Why World of Warcraft is my Reliable Comfort Game

I’m sure I’m not the only World of Warcraft player who has taken long breaks from the world of Azeroth due to feeling burned out toward the game as a whole. I’ve had that exact thing happen to me several times over the 15-ish years I’ve played WoW, usually when I’ve done all the endgame content I want to do on my main, max-level character and I don’t feel like leveling an alt up to the current expansion’s content. Recently, though, I’ve discovered a different approach to World of Warcraft that has both kept me from burning out and actively encouraged me to view it as a comfort game.

I currently have two characters at max level as of Dragonflight Patch 10.2. Alongside those two, I have a slightly concerning number of alts at various levels. I created some of these alts because I want to unlock their racial heritage armor, I created others because I want to eventually learn to heal as their class in dungeon environments, and still others were created just for the heck of it. I’ve had a much easier time leveling all those alts recently thanks primarily to Chromie Time, which enables me to decide which expansion I quest through and lets me change my mind about that whenever I want.

Earlier this year, I discovered a speed-leveling guide on YouTube that has been particularly useful for me. However, I reached a point where I was growing bored following that guide to the letter so often, even though it’s been such an efficient way to power-level my characters. It was then I realized that I don’t have to speed-level every single character I create just to get them to max level before the next expansion releases: I can level up however I desire regardless of how long it might take or how “inefficient” it might be. Using that speed-leveling guide so stubbornly was an entirely self-imposed strategy.

That revelation re-introduced me to the joys of questing at my own pace through my favorite expansions in World of Warcraft’s history, as well as discovering the expansions I’m not so familiar with whenever the mood strikes me. Sure, I personally avoid questing in Wrath of the Lich King’s content with a character who’s under level 30, as I think Northrend is a slog to travel through until you can ride flying mounts, but even that hesitation isn’t a barrier for very long. Of course, it also helps quite a lot that all riding training is automatically learned and free of charge as of Dragonflight.

For example, I’ve never done very many of the quests in The Burning Crusade’s content, and I missed out on virtually all of Mists of Pandaria. I can now experience what those expansions had to offer whenever my heart desires. That’s quite a liberating feeling, let me tell you. The point of this article isn’t to praise Chromie Time for facilitating that, though, especially since that mechanic has been available for years at this point. Rather, I’d like to tell you how World of Warcraft has recently become one of my most reliable comfort games.

Whenever I decide to quest within an expansion I’m less familiar with, I consciously think about what’s happening in the context of that expansion and what effects my actions are having. Heck, I even go out of my way to actually read quest text, which seems to be generally considered a minor sin among the WoW community these days. However, when I want to relax and level up one of my alts, I always quest through one of the expansions I know well, like Warlords of Draenor and Legion. I fall back on those two in particular because I’m so accustomed to them that I hardly have to think about what I’m doing.

In those cases, I can essentially just switch my brain off and rely on “muscle memory,” for lack of a better phrase. Not having to pay much attention as I complete quests I’ve likely done dozens of times before really helps me relax while I’m still technically being productive. Legion is by far my favorite WoW expansion. So much so, in fact, that I must have had upwards of twenty max-level characters when Legion was current simply because I enjoyed playing through its content so much. It also doesn’t hurt that quest rewards that once powered your Artifact Weapons can now be sold to vendors for decent money.

Concerning Warlords of Draenor, my main character is still the same one with whom I unlocked flying in that expansion back when the process of earning the achievements required for that was still a huge (and painful) undertaking. That’s why I think it’s safe to say I still remember quite a lot about Warlords of Draenor’s content. That speed-leveling guide I’ve mentioned has alerted me to a few changes to my normal play style I can make to further expedite the leveling process, but I still play WoD content virtually the same way I always have outside of those aspects.

Back when Shadowlands was still the current expansion, I think the most significant portion of what made me hesitant to level any of my alts was that I would eventually have to take them through Shadowlands content if I wanted to get them to what was then the max level. I burned out so severely on what Shadowlands brought to WoW that I still have many unpleasant memories associated with that period of World of Warcraft’s history. Thankfully, now that Shadowlands is part of Chromie Time, I don’t even have to acknowledge its existence if I don’t want to.

I’ll conclude with what has surprised me the most since I re-discovered how to relax while playing WoW: I can stay calm during player-versus-player combat if I decide on a few random battlegrounds. I’ve finally learned to stop caring about how well or poorly I do in PvP and just have fun with it. I still avoid all forms of ranked PvP like the plague, though, so at least I can’t be justifiably shouted at for my casual-level performance negatively affecting the rankings of my teammates. If any teammates still give me a hard time, that’s why the “ignore” button exists.