I really like World of Warcraft

Sometimes it just feels like it needs to be said.

Even when I have negative opinions on specific aspects of the game — for example, I’m never going to be a fan of the Azerite Armor system, no matter what they do to it — overall, I am just a huge fan of this game. I like World of Warcraft. I enjoy World Quests. I think the zones full of stuff to do are masterfully done and a huge improvement over previous expansions. I’m incredibly fond of Warfronts, I have yet to see a raid in like two expansions now that wasn’t astonishingly well crafted. I like this game.

WoW is never — and will never be — perfect

Saying that World of Warcraft isn’t perfect is true enough. Since it’s constantly being expanded and added to, it literally can’t ever be perfect. That’s one of the things I enjoy about it, that it is eternally, perpetually a work in progress. I can go back to previous content and farm it for transmog  looks. There’s almost never a time when I can log into WoW and I can’t find something to do, and there’s a lot of stuff I almost never do like pet battles or Arena PVP or Mythic+ dungeons which means there’s even more content than all that content I could be doing at any given moment. The game isn’t perfect, but it is constantly changing and growing and evolving.

Honestly, sometimes I just go play for an hour on a long-forgotten alt on a server I haven’t played on in years just to see some of the stuff I’ve forgotten, this game has so much stuff in it. Remember all those zones that got revamped during Cataclysm? Turns out there was a ton of new content in that expansion. Or running around Pandaria again, or even going to check out Draenor now that the pressure to hit max level is well and truly gone. It’s been long enough that I feel like I can say that the leveling game in Warlords was strong and both Legion and Battle for Azeroth have been the better for it having existed.

It’s okay to like things, and it’s okay not to like things

But ultimately, it’s not about whether or not I enjoy the game.

Lately I feel like I’m expected, almost demanded to not like it, and the very fact that I do enjoy it may end being treated with derision, or worse.

I’ve felt this before, of course. I’ve been playing WoW since it came out. If I had a dollar for every time someone told me the game was dead or dying I could pay my rent for a year. I’ve literally spent twelve years writing about the game and I’ve seen the exact same criticisms, the exact same pronouncements, the exact same accusations of bias and fanboyism over and over and over again. And yet I still like World of Warcraft, despite it being a very different game now than it was when I started playing. I even like it so much that I liked WoW Classic when I played that beta.

It’s okay not to like things, but it’s also okay to like them. And I feel like we need to be reminded of that, sometimes. This isn’t to say you can’t critique something you  like, or find fault with it — there have been things just this expansion I haven’t liked. No Tyrande in Nazjatar. Azerite Armor. The burning of Teldrassil. Azerite Armor. And of course Azerite Armor.

But these criticisms aren’t in spite of, they’re because of how much I enjoy this game.

I really like, even love World of Warcraft.