closer to launch, but rest assured—you’ll have plenty of time to figure out your plans for realm domination!

** To align with other regions, the Americas character creation will occur slightly ahead of August 13.

Didn’t notice the footnote before. It doesn’t specify when but I guess it may be sometime in the evening of August 12th?

Thanks for clearing that up, Mark.