Since 70% of WoW accounts are 10+ years old, I think it might be useful to have feedback from someone with a fresh look on the game.
I’m a boomer who played vanilla and left WoW during TBC.
My big positives:
Classes are fun, interesting and complex
The art style I’ve always loved has been modernized beautifully
Balancing: there are “tier list” videos all over YT but DPS classes are all within 5-10% of each other in terms of damage in a dungeon, which is a feat with how many variables, classes, specs there are
Flying
Follower dungeons are a great way to learn my build
Great addons & CurseForge that improve the experience
Creative, comfy world. The Meadery is a favourite.
My big negatives:
I did not have fun initially. Half of week one was spent with ChatGPT trying to find my way around bugged quest connections, interfering timelines, interface and gameplay settings (playing without auto-loot was tiring), an addon for healers etc. that all make the game feel more smooth and less tedious.
Combat: I sometimes play an old MMO (private server) and expected modern WoW to not feel so similar with 20+ extra years of development. Monk spinning kick feels like it has zero impact - playing “modern” games the past years, WoW combat is floaty and clunky.
The map doesn’t let you zoom in and out seamlessly
All delves I’ve done so far have had annoying mechanics like spiderwebs and exploding mushrooms slowing me down
My support tickets just pointed me to Wowhead (which didn’t have a solution either) with no option to reply back again
What turned it around for me was finding classes that clicked with me and felt right for me, setting up my controls, addons etc. in a way that supported my playstyle, learning about the synergies of a build, and the graphics, art and world. But that was also thanks to my commitment. I was close to throwing the towel before that.
I’m still encountering more unknown systems and problems here and there but now I’m definitely over the hill and sure I will play more.
And I’d like to get into PvP but I don’t want to have 70% of my screen be addons to play optimally, so I think banning many addons will be a good move.
All in all, still a great game ! But with a bit of an unfun learning curve at the start.
where do i find the information about account age? i looked on that site and its only letting me look at leaderboards based on actions in the accounts (kills, mounts etc)
nvm. i found it. bottom of the page, statistics. i am not sure how accurate that data is. my account is 18.5 years old, according to that, im in the 0.0005% of accounts :\
That data would suggest that pretty much no players from Vanilla and TBC still exist, but that nearly half the current player base played during WoTLK. considering the amount of players that have quit the game since Cata, i would be very surprised if that many WotLK players outnumbered the newer players, due to WoW of 2004-2013 being so different to WoW of 2015-2025.
I do find it funny though that it suggests that WoW is down to a COMBINED number of accounts less than 1.3M. Not sure if this is accurate or over estimated!
Just wondering as I see these posts pretty often. If you are coming back after twenty years, does it mean that you actually didn’t even play the game much initially? Otherwise it would be 19,18,17 years?
Also, this thread made me calculate how old my account is (also my main) : 20 years, 4 months and 19 days
And I’d like to get into PvP but I don’t want to have 70% of my screen be addons to play optimally, so I think banning many addons will be a good move.
I don’t have many add-ons for myself, I tend to keep the original UI. And it works perfectly.
Had this account since early vanilla beta (which I was in). Played since launch, but I took a long break from the game from the tail end of WotLK until some time during WoD (I think the patch with the last raid and such was released when I was 2 months or so into my return).
I started in SL and liked it, I liked it way more than what WoW offers right now, yet most people complained that SL had too many things to do. All those little things were fun to me
It was quite the opposite; it didn’t have many things to do, but the amount of times we had to run them to get equal progress in comparison to previous expansions was absurd. The Anima grind especially was (I think) mathematically shown to be incompletable before the devs pulled the ripcord and quadrupled its income rate.
