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Original WoW worth it for a couple?
norriscj
Member Posts: 107
My wife and I each own a copy of the original WoW (no expansions) from years ago, and were considering getting addicted for a week or two. We are both very busy with our lives, but have decided to take a mini-vacation to the land of gaming. We have agreed to lock ourselves in the room and game until to our hearts desire. In all likelihood, after our 6 day vacation is done, we'll stop playing whatever it is we play.
My questions are: Can we hop into WoW (no expansions) and enjoy playing? Does anyone still play this, or will we be the only ones running around at lower levels with little to any experience? If the place will be a graveyard, does anyone have any other game suggestions?
Comments
If you choose the right server you will see a ton of players. People still do play this game like crazy. Don't worry about that. and yes you will be able to play
So I just cross my finger and hope I get the right server?
Even with the core game without expansions you'll be playing in the same gameworld as everyone else. you will not have any problems finding any players. World of warcraft is still the top most subscribed MMORPG.
A little side note :
I think it was just a little over a year ago was the last time I decided to make a new character. I picked a few servers and made a level 1 character to find a populated server for low levels, picked the most populated one and played it.
Sure it was well populated, soooo many players in the starting zones, it was nice.
Come to find out it was just a bunch of 6 year olds playing the free trial, talking smack, dancing, following me around, asking me real stupid questions, were talking real stupid questions. I think they were looking for anyone they could suck into there little board adventure !
I think the max trial was level 10 back then, after that THERE WAS NO ONE TO PLAY WITH ON THE SERVER. Now I think the free trial is level 20, so you will have to put up with the six year olds for a little longer.
The population on lower levels is low, but there's now cross-realm system to look for dungeon groups so if you want to play in party you can use that. Any party with a tank in it will usually get a spot in dungeon run immediately, others will have to wait for a tank.
In the open world you likely won't see many players of your level around, except for people with trial accounts who are often bad company. But the old zones were revamped in Cataclysm, and you'll have access to all content up to level 60 except the starting areas for new races (lvl 1-20 content for Draenei, blood elf, worgens and goblins). It should be worth it to play for a week.
EDIT: Correction: Blizzard release Burning Crusade for free to all players who own the original game. So you'll have access to all content up to level 70, and also to draenei and blood elf starting areas /EDIT
WoW's demise is somewhat exagerated. Even if the numbers dropped from 12 million to 10, that's not even a 20% drop. I don't have specifics on North American population. No clue if the drop here was proportional.
The Cataclysm update reworked both vanilla continents. Teaming up for group questing will keep the two of you in the same phase. There's lots of content you've never played before.
Also, if you weren't aware of it, your vanilla accounts received the Burning Crusade update for free. Your cap should be 70 and you can play Outlands also.
If you never moved your Vanilla accounts to battle.net, you will need to. The original username password system is gone, replaced by the battle.net integration.
I haven't been server hopping in WoW for ages. Two servers I do know of that had decent population were Thrall and Lightbringer. Most of the normal servers are probably still fairly well populated. Some of the PVP servers started during Lich King (?) may not have fared so well. There were a bunch of server openings back then.
Leveling up will be a ghost town no matter what server you choose. You may (MAY) see 10 other people through the course of 1-60. They have redone the 1-60 content so it still may be worth checking out to you. I recently rerolled and it was neat seeing auberdine destroyed, etc... If you want to be around other people, the only cities with any population are Stormwind (A) and Ogrimmar (H). All other cities are dead.
Step 1: Leave /General. Maybe /Trade if you don't anticipate selling anything.
Step 2: Pick an RP server (less smacktalk), then get the hell away from Goldshire.
Everything after that should be gravy.
Warning: Current leveling in Vanilla content is far too fast. You can easily outlevel quests in the middle of a chain. So relax and look around, there is no rush. Power leveling is not recommended if you have no endgame goal, you'll just ruin the experience for yourself.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Almost nothing from the original wow experience remains, and the rate you will consume content will make your head spin. would not surprise me in the least if your expansion capped by the end of day 3.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
If you are unsure about the decision... just download the free trial version... you can play up to level 20 for free. Please note, most players can hit level 20 in a day easy.
As for it being full and alive? Well luckily cataclysm tossed everyone back into the old world, so you *may* actually see players outside of the major cities. Now if you were playing the expansions like TBC or WotLK... you'd run into a desolate wasteland for sure.
The game has been dummied down immensely to encourage getting to level 85 as quickly as possible. The initial expansion is only 60 levels... with the current leveling system in place, you should complete that in about 3 days.
While it still might be fun to just play & quest in vanilla levels, I would advise against WoW.
My opinion is of course biased cause I don't like direction this game took after Vanilla.
Nothing will hurt in trying of course.