"Another one! Right here! Right here! Get the mother!@#$er," my mom yelled while we were on the hunt for Kobold Vermin amongst a sea of players dying to ride the high of nostalgia that is WoW Classic.
WoW Classic: A nostalgic trip
I’ve played World of Warcraft before, but never like this, whereas my mom has been playing for over 10 years. It took me 1 hour and 30 minutes to get pulled into a server, and during that time, one of my friends sent me a screenshot of people waiting in a line for a quest. It was the single most respectful and wholesome thing I’ve ever seen in gaming. For your viewing pleasure:
After the long wait, I rolled a Human Paladin and my mom rolled a Human Priest. When I popped in, the world was packed to the brim with players, but the lack of music made it quiet, and somehow peaceful. There was a hint of nostalgia in the air when roaming around Northshire, the starting area for Humans. Despite the wait, there was no lag in the server (WestFall).
After I met up with my mom, we went to grab our first quests. What caught me off guard was the absence of the quest tracker found in the current game -- I really did spawn into 2004. We were tasked to hunt Kobold Vermin. We pulled up to some random cave, and my mother was cursing and yelling up a storm because she couldn't attack the vermin before other people could. (For context, in WoW Classic, you need to be the one that attacks the enemy first in order for it to count as your kill).
"Wow. People really want to play this game?" my mom sighed right after discovering we weren't even in the right place (again, no quest tracker).
Once we moved over to our real target, we realized that we didn’t share loot, either. We had to take turns looting monsters to get what we needed.
"Too slow. Come on, you gotta tag em!’" my mom yelled, dunking on me because I couldn’t hit the enemies fast enough. "You really wanna do this? Just make up some !@#$"
Needless to say, I started dying of laughter at this point.
In the whole thirty minutes I spent in Northshire, I realized how much time you need in your life to be able to complete these quests and level up at a reasonable rate. And it’s less about how slow the old system is, but more so about the influx of players halting your progress.
"I didn't even tag this guy and now he's hitting me!" my mother screamed, pent up with frustration. "We'll get these bandannas by tomorrow morning, let's just go explore."
WoW Classic: The road to Goldshire
We decided to leave the player-infested Northshire and travel toward Goldshire, one of the most popular cities in Elwynn Forest, recognized as a roleplaying hub to many players.
As we walked up to the Lion’s Pride Inn, my mother reminisced, "I remember walking out here and getting killed by all the mobs when I was low level," and then she complained "Ugh, I can't live without my add-ons."
I went to return a quest in the Inn and the quest-giver forced me to choose between two rewards: Small Pumpkins or Refreshing Spring Water. Is this game really making me choose between pumpkin and water? "You're really going to need that water for your mana," my mom informed me. I couldn’t help but sigh.
While jotting down my notes, I heard what sounded like a chicken screeching, followed by my mom yelling, "Stop killing the chickens!" I walked outside the Inn and saw my mom, “The players are killing the chickens -- oops, I killed one too,” she chuckled.
I started losing it -- from the incredibly slow pacing to the horribly competitive quest hunting, everything about our experience had been a hilarious nightmare.
Suddenly, my mom sprang up in excitement, "I want to show you a glitch that might get us kicked off. I bet they didn't fix it."
WoW Classic: A glitch through Stormwind
"We get to see my king," my mom yelled wholeheartedly as we rolled up to Stormwind City, the capital city of the kingdom of Stormwind.
We took a trip down memory lane, visiting the jarringly empty bank and auction house, which don’t exist in the same form anymore.
Finally, we continued down an alleyway in Stormwind until we came upon an underpass with a torch to the side of it. My mother explained that the goal was to hop on the torch, jump on the platform above and walk forward into the wall. After about five minutes, I managed to get on top of the wall and walked forward into the empty abyss.
"How the hell did you do that? Paladin powers!" my mom yelled after struggling to get up there on her own.
Eventually, she called my brother to help her with the jump. We were reunited and in delight that we actually broke the game.
The underside of Stormwind was a glitchy mess, and we couldn’t see anything apart from bare bones terrain and trees floating in the air. We ran for miles toward Burning Steppes, which is an area for players in the 40 to 60 level range. My mom was excited to say the least. Eventually, we got to Searing Gorge, which was an equally high-level area. We couldn’t find a way out of this hell that we were trapped in, so we looped all the way back around to Elwynn Forest and back to Stormwind.
The final stretch was attempting to walk up this buggy hill to escape. My mom made it on the first try, but I was having trouble. "Dude, come on!" my mom yelled at me because I couldn’t make this jump, even though she called my brother for help earlier. She dropped down the hill and then did it again just to show me (and show off). Finally, I got over, and we popped right back through one of Stormwind’s walls and landed in the Valley of Heroes.
We only made it to level 3 and we were both already so done with the game.
Bottom line
When I asked my mom what she thought of WoW Classic, she said "well, I got to level 3. In the beta I got to level 2 and I quit."
Will she come back to it?
"Maybe if I'm bored," she said "Everything takes too long. And if I want to play by myself it's going to take even longer. But let's go see Hogger tomorrow!"
As I wrap up our uneventfully eventful story through WoW Classic, I received a text from my mom that reads: “Hey, make sure you write nice things. Blizz might track my account and mess with it. I’ve grown fond of my BFA (Battle for Azeroth) account lol.”
