WoW Classic Demo Coverage

I mentioned that I didn't buy a BlizzCon ticket myself but was very curious about what other people would have to say about the demo.

Somewhat to my surprise, the various private server players whose channels I follow, and a lot of whom had been heavily lobbying for classic servers for years, turned out to be utterly useless in that regard. I had been hoping that maybe they'd have some interesting insights on details that still weren't quite right in the demo, or would comment on where it revealed that private servers had maybe gotten certain things wrong due to lack of data. Instead, every single one of them went on hour-long rants about how being allowed to trade a mislooted item without a GM ticket in Classic was going to ruin everything and similar nonsense. Seriously, there was more than one video that I tried to watch and eventually had to close down halfway through because it was just so boring and petty. I guess being super knowledgeable about Vanilla doesn't necessarily correlate with understanding what most people actually care about in regards to Classic. Hint: It's not whether some no-lifer's progression will be "messed up" because a drop from Dire Maul is available at the same time as Molten Core.

So yeah, interestingly it was regular news outlets and retail WoW players who provided the most entertaining and insightful content about the Classic demo. For example I had to chuckle at the headline of this Kotaku article: The WoW Classic Demo Is The Hell We Asked For. The author basically keeps talking about how much fun he had while interspersing it with negative adjectives: The experience was "an inescapable nightmare, which is to say it’s perfect". It was "horrible, but also beautiful". I'm not entirely sure why exactly... I guess because we're not supposed to say that something old and slow can simply be enjoyable as it is; it must be portrayed as some sort of guilty pleasure?

My favourite take on the demo on YouTube was this video by Preach. One of the things I really appreciate about him is that he's one of the few people still active who a) were actually there back in Vanilla and b) that he doesn't assume that everyone likes the same things he does. He's not wrong when he says that the moment-to-moment gameplay in combat is slow and simplistic and not something that can hold his attention anymore these days, but he also recognises how much more immersive the overall experience is due to slow travel and most mobs actually being dangerous opponents.

Bellular, who is a Wrath baby I believe, similarly goes into detail about how the talents and the way combat works made everything feel more meaningful for him.

An unexpected gem in terms of entertainment was "First and Last Time Playing WoW Classic" by Hazelnutty Games. She went into the demo without much enthusiasm and feeling tired to boot and basically made an utter mess of everything. She didn't even manage to pick up any quests because she didn't understand that she'd have to wait for the text to finish scrolling before the accept button becomes clickable! While this got her many downvotes and negative comments about being "dumb", I thought it perfectly illustrated that feeling of utter noobishness that many experienced in Vanilla WoW the first time around. Also, the way she got carried away messing about with her hunter pet and wondering about the kinds of things it would eat was strangely adorable.

LazyPeon's take on the demo instantly earned a thumbs up from me the moment he commented on how he didn't understand why so many people had trouble finding Mankrik's wife back in the day, because that's something I honestly always wondered myself. It's amazing just how much people struggle with basic reading comprehension apparently! Other than that he too manages to capture a lot of that Vanilla spirit in his demo footage, constantly challenging random people to duels everywhere (people like that were definitely a thing) and editing his hunt for quillboar tusks in the Barrens into an epic montage reminiscent of the WoW South Park episode.

On a more serious note, the BlizzCon panel in which they talk about just how they went about restoring Classic from a technical point of view as well as how they set their design goalposts is also up on YouTube and really interesting.