After being down and out from a bad cold for the last few weeks, I am officially back and ready to take on my Monday’s gaming blog. Previously, I discussed the idea of WoW Classic, and wondered if you really could go home again. Even after playing a little of the beta and demo, I was impressed but skeptical. There was something special about the original game that drew me in. I’m not normally some social butterfly that makes friends easily. But in this game, I was making friends and getting help to achieve goals in the game. It was amazing and no wonder so many people flocked to this game.

After each expansion, you lost more and more of what made it special. The story was still great, keeping you around until you finished that part of the story. Then you left and never looked back until something new happened. While I always found something to do, there was just mindless grinding all by yourself. You didn’t need anyone else. You could just hop on LFG or LFR to get whatever group you wanted. It did become easier. You have more flexibility in playstyle. It’s no longer “well I have to be a human priest that heals because of the human spirit trait”. It’s now “what character looks the coolest?” Which adds its own interesting element, but it’s not the same as the spirit of the game that attracted so many of us to begin with.

I wasn’t able to play as much as I wanted to at Classic’s release, as I was too sick to really function as a normal human being. But from what I played, I remembered everything all over again. I chose my current and original main: a human priest. It started off fine until I remembered that I’m a human healing priest and Westfall sucks. After a warrior friend hard carried me through some quests, I went to the significantly easier Darkshore to quest. Things started to speed up there, and I died a lot less questing by myself. I haven’t been in any instances yet, but from what I can tell they are just as long and difficult as they were.

It was lonely by yourself and once I joined a guild, I remembered everything all over again. People helped each other. They ran instances together, gave items to help others succeed. People ran by and gave you buffs as they passed. People formed groups to complete quests together. It was just like the original game. I felt at home again. I spent so much time worried that I’d remember Vanilla wasn’t great or that going back wouldn’t be as satisfying. But it was satisfying. It was everything I wanted out of this game. It was like I remembered. I put on a playlist, and just fully immersed myself in a game. It took me away from here. It took me to a community, where people helped each other and were kind to each other. It brought me to a place where I felt the world should be: a community where people work together to accomplish a goal to make the world a better place. The goal is to get rid of the baddies from Azeroth so the residents can be safer.

You can go home again in the World of Warcraft Classic. They managed to successfully recapture the essence of the game that meant so much to its players. When things were going wrong or stressful in life, you can count on your pixels to make you feel better. When you felt alone, you know that you can have your guildies or WoW friends there to talk to you about random things when no one else will. This is the game that we love and I would love to thank the Blizzard team for giving this back to us.