Hi,
Nickname's Riv/Rivlet, from Spain, Europe. I found out about Warmane through Twitch and Google. As the title suggests, I'm just somebody looking for an MMO that can make me lose myself in it. Unfortunately, I deem that to be scarce as of late.
Let me give you some info, in case you want to help me out with some suggestions: I'm 35 years old, so I was born in 1990. I played my first videogames when I was 5 or so, mostly thanks to my older brother and cousins. Truly, my first consoles and videogames (of my own) were the original PlayStation with Final Fantasy 7 and the Game Boy Color with Zelda: Link's Awakening and Pokemon Gold.
Focusing on MMOs, I first came in contact with them through a forum I used to be in during the early 2000s. People there were playing Ragnarok Online, so that was the first experience I had in that regard... and what an experience. I absolutely loved (and love) that MMO. I played on a private server. Money for videogames was always an issue back then (kid, parents ruling, etc.). Second one was Lineage 2. There were others as well.
When WoW came out, I had to watch from the sidelines. It was very unfortunate, because I really, really wanted to play it. But yeah, buying the game and paying a monthly subscription was prohibitive. So... The love I had for the wonders Blizzard used to make back then (Warcraft, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3, Starcraft, Diablo and Diablo 2) met a barrier it couldn't break.
Fortunately, I had the ability to test it out a little bit on a private server when they became a thing. My tauren reached level 40 until I got bored/occupied with my studies.
Guild Wars became my scapegoat. At first, when Prophecies came out, it didn't appeal enough to me. A couple of years later, when I got the Complete Collection, I fell in love with it, its stories, its world, its quests, its characters, etc. The overall feeling, so... Big Guild Wars fan (and a bit of a loremaster).
Something similar happened with Guild Wars 2. I bought the game at launch, but it had changed so much in comparison to the original Guild Wars that I felt it wasn't for me. Years later, I gave it another chance and I got hooked. It's incredible how good the game is in many ways. Unfortunately, it also "betrayed" what it used to be in terms of storytelling and world building. I'll elaborate on that later, because it's connected to me being here.
Then came the turn for Final Fantasy XIV. This time I had the money, but I always felt biased towards subscription-based systems. Fortunately, it was after Yoshi-P had changed the early stages of the game, which meant I could play the base game and Heavensward with its new questing system. The beginning was tough, but I was liking the experiment and considered subscribing. I got hooked, but then I made a mistake: to show support for the fun I was having with the trial in its early stages, I paid our subscriptions. Unfortunately, I didn't think that meant that, once the subscription was over, I wouldn't be able to continue playing at all (I thought I would be able to access the base game and the first expansion still, just like trial users) and that discouraged me a great deal, so I stopped playing.
I'm not poor, but I'm not rich either. Also, we rescue cats (18 of them as of today), so that takes a toll. I'm very responsible in regards to our finances, which makes me think a lot about every single € that goes out. Also, I work a lot (doing double shifts during this last couple of years to save a bit more), which means the time I had for gaming is limited. All of that means that when I subscribed to WoW on December 2024 (I got mega-hyped by the fact that they were relaunching Classic as if it was 2004 all over again), I barely had time to play and my mind was like "the design of this quest sucks; it feels like it's made to suck time and money out of me, instead of providing an interesting/rewarding experience". My friend got to level 30 or so. I barely hit 15, I think. Wasted time, effort, money.
But I still freaking love the Warcraft universe (W1, W2, W3 and their awesome manuals —yes, the games and the manuals are the only lore references I care about, because everything that comes in "expanded universes" feels too... convenient. Different.) and I still love MMOs. But I'm struggling to find something that really moves me.
I feel that's mostly because there are too many things that have changed. The videogame industry isn't what it used to be anymore. It's a money-printing (and money-sucking, specially for MMOs) mammoth that focuses too much on the audience: will it be able to get the money out of their pockets? will they like this? Will they feel offended by X or Y thing? And yes, it is logical. And every company/product should take the audience into account, but I also miss the times when the product came first. A bunch of crazy visionaries that had a cool idea in mind and said: let's make it happen. And then, people liked it. Less marketing. More raw creativity.
And so, after replaying Warcraft 1, 2 and 3 again, feeling captivated by them (and their manuals; I really want to credit how much soul they poured into them) I thought: what if I play WoW on a private server? At least I won't be thinking in terms of time and money consumed, even though I have other worries (will it be a good experience? is WotlK enough? will I miss the rest of the stories and expansions? will it be a fair experience? will I lose everything if something happens to the serv?). Don't get me wrong, paying for something is fair, but it's just subscriptions. My life, no matter how hard I try (and you can see that I tried) can't adapt well to them.
Specially if the deal is: pay base game, pay subscriptions, have ingame items and cosmetics locked behind ingame shops, ingame currencies, ingame tokens, etc.
Tl; dr: which server might be the best for me? I'm tempted to try the most populated one (I want an experience that is very much alive), but I read around that something more slowly paced, RP/lore focused would be Lordaeron.
Thanks. See you around.
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Member
Soul looking for soul
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Member
im way younger than you, being born in 2004 and have played wow ever since i could touch the keyboard arrows so my views are probably skewed but ill give my 2 cents to your questions, beforehand a tldr: if you want to experience the story slowly then go for lordaeron, if you want to experience the story faster (since you dont have a lot of time to play) then you'd best play icecrown, there are numerous people interested in wow lore even if it might seem counterintuitive for a high rate server (we just cba leveling or farming gold on x1 for the 10000th time through the same zones)
1.will it be a good experience?
-icecrown is a pretty good choice if you have barely any time to play. its a really good choice if you just want to log in 1 or 2 hours max every day or so, the server is beyond progressed and the economy is fine enough that you shouldnt ever really feel like you are grinding for anything important. the social aspect however is a bit on the downside depending on how hard you try to find people you like interacting with, the majority of people dont really care to chit chat once you get to 80 and get into dungeons, there are some that have huge egos regardless if they are 2 iq clicker lazy noobs or good players. on the other hand, whenever you meet a person while leveling and just walk up to them and type "hi", you will regularly find someone to have a decent conversation with. i would advise against lordaeron because x1 xp will feel very much like time being sucked out of your life, and the raids are literally made to be harder, so if you are not a tryhard (let alone a new player) you will have a rough time.
2.is WotlK enough?
-there is a reason why wotlk was the time when wow had the most active subs ever, the story of wotlk wraps up arthas' story from warcraft 3, just like tbc wraps up illidans story(well not really considering later expansions, and illidan is written really well even in said later expansions, or atleast i think so because i like legion very much). wotlk is also very very simple to play compared to more modern iterations and thus appeals to all players. you also dont need to play well at all to experience the lore to the fullest given that the game is just simply easy and fun once you get the hang of it
3.will I miss the rest of the stories and expansions?
-not really, i mean the gameplay isnt the same obviously but the stories are all still there for you to discover in your free time through the hundreds of quests. every now and then, every few months/years i like to quest in netherstorm in outland even as a lvl 80 just because i love the atmosphere of tbc way too much in contrast to how much i loathe how ****ing grindy tbc is for most classes if you want to perform highly. the only "vibe" you'll be missing out on is doing (more like wiping tbh) 5 man heroic dungeons and raids on lvl 70 during tbc class balance/systems etc
4.will it be a fair experience?
- it kind of depends on what do you mean by fair. if you decide to go through stranglethorn vale or tanaris while leveling you will indeed be molested by bored lvl 80s. as for pvp, there is a cash shop, but the matchmaking for battlegrounds is item level based, so you wont have to play against people with 284 item level gear if you dont have anything as shiny as that. incase you are thinking about playing arena just forget about it. as for pve, its whatever, there is really no unfairness other than gear
5.ill I lose everything if something happens to the serv?
- obviously, but if theres any safe private server to play in regards to that worry, it is warmane's servers and none else. they lay low and they dont modify the game client, they even fixed a lot of bugs that blizzard just didnt bother to because they had cataclysm on the horizon, it has become the gold standard for private servers over the past 10 years
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Member
Hey,
Thanks a lot. Your answer was very insightful. And no, no tl; dr. I read, and I read it all.
I already made my mind to get my WoW experience from here, following what you said. However, I'm still hesitating between the different servers. Lordaeron seems like the experience I would have gotten originally and I don't mind slow pacing that much, but it could be overwhelming. Your description of Icecrown seems awesome, but 7x feels like it's too much. Maybe the 5x is a bit better? I saw that it's still very populated. More than Lord and less than IC.
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