At the end of this month we get to return to Azeroth as it once was. I’m excited.

Last week I played in the stress test. I created several different characters and ran around for a few hours, doing quests, and remembering what it was like to play WoW for the first time. I wasn’t sure if I was going to like the old game. I didn’t just like it, I loved it.

It felt so good to return to Azeroth as it was back in 2005. The game play is not only how I remembered it, it’s what I’ve always wanted retail to be. I was amazed at how quickly the online in-game community sprang into being. The zone chats were filled with people talking, collaborating on builds, and looking for groups to take down basic non-elite bosses for quests.

I’m really looking to playing a druid and a paladin this time around. I’ll be playing on an RP server in the hopes that the community will be more immersive than non-RP servers. We’ll see if that theory holds up or not. Probably not, but it never hurts to try.

I’m prepping an ethnographic study on team adaptation for WoW: Classic. I’ve still got a lot of work to do, but I want to study the game when it launches so I can participate in the initial wave of interested gamers.