This is Moosarella. (My husband came up with the name, and I thought it was amusing). It was exactly the type of name that would be good for a temporary character that would disappear when the beta ended.

I chose to play a Tauren Warrior, mostly because I spent “Vanilla” playing a Night Elf Hunter. At BlizzCon 2018, and afterward, I also played a Night Elf Hunter. It was time for some variety!

The screenshots in this blog are from June 19, 2019. I think I played the Classic WoW Beta for about two hours without taking a break.

There were two server options, and both were PVP. I’m not a huge fan of PVP, but was willing to accept a PVP server for the beta. (There wasn’t any other options available.)

It turned out I had nothing to worry about. The majority of players I saw were all Taurens. There was one random Forsaken who made it to one of the smaller Tauren towns. I never saw any Alliance players.

Here is what the loading screen in the beta looked like.

It didn’t take long for me to file a bug report. I could “left-click” on the NPC (non-player character) quest givers, and the NPC vendors. They would greet my character. But, they weren’t giving out any quests, or letting me see what they were selling.

I reported it as a bug, logged out, and logged right back in. When it doubt, turn it off and turn it back on again. Right?

The problem continued. “Left-clicking” did not open quests. So, I tried “right-clicking” – and it worked! I immediately filed a bug report letting Blizzard know, in short, that my previous bug report was “user error”.

I didn’t remember having to right-click to get the NPCs to open quests. Either that isn’t something you have to do in “live” WoW, or I’d simply forgotten because I spend way more time on Diablo III than World of Warcraft.

The first quest I picked up required me to kill Plainstriders and collect a certain number of their parts. This is a typical quest for low-level players.

There were a lot of people playing Taurens, and we all were picking up the same quests. The cool thing was that players were being really nice to each other.

Druids were casting beneficial buffs (Mark of the Wild) on other players. Some people joined a party and quested together. Plenty of people who had played “Vanilla” were in chat, explaining to newer WoW players how the game functioned back then.

There were plenty of Plainstriders to go around. Players automatically spread themselves out and moved around so that everyone had access to them. No one was camping Plainstrider corpses, waiting for the respawn. No one was pushy about getting to that one Plainstrider, over there, that someone else already targeted.

One time, I was fighting a Plainstrider another Tauren Warrior ran by. As he passed me, he took a swing at the Plainstrider I was fighting – offering a little help – and continued on his way.

This kind of “we’re all in this together” behavior happened the whole time I played the beta. Maybe people were just really happy to be in the beta. Maybe the players who had played “Vanilla” were indirectly teaching newer players how to be a good neighbor in Classic WoW.

Or, maybe the majority of people who choose to play a Tauren are the kind of people who intrinsically want to help others. Either way, it made for a very pleasant experience.

The first useful piece of loot I got was Painted Chain Gloves. It is one of two reward options for players who turn in the Plainstrider parts they collected.

I went from using Frayed Gloves (4 armor) to using Painted Chain Gloves (42 armor). These gloves turned out to be the best ones I found in the beta.

The Warrior Trainer was willing to train Moosarella, but she didn’t have enough currency to buy that training yet. She was Level 2, and had only done a few quests. The way to solve this problem is to do more quests, or to kill a bunch of stuff and sell the useless items.

Mozzarella hit Level 3 while working on a quest the required her to collect Mountain Cougar pelts. As before, there were many other players working on the same quest. People spread out to different areas that had Mountain Cougars, and there was plenty for everyone.

Eventually, I gathered up enough currency to buy Battle Shout. I continued to buy more from the Warrior Trainer whenever I had the money. The main purpose of a beta is to try things and make sure they work.

While the vast majority of players in the WoW Classic beta were nice, not all of them were. There’s always going to be some jerks who try and ruin the fun.

Five jerks, with incredibly similar names, decided to spam the chat. All the names started with “Sewin” The ending of those names were: life, earth, air, water, fire. It was obviously a coordinated group of players.

The jerks yelled: “All Hail the Master Race!” in all caps. Maybe that was considered to be funny back when “Vanilla” launched. But, in today’s world. that phrase feels a whole lot like Nazi propaganda.

It probably did back then, too. But, today, we literally have the federal government putting brown people in concentration camps. I think most players were a little bit stunned to see that pop up in chat.

One could make the argument that they meant the Tauren were the master race. Still doesn’t make it an acceptable thing to yell.

Shortly afterwards, a helpful player posted in chat. “Good news, the ignore feature works!” Now was a great time to test the ignore feature. It worked quite well on all five of those jerks. I assume they got reported by several players, too.

Moosarella hit Level 4 in the entrance to the Brambleblade Ravine. This area turned out to be the most lucrative area in the game. The Plainstalkers and Mountain Cougars, and Battleboars dropped parts. The enemies in here were dropping copper currency.

I had to go back to town more than once while fighting enemies in the Brambleblade Ravine because my bag got full. This is exactly what happened in “Vanilla”. The only way to travel was to “hoof it”.

Moosarella hit Level 5 while I was running around in the cave. I figured that was good enough for now, and needed to go back to town anyway to turn in a quest.

Here is a look a the Skills Moosarella had leveled (so far). As you can see, players could raise their skills in a variety of different types of weapons (as well as “unarmed”).

“Vanilla” had this. I cannot remember when it was removed from the game and replaced by something else. What I do remember is that my Draenei Shaman has built up an impressive Unarmed skill. That must have happened while The Burning Crusade was “live”.

Here is what Moosarella was wearing when I decided to take a break from the WoW Classic beta. Her gloves, belt, bracers, and the wrap on her weapons actually match each other. That was entirely by accident.

The other parts of her armor mostly go together, with the exception of the chain mail chest piece. None of it goes very well with the green colored pieces. But, it could have been much worse!

My intent was to return to the WoW Classic beta and continue leveling my Tauren Warrior. As far as I can tell, it ended before I had the time and energy to get back in there.

Overall, I had a lot of fun! The pace is much slower than “live” WoW, and that provided a very relaxed and peaceful experience. The slow pace works well for me, a person who has chronic illnesses and chronic pain.

Bag space is very limited, which forces players to make calculated decisions about what to sell (or drop) and what to keep. There is an Auction House, but I didn’t try it out. Money making is very slow in Classic WoW compared to “live” WoW, and this may frustrate some players.

My Experience in the WoW Classic Beta is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites.

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2 comments

  1. I think it’s a safe bet that the five “Sewins” were all played by the same person. Naming all the characters in a multibox group that way is a well-established convention. By “Master Race” they also most likely meant “my multibox group” rather than any real-world ethnic group or even Taurens.

    That in no way excuses the entirely inappropriate choice of a well-known and highly objectionable real-world phrase, which the player would almost certainly have known – and probably intended – would cause offence. At least it was probably only one complete idiot, though, not five of them.

    1. Bhagpuss, It did not occur to me that the “Sewins” were the same person. I’ve never done the multibox thing, so I didn’t understand how that worked. Thanks for clarifying! It kind of makes me feel better that the “Sewins” were just one complete idiot, and not five complete idiots.

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