Now that we’ve gone through all phases which one has been your favorite (so far)?
For a lot of people it’s going to be phase 1 as at that time you ride with the hype and there’s so many people playing the game. Why I liked this phase a lot was because there was no incentive for people to gank you so if someone did you could make up in your head they were an evil SOB. The letdowns were layering and the lack of end game content with only MC and Ony.
In 2nd place i would place the ZG patch. Reasons being that now you could really get going with alts. The PVP gear was still very much king and everything felt harmonized in some strange way i cannot really explain. However, the reintroduction of layering and how it lived on for so long along with locked realms was a pain.
3rd place is a hard one. Phase 2 left me with some found memories but it really limited the content for a huge portion of the players. Just going to BRM as an alliance character on Gehennas could take and additional 15-20 minutes. Giving people incentive to kill the other faction put the biggest “Don’t hate the player, hate the game” stamp on the whole gaming experience you could imagine as there were no fair fights and everyone were riding around in big deathballs. So, initially i was going to put phase 2 here because of the few best moments I had that were truly brilliant but really thinking back this phase was torture. Therefore, I’ll put phase 6 here.
Now we’ve catched up with the patch. The “current” endgame raid is in it’s intended state with no gear intented for later patches that people could have before it was ment to be available, im talking about progressive itemization. The only real letdown in this phase is that for many people killing Kel’Thuzard will be the end of their Classic adventure.
I’ll take a crack at rating the phases but I didn’t play much in the first half of the BWL- phase.
1: Phase 1 hands down. The feeling that a whole world, an entire journey is ahead of you. I went with the meta and tried my hand at a mage. It felt awesome during lvling, lots of groups for dungeons, friendly people all around. I have vivid memories of grouping up with a full party to do the group quests in Redridge. Spent hours together and was good fun.
2: Phase 6. Might be controversial but I very much enjoy Naxx. I never played Vanilla so I only know naxx from my Wotlk days and it’s awesome to finally experience it in it’s original glory. I like that it’s a serious step up from all other raids in classic, and I love it. This is also the Phase I’m finally raiding with a good guild full of people I like. My other guilds in Classic always took the game too serious and were not honest with loot.
3: all other phases. As much fun that I had during lvling (quests, learning to aoe grind + dungeons) I did not enjoy raiding on that toon. Pressing frostbolt for hour on end wasn’t my idea of a good time, so I quit a few months before BWL got released. I eventually decided to make a healer priest and raided with that from AQ40 to Naxx now.
I really enjoyed AQ20 and ZG, so that’s why. Finally my alts had more sources of gear than just MC. And of course P5 is when I finally got Neltharion’s Tear on main, so there’s that too.
Phase 1 was amazing, the hype made it so fun and everyone was playing!
But I really enjoy phase 6 because of Naxx being a challenge, we’re finally struggling and wiping in raids! It makes the killing of a boss so much more enjoyable and rewarding!
And bgs are much more enjoyable too, not filled with premades, you can actually sign random bgs and get good fights!
phase6 pvp is wierd. I now come across 1-2 premades a week, as opposed to 1-2 every hour.
but yes Phase1 for me. The world was so alive. The journey was waiting. The bustling zones packed full of eager players. Azeroth once again feeling like a living, breathing entity was truely awesome to experience. Logging on each evening felt like you was really entering another world. I rolled Prot warr from 10-60 and I’m so glad I did. I feel that choice made my journey what it was. so many dungeon runs with many happy groups. And outside in the world, being able to contribute to the many group and elite quests by being prot and on the front line. steadfast with sword and board in hand. ready to defend my group come whatever may.
Yeah It rocked.
Also I played up to Phase2. I missed 3,4 and 5. and am now back again at 6 lol
It has to be a toss up between phases 1 and 6. The return to bustling, living world of Azeroth after 15 years was of course amazing, and a lot has been written about how Classic was in the first month or two, but I am enjoying the progression through Naxx immensely. Maybe if my raid was more stacked, carrying more consumes and spend more hours preparing and raiding, it wouldnt be so. But as it stands, we are casual enough to have a feeling of genuine progression on the harder Naxx bosses. Finally killing the 4 Horsemen last Sunday after 14 wipes gave me that feeling of vanilla raid progression. And I loved it!
Third place would probably be phase 4, which was the last time I had time to do every raid available to me on cooldown, and my fondest memories from Vanilla were leading tentative progression raids in ZG, so re-living that was nice too.
On the other side of the spectrum, phase two was trully horrible, and I basically MC-logged through it. Thank Elune it was over quickly. But it taught me that if ever I intend to play “vanilla” wow again, I won’t even consider a pvp realm. And I was on Alliance majority Zandalar Tribe, were I on one of the horde dominated realms, I most likely would have quit in utter disgust.
Phase 2 of course. Fun of World-PvP and a feeling of amazing world which is waiting for you
I really want Blizz to make some fresh realms with phases going from 1 to 6 for people to play again through their favourite periods of WoW Classic
Phase1 is king, always has been.
The FRESH meme has a solid reason for existing.
Nothing beats leveling up together with thousands of other gangsters and getting ready for whichever reasons you started the game for.
