This review is about the release of the classic version in 2021. My experience with this game before the classic version is basically non-existent, so nostalgia is not a factor for me. I also don't really want to talk about the changes in gameplay found in this expansion, this is only me and my thoughts and feelings throughout the expansion.

If I were to look only at the game alone, then World of Warcraft is truly a great example of "it's not about the destination, it's about the journey". In an era where instant gratification is all over the place in video games, TBC Classic reminds us of a time when we had to work for everything. Goals like getting to max level and preparing your character for raiding were not as time-consuming as in WoW Classic, but you still invested a lot of your time doing them. I feel like TBC is the expansion that had the best balance between the leveling journey and the end game. Starting with the next expansion the focus clearly shifted to max level content.

When you start to include the MMO aspect is when my opinion of the game starts to sway from one side to the other. We could talk about how I made a few friends by doing the quests that forced you to party up since they were really tough to do on your own, or the really nice guilds out there that made raiding into a "me and the boiz" night. We could also talk about the absurd number of bots and hackers that ran all over the place due to developer negligence, or the gold sellers promoting their websites. Or how about the feeling of "instant gratification" mentioned before, causing a portion of the community to be obsessed with the min-max culture and willing to buy gold from sellers to spend it on gear in raids or paying others to level them up via "boosting services". Or better yet, how about Blizzard adding a service that allowed you to skip 75% of the leveling experience just so players could access the new content sooner? And obviously not for free. It seemed like the developers themselves did not want players to PLAY THE GAME. Why play when you can pay, right? (wink sarcasm)

WoW TBC Classic was fun if you were able to find a guild that had similar goals like yours, but Blizzard's poor handling of bots and hackers, the level 58 boost that you could purchase directly from the developers, combined with the clash between gamers wanting to enjoy the journey and gamers wanting everything ASAP, created an environment where a new player could, for example, end up having a disappointing first impression simply because bad luck had that person's first interaction with other players be gold sellers and boosters just spamming chat, or finding no one to level up with because everyone decided to buy the level 58 boost.

Gone is the era of working hard for what you want, gone is the era of taking your time and explore as much as you could. I'm not criticizing nor am I applauding this change, it's just that it was while playing this version of WoW that I realized gaming, both from the developers' perspectives and from the players' perspectives, will no longer be what it used to, and us older gamers have no choice but to accept this, regardless of how we feel about it.