A hunter, 2 death knights, a demon hunter and an undead warlock

 I logged on to World of Warcraft retail version for the first time in eons because I wanted a break from Classic and was surprised to see how much had changed. I really enjoyed rolling different classes, especially the demon hunter and seeing what a good job Blizzard had done with those starting areas and with the updated graphics and cutscenes.

I was surprised I had forgotten that I had a 36 level hunter and several death knights on various realms and also my undead warlock. All of the characters had been updated to adjust for the changes made to the game since Warlords and other more recent expansions including the level drop to 50 and the adjustments in gear, equipment etc. 

But the experience was not all positive because even though I enjoyed some of the humor, talented voice acting and in game cinematics, the whole experience, while fun, felt somewhat artificial and compared to classic was more of the ultimate themepark. 

Every zone leads to the next but instead of the feeling of organic exploration you might feel in another game like Dark Age of Camelot, the polished retail wow is one of more controlled fun than an open world experience. I still played for about three hours yesterday and they went fast, trying out the different horde classes and races. I really did like the way levels were redone and scaled back to 50. They had been bloated for so long that this way of leveling feels more in tune with old school mmos where the leveling wasn't out of control.

Sadly I failed in my attempt to level all the Classic classes to 20 with only my undead warrior reaching that milestone after 66 hours played. I think I will take a break until TBC drops and focus on retail toons when I decide to get back to wow.

D&D update

Still zooming in to 3.5 campaign. I have been slowly adding supplements to my core book collection. Recently I became the proud owner of every PHB, Monster Manual and DMG from 1st edition to 5th, with the notable exception of 2e because I heard it was too similar to first. I hope to post a video I made on the races that we like to play on my  Behind the Sreen/noob DM Youtube channel tomorrow. 

This is what the character creation screen looks like in retail, something I was unaware of until recently. I think it is very cool and makes me want to play different classes.

One captivating thing I found about retail wow is the fact that the voice overs, cutscenes and new starting zones make for engaging play. At the same time, the game design is too much of a themepark and it shows, the game practically railroads you from zone to zone and action to action which makes it feel less like an open world as in a sandbox mmo, or even an older mmo like Dark Age of Camelot.