Classical beauty

*Opens rusted shut door with difficulty*

Hello folks, its me, your favorite mage Jed! Now I know that it's been a minute or two since I wrote a blog post but lately I've had that itch that only blogging can scratch. First off let me apologize for not having written anything since...2015?! Well crap that is a lifetime ago. Since then my adorable baby girl has grown into an adorable four year old who still demands a TON of my time. I've also been streaming a crap load more and have made it to twitch affiliate. I know that y'all are super impressed by the streamer part more than the baby part. Well anyway that's enough of me and my story, lets go on with the whole blogging thingy!

*Replaces burned out light bulbs and clears off cobwebs*

There's an old saying "everything old is new again" and as I get older, it does seem to be proving itself truer and truer every year. Blizzard announced at Blizzcon 2017 that they were going to be bringing us World of Warcraft Vanilla in the near future and I got to tell you that there was not a single person in that hall that wasn't cheering their mind out. Fast forward to today and we are counting down the global launch of Classic Warcraft. What is Classic Warcraft?

Well imagine a beloved old television show that you grew up watching and eventually you stopped watching it because you grew out of its demographic or because you just didn't have time for it. You spent a lot of time and energy invested in that show and made tons of friends through your love of it and you miss it dearly. Now imagine that the show continued on after you stopped watching it. Eventually you go back and try to watch the new version of the show but it is a pale imitation of the show you have in your heart. Now pretend that you find out that you can watch the show digitally and that you can now watch the show that you grew up watching. That's Classic Warcraft in a convoluted and super unclear nutshell.

Classic Warcraft is essentially Vanilla WoW. With its level 60 cap, talent trees, no flying, horrible questing paths, terrible attunement chains, and atrocious ingame models. If you have a current active WoW subscription, you can play on the Classic servers FOR FREE! WoW has been out for 15 years now and in that time millions of people have come and gone through our hallowed digital halls. One thing that has remained the same though is that all new players have heard stories from older players about what life in WoW was like back in the day. Whether that day was in Legion, WoD, MoP, Cata, Wrath, BC, or Vanilla, the stories are all the same. Shit was tough and new players have it so easy.

Well let me tell you that y'all are a bunch of babies who don't know tough! I played on the beta servers and spent ALL MY MONEY(a hard earned 10 silver) on a stable slot as a warrior because I thought it would get me a mount. There were no warnings informing me that I was an idiot. There were no confirmation windows popping up that said "hey don't do this buddy." The game just took my money and laughed at me. That was what beta was like. No one knew anything about anything and we LIKED IT!

But I feel like I may have steered away from my point which was that most new players grew up ingame listening to these stories about the great yesteryear and wishing that they too could have experienced all of those wonders. With Classic Warcraft, players can experience a little bit of that magic for themselves. Whether it will be something that every loves or something that most people will play for an hour and walk away from, only time will tell.

Since the announcement there have been several beta test phases and stress tests. I sadly did not get into any of the betas so I had to sate my thirst for the olden days during the stress tests. What was it like you may be wondering? Well it was like I was in college once again playing a brand new mage. The first stress test was hella rough though because mobs took FOREVER to respawn so questing was a serious headache. The last stress test was a lot better though. Mobs were spawning regularly and the only challenge was in tagging the mobs before someone else did. Many groups were created to quest together since it was easier to have 5 people tapping mobs and giving everyone credit for kills.

Once I got through the initial zone(after a few hours) I hit the second zone humans experience, Westfall. Boy let me tell you that it was in this zone that I spent most of my time dead or dying. You see, I had gotten used to being a super awesome level capped frost mage with a ton of abilities and cool downs. But in Classic, I was a level 10 mage with 3 damage abilities and not a whole lot else. It was definitely a reality check that I was going to have to pull very carefully and more importantly that running away was definitely a good option.

So yeah Classic Warcraft is a thing. It goes live on August 27th and I know TONS of us are going to be excited for it. I have reserved names on Pagle-EST PVE server and plan on creating my guild there on day one, servers permitting lol. If you're interested in checking it out and want to play Alliance, you are more than welcome to play with me in my guild! We have a discord server and will definitely have a tabard! I'll be more than glad to invite all the cool kids to my discord server so we can all geek out.

Well that's it for now. I will try to make this whole blogging thing happen on a regular basis but honestly everyone who knows me knows that I'll probably come up with a million excuses as to why I haven't blogged lately lol. Are y'all excited about Classic? Will you try it out or pretend it doesn't exist? Let me know in the comments!