Classic WoW Beta: First Impressions

Classic WoW Beta: First Impressions

First of all, if you do not like slow leveling, without a quest tracking tool and you can not imagine playing the game with all the comforts of modern WoW, Classic is probably not for you. On the other hand, if you love the real sense of community and immersion, you will love the game when it comes out on August 27th.

World of Warcraft takes its roots with the release of Classic in summer and only an active subscription will be necessary to play. We have been invited to the closed beta and have some first impressions to share with you.

1. Blizzard's Goal

The goal of Blizzard with Classic is to recreate an authentic Vanilla experience. So it's time to forget all the amenities of the current version of the game. In Classic, there will be no legacy stuff, quest tracking, flying mount, quick upgrade or dungeon search and you will get your first ground mount to 60% at level 40. Quest targets have a low chance to loot and you will often have to kill 18 mobs for a single quest ...

2. "Out of mana"

You will find yourself more often outside of Mana, which is why you should always carry water. You can increase your mana regeneration by sitting out of combat. I believe that mana regeneration is increased for low level characters, but you will have a bad time if you intend to draw more than one mob. As a mage, after 5 fireballs, a pause is necessary because you will already be "out of mana". This allows you to enjoy the game differently, to take your time and especially to approach the fight more strategically and better manage your mana / life (as Casters, the usefulness of the rod makes sense!)

3. Community

With the introduction of Dungeon Finder and other conveniences, the current game feels a lot less social to me. You don't like a member in your party? Kick them out and that's it. In Classic, you will think twice before kicking someone out of your group, because you're looking at 30 minutes spent in town, looking for a new member.

It's all about the little things in Classic! If you're a Priest and buff nearby players with your buff  expect a wholehearted thank you. A Mage may trade you conjured water to help you regain Mana in between pulls and buff you with Arcane Intellect, which brings me onto the subject of combat.

4. True Immersion

There's no map tracking in Classic, you actually need to read the quests or look them up to find the objective. Instead of a mark on your map, you must read the quest log and figure out the objective yourself. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

You must pay close attention to your surroundings and visualize your current location and where you're supposed to go, or look the quest up. If you want to track a quest, you must do it manually from within the Quest Log.

5. Great satisfaction

The quests:
They are tedious and no assistance available. You have to read them, understand the text, go around in circles for 5 minutes before you can finally find this little item hidden under a cart ... But every time you return to the camps to make this famous quest that will give you a green object that makes you gain +1 intelligence, you'll be just happy! (While at BFA we chain the quest without accounting and we do not even take into account the rewards ...)

The equipment:
Speaking of the stuff precisely, what a joy to go to the caves of lamentations and to fall on a blue wand! It's just a blue object, but we know very well that on Classic this object will accompany us from 5 to 10 additional lvl, which represents tens of hours of play time. Moreover, each new object obtained brings a boost of power (intelligence for mages for example) and it becomes immediately significant, we really feel a difference in our DPS.

6. Final words

One thing is sure: The game will not please everyone, but it's not a problem because there is a real community that is getting stronger from day to day and from the feedback of other streamers, WoW Classic to a very beautiful future!

On our side, we were fervent Vanilla players from the beginning (access to the first Beta in 2004, clean Naxx, etc ...) and we played all the extensions since then, and we thought it was the nostalgia effect which pushed us towards Classic, but not at all!
Ok there are some cutscenes, areas, NPCs etc. that make a little nostalgia come back, but it's really the game itself that seduced us, the difficulty, the community, etc ...

In a few hours of beta, we were directly immersed in a different atmosphere, another WoW, the return of the real WoW in some way.
You know, the WoW makes you finish your meal as fast as possible to go back behind the screen and finish this bloody quest in the Barrens. The WoW who says to your sweetheart "No baby, tonight we will not watch another episode of Game of Thrones" all that to take your little living dead level 22 and set up a group to go to the caves of lamentations.

In short all those moments that make WoW Classic an extraordinary game, with a bright future. (Who says the best version of WoW? ^^)