Returning to Azeroth.
It’s impossible to experience all the story at this point, since 2004 US release there were 7 expansions, history of the world changed a lot, you had to be there from the beginning. But not all is lost, there’s time walking events, there’s books and graphic novels. So much story can be overwhelming, so I recommend taking advantage of “Class Trials”, you can start playing at level 110. Choose your character — Honourable Horde or Righteous Alliance member, or maybe, neutral Pandaren and jump into this huge world with million of others. It feels like you part of something big.
I still remember the day when I picked my World of Warcraft box. The box felt good, thick, with colourful illustrations and beautiful characters. But that wasn’t the reason I decided to buy the original game, I only picked it up because of familiar and friendly Mac log on front. Blizzard still supports Mac and even Metal 2, so it won’t be affected with deprecation of OpenGL. Even though it’s very old game, you will be pleased with level of details in a new areas. I play on my 13-inch MacBook Pro and I get ~30-50 FPS with low graphics but native Retina resolution. Text is so sharp in quest descriptions.
How game changed since beginning? There’s a trend to make it more approachable, you don’t need to learn a lot and you don’t need to invest huge portions of time, completing single quest can take you 5 minutes. It’s genius how questing is used to advance your character and give you motivation to explore new areas. There’s always something to do, dwellers to help. It’s a very smooth experience, it gives you bits of story and landmarks peace by peace, it’s addicting and rewarding. No commitments at all. It can be a pleasant routine, an escape into different world.
There’s 2 phases — levelling and the end game. Anyone will tell you that the end game is the most fun part, but for me questing and small dungeons always were more than enough. I never even got to the end game. When Battle for Azeroth was released, I subscribed again, this time I will try to reach the end game.
There’s interesting accident happened in the game called Corrupted Blood plague which simulated chaotic deceases outbreaks from real world. It’s even studied by scientists.