World of Warcraft is a massive game and one that we, rather surprisingly, rarely cover on our site! With the new expansion Battle of Azeroth in the works, it seems to be the perfect opportunity to remedy that. And, as Legion content is now getting a tad stale, what better an article to publish than one on what to do with your Azerothian downtime. Here are four things you can do to pass the time in World of Warcraft!
Explore and Investigate
The World of Warcraft is huge. With over one hundred zones to explore, Azeroth has some nifty secrets hidden away. Some areas, such as the famous underwater Gnome village off of the coast of Tanaris, or the haunting crypts found underneath Karazhan in Deadwind Pass were placed by the developers without explanation and with the intention of never being found by players. Others, such as the Druid circle in the Tirisfal Glades or the Goblin Spa and Sea Resort in Southern Feralas are hidden and quest-less areas which, while not productive to travel to, make for some great sightseeing.
Minigames
Players in World of Warcraft are adept at passing time in the game. Player toys like the ‘Dazzling Rod’ and the ‘Darkmoon Tonk Controller’ allow players to pass the time while they wait for their dungeon queues to trigger. Also, many players have taken to setting up and participating in player casinos. These casinos work in much the same way as online live casino games, with players interacting with a live dealer, as well as other players within the game and real world. The dealer, in this case, utilises the ‘/roll’ function to pit each player against each other for big gold pay-outs.
Level a New or Alternate Character
With the new scaling-level patch, the low-level zones in Azeroth have gotten a much-needed update. These zones are fun to progress through once more! So now is the perfect time to try out that class that you’ve always wanted to play, but never had the stomach to level. Particularly unvisited zones like Desolace, Feralas and the Stranglethorn Vale (for both Alliance and Horde) are surprisingly fun to level through, as the slow or irregular pacing of some of the quests in the zones are no longer a hindrance.
Pet Battles
Battle pets are an incredibly underrated addition to the game. It’s the kind of thing that a small community took up as their principle reason for playing the game, while the rest promptly forgot about it altogether. Yet, this fun and engaging pokemon-esque system combines minigames, exploration and the potential to level a new character as you travel Azeroth searching for rare pets and NPCs to battle. Level battle pets have the added bonus of being worth a lot of money on the auction house, so if you’re interested in making some money, levelling up a few pets might not be a bad exercise to undertake.
This list is by no means exhaustive, we’ve only scratched the surface of what over thirteen years of development on one game can provide. And the best part of World of Warcraft is the stories you make yourself which you can regale all your friends with in-game. So, by all means explore and research; there’s still so much more out there to be found.