WoW Classic update and some thoughts.

Since transferring our original Alliance characters over to a PvE server, things have been going well, and our core group of five are now in the mid-late 50s. The current dungeon we are on is Black Rock Depths, having recently finished Sunken Temple and Zul Farrak before that. My character here is a human Rogue.

About BRD itself, man what a dungeon. I’d forgotten how involved the whole place is, and how much it truly feels like attacking an enemy city or establishment, vs just another loot pinata dungeon.

Additionally, we have a ‘slow leveling group’ set of Horde characters on the same server, and that group is at the early-mid 20s, having recently run Shadowfang Keep. For this group I have my undead Priest, while my wife plays an undead Warlock. The Priest and Warlock are a great duo as well, since her Voidwalker pet is essentially our 3^rd, and we have the holy trinity of tank/healer/dps.

Besides Classic dungeons being overall enjoyable, the thing that is sticking out to me lately is how well the game interconnects itself. Dungeon quests are scattered across the world, and many have quest chains that also send you into zones you might otherwise skip or ignore. None of this is required, but the fact that it exists helps tie everything together. Hell, even the dungeon locations themselves will nudge you to explore or get caught up in local questing, or return you to an earlier zone. This makes Classic feel more like playing in a world vs a series of zones, even if that zone-to-zone feel is more true of Classic than a ‘true’ worldly MMO like EVE or UO.

I don’t recall Final Fantasy 14 doing this for instance (its been a few years). My recollection is dungeons were tied to zones, and once you finished a zone in FFXIV, you moved on to the next one, and that was that. I also don’t recall FFXIV suggesting to quest around in different zones. Again what I recall was working in one zone, maybe returning to a major city, and then moving on. It makes the experience feel ever more themepart vs world, to an extreme I’m not a huge fan of compared to what Classic does.