What I like about old-school World of Warcraft

Published: November 19th 2025 (week 47 of 2025)

It boils down to three things: gameplay, world building, and adventure design.

Gameplay

I enjoy the slower kind of gameplay that vanilla WoW offers. It reminds me of the Final Fantasy style: the game runs on autopilot with default attacks, and the player steps in when a special ability becomes ready. While it is not turn-based, you can take a more tactical view of the game instead of relying on reflexes and raw speed.

This is also why I enjoyed combat in the first Witcher game. Geralt, the main character and player's avatar in the game, was swinging the sword by himself during combat, and the player's responsibility was:

to maintain the rhythm between the different phases of the combat dance
manage signs, the Witcher's version of spells
manage potions

To me, it felt great, and to this day the first Witcher is one of my favourite games gameplay-wise. (It helps that the world of the first game is simply incredible too.)

World building

That last remark brings me nearly into the second part of this post ie, world building of vanilla WoW.

I think the genius of the design was that the world building faded into the background, sunk almost below the level of the events of the game, and the focus is on zone design. There are some threads tying the whole world together, but for the most parts all the various zones are self-contained and have their own problems the player can help with... or ignore completely.

I may be biased, because this is also how I structure my own RPG scenarios. There is some background overarching plot, but every arc is its own thing. The big story is a vehicle driving the plot forward, but I direct the players' attention to the small stories, with occasional reminders and hints that it all ties together.

The beauty of it is that when you only give the players glimpses, their imagination paints the rest of the owl and fills the blanks with what is most interesting to each particular player. This way everyone gets a version of the story tailored to themselves, by themselves. (Similarly to a well-designed dress, that invites the eye and the imagination equally.)

Story? What story?

The lack of an overarching big story, and making the game live on a bunch of smaller stories, is another brilliant move. Why?

A big story requires a big thing: a great love, a terrible villain, a Zeitenwende event, etc. The problem with this is that the moment you put a big whatever in your story you step on an escalation ladder. The next whatever must be bigger. And every subsequent whatever must be even bigger than the previous one.

save your village
save the valley the village lies in
save the kingdom
save the empire
save the world
save the galaxy
save the universe
save the... um... the realm of the dead?

At some point you run out of not reasonable options, and coming up with something big relative to the last things requires you to dig into the box of ideas labelled "ridiculous".

The key insight here, that I think was lost with later expansions, is that to keep the stories told in the game interesting you do not necessarily need bigger threats/loves/events. You need them to be somehow different.

Oh, that story!

What makes a story different? The details. The place where it happens. The characters in it. The problems encountered by them. The threats lurking in the shadows (or broad daylight).

Most stories follow a similar pattern (similarly to every adventure being a dungeon), but enough details are different that you do not notice immediately; and if the story is good, you do not care even if you do notice. A good story is a good story, even retold.

Eaters of the Dead

For example, let us take Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton. The story follows one Mr Ibn Fadlan, who accompanies one Mr Beowulf on his quest to save king Hrothgar's kingdom from the titular Eaters. There is also a film adaptation of the book, called The 13th Warrior.

As soon as they arrive, the vikings are trapped in the king's besieged kingdom, where danger lurks behind every pine tree and descends with the northern mist.

As the story unfolds, men are killed, children are saved, solutions are attempted, options are taken away or rendered insufficient, but ultimately the challenges are overcome, the monsters are defeated, with the protagonist surviving to tell his tale.

Jurassic Park

Then, let us look at Jurassic Park (by the same author, what a surprising accident). The story follows Alan Grant, a paleontologist, and Ellie Sattler, a paleobotanist, who accompany one Mr Hammon on his quest to save Mr Hammond's jurassic zoo from worried investors' fears.

As soon as they arrive, the scientists are trapped in the park, where danger lurks behind every palm tree, and descends with the tropical night.

As the story unfolds, men are killed, children are saved, solutions are attempted, options are taken away or rendered insufficient, but ultimately the challenges are overcome, the dinosaurs are outsmarted, with protagonists surviving to tell their tale.

Looks familiar, does it not?

Evil Dead Rise

Just to prove a point, let us take Evil Dead Rise, a 2023 horror film, for a spin. The story follows Beth, a guitar technician, on her quest to talk to her sister and her children.

As soon as she arrives at the sister's apartment, everyone is trapped on the apartment complex' floor, with ancient horrors lurking in every room, corridor, and ventilation duct.

As the story unfolds, men and women are killed, children are saved, solutions are attempted, options are taken away or rendered insufficient, but ultimately the challenges are overcome, the ancient horrors are escaped from, with protagonists surviving to tell their tale.

Of course I oversimplify and overexaggerate here, but my point still stands: all these stories follow a similar pattern despite being, at first sight, completely different—one is a fantasy story based on a legend, one is a science-fiction thriller, and one is a modern supernatural horror.

Apart from the pattern, they share one more trait: they are good stories.

This brings me back to my point, which was that to keep the stories interesting you do not have to make them ever bigger, but you have to make them different. Classic World of Warcraft achieves this with its zones. Each zone has its own story of struggle; some are bigger, some are smaller, all are similar, but different enough not to get boring.

Adventure design

Adventure design follows world building. The goals are similar (because let us be honest: killing ten dinosaurs in Un'Goro is no different to killing ten boars in Durotar), the quest lines in every zone follow a pattern, but they never explode in scope.

Granted, adventure design is tied to mechanics more firmly than world building is, so the quests get progressively more difficult, but it is a quantitative growth, not qualitative. Again, hunting dinosaurs is no different to hunting boars, and the fact that they have more health points and deal more damage is kind of irrelevant due to players also having more health points and dealing more damage.

Things do not get boring due to change of scenery, different flavour of each zone, some monsters threatening players in unique or new ways, and the players having more options at their disposal, but the adventures themselves follow a pattern.

It just so happens it is a pattern I enjoy.