5 Tips for WoW Classic

Avoid Killing Dishonourably

In modern retail WoW, you can kill almost anything you want without it causing you issues. Classic WoW, however, had a system that marked NPCs from the opposing faction as civilians. This means that if you decided to randomly kill a vendor, innkeeper, or other NPC it would count against you as a dishonorable kill. This type of kill would dramatically lower your overall honor, removing your access to the PvP vendor’s upper tiers instantly. This stayed in effect until your honor was restored.

Be careful storming The Crossroads and don’t randomly kill NPCs unless it’s for a specific achievement, and you should be fine.

First Aid is a Vital Skill

When WoW expanded to Battle for Azeroth, the first aid profession was essentially removed. This profession didn’t have a lot of use when players’ health recovers quite quickly and food and potions are abundant. In Classic WoW, however, First Aid was a vital skill that most players needed to have in order to survive. You started out with a toon that was incredibly week, and health pools took a long time to refill after taking severe damage. Keeping your bandaging and first aid abilities scaled up helped keep you healed up efficiently, especially if you had a nasty encounter that you weren’t quite prepared for.

First Aid wasn’t only for DPS classes. Classes that could heal themselves, like Druids, Paladins, Shamans, and Priests also worked to keep their First Aid skill leveled. Numerous higher end guilds insisted that people have their First Aid skill leveled in order to join or raid.

If you’re playing Classic, don’t sell off your Linen, Silk, and Wool – they’re more valuable than you’d think for making bandages as you level.

Stock up on food and water and level your cooking skills.

Your resources replenish slowly, and skilled players make it a point to carry food and drink to keep their health and mana pools healthy, whether they’re buying the food or making it themselves. So, when you see a fruit vendor, a mushroom vendor, or someone randomly selling fine cheeses, be sure to stock up. And if you’re playing retail, understand that these vendors were once far more important in the game than they currently are.

The Process of Leveling is the Fun

When a modern expansion comes out, Blizzard does their best to rush you towards the new level cap as quickly as they can. The zones are amazingly beautiful, the story is enjoyable, but often players are highly focused on hitting that level cap as quickly as possible, so the real fun can begin. This simply wasn’t the way the game worked in 2004. Blizzard gave you 60 levels to play with, and they made sure that the process was slow and enjoyable. In fact, it took me almost a year to hit my first level 60 toon.

Don’t focus on the level cap. Don’t rush through the game and bring 2020 logic to a product that was created in 2004. This isn’t the kind of gaming that Classic WoW was all about.

Save Your Money for Mounts

WoW gives away mounts like candy in modern expansions. You can play a game of Hearthstone and poof – a brand new flying mount gets added to your Battle.net account. In Classic WoW, though, hitting level 40 with enough gold in the bank to get a starter mount was quite the achievement. They cost 100 gold, which was enough to break the bank, and nobody wanted to be the player without the mount. Save your gold or buy WoW Classic gold here.

Keys Open Amazing Doors

Now that Dungeon Finders exist, you queue in for an instance and get teleported directly to the door. Then everyone runs through the encounter together, often coordinating without saying a word to the people in their PUG. This wasn’t the way Classic World of Warcraft worked for numerous reasons, but it’s most important that newcomers get familiar with the idea of attunement.

A great deal of the high end content in old school WoW needed at least one of the players in the party to have completed an entire quest chain that would provide them a key to get in to the dungeon. For Molten Core, each player in the raid of 40 needed to do a quest chain before they could enter the Ragnaros’ lair. No key, no entrance. Do you want to run Upper Blackrock Spire on a Saturday night? Cool! As long as you’re in contact with another player who’s completed a multi-part quest and mind-controlled the dragon of Dustwallow Marsh.

This element goes back to WoW’s more traditional roots in tabletop RPGs. It makes solid sense that the bad guys lock their doors. However, if you’re new to the game, this component may be difficult to get used to. On the other hand, it’s also a great opportunity, as you’re far more useful to a raiding party or guild if you have all of the right keys.