WoW Classic Week One: Game Complete

September 2, 2019

Ragnaros is down, Onyxia is down, the game is finished, and that’s all in WoW Classic week one. Join us as we take a look at the events that unfolded over the past 7 days, as well as our own personal leveling experiences on Oceanic servers.

It’s been a full week since we logged in to the WoW Classic Oceanic PVP server Arugal to create three characters ahead of the game’s full launch at 8AM last Tuesday, and haven’t things changed since then. 8AM saw massive queue times across most PVP servers that Blizzard had created in all regions, and Oceanic players were stuck either queing for the one PVP server or playing on the lower population normal server Remulos.

It wasn’t until around 10AM when a second PVP server Yojamba appeared, and players began to divide amongst the two servers. Launch day also saw a third Oceanic PVP server Felstriker appear late in the evening. Whether this server is needed remains to be seen, though Blizzard definitely have their options on the table now with possible server merges or free character transfers.

Later in the week, Blizzard announced they were increasing server population limits by 3,000 to ease queue times. This meant a lot of servers now had small, if any queues however the most popular servers were (and are) still being hit with queues of two hours or so.

WoW Classic Launch

To call the launch of WoW Classic a success could be the gaming understatement of 2019. People have flocked to WoW Classic to relive (or perhaps experience for the first time) the mystery and exploration that was leveling from 1-60 before expansions made it a lot faster and easier. Many people have complained about the server queues, suggesting Blizzard wasn’t prepared, but we think they knew exactly what they were doing and have had one of the most successful MMORPG launches (if you can call it that) in history. How many other MMORPG’s had so many players spamming servers and waiting in 4 hour queues, using AFK add-ons to stay logged in, just to play the game? WoW Classic is an overwhelming success, so let’s take a look at the key events of the first few days.

The first week saw many players reach level 60 around the globe, though none were as fast as the gnome mage Jokerd who completed the epic achievement in under 4 days of /played time. Jokerd used an Area of Effect (AoE) maneuver to pull and kite large groups of enemies and wear them all down to gain maximum experience, and it appears the method paid off. Upon reaching level 60 however, Jokerd was bombarded with spam from fellow WoW Classic players, and he decided to try and delete the character. Players quickly spammed his in-game mailbox however, which meant he was unable to delete his character.

Several other players were soon to join Jokerd at level 60, and raiding began shortly after. With just Molten Core and Onyxia available, guilds began working their way through to Ragnaros, and it didn’t take long until guild <APES> completed Molten Core with a raid group only slightly more than half filled with level 60’s. <APES> then went on to take on Onyxia, and successfully downed the dragon shortly after.

WoW Classic Character

Some people wonder how guilds are able to achieve these feats so quickly, but this is 2019, not 2004. Players have been downing Ragnaros and Onyxia for 15 years, and soloing them since the first expansion. Players have been raiding these locations in private servers for years. Players have all the guides in the world and all the add-ons they need. This is not WoW Classic, this is WoW Enhanced.

With most players still leveling up between 20-50, it will be interesting to see how many end-game players are in full Tier 1 by the time most people reach level 60, and when Blizzard decides to roll out the further phases that include battlegrounds, Zul’Gurub and Blackwing Lair. It is looking like WoW Classic is not the challenge it once was, but perhaps its PVP will have redeeming qualities given the changes to talents and skills are what ruined it for many over the course of the past decade and a half.

Disappointingly, the game doesn’t quite feel like vanilla WoW. The auction house is flooded with single stack items, everyone thinks they know the best way to do everything, and level 15’s are wondering why they can’t get invites to Deadmines. With the servers all flooded with leveling players, it’s hard to relive the authentic WoW experience, though we have found it to be a very nostalgic experience, and a great break from 2019’s flow of hyper-realistic games.

As WoW purists here at Rocket Chainsaw, we’ve been spending WoW Classic week one questing and completing instances with random people, without using any add-ons and only checking Thottbot or Wowhead for the odd quest marker or NPC here and there. We want the authentic leveling experience. The grind. The disappointing dungeon groups. The loot ninjas. We want it all, and we’re happy for it to go slowly. After all, with the phasing that Blizzard still hasn’t yet announced its release schedule for, we’ll all be 60 soon enough.

Stay tuned for our full review of WoW Classic, and let us know via our social media channels what you’ve been getting up to in WoW Classic week one, and what your plans are for next week! For more information head to the official WoW Classic website.