World of Warcraft Classic: Exam In Progress

Last week, Blizzard opened its doors World of Warcraft Classicand I took my first steps in a world that I have not seen since 2006. I deliberately spent very little time in beta and resistance tests to minimize fatigue and allow me to have some a good idea from the beginning. Do not make mistakes; This is not a recreation of the game it was when it was first launched in November 2004, but rather a re-enactment of what existed before Burning Crusade in 2006. Of course, a some of the content available at the time is not available at the moment due to the plan of a phased deployment. That being said, it is the closest approximation of the original game that has existed since BC changed everything.

The first hurdle is to get into the game in the first place. From the beginning, server queues have been staggering in the most populous realms and even in the smaller ones, there have been decent queues. However, with the addition of more servers and the initial race on the queues subsided. As I write this article Sunday afternoon, the most popular servers in the United States have a queue of about 7600 people with an estimated wait time of 200 minutes. The low, medium and high pop servers have no queue. Of course, the place where you decide to play will have a significant impact on the difficulty of connecting. If you accidentally leave the queue or log out after logging in, there is a grace period that allows you to go online in one place or reconnect immediately.

I would like to take a moment to discuss the estimated waiting times of Blizzard. First of all, Blizzard 's estimated time is terrible. Tuesday, I have never seen a queue of more than 90 minutes, but I waited three and a half hours. When I arrived at an estimate of 20 minutes, it took me an hour before I succeeded. I understand that these are only estimates and it is difficult to give an estimated time because there are many variables that fall into this variable, but given the estimated duration, I wonder if it would be better not to not propose an estimate of the queue at all. I would rather see a long queue and take faster than wait longer than expected.

All that being said, once I returned to the game, it brought back a lot of memories. A lot of the initial quest experiences that I knew were destroyed during Cataclysm were in front of me again. Honestly, my first few minutes were spent looking around and putting Mark of the Wild on EVERYTHING. And kissing the innocent young sweet Baine, before everything becomes terrible for him! Once the initial "OMG" disappeared, I started the quest and the long process of upgrading. It quickly reminded me how much I now depended on the quest givers represented on the mini-map.

I play as a Tauren Druid, and there are one or two quests right now to treat the silks of the sisters nearby. So, as a good Tauren, I went out that way and stumbled from behind because I could not find the front door because I was coming from the opposite direction. I quickly eliminated the quests, without the drama being killed. Everyone was coming together to help each other, which was a pleasant surprise. While I was running back to town, I saw an old Tauren woman who asked me to bring a pot of water to our chef. Not much. I went to see the leader and he sends me to talk to that other Tauren, who then gives me a quest to go back to where I was fighting the Silks a few minutes ago. The Tauren Women were not far from the city; I did not notice she had a quest for me when I ran around. The moral of the story is to look around the areas you are looking for, for fear of losing you just by something important / interesting.

I have always remembered how much I had always gone bankrupt in Vanilla; I had to borrow money to get my first horse and having an epic at age 60 was not even an option. However, I forgot how expensive classroom skills are. Go to the trainer level to learn a new skill or a new rank before realizing that I do not have enough money, it's terrible. It's only a matter of time before I find myself managing a dungeon and it will happen that the healer did not learn the floor because he did not have the money. It's true for vanilla, so I can not beat it too much. Also, the healer will be me this time, sorry in advance!

One of the critical things that can not be recreated is back then we did not rush for the maximum level. When Sensational Launched, there was little to do the maximum, so it was not necessary to rush there. Of course, as the game progressed and new things were added, and as WoW gained popularity, the end-of-match rush began to be a thing, but at first it did not exist. me neither for those with whom I played. In classical although there are already people who kill Rag and Onyxia. This should not be surprising, however. These paths have already been covered. We already know how to do everything, and no matter if anyone is willing to admit it, raid fights have become more sophisticated over the years. These old fights are retrospectively simplistic. Regarding everything that offers a real challenge classical is not the place to look for it.

My point is blizzard did a great job recreating Vanilla in the classical form. I have a lot of fun playing the game, but we must not fool ourselves. This is not the game as it was back when all this was new. It is an approximation close to some quality of life changes. I am curious to know how everything is going in the long run. Will the populations remain stable? Will we continue to queue? Or will it end up like just about any MMO where a kernel plays all the time, then come back in large numbers when new content opens up. Either way, I'll be back in a week with my full review!