World of Warcraft Classic has been playable since August 27th. A whole week is up. Seven days that felt like months. WoW: Classic has not reinvented comfort, but has rediscovered it - at least for the majority of the players who spent many hours in queues, especially at the beginning, only to be able to play for 30 minutes until the server was interrupted. Despite overcrowded servers, long waiting times and, or perhaps because of, the Quest design from the last century, WoW: Classic is emerging as a success. Time for our first "Weekly Roundup".
Waiting place 23.456: Thank you for your understanding
The release day of World of Warcraft Classic was comparable to Monday morning at the family doctor: all waiting room spaces are occupied, you actually have an appointment and still have to wait three and a half hours just for the doctor to devote ten minutes to his time.
Precisely at 00.01:10 a.m. last Tuesday, the servers went live - far too few, but Blizzard should change that over the course of the week. For those players who wanted to play on their "dream server" right after the release, it was of course of little help. The firm plan to have completed the first quests on release day and perhaps reached level XNUMX (the first milestone!) Gave way to a pious wish.
WoW: Classic destroys dreams - the hard way. Many players had to experience this even after they made it onto one of the servers. Easy entry? Nope. Difficulty adapted to character level? It wasn't really. Cool equipment that makes it easier for you to move forward? Not before.
Players who played World of Warcraft in the "real" Classic times had to get used to - everyone else expected fun, but was given out with a very rough trowel.
Nice for nostalgics: In fact, the Classic version is the same as it was 15 years ago - at least with the exception of minor adjustments that Blizzard made to the distribution of loot, for example. Where support staff previously had to intervene manually in the event of "wrong loot allocation", today's Classic players can then pass looted loot on to all those who were there when a kill occurred.
The solution is not nostalgic, but a good compromise. After all, the same result is achieved in the end, just without going through support. Some interface optimizations that have been implemented over the years have also been adopted for Classic: the easier opening of the post, for example. Still, Blizzard remains true to its promise to really want to offer players the gaming experience that made an entire genre great.
Return to old virtues
With all the "external conditions" in need of improvement - a lot of it regulates itself with some time after the release - even the playful framework of WoW: Classic is still a safe bet even after 15 years: The world that Blizzard Entertainment has created is terrific and literally invites you to experience stories. Reading quest texts, traveling countless miles (of course on foot), actually looking after a character's equipment - sometimes dying: all of this is part of Classic.
Of course, WoW: Classic isn't exactly the same as it used to be. Many players are new, but can look back on a WoW career; There are streamers who bind hordes of viewers to themselves, there is a need for optimization that is known from WoW, but which did not exist back then at the beginning. And yet Classic brings back the leisurely gaming that many MMO players have wanted for years, also because modern MMORPGs are pushing for quick success.
Yes, even in Classic times there were and are those who were used to success: Reach level 60 quickly, put down all raid bosses in the first week, be better than all other players. Whether and how you play WoW: Classic is up to you - the game probably works best if you let yourself go to the pace set by the world and its stories.
Players are then encouraged to reflect on the early virtues of the then new genre: composure, patience, helpfulness, perseverance. Sometimes to wait for a player who is heading for the same quest mob as you, to stand by an unknown counterpart with "low HP" heroism so that he does not have to run five minutes from the far away cemetery to his corpse, including the hundredth wolf to kill in order to have collected eight wolf flanks in the end - all of this is Classic.
Behind this is often the wish of players to finally be able to enjoy a game again. We did that in the first week of WoW: Classic. We tormented ourselves by queuing, created characters, leveled and discarded, and started over. Everything to capture those perfect moments that are common at Classic. Finding green items that really fit a character is really celebrated. Spending the last bits of silver on an alchemy recipe that gives you a marginal bonus feels like a huge success. Mastering instances motivates you again instead of being bored. Even finding a long-sought quest item without search engine assistance makes you happy.
WoW: Classic is full of small events that you miss not only in the current "World of Warcraft", but in almost all modern MMOs.
Now you: What was your best moment in the first week?
