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Was Old World of Warcraft Really That Good?

Kneecap Jake

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I’ve played World of Warcraft for more than 11,000 hours, and in that time I've found myself trying to skip large parts of it to get to end game.

In this video I take the rose tinted glasses off and review the version of World of Warcraft I started on back in 2007. I replayed The Burning Crusade with my friend Jim, who had never played WoW before. We tested everything up to our first raid together, all in an effort to find out, was World of Warcraft really that good?

I discuss:
■ Why Classic WoW’s slow levelling can be both rewarding and incredibly frustrating.
■ Drop rate quests, weapon skill, overcrowded servers and the mechanics that made progression feel painfully slow.
■ Why spending so much time levelling can also make your character and the journey feel more meaningful.
■ What a completely new player noticed about Azeroth that I had stopped seeing after thousands of hours.
■ Why travelling across the world can make destinations feel more important.
■ Why dungeons are still my favourite part of World of Warcraft.
■ What playing with random players taught Jim about the WoW community.
■ How other players can make an MMO feel alive while simultaneously becoming an obstacle to actually playing it.
■ What The Burning Crusade changed about questing, travelling and dungeon design.
■ What happened when we finally reached level 70 after almost 200 hours.

And much more...

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TIMESTAMPS
00:00 What made WoW great?
02:14 Leveling
09:09 The World
17:19 Dungeons
23:09 The WoW Community
33:38 What TBC Made Better
38:55 End Game
44:08 Was it Any Good?

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20 Comments

@kneecapjake Creator 2 weeks ago (edited) Pinned

Can you find where I hid my microphone?

If you enjoyed this video, please consider hitting the subscribe button, I have more video essays planned across the year!

@mikfhan 7 days ago

Tip of the hat to players joining dungeons halfway through, responding to quest invites and questions - restoring the M in MMO.

@OrdoMallius 7 days ago

3:15 brooo you damaged the liver while fighting it it needs PERFECT liver. What pained me were humans in Hillsbrad not having skulls and Zebras without hooves in the Barrens

@klontjespap 7 days ago

agreed, simple old grind and kill quests are where it's at

@yrtubetubington 7 days ago

Forever is proving that it was that good.

@helom- 7 days ago

I'm currently replaying Burning Crusade on Retail, which is a little fast paced and easy but you can just slow it down yourself, by exploring and actually caring for the world you are experiencing. I started really reading wtf I am doing in the Hellfire Peninsula and see myself starting to care for the NPCs I have been helping

@jchapman1605 7 days ago

27:29 !! Oh my lord! I had this EXACT scenario play out with me and my tank buddy in that EXACT spot in Gnomer, and we bailed on them down the elevator just the same!! 😂🤯

@kessler2356 6 days ago

chef's kiss that meadows music

@jonathanpeters9271 5 days ago

9:26 playing through with my wife was so great for this reason. She would notice so many details and generally cool or funny things that I would have totally missed because of the way I've learned to push through the leveling journey over the years. It's been so much more worthwhile and memorable than it has in a long time

@MrCristoflanga 7 days ago (edited)

I think basically, yes, it is that good. I've been playing the forever beta with very limited previous experience of wow, it still seems like a great game to me. From what I've seen of the community, and how worked up they get over the tiniest things (the changes to warrior being the end of the world for a week until they weren't, for example), I think players get addicted to it or build livelihoods around it and then want the game to be more that it can be (just a fun game) and that's where things start to go wrong.

@emissarial6598 5 days ago (edited)

I had a similar experience when beginning the game with experienced friends. They wanted to herd/AoE kill quests while I was trying to see what the monsters looked and sounded like, how they moved, what they could do to you, etc.

@TheDaveCalaz 7 days ago

Loved the DSP impression on the outtakes there.

@valitsemllaluokanavahyvaks3556 7 days ago

Doing dungeons when lvling and grinding end game dungeons for preBis is easily the most enjoyable part of the game for me, i dont even care about raiding that much.

@Hundr_ 5 days ago

Enjoyed the bloopers. 👍
Sniff 😅

@shrimpfriedr1ce 5 days ago

Awesome vid as always, man.

@zombre_9206 3 days ago

perfect vid to do the People's Militia quest to. Thanks!

@getzo5340 5 days ago

Fucking lost it at the bloopers xD

@Minkmiester 7 days ago

The Tink shirt 😂

@JesseCaine 5 days ago (edited)

Ha. Who knew you worked out? Good man. Also, thank you for such incredibly HD in-game video.

@isak098 1 day ago (edited)

31:24 These responsabilities typically falls on the tank because nobody else will take them, but there is no good reason why a damage dealer can't take on these roles as well. For example, I dont see why a mage couldn't mark their own sheep targets (and some of them do) other than lack of dungeon knowledge and laziness. The attitude that a tank has to manage or "babysit" the entire group is exhausting and part of the reason why tanks are so scarce and hard to find. It also reinforces the idea that tanks have to be veteran players who knows the in and outs of every dungeons, making new players reluctant to pick up the role. I love tanking (or at least the idea of it) but most of the time it just feels like DPSing with 10 extra steps