A Late Look: World of Warcraft Classic

by
Mark Nielsen
, posted 2 hours ago / 261 Views

As someone who missed the chance to return to World of Warcraft when the widely successful Classic servers were first introduced six years ago, in an attempt to replicate the vanilla experience of 2004, I was glad to be given another chance when Blizzard introduced their 20th Anniversary servers late last year, which tried to replicate the World of Warcraft: Classic experience of 2019. In other words, it’s World of Warcraft: Classic: Classic. It’s worth noting for this Late Look that I do indeed have previous experience in the world of Azeroth – years of it in fact, but I originally started playing just around the time that vanilla was drawing to a close and the first expansion made its debut, so it’s both a bit of a revisit and a fresh experience to me. And with that, all that’s left to say is: time’s up, let’s do this!

Strength: Atmosphere

Other than its simple yet solid RPG mechanics, one of the main draws of World of Warcraft is the World of Warcraft. Even with just the base game, Azeroth is one of the grandest and somehow also most refined gaming worlds ever created and this is felt most strongly in its atmosphere. Thanks to the massive varied zones, with different environments and switching weather, it’s easy to get lost in the world, both metaphorically and literally. Adding to this is an often underappreciated soundtrack that helps make the forests of Teldrassil ethereal and the city of Stormwind grand. It’s a game that makes you want to see all the zones and manages to make the occasionally-excessive amount of walking feel (mostly) worth it, because being in the world is simply enjoyable on its own.

Weakness: No Quest Tracking

As someone who originally started playing WoW around the release of Burning Crusade, I was a little unsure how different the base vanilla experience was from what I remembered, particularly in terms of things like the UI and quality of life features. It turns out the game mostly has you covered in these areas, with the exception of one key element: quest tracking. It’s not that WoW: Classic doesn’t keep track of your quests at all – it very much does in your Quest Log and you can snap the ones you’re currently looking into to the right side of the screen (though this is arbitrarily limited to five) – but the issue comes when you start asking where the quest is. WoW: Classic is much more minimalistic in this regard than later expansions; there are no signifiers showing you where to go for a quest, or indeed even showing you where quests start in the first place, only where to turn them in.

On one hand there’s something to be said for this purist experience, where you’ve got to figure out things and go exploring for yourself based on the quest description, and go poking around till you find the enemy descripted or the cave vaguely hinted at. I would actually say it was very refreshing at first. But the problem is that once you get past the early stages of WoW, the leveling process will start to slow significantly (perhaps a tad too much) and there comes a point where you get tired of stumbling around blindly for 30 minutes to complete a quest that fills 10% of your XP bar (or less). So, ultimately, I turned to the same solution as 99% of the player base and modded my way to a less vanilla experience in this one area. With some tweaks to the ever-overdesigned fan mod, I managed to find a good balance where it only affected the map and minimap and was close to what felt like a reasonable level of guidance.

Strength: Classic Gameplay

WoW implements a battle system that’s rarely seen outside of the MMO genre, but which feels like the most natural and fluid implementation of real-time CRPG combat. It can allow for both relaxed early-game questing and high intensity PvP – all with as many or as few buttons as you want, thanks to its toggleable action bars. Generally being able to set up your own UI with ease is one of the great strengths of the game; it allows for a ton of depth for those who want it, or you can make do with the handful of abilities you use the most and let the rest gather dust in your spellbook. Speaking of spells and abilities, they also manage to make each class feel very distinct both in combat and beyond, which honestly makes you want to try them all out (but when in doubt go Hunter, as having a pet is awesome – and kind of OP).

Going back to the CRPG inspiration that the game clearly draws upon, that does indeed mean a certain level of randomness, as the hidden dice can decide whether you hit, miss, parry, crit, or occasionally whether or not you resist some 5-minute debuff. Fortunately, due to the pacing of the battles it generally evens out better than DnD and the like, and you’re rarely left feeling like it was the random number generator that got you killed. Though you do have other causes of frustration in that area, as we shall soon get to…

Weakness: There’s No Escape

It might not come as a surprise to many that World of Warcraft: Classic is a difficult game, but the issue here is in where that difficulty lies: not in the dungeons, nor the occasional rare/elite enemies you face, but instead in fighting your way through farming quest #326. The reason for this issue is threefold. Firstly, because enemies within a given zone will often outscale the player if they simply do regular quests at a regular pace. Secondly, because nearly all enemies beyond the starting areas will attack the player on sight and the world is packed with them like a minefield. And, lastly, because if you try to escape from a battle the enemies will follow you half the length of Kalimdor before giving up pursuit (and of course that distance will have to be covered through the previously-mentioned minefield). And not only can enemies still attack you while running after you, but the developers even went so far as to give them a chance to daze you when attacking from behind, because they really didn’t want you bailing on your epic showdown with Kobold #33.

The end result is a game where you can realize you’re in over your head at 70% health and still die before you manage to disengage from combat. Of course, this depends massively on the class you’re playing as, as some of them have abilities designed specifically for escape; in fact most of them do on paper, but their practical efficiency varies wildly. All of this isn’t quite enough to ruin the fact that questing in WoW is still mostly an enjoyable experience, but players will have to be prepared for some rather unsatisfying deaths at times, which is also why I stay far away from the Hardcore mode.

Strength: The Social Aspect

The previous weakness builds nicely into the last (and no doubt to many greatest) strength of the game, as the difficulty sometimes present even in the simplest of quests serves to incentivise players to band together – and that they most certainly do. It’s a common practice to team up with random players on the same quests and form 30-minute friendships, and what’s remarkable about WoW: Classic compared to other multiplayer games is how friendly and helpful players generally are towards each other. You’re missing a quest I already did? No worries, let’s do it together. You’ve queued up for a dungeon even though you’re on the other continent? No big deal, we’ve got time. Any game will have outliers of course, but from my experience WoW: Classic is among the most positive gaming communities out there and it shouldn’t be understated what that can add to a game. Even if you choose to explore the world on your own, seeing other players around on their own journeys adds to the liveliness of WoW and is what makes it feel like an actual world in a way few other games have managed.

Conclusion

World of Warcraft: Classic is beyond doubt a classic, taking you back to a twenty-year-old game that still feels fun today. As a returning player, on one hand it does make you miss some of the improvements brought in by the first two expansions, but it’s also impressive how much the game got right from the start. And despite a few hiccups and annoyances in the experience, I’ve played fairly little else since starting back up with WoW, which speaks to how the strengths outweigh the weaknesses. I was even tempted to cover more elements, such as the iconic dungeons or the addictive fun of creating new characters. For those who have considered returning to World of Warcraft – or even making their debut in it – now is certainly a great time, though the same will likely still hold true as Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King make their way to the anniversary server over the next two years.

Personal Verdict: 4 Leeroy Jenkinses out of 5

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