The Classic Experience

When Classic was announced I was super hyped like a lot of other people. But I've not really give it much attention, so when the shadowlands beta was a bit dissapointing I installed Classic again. As a sort of plan B if I end up a raidlogger in Shadowlands or something.

When it first came out, I remade my most requested character in vanilla, a gnome warrior named Shrieker, and wanted to tank stuff and mortal strike people in pvp. While playing it alone isn't so hot compared to other classes, the real crash came from doing an instance - as threat is just so clunky in Classic. The desire to even do group content in classic kinda died in those first few Deadmine runs.

So my grind came to a halt, and everyone outleveled me. And trying to catch up on people with full bags, no bankspace and trying to play without addons or following a leveling guide with less time is not really fun. Not to mention most quest sites being super camped so struggling to tag anything was not happy fun times at classic release either.

Pretty much a year after I ended up picking up the paladin character I had made and started leveling. Now without endless amount of empty areas with dead mobs and no gathering nodes, to the odd person and something that felt a lot closer to what vanilla was actually like back in the day peoplewise.

While the idea is to try to tank dungeons as a paladin, I've done dungeons both as protection and retribution. Neither is particulary fun I must admit, the group content just feels so incredibly dated. LOS pull trash, have a chaotic struggle with aggro as the tank may or may not hit with sunders, people needing manabreaks constantly... Dungeons are great for nipping in once to do the quests and some possible loot, but I really cannot understand how people prefer this to retail dungeons or any other mmo. Like, farm SM for stuff? Erm.

The pug was pleasant enough, but in traditional WoW Vanilla fashion one of them trailed me and took the mineral nodes I was trying to get while I leveled later.

Tanking as prot pala was "fun enough" compared to playing prot warrior as consecrate seems to always hit, so at least healeraggro is less of a hassle. The downside if of course that needing to constantly drink due to having little int and needing to pop a manapot every time someone gets adds is not the greatest thing ever.

The inevitable Scarlet Monastery happened, and being outleveled by the warrior meant he got the honor of tanking. SM and I guess most other dungeons still has the charm and atmosphere it always had, but doing it more than once is not really appealing.

The greatest part about classic is how it's good parts is what retail isnt good at. While retail has fun group content and generally has more interactive and fun gameplay, it lacks on all other fronts or is way too complicated with no gains. The talent tree, the professions, the open world, all of that is super pleasant to do in Classic. Feels like a point to the leveling itself, and the endgame just being there for something to do when you are 60. The slower pace and just doing world stuff makes it a good game to just leave open while you do other stuff. Instead of being AFK in Boralus or Dazar waiting for people to log on for m+. So I think I will still play this, and do all the things I dont do on retail, like fishing.

Guess we'll see how long it lasts, however. Will I level a shaman once the paladin is level 60, or have I "completed" classic with level 60 and been in every 5 man dungeon?