I've had an on-and-off relationship with World of Warcraft ever since I first booted it up in my early teens. I love the size of the world, the joy of exploration, the kick from getting a purple drop from a dungeon at 1am. But more and more, I found myself stepping away from the endless treadmill that is the modern game. World of Warcraft: Classic, however, reunited my enthusiasm, and now Forever has properly dragged me back in.

When Wow Classic launched in 2019, I was entranced enough that I levelled up to 60, and after that, I continued: diving into rep grinding in The Burning Crusade Classic. Both were largely adventures in nostalgia, flipping through old photos. Later, I died over and over leveling in Hardcore Classic WoW. This injected a largely solved game with an intense level of danger that made even the blander segments of the leveling journey exciting. Scrub that I am, I never maxed a hardcore character, but every cave I died in became a milestone moment. Every other player I saw die was a spectacle, and a sombre community moment where you could mourn (or mock) a fallen comrade fighting against the odds.

Later still, I loved the bold swings Season of Discovery brought to the table. New spells, new quests, new raids built on the foundation of decades' old dungeons. This helped chip away at the sameness that inevitably haunted the Classic rerelease; some changes worked, some didn't. But either way it showed Classic World of Warcraft was a rich field worth toiling over.

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