After spending a lengthy amount of time on the private server “Monster,” I found myself in a relatively short honeymoon phase. Their Legion server was ok, but I made the switch to BfA and was excited at the opportunity for the content. Unfortunately reality set in and it was clear neither server was in good enough shape to call home for myself. I was just too excited early on to notice. As a result, I ended up in a mass hiatus once again. Recently, though, I found the strings to come back being pulled at my heart once more. It was heavily influenced, no doubt, by my acquiring the WoW Board Game in all it’s glory. Seriously, it’s vanilla to a tee. Or a vee, I suppose. But it gave me thought on what I wanted to do if I returned to Azeroth. I gave a lot of thought to vanilla because there’s so much stuff I missed out on, for better or worse. In the end, as the title would suggest, I went down a different path.
Indeed, back to the days of Northrend. Patch 3.3.5 to be specific. One of my happiest times in playing the game and the content was as rich as it would ever be. The server I ended up choosing seems to be a perfect fit. Everything works the way it’s supposed to (though I haven’t rolled a Death Knight yet, so that’s one of the few things I can’t speak to). No glitches, missing quests, npc’s, or anything to that end. In fact, there’s some bonus treats. They have a mall. As in, a developer created location that doesn’t look like anywhere else in the game. You have access to all the expected goodies such as Tier gear and legendaries if you’re lazy. But also you can transmog. By paying their vote/real money currency, you can get transmog tokens. One token lets you transmog one slot. Certain mounts can also be bought in this location. Ones that weren’t in the game yet. So again, it’s a purely cosmetic service. You’re also able to buy said currency with in-game gold, so even if you don’t give the server any money you are not missing out.
There are two things in particular the server does for starting out. For one, you’ve got Goblins and Worgen who spawn in existing start zones. The goblins join the orcs and trolls starting out, while the Worgen are in the Night Elf start zone. The other thing, which even modern WoW should do at this point, is the moment you hit level 10 you get the Riding skill and a version of your racial mount. With most of the flight points players are accustomed to being nowhere in sight, having the riding mount at level 10 is a nice boon. It doesn’t make a huge difference, just that nice little assist as it were.
So, yes, there are some minor modifications to what we knew as Wrath of the Lich King. But that’s all they are. The game itself functions as one would expect it to. It’s 2009 all over again as far as I’m concerned. And that’s not a bad thing. Granted, it isn’t all sunshine and lollipops. There are some things that definitely changed for the better, but there are others I miss. And I will go into those at another time. For now, I’m playing the game on my time, my terms, and where I want to be in the WoW timeline.
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