Unexpected Installables

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Last night I started the evening as I have done several recently…  spending a chunk of time playing Rage 2.  However at some point I needed to get up and around and when I finally got sat back down at the laptop on the sofa…  I decided to check to see if I happened to make it into World of Warcraft Classic Beta.  I can’t even pinpoint where I heard the news, but at some point yesterday I heard that Beta invites would be going out.  I did not notice that I had gotten an email but I opted to just check the launcher, and sure enough…  nestled beside PTR in the list was “Beta:  WoW Classic”.  I installed the game and popped in to see what all had changed since the BlizzCon demo.

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Side note… at some point during the evening I did in fact receive an email titled “Belghast – You’re Invited to the World of Warcraft Classic Beta Test” and I clipped part of the email above…  which is obviously formatted for mobile devices.  Like I said however my account had received the entitlement long before I got an email, so I feel like your best option if you are curious is to see if it shows up in the drop down of selectable World of Warcraft accounts.  There are rumors that you have to have an active subscription to get access to it…  which checks as even though I am not playing the game I never went through the process of cancelling my subscription.  I also purchased BlizzCon access last year…  so it might also be tied to that for all I know.  Whatever the case I have access and I spent some time playing last night.

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Ultimately I created what was literally my very first World of Warcraft character.  I made a Tauren Warrior back in one of the beta phases in 2004, and since my good friend Grace is excited about Classic and has way stronger Horde loyalty than I do Alliance loyalty I opted to give it a shot last night.  First take away…  Mulgore is way more peaceful than I remember and it was super chill running around as a big damned cow warrior bopping things with a big hammer.  Eventually I managed to get a axe and shield set up going, and since I leveled the original Belghast as prot I am expecting to level in Classic as prot for old times sake.

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There was a weird sense of coming home to roaming around in the world.  One of the things I love about limited access alphas and betas in World of Warcraft… is that the community is generally speaking non-toxic.  I spent a good chunk of the night chatting away with random people in general about what we remembered about the early days of Warcraft.  It is weird but I have sorta missed feeling like I had a community that is worth communicating with.  Sure there are excellent people in a good number of the games…  but in the post Dungeon Finder reality no one talks to anyone else.  This means that general channels are left to the devices of the people who just want to make trouble for others, and a secret to my sanity for years has been disabling them entirely.  I’ve missed an era when it was okay to hang out and chat in a public space, and if nothing else that was refreshing about the Classic Beta.

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The other big takeaway from the night is that they seem to have toned down the game a bit from the Classic Demo from BlizzCon.  The only death I took during the night is when I charged in to attack a mob that I did not properly “con” first…  and wound up fighting a level 9 swoop and level 6.  This probably would have been fine had another level 9 wolf not jumped in to help out the birb.  My goal for the night was to get to the point where I had tradeskills trained, and I now do in fact have both Mining and Smithing after a quick jaunt to Thunderbluff.  My best drop so far is the 4 slot black bag… and I remember back in the day I used to farm the newbie zone until I had gathered four of these before moving onwards.  Hell when Classic launches I might actually do this so that I don’t feel like I am behind the curve the entire time.  As far as tradeskills… I figured Blacksmithing was going to give me the best bang for the buck as a Warrior in that it will let me craft all of my gear for the most part.

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The joys of looking like you dressed yourself for the very first time.  I guess however that is part of the charm of starting over and returning to vanilla.  Getting excited over a grey item dropping for a slot I currently had nothing equipped in is an experience that I have not had for a very long time.  I remember banking shoulder items back in the day just so when my friends got to that point I could hand them one and fill a slot that greys start dropping well before anything reasonable does.  I look forward to running Ragefire Chasm and Deadmines legitimately.  I do not however look forward to trying to make the run to Deadmines as a Horde player.  I keep reminding myself that this is patch 1.12 and not patch 1.0… and in theory Meeting stones exist?  I am not sure at what point they put in the teleports that allow Horde to get to Deadmines easily however.  Ultimately it feels sufficiently vanilla to trigger my nostalgia and doesn’t feel quite as purposefully punishing as the BlizzCon demo did.  I am happy for the moment if for no reason other than I was not expecting to do this last night at all… nor was I expecting to spend the night chatting with strangers.  Good start so far!

5 thoughts on “Unexpected Installables”

  1. Not sure if you have kept up on my blog but I have been playing Project 1999 exclusively right now, its a blast, and the community aspect *feeling* is definitely still there. Weird to spend so much time spent in a game that isn’t going anywhere, but perhaps that is the point?

  2. I’ve been thinking a lot about the “you don’t want WoW classic… you want your youth back” video a lot lately, as folks have been talking about the game. It pretty much perfectly encapsulates what I feel about WoW classic. But what confuses me is when folks that are closer to my age are excited about it. Not that that’s wrong or anything… clearly. It just confuses me, is all.

    If you were a teenager, or even in your early twenties when WoW came out, now, as someone in their twenties to early thirties, you’re remember a different time and that’s clouding your judgement regarding the quality of the game.

    I feel that if you were 30+, you have a little better outlook on what was great about vanilla… and in MANY cases, it wasn’t the actual game. It was the community, largely. And as you’ve mentioned, that’s changed drastically over the years.

    And I’d say that the parts that genuinely were the game, were because of how fresh and exciting it was, even for those of use who’d played other MMOs before WoW.

    But those days are long gone. Sadly, I don’t know that we’ll get that again as it pertains to an MMO, and personally, I know I wouldn’t get it from WoW classic.

    Again, glad you’re having fun. Definitely not for me, though.

    • I get what you are saying because I have said the exact same thing at several points during the history of this blog. If I went digging I could unearth blog posts that sound an awful lot like what you just stated. I was 28 when World of Warcraft released, and that experience absolutely was about the weird coalescence of all of my friends from all of the games that I had been playing coming together in one place. House Stalwart of old was a mix of people from Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes and Horizons all magically deciding that they wanted to get on board this brand new adventure. World of Warcraft more than that was a phenomena that brought in people who never really played games and made them interested in trying this new fangled MMO thing.

      It is absolutely a moment in time that cannot be relived. That said I enjoyed myself last night. I don’t know why I did or fully understand it myself but I enjoyed myself. The thing is… I have been struggling with games for a long time where I am enjoying bursts of gaming but having trouble digging in deeper like I used to. For now… I am going to grab hold of whatever joy I can find with both arms.

      • More power to ya.

        If you’re enjoying it, you don’t need a reason. It’s really that simple. Whether jackasses like me get it or not doesn’t mean anything.

        🙂

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