Why I’m Not Going To Play Classic

NOTE: These are MY opinions, and mine alone. I am well aware that my reasons for NOT liking Classic are the same reasons that many love it, and vice versa. Classic is/was a product of its time, and my tastes have changed over the last fifteen years. It’s interesting to me as a sort of time capsule, but that’s it. If you’re hyped about Classic, awesome! All I know is that I’m not.

Things It Doesn’t Have (That I Need)

Flying/Fast Mounts

I know, I know, only filthy casuals like flying. Well, if not wanting to trek across an entire continent ON FOOT to turn in a quest for 20 silver makes me a filthy casual, so be it.

Gold

I prefer to make gold because I WANT something (gear, pets, mounts, toys, whatever), not because I NEED it to play (repairs, food, INDIVIDUAL flight paths). I’m OK if I have to grind for a bit to buy a pet; grinding to get the coin to fly to Westfall is a bit less appealing. Gold scarcity doesn’t make the game challenging, it makes it more tedious (this seems to be a theme with a lot of Classic mechanics).

Storage

• Small bags
• Reagents for EVERYTHING
• ’nuff said

I don’t enjoy inventory management as a mini-game. This is the one problem I have with Mechagon: TOO MANY THINGS taking up valuable space.

Transmog

This one right here is a deal-breaker. Sorry. It’s not JUST about appearances, it’s about collecting (and the challenges often found therein).

Group Finder

I was guildless until Icecrown Citadel… My memories of trying to get into groups for dungeons involve standing in Dalaran for hours, responding to ads in Trade Chat with my Gear Score (remember Gear Score?) only to be told “NO WARRIORS”. Clearly this wasn’t quite the same experience I would have had in Classic, but it’s not far off. No guild? No instances for you. LFG helped ameliorate some of that for me.

AoE Looting

It’s just a quality of life issue, but for me it’s a biggie. I want to PLAY, not spend time doing simple things in an intensely slow manner because that’s just how the game engine worked back then.

Seven expansions of content

I liked BC. I liked Wrath. I liked Cata. I liked Mists. I liked Warlords. I liked Legion. I like BFA. I like all of the content those expansions brought to Azeroth (and Outland, and Draenor, and Argus). I like revisiting it frequently. If being stuck on the ground makes Classic feel “big” (to me it doesn’t), the lack of over a decade of content makes it feel incredibly small for me.

Things It Has (That I Don’t Want)

Models from 2004

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I know, Graphics Shouldn’t Matter. But they do. WoW looked pretty good for the time when it was new, but that was fifteen years ago, and I find it hard to play a game that looks like WoW Classic when WoW Retail looks sooooo much better.

Insanely slow grinds

• Insanely slow respawn rates
• Insanely slow drop rates
• Insanely low XP gain rates
• Lots of dying/eating between mobs
  • If I wanted to play Dark Souls, I’d play Dark Souls
• WHERE IS MANKRIK’S WIFE?

Things I Don’t Care About

“Community”

This one is extremely dependent on your individual experiences back when Classic was Current. If you had a guild, or a Good Reputation on your server, the community experience was likely great. If not, not so much. My issue is that, no matter what people think, it CAN’T be the same in Classic now as it was originally. It’s a completely different group of people, those that are returning aren’t the same as they were fifteen years ago (unless they spent that time encased in carbonite), and it’s not 2004 any more. Classic will have lots of Important Streamers and Influencers playing, WoWhead will supplant much of the “help me” banter that made sitting in chat channels a necessity (a change for the better, IMHO), and the sense of innocence/camaraderie that came with exploring a brand new world for the first time is impossible to fully recapture. Nostalgia can be a helluva drug, but it’s one I’m avoiding.

“Challenge”

Classic wasn’t necessarily “hard” (with the exception of maybe things like Naxxramas 40); it was TEDIOUS. EVERYTHING took FOREVER. The difficulty didn’t come from the game, it came from time management. For me, that’s not fun. Molten Core wasn’t HARD… Hell, the fight mechanics were ridiculously simple compared to contemporary raids. The hard part was convincing 40 people to get together at the right time with the right classes. I can do that at work by calling a meeting. I spend enough time waiting in lines in real-life; I have no desire to spend recreational game-time waiting in line for 45 minutes for a quest mob to respawn, then spending 10 more minutes running to turn in the quest.

“Nostalgia”

Yeah, I had fun back in the day (before it was Vanilla, or Classic); I wouldn’t have stuck around until Burning Crusade if I didn’t enjoy it. I don’t look upon those early times as “the best” or “the good old days”; MY experiences only got better as time went on and the game evolved into what it is today. I played Classic at BlizzCon; I played the beta when it became available at home. To me, it was clunky, ugly, and painful to play. My reaction wasn’t “oh wow, the memories!”, it was “ouch, this sucks!”. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a BAD game, for what it was at the time. Blizzard didn’t take Retail, butcher the hell out of it, and call it Classic. Classic is just how the game was when it was released (or a few months after, as it’s not based on the release day patch). It’s an authentic resurrection of a fifteen-year-old game. Playing Classic for me is like playing my favorite PS4 game ported to PS1: it may be recognizable, but it feels like a shadow of the current product. It’s not for me. I KNOW that I’m not the target audience for Classic. I’m fine with that.