Monday, March 30, 2020

World of Warcraft Classic as a Casual player

My classic toons, much like my first five retail toons
Like I said in my first post, I am using my blog as an exploration of what it's like to be a casual player in a genre (MMORPG) which expects people to spend lots of time in the game.  I'll start with how I got back into World of Warcraft last year and what got me to where I am now.

Even though I hadn't played World of Warcraft (WoW) for more than three years, I was still subject to the hype for WoW Classic.  Blizzard gifted me a free week of retail just before the Classic release (sometime in August 2019) and that was a good enough excuse for me to log back in and see what my guild was up to.  I found out the website no longer worked but the Discord was listed inside the game so I was able to see how they were planning for the release of Classic.  That was enough to get me to subscribe and I had some fun starting the Battle for Azeroth content just as it was approaching the last update.

Classic started well enough.  I waited a few days to miss the rush and leveled my hunter just as I did when retail first went live (including the queues but without the lag).  Before long I started gathering things I couldn't use and so that had me start recreating my other toons since I've always been a hoarder in WoW.

After a while I came up with a plan to level my hunter, Kanter, first and then, level my priest not too far behind so Kanter could provide her gold and equipment and she could heal in dungeons.  That all went well until I took her to the first alliance dungeon, Deadmines.  As a whole, the dungeon went well and we finished it fine but I did not.  I have been having some issues with my internet but I was hoping they wouldn't interfere with grouping.  After three disconnects where the rest of the group did fine (there was a druid who healed when I disconnected) I didn't think I could do it again.

Grouping has always been stressful for me.  I always judge myself harshly and I'm always fearful that I'm not pulling my weight.  In this case, I obviously wasn't.  About this time the World of Warcraft anniversary event started.  Part of the anniversary was a token given you 15% more experience in retail (it didn't work in classic).

I went ahead and made the switch to retail and used the experience buff to finally see the Battle for Azeroth (BfA) content.  More about my experience with BfA and Classic in my next post.

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