World of Warcraft is a very popular video game title that came out back in 2004, and ever since its release, the game saw a huge number of fans and hardcore players that are still very close with this title even after so many years.
However, it’s not very uncommon to hear that someone who played this game from the very release has recently quit because of some of the latest changes.
You’re probably wondering why after so many years of paying subscriptions and grinding to make your characters max level someone would quit playing World of Warcraft, and today we’re here to answer that question for you.
Whenever you read an article about this world-famous video game, you are very likely to hear someone complaining about the latest changes and how they’re driving the hardcore player base away from the game instead of attracting more serious players. Why is that so? Make sure to read until the end if you want to learn some more.
What is World of Warcraft?
World of Warcraft is the world’s most popular online MMORPG game, developed by Blizzard Entertainment. Ever since this game was released, people knew that it’s a serious business. There wasn’t another game like this and people were just immediately hooked.
Even though it was the first popular subscription-based game, it wasn’t a problem at all to see millions of players on the charts. Nobody really expected this game to reach the point where it’s at today, but Blizzard made a few mistakes along the way, and here’s why.
The beginnings of WoW
For each quest that you had to do in Vanilla, you’d have to spend at least a few hours trying to figure out what to do, and when you finally finished it, the feeling was pretty amazing.
Today? That’s not the case. People even posted on various forums about a certain quest, working together and waiting for answers, hoping someone comes up with a solution, just for a single quest.
This is something that gave a very special feeling to the game, and although many will say that this is just a waste of time and it’s opposite of what a video game should be, the hardcore player base would have to say otherwise.
Progression – First few expansions
As each new expansion in WoW got released, the game got progressively easier to play. Although this attracted a lot of new players, that’s not what the original and diehard fans wanted. Sure, a bit of help now and then was fine, but slowly World of Warcraft started to lose its charm.
Back in the earlier expansions, you’d have to visit a class-trainer to learn a certain skill, but then you’d realize that you have no gold for it, so you decide to farm a bit and come back later when you have the amount to pay.
Today, skills are automatically learned when you level up, and they are even placed on your Hotbar, eliminating any effort that it took to do these things on your own. Once again, new players loved this, but the community base that mattered is slowly starting to leave at this point.
Is this a good thing?
At the end of the day, Blizzard is a company that wants to make a living out of creating video games and interesting content for players. Well, according to the charts, each new expansion has a lot more players than the previous ones, so they are doing a great job running this world-famous title, right? Wrong.
Although they did earn some more revenue in the past couple of years, WoW was slowly dying, and nobody was paying any attention. Blizzard didn’t notice this until they announced another project called WoW Classic.
What is WoW Classic?
World of Warcraft Classic is an “expansion” that sets us back sixteen years ago when the game first came out. When Blizzard announced that they will allow players to get nostalgic and feel the unexplainable charm of the game itself back when it was in the “right” state, people went crazy.
This is when the devs understood that most of their community wants to play the real World of Warcraft, not the latest expansions that not only are not rewarding for dedicated players, but it puts new players on the same level with those who spent thousands of hours in the game.
WoW, Classic immediately “exploded” and a lot of people abandoned the latest expansion of WoW, Battle for Azeroth.
Sure, WoW Classic is hard, and for most new players even frustrating, but that’s how things are supposed to be in this universe.
Finally, peace was restored once again. Blizzard made a game-changing decision in the last couple of minutes that saved this video-game title from being buried underneath other uprising MMORPGs such as The Elder Scrolls Online.
Progressing in WoW Classic
If you are a new player that agrees with everything we said above, and you want to keep playing the classic version of this game, even though the newer ones are much easier, there are a couple of things that you should know.
Patience is key, and things will take you a lot of time, but they’ll be rewarding and always worth-it. Also, this is a pretty strange way to think of it, but if you are considering purchasing all the latest expansions, you can instead purchase a WoW Classic Dungeon boost and make things a lot easier for you, while still playing the supposedly better version of the game. Feel free to click here if interested.
Things aren’t as easy for newer players in WoW Classic, but there are many guides and tutorials made by the same hardcore players that are trying to keep this game alive, and you can learn a lot of things from them. If leveling to max level on Classic took about three months before, you can do it in less than a week now, if you know what you’re doing. It’s difficult, but it is very possible.
Believe it or not, the current latest expansion in World of Warcraft has fewer players than what WoW Classic has, and this shows just how better the game was many years ago.
