Ok, I’ll come out and say it. Modern World of Warcraft, or Midnight, in all of its convoluted story-driven glory, with its systems on systems, its currencies on currencies, and high-octane pacing, isn’t an MMO. It’s just not. At least not to me.
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I know that’s a big ol’ bold statement, and I get it; you’re probably sat there thinking: “Zak, what the hell are you on about? Stop being an overly dramatic journalist trying to clickbait us all into reading your long-winded waffling diatribe”. But hear me out before you reach for the Dirge.
If you boiled down the current iteration of the game in a pot, and stripped away the marketing hype, and the hyper-attentive gameplay, Midnight, retail, it’s not actually that different from something like Call of Duty, or Overwatch. Not at its heart. It’s seasonal; it’s mostly queue-based, with as much commitment as I have to that chilli I cooked up three months back that’s still sitting in my freezer.
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Where it all began
I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since 2006. Over 20 years, stuck with the same video game, handing Blizzard my hard-earned cash for a monthly sub.
I’ve done it all. I was a Priest Class Leader at the age of 14, raiding in Molten Core, BWL and AQ40 (mad respect to Fracture Bloodfeather EU). I then main tanked through The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions on a Dwarf Warrior. After that, a Guild Leader and Raid Leader in Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria, healing on my Priest. Finally, ending as a Retribution Paladin in Warlords of Draenor and beyond.
The game got me into UI development; it got me into PC building. I studied how to create textures and TGA files in Photoshop, built rudimentary addons with Lua, and created a reasonably successful UI series. It taught me about design, about triage, about optimization. I owe my career to this game in many ways.
But during the Legion expansion, going into Battle for Azeroth, something flipped. I’d gotten used to the pace, the tempo. I tolerated the timed high-end Mythic+ 5-man dungeons, the constant weekly epic treadmill, and how impatient the community had become.
And of course I managed to continually decode the never-ending slew of multiplying vertical progression systems and catch-up mechanics with ever more convoluted naming schemes, to stay at the top of my game.
But it wasn’t long before I came to the realisation that I had no close community anymore. I wasn’t making new acquaintances or friends in the same way I had through previous expansions; I didn’t feel tied to any one guild, or server, or faction, or anything. And slowly, my love for the game faded.
The sub was paused on and off sporadically. I’d jump back in every expansion launch, trying to get into it, trying to convince myself that this was the one, but it was a constant struggle to stay committed, to enjoy it. In a world that felt so empty, so devoid of life. It turned into a lonely chore, rather than a fun pastime to rid myself of the day’s stress, and I couldn’t pinpoint why I was getting so burnt out by it. At least not until very recently.
The key concept: Time
The last few months I’ve been playing World of Warcraft: Classic, (of course on the run-up to the WoW Forever launch), and that, that has provided me with clarity on what it was I didn’t understand was missing from Retail.
Vanilla Classic, even today, is still ridiculously popular. More so than Mists of Pandaria, or any other version of the rebooted game. It’s odd, right? It launched in 2019, and yet the servers are still bristling with people running 40-man raids, doing PvP, and are home to thriving economies, guilds, events, and more. You can barely move in Stormwind on some servers. And that’s despite the game being well and truly “worked out” years ago. But why?
Simply put, it’s time. The game in its modern state, maybe accidentally, maybe on purpose, gave up what made it so special. What made it an MMO to begin with. All in an attempt to try and attract more people to the player base, and bring more subs in. And it did so by, conversely, becoming more accessible.
Because everything is so fast, and there’s a constant treadmill with extensive catch-up mechanics, there’s no commitment. You lose attachment to what it is you’re doing, and as a result, nothing matters. On average, to go from level 1 to the max cap of 90 in Midnight, it can take anywhere between 12 and 18 hours. For an established player, it can be less than eight.
As a result, people hop about constantly. Is your class not performing well? Is another now at the top of the Mythic+ logs? Just create a new character, and in less than half a day you can be gearing up for high-end Mythic raiding.
Even worse still, if you’re low on cash, you can get some from Blizzard’s in-game store with three mouse clicks and a healthy chunk of your own cash. That will allow you to buy a slew of gear from the latest content directly on the game’s player Auction House.
The modern games’ profession systems are also a mess, and it takes a degree in data analytics to understand half of it at a glance. Hell, you can even skip the bulk of the levelling entirely if you want and just pay for a character boost if need be, no matter what state your account is in.
If you do decide to skip the boost, then even the levelling journey itself feels disconnected from the community. Most just spam dungeons and get pooled up with players from all over the continent, never to see them again, running them as fast as possible with mass AOE pulls.
Or if that’s not to your taste, you pick a specific past expansion from the game’s lengthy list to level through instead. In this case, you’ll see no max-level players at all, only the select few that have chosen to also level in that specific piece of content.
This is all as you barrel through levels a mile a minute, learning new skills faster than you can acclimatise, and watch as your gear becomes redundant in less than 15 minutes.
What WoW: Forever & Classic get right
And this is what Classic and Forever get right. It takes an age to level; it really does. I have a 32 Hunter currently, a 21 Warrior, and a 21 Priest on Classic. I’m halfway to 60 (in number only) on that Hunter. It’s one of the fastest classes to level in Vanilla WoW, and my playtime is 2 days and 1 hour to get that far. I could’ve levelled five classes in Retail in that time. And still, I’ve got another 4 to 6 days to get to max level, if I don’t mill about.
And here’s the thing: because it takes so long, I’ve done an incredible amount of extra content outside of levelling when I’ve got bored of it. I’ve spent time doing my professions to make money, because I’m prepping to get my mount at lvl 40. I’ve gone to Darkshore and explored various areas to get a special ghost nightsaber pet. I’ve grouped and travelled to dungeons like Deadmines and Stockades. All the while making some incredibly memorable runs with good people, with wipes, close calls, and quest lines that have taken an age to finish.
My gear matters too, and if I get something from a dungeon, or a particularly long quest line, it feels momentous; the power increase is tangible. I’ve even treated myself to an Epic level 37 bow, ready for later on, and it’s just sat in my bank waiting. And then, of course, new spells, new talents, I’ve got my pet to look after; all of it feels that much more potent.
Socially too, I see people about when I’m levelling, high levels, low levels, you name it. And we help each other; we chat about gear, about specs, buff each other as we pass, talk nonsense.
I had a group of four players jump in to save me from dying to a difficult quest mob in Duskwood, for no other reason than to help. They gained nothing from it. That’s just one example where I’ve made new friends in-game.
Because it takes so long to do anything in classic — to travel, to learn — and because the world is so dangerous, because it’s not easily accessible (there aren’t even any summoning stones in Forever), your decisions and commitments matter.
If I were to re-roll, it would take me another two days, maybe more, to get that character to 30. As a result, I’ve become attached to the people I’ve met, my gear, my character as a whole. Even my server. If I see a level 40 to 60, there’s a sense of almost awe, like “yeah, one day I’ll be that level, that kitted out; I wonder what that’ll be like?”
It’s aspirational, and the lack of catch-up mechanics contributes to that; it doesn’t impede it. It’s not that there’s no vertical progression here either; there is certainly in Classic, and in fact arguably that’s what makes it more interesting, not less.
Get to max level, and you gear up via dungeons. Then you’re set for the 10-man raids. After that, you move into Molten Core, Onyxia’s Lair, and Blackwing Lair. Finally, you’re set for high-end content like Ahn’Qiraj and Naxxramas. It’s a long journey upwards.
If you don’t have good enough gear on your character, you’ll underperform or be unable to compete on the next level of content. But all of that content from day one is still relevant. Catch a glimpse of those players running around the capital cities, and you’re struck by it.
It’s visually impressive; they’ve committed that time to the game, that character, that class, and they’re powerful as a result. You can see it, certainly with no transmog.
Imperfection makes it more, not less, sociable
By all accounts, Classic World of Warcraft, and subsequently Forever, are flawed games. Certainly, from a shareholder perspective. You have this massive time investment from developers building content that only a select few will see. It takes an age to get to max level compared to modern WoW, and its slower pace can feel like drudgery in direct comparison to the live button-masher mode we have in Midnight.
But it’s that lack of accessibility, that need for time, that gives Forever and Classic their sense of sociability. It makes you feel attached to the world, your class, your character, your race; it feels inhabited, and it’s that that makes it feel like a true MMO.
World of Warcraft Forever is heavily based on Classic. Blizzard has stated that many, many times over. The entire game is built on or forged from the idea of what Classic might have looked like in an alternate timeline, where the developers added new content but stayed true to the original design principles.
They have arguably deviated in certain examples already, of course. For example, the game already features a number of quality-of-life improvements to classes, a group finder, and cosmetics.
From what I’ve seen, however, Forever is already on a good path. It’ll be less vertical gear treadmill and more slight horizontal incline. From what we’ve seen so far, general levelling and gearing is almost on par with Classic, albeit mildly quicker.
What Blizzard needs to do, in this humble journo’s opinion, is to keep the pace the same. Instead of rushing to deploy new content, or forbidding themselves from adding something on arbitrary, subjective “staying true to the Vanilla World of Warcraft experience” guidelines, they instead need to be asking, “does this reduce the time commitment, or make the game more accessible?”
If either answer is yes, then there’s room for discussion.
Can Retail World of Warcraft be saved?
But what of the ailing beast? What of Midnight and its rapid-paced, cartoonish Mythic+ dominated landscape, filled with timers, rewards, and catch-up mechanics galore? What could be pulled from Forever beyond better shaders and volumetric fog? It’s a challenging question to answer. Midnight has an active player base, people who love it. Those who live for the high-intensity and flip-flopping nature of chasing the meta. To change that game and make it more Classic, could be intrinsically unpopular.
And yet, we’ll have to see exactly how well World of Warcraft: Forever does. If it is what we expect it to be and it dwarfs Midnight‘s player base by a considerable margin, it’s not likely Blizzard will ignore that.
I genuinely believe slower-paced levelling, a lack of catch-up mechanics, and a simplified gearing system would dramatically improve Midnight, and in fact would’ve improved everything from the Battle of Azeroth expansion onwards. Whether that comes to pass, well, we’ll have to wait and see. For now, you can find me buried headfirst in what World of Warcraft should have been, and probably should’ve stuck to, all those years ago.
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Zak Storey
