World of Warcraft Casually, Classic and Retail

Battle for Azeroth

When I started playing World of Warcraft (WoW) Classic, I saw it as a way to start over and enjoy things differently than I did the first time I played through.  What that didn't mean, as I mentioned in my last post, was that creating different characters.  I liked my characters and tried to recreate them as much as possible.  What I was hoping was that I could advance with my guild again and have Kanter, my hunter, be my solo character, and Kantra, my priest, be my dungeon and raid character.  That all fell apart when I realized dungeons weren't practical with the internet issues I was having.  However, I was already subscribed to World of Warcraft and there was this tempting bonus experience only in retail, not in classic.

Blagpuss was talking about how easy isn't a bad thing in MMOs when discussing how he was enjoying that last expansion in Everquest II.  I was feeling the same way as I was able to easily get to max level in World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth with Kanter after putting it off for so long.  The contrast with Classic made it especially enjoyable.

I spend a descent amount of time reading blog posts (see blog roll to the right), many of them about MMOs.  I started reading them before I started this blog and they definitely encouraged me to write and I still enjoy reading them even if I'm not playing.  I've read the criticism of how World of Warcraft ruined MMOs from certain bloggers and I understand what they are saying, but they aren't playing the game I'm playing.

I want to be casual.  I was looking for a free to play game thinking it would be a better match for a casual player but it hasn't happened.  World of Warcraft is an easy solo game.  For a few years I did raiding in Vanilla (not Classic) and Burning Crusade but it was always stressful for me.  What that time did (and it is a lot of time, supposedly almost 152 days of play time just on Kanter according to WoW) was put me in position to be able to play the game on my own terms as long as I'm willing to pay or buy a token.  

World of Warcraft is comfortable for me and, even though they recreate it with every expansion, it still keeps that level of comfort.  They have also added more for the solo player to do. More features like the farm in Mists of Pandaria, more profession related quests, and more little goals that give you incentive to stay around.  Legion was even better for solo players in that there were more class related quests (more about that in one of my coming posts).

I remember people saying that end game was the game but even when I was raiding, I enjoyed the journey more than the destination.  At this point there is so much content in World of Warcraft that I don't need to worry about running out of things to do.  I don't know if it would be that way if I had never played WoW, but, for me, WoW Retail is a great casual game.  WoW Classic is not.