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Has World Of Warcraft become too big for its own good?Know your history
Know your history
What’s It Like To Start World Of Warcraft From Scratch?
I know, I know. I could play WoW Classic for that delicious vanilla flavour, or choose Elwynn Forest as my starting area instead of Exile’s Reach. Even still, I think that normal, retail WoW has become a disjointed experience that’s concerned more with shuttling me towards max-level daily quests, than embedding me in its storied history. But with expansions and regions up the wazoo, I’m unsure whether Blizzard know how to collate it all into a package that’s all-encompassing yet doesn’t take you hundreds of hours to complete.
Still, WoW has lost the sense of adventure it used to capture so brilliantly. And I think it’s because Azeroth back then was a perfect size, with regions that I grew to understand deeply, to the point where I could map a mental route through its areas with relative ease. No matter where I was, I understood my place in Azeroth. I knew the gulf between Alliance and Horde members, and where their battle lines were drawn. Things were tougher back then, like earning money and travelling around - heck, you couldn’t get a mount until you dinged level 40 and had 100 gold to spare, which was aneffortto scrounge together back then. Without a mount, you were forced to either run between zones or use public transport (gryphons and blimps) to get around.
But I wouldn’t say the game’s difficulty translated to frustration. If anything, it forced community interaction and scored many of its dirt tracks into my memory. I distinctly remember popping “LFG Scarlet Monastery” into the dungeon finder part of the chat, sliding into a party of randoms, and riding my ram across several zones to tick it off. Here’sa videothat illustrates how you’d learn the lay of the land, and the seamless nature of it all.
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