My first foray into azeroth was in 2006, I was an unsuspecting teenager longing for another video game to tide me over my school holidays. I remember being filled with wonder and excitement when I first realised the scope of the game, the possibility for adventure seemed endless and I ended up spending many a night slogging away to earn my first mount.
It’s 2014 now and a lot has changed. The recent trailer for the new expansion and all this hearthstone buzz has made me long for the good old days of questing and /dancing so I’ve decided to take a plunge and return once again to The World Of Warcraft (cue title card).
This is my character Nickosaurus, he’s a badass warlock and also my first class.
Something about controlling evil minions to do my bidding struck a chord with me. It’s kind of amazing to see my character again after all these years, and he hasn’t changed at all during my absence. Like an old friend who’s always going to be there for you and welcome you back with open arms, then systematically destroy your life by starting with your free time. After leaving for a long time, the thing i always looked forward to when returning to WoW is the wipe of my talent tree and coming up with a new build. To my dismay, the tree was gone, you can still spec your characters but 3 new talents are now unlocked at preset levels and you can only choose one of each. The way all the classes worked have also been completely redone. There was now a new bar under my mana which I was completely confused by, and some of the spells I used to cast were now gone.
Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, for the most part most of the spells that were gone are now worked into the talent tree, and spells that i used to cast like demonic armour (gives a defence boost for 30 mins) were now just passive skills for the class, which I kind of preferred anyway. And that new bar was a real pleasant surprise for me too. It works like a warrior’s rage meter and goes up as you deal damage, and you can use that energy to transform into an actual demon with a whole new set of spells and extra spell damage (HOW COOL IS THAT?). I was thoroughly impressed by the game so far.
I picked up where I left off, in the eastern plaguelands, and man that place has changed! The holy paladin dudes have now gotten more control over everything and the place is a lot less scary as I remembered it to be. The game also seems to have gotten way easier, the rate in which I was earning gold and leveling was so different to when I was playing in the past. I for one am ecstatic about the change, I remember getting really frustrated in the past spending hours at the AH trying to sell mats so I could get enough money for a mount or new gear to make my life easier rather than actually going out there questing! The new pace really kept things fresh, and I never had to grind for gold of loot because the quests were designed so much better now. Gone were the group quests that required me to wait around till some poor sod was in the exact same quest i’m in, instead those quests now provide you with NPC characters to make your life much easier. The game is pretty much a breeze now, which will probably upset some players, but for me it’s great. I get to do what I like to do in WoW, exploring new locales and living the lore.
That about does it for my first entry of my “goin back” feature. If any of you are as tempted to jump back in as I did, find me on battlenet as invadernick, I’m playing on the Oceanic Nagrand server. Hope you enjoyed the article if you have questions or comments post them below. Also if you have a suggestion for game for our next “goin back” feature where we revisit some old games drop them below too. Also we have Facebook.
The Millennial Geek 