I’ve been playing a bit of “classic” World of Warcraft for the last couple of weeks — and it’s been great!
Back in late 2004 I started playing the game with a bunch of folks here at work, and we hit it pretty hard all the way through the original raids, and it was great fun.
As the years progressed though, Blizzard kept chasing the lowest common denominator; the game got easier and more hand-holdy, and more homogenized… Class identity was winnowed out, along with any real option to make a character uniquely yours. And I lost interest near the end of the ‘Wrath of the Lich King’ expansion.
I’ve returned briefly — a month or two — for each expansion, but I’ve not really been hooked like I was in the original game.
Now, sure, there have been some strong expansions; Legion for example was really good, and got me to stick around for about six months… Which is about as long as it took for me to see the conclusion to the story started in “Burning Crusade”.
Anyway, I’m back in the original world with about a million other people, and having an absolute blast!
I play a shaman named “Mishakawe” in a guild called “Hand of Lordaeron” on the Grobbulous ‘RP-PvP’ server.
The guild is really interesting as it’s primarily a Forsaken guild (the playable undead race in the game), but they do allow black-furred Tauren of the Grimtotem tribe to join. See, the back-story for the Forsaken is that Magatha Grimtotem was the one who argued for their inclusion into the Horde in the first place. There are also several quests in the game that hint that the Grimtotem are working with the Forsaken for nefarious reasons.
The guild also spans both factions, meaning that there is a couple hundred Alliance members as well — so we stage a lot of role-played skirmishes. 🙂
It’s been a ton of fun.