So, been doing some thinking lately. Started playing classic WOTLK and classic wow, gone back to my roots and as a boomer I can safely say good old days.
When I started a new character in classic wow, one thing stood out to me immediately, the journey I was about to go on. Leveling from 1-80 without any super geared alts, or anything fancy was a journey. I wen’t from zone to zone, experience to experience and along the way I realized, it was all interlinked. Just take the early onset quest in duskwood, stalvan questline. You have to travel across everywhere, gather clues, legends figuring out where it all wen’t wrong. And by the end, an amazing lootpiece that was with me for the better part of 20 lvls.
So that’s when I realized, this is no longer “world of”, this is just “expansion of”. Reliving some of the old zones made me realize there is no union between old worlds and new worlds, they are all just there and nothing makes me feel like they belong together.
For example, we just travelled to the frickin dragon Isles, a place so deep in lore you would have guessed thousands of explorers would have wanted to hear about it, yet when I travel to IF, i’m just greeted by “hi champion”, which I no longer am… according to the story.
Don’t know when this stopped being the case, but feel like there should be more immersion, why didn’t we ever go back to report on our success to the throne? Why didn’t we talk to them about the threats, why didn’t we travel to dragonblight for some reason that I can’t think of since i’m not amazing at lore but makes sense for some reason.
The world isn’t dynamic, and development probably would require some immense man hours to finish, but that’s why I personally believe this isn’t a world anymore, just an expansion.