12. 19. 2022
Greetings, travelers. With Light's Hope shutting down in 6 days and Classic just around the corner, you may be asking yourself what the future of private wow servers is. I've been asking myself this every day the past few weeks. Allow me to attempt to explain the situation by typing out a short stream of consciousnesses that's been running through my mind.
What made you fall in love with WoW in the first place? The answer will be different for every person here, but for me, it was Azeroth. The gorgeous music, the everchanging landscapes. The unique NPC's, each of which felt unique and part of the greater world the existed in. The quests and the stories behind them.
At some point, this changed for me, and I began being concerned with gearing up, getting my BIS gear and raiding. finding leveling routes that were the the most efficient, and would get me to 60 as quick as possible.
Don't get me wrong, this is an essential part of the WoW experience, however, I would argue it is the part of WoW that lessens, and eventually ruins the sense of mystical immersion in the game.
It is much like life. You can try to succeed in every conventional standard, racing to the top to get that career, earn money, raise a family. These are some sort of markers of a “succesful” life in today's world, perhaps not everywhere but in a lot of places. When these goals become the things giving you meaning, you tend to forget the minuscule details of every day life tha tmake it a mystical experience, and more often than not life becomes somewhat of a “grind” to achieve these hallowed artifacts of success.
I'm not saying this is the case for every person, but among the people I know it seems to be the case. I would argue that it is attention to the smallest of details that makes life special. The thigns that exist only in the moment, and that can only be experienced in the moment.
How well do you really know the quests you are doing? why are you killing these Quillboars, and where is Mankrik's wife? The answers lie in the world of Azeroth, and in the character in it – but it is up to the individual to pay enough attention to make these details meaningful.
For me, this sort of change in perspective is what made WoW great for me again “MWoWGA”. I got to 60, I got my T1 armor, I did raids. But at the end of it, I felt empty. Returning to the world itself, to the lore, to the quests, to the exploring of the landscape and to the beautiful interaciton between players is what made me love vanilla wow again. It seems to me that the Turtle WoW private server shares the same vision. the optional 0.5 leveling rate (its either 0.5 or 1x leveling) forces yo9u top slow down, and remember what is so great about the game. If any of this resonates with you, I hope to see you in-game in Turtle WoW, because that's where I will be spending my years of gaming to come.