A Small Pinch of Nostalgia

Hey everyone,

For the past few days, something has been sitting in the back of my mind: the idea of coming back to WoW but not Retail this time. An expansion I never truly experienced. I’ve always been a Retail player, on and off. A few intense months, then life would catch up family, work, responsibilities and I’d step away. Then I’d return again. That cycle has been repeating for years, but this time feels different.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about nostalgia, and strangely enough my feed has been filled with posts saying, “It was better back then.” Maybe that triggered something. For the first time, I’m not drawn to the newest expansion. I’m not excited about Midnight. I don’t want the modern systems, the constant rush, or everything handed to me too quickly. I want to understand what I missed.

I want to experience Wrath the way it was meant to be experienced: slow progression, actual mana management, learning your class step by step, earning your gear instead of replacing it every two days, and building something that takes time. I know it won’t be easy. I’m not the best player, and I’m used to the explosive, fast-paced gameplay of modern WoW. I know Wrath is slower, more methodical, and less forgiving and honestly, that’s exactly why I’m here.

I want to struggle a little. I want to feel my character grow. I want that moment when you arrive in Northrend for the first time and everything feels massive, cold, and intimidating. I want the butterflies before a dungeon, the random world PvP encounters, the conversations in general chat, and the feeling that progression actually means something. I’m ready for old-school rotations, for managing resources, for wipes, and for real arena fights where positioning and timing matter more than flashy effects. I’m ready to earn every piece of gear.

Maybe this is nostalgia. Maybe it’s just me looking for something slower in a world that keeps accelerating. But sometimes slowing down is exactly what you need not to escape life, but to disconnect from the noise. So here I am, starting fresh, no shortcuts, no expectations, just curiosity and that small spark of excitement I haven’t felt in a long time. Do you think I made the right choice? See you in Northrend.

Welcome, I had the same feeling. From my experience, it might be best to join the realm of Lordaeron, it's x1 exp rate, there are no items in the shop that you can buy like equipment and weapons. I have 25 days of gameplay on my hunter, I haven't joined a single raid so far and I have a 5.8k gearscore. There are a little less people than on other servers, but enough to do everything you need to. Good luck and see you in Northrend

Hello and thanks for the advice, I really appreciate it!

The thing is, I just joined Icecrown mainly because of the population. I like seeing cities alive and having groups form quickly, and I heard you can manually lower the XP rate there, which sounded like a good middle ground.

So now I’m kind of stuck between the two. Lordaeron sounds appealing because of the pure x1 experience and no shop gear, which I respect a lot. At the same time, Icecrown feels more active overall.

I’m also thinking about rolling a Feral Druid, so I guess part of it is just accepting that the gameplay won’t be as explosive as retail and learning to enjoy that slower, more methodical pace haha. Maybe that’s part of the charm.

Still debating whether I should fully commit to the Lordaeron experience or stick with Icecrown x1 and see how it feels.

Thanks again, and see you in Northrend!

Trust me, go Lordaeron to experience what you seem to be looking for.

It's slower paced, but there is still enough of people playing that you won't feel truly alone. Icecrown realm is way faster paced with a worse community, and even if you lower the experience rate, it's definetly not the same feeling. Also a lot more gankers there.

Source: Myself playing both realms since 2017.

I agree with @t4d3y completely, definitely go for Lordaeron with the 1x xp rate for the proper WOTLK experience. The 7x rate of Icecrown is so fast it essentially skips the whole leveling part, and the server is meant for players who already know the leveling phase and don't have time/interest to go through it for the n-th time.

Icecrown is for people who want to get 80 fast and skip straight to raiding/PvP. You will ruin your first WOTLK experience if you go to a faster-rate server for your first experience. Note that it doesn't really help if you personally lower your xp rate, because everyone around you won't. Find a good dungeon group that you'd want to do another dungeon with? Can't, because they just gained 7 levels with 1 dungeon run while you gained 1, they can't go into the same dungeons as you anymore. The higher xp rate completely breaks the game design and progression and the only reason for it if you don't actually want to level. The correct way to think of it is as a 80 boost instead of actual leveling experience.

Note that at 1x, the leveling is already quite fast in WOTLK. See, originally when TBC was released, they upped the Vanilla xp rates, so progressing through Vanilla became faster as a new player. Then when WOTLK was released, the Vanilla rates were upped even more, and TBC rates were upped too. And Warmane is obviously using the WOTLK rates, which are doubly-upped for Vanilla and single-upped for TBC already at 1x. Meaning that to level through Vanilla portion, you already need to only do about third of the zones/quests/dungeons, and then half for TBC. The 1x rate is by no means slow.

It is unfortunate reality that since addition of Icecrown the playerbase split to two, Icecrown leeching a lot of players from Lordaeron, but on the other hand at the time Lordaeron was so full there was queues very often so I understand why they felt need to create another realm to relieve the pressure, which it did. At the cost of now shrunken Lordaeron playerbase, although it is still very much alive and you will have no problems finding dungeon groups any day of the week except maybe during weekday mornings EU time when its also weekday night in NA, which obviously means less players.

Good thing about either realm is that unlike pservers usually, these seem to have exceptional staying power. Many pservers in the past get influx of players with the "fresh realm" enthusiasm, then taper off and die in a year or two, and get shut down. But Lordaeron was opened in fall of 2015, and Icecrown a couple of years(iirc) after that, and still online a decade later. So you don't have to worry about your character going poof (as long as you log into it at least once a year, or make it to 80) no matter how much time you want to take, and the players seemingly aren't going anywhere either. I don't see these realms dying anytime soon, it seems that constantly as some players leave, new ones come in.