To counter the negativity surrounding WoW, Cortyn reveals what is still fun about World of Warcraft.
Similar to streamer Asmongold, I believe that not everything is running smoothly in World of Warcraft and that the game could be significantly better in many areas than it currently is. Nonetheless, I play WoW pretty much every day and enjoy it.
It is no secret that World of Warcraft is much more fun with friends than alone. That is also the main reason why I rarely take “WoW breaks.” As long as there is still someone to play with and chat comfortably on Discord, everything else is not that important. The social aspect has always been good in WoW, as there are countless things to do.
Even if you don’t like the current content, there are countless things you can do in the old content, like collecting transmogs or simply visiting old raids and dungeons to experience the story.
The Fun of Old Content
In my circle of friends, there are now many who can be categorized at the “casual” end of the player base or who have taken long breaks. This means they have never properly experienced old raids from the last expansion, such as the Tomb of Sargeras or the Night Hold.
It was incredibly fun to go into the Tomb of Sargeras on heroic with four friends a few days ago and “very classically” refine a boss strategy for the fight against the Avatar of Sargeras or the final battle against Kil’jaeden.
Seeing friends fall into the abyss against the corrupted maid because they jumped into the hole too early with the bomb is also incredibly satisfying, just like the laughter in Discord.
Even though this may sound like a negative point, we are learning to appreciate the “old” things in World of Warcraft again. Of course, it’s a shame that aside from dungeons, so little can captivate us in the new content, but that is not really a problem.
A friend of mine has just found out that he can earn a class mount in Legion and is now fanatically trying to obtain it.
Another player has taken a liking to pet battles and is now chasing pets more eagerly than any “Pokemon Go” junkie, just to proudly present me with his new high score of unique pets every day.
The Secret of Minahonda
Another anecdote in my circle of friends is “the secret of Minahonda.” We were just about to tackle the HUGE FLOB!! on mythic and needed another damage dealer. So we turned on the group search and immediately stated in the description, “We are a Nappel group and are cruising through the dungeon, no stress, just fun.”.
Filtering was based on names, not item level – anyone who named their warlock “Shadowkillerxx” or their demon hunter “Illìdân” didn’t get in with us.
We then caught a druid from the server “Minahonda,” which immediately led to discussions and speculations. What language was that? Apparently Spanish.
Since server names always had something to do with Warcraft lore, we started speculating on what “Minahonda” might mean.
So we asked the druid from Minahonda in English what his server name meant. The problem was that the druid probably understood very little English or had a degree in “I don’t read the chat”.
After the first mob groups where we got no answer, we switched to a bit of “pseudo-RP” and pleaded with the druid in the say channel for information.
- “Tell us the secret of Minahonda!”
- “We need to know! Reveal the truth!”
- “Mi-na-hon-da! Mi-na-hon-da!”
After the response still didn’t come, we decided to dance on one of the dance floors (which exist in the HUGE FLOB!!), and things got quite silly in Discord while we tried to solve the riddle.
After a confused “what is happening” from the druid, he unfortunately left the group, taking the secret of Minahonda back to Spain with him.
The dwarf paladin who replaced the druid didn’t care about our dance performance by the way. She stood up and danced along, which fueled our laughter in Discord even more.
I still have no idea what the server name “Minahonda” means. But is that really important? No. From now on, every riddle will be compared to this one. When we talk about the riddle of the belt of temporal gold, we can rightly say, “At least it’s not as complicated as the secret of Minahonda.”.
This is just one example of fun situations that I could also imagine in other MMOs, but they happened in World of Warcraft. It’s a fun memory I only had because I was with friends in WoW – alone or “only with randoms” would simply not have been possible.
When Some Things are Bad, There’s Still So Much Good
There is a lot to do in World of Warcraft. And there are many things that are still a lot of fun.
In summary, I still have a lot of fun with World of Warcraft, enjoy the evenings with friends in dungeons, on island expeditions, or in PvP. I still consider many mechanics from Battle for Azeroth broken and hope for changes. But until then, I will just do other things in the game – my battle pet collection also urgently needs an upgrade and I still lack the green parrot from the island expeditions.
Because even though I dislike the current content due to some mechanics, World of Warcraft as a whole is still “too good” not to play. And with Patch 8.1 Tides of Vengeance, which is probably coming in a few weeks, many things in WoW will also improve…
What are you spending your time on in WoW right now? What keeps you playing? Or do you think everything in Battle for Azeroth is great?
