BACK IN GRIND
NEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT? A special set of servers that emulate 2006-era World of Warcraft
EXPECT TO PAY $15/month (included for free in a regular WoW subscription)
DEVELOPER Blizzard Entertainment
PUBLISHER Blizzard Entertainment
REVIEWED ON i7-7700, Nvidia RTX 2070, 16 GB RAM, 500GB SSD
MULTIPLAYER MMO
Returning to World of Warcraft’s original state is a humbling experience. With thousands of hours spent in Azeroth, I’ve defeated intergalactic demon armies and thwarted orc hordes from alternate timelines, all while amassing the most powerful gear the universe has ever known. But Classic makes braving a cave filled with level 12 troggs feel like a massive achievement. It’s not so much a nostalgia trip as it is a nostalgia fall into a pit of rusty razor blades. And you know what? I kind of like it that way.
Classic is a full recreation of as it was at launch, or not long after—a sort of digital time machine that lives in the first place. For better and worse, this is exactly as I remember playing it well over a decade ago—before expansions, like 2010’s , streamlined entire game systems and forever changed Azeroth.
