WoW Classic will be the perfect MMO if you DON'T have a lot of time!

[Marakesh]

What's funny to me, is that a thread clearly about leveling still has all these retail raiders jumping into it, arguing about how much better "their" raids are. You know who's raids matter the most? Nobodies. No one, outside a very, very small circle of people ever did care, but you.

Back when I first played WoW in Jan 2006, there were people who power leveled within the first week. It was possible then and improvements aren't going to change that by much. The thing is, I have even less time per play session now. There's no way I could follow some straight through leveling path of 80-100 hours.

The calculations are going to change when its a very long leveling time compared to modern mmo's and the quests aren't designed to be run straight through. How people play it will differ greatly from any mmo out right now. Professions, friends wanting to do stuff for their character, and questions like does this dungeon give me a shot at some better items that will save me time long term - its not as easily solvable an equation as some are making out here.

There are a lot of people who will be instantly turned off by this. They want end game immediately or for reasons I can't figure out place value on click, get rewarded instantly, no questions asked. If you approach vanilla WoW like a grind it will be a very long onerous one. I never did that then, and I especially don't see a reason to do that now. If you long in a couple hours, a few times a week, I would say its still the best casual PVE experience available.

And btw, this question has been on my mind - wasn't it LOTRO that really started this linear, story driven mmo style that everyone uses now? I remember people playing it when it came out talking about it that way and then with Cata Blizz changed to something that sounded very similar. What the play difference is between those 2 styles was very striking to me, a couple days after rolling a new character on the server that will not be named, but we all know is why this entire forum exists now.

[lanesia24]

I did play a lot of Vanilla, and it was a grindfest but what was different was there wasn't any rush or pressure to level and hit 60. It's not like now where 1-109 is nothing but a boring speedbump to the game. The game was alive pre 60 and there was plenty to do and plenty of people to do it with. The focus in Classic is the entire expierence, something lost to blizzard.

That was back when the game was new. The game isn't new anymore. People will play it just like they do on retail WoW. They will do it the best and fastest way possible.