Building a World to Inhabit

One thing I loved about game worlds, whether in MMOs or RPGs or even tabletop games, is that it's a world to inhabit. There are (or ought to be) spaces where people can be free to just do whatever. Some people roleplay, some people goof around, and others just hang around waiting for a queue to pop* while soaking up the scenery or the chat that's flowing across their screen.

For example, about eight or nine months ago my Questing Buddy, her middle kid, and I played hide and seek in Stormwind. I thought I knew Stormwind in Classic Era, but my Questing Buddy had discovered places that people never go to so she could hide in.

Such as this place.

To get to Cut-Throat Alley (above), you have to go through another building and out the back, and from there you can go into another building or two that are completely empty. I'd imagine that some people roleplay in these spaces away from the crowd, but this particular time there was nobody there except for the three of us.

I was curious just how many of those places remained in Retail WoW, so I hopped onto Livona and took a look around. 

Well, whaddya know...

Yes, Cut-Throat Alley is still there, although with flying being allowed in the Old World now it's not quite so isolated as it was before. No, I didn't see anybody else there, but anybody flying by can find the place from above quite easily. 

It's quite remarkable that this remained intact in a post-Cataclysm revamp when so much throughout Azeroth was rebuilt (just look at Hillsbrad Foothills, for example). In fact, the only change to the entire area was that while in Vanilla Classic the building you go through to get to the Alley is empty, in the Retail version the building is actually inhabited with NPCs.

Filling in some of the gaps like this is something that I've occasionally advocated for in the past, to make these old areas feel lived in a bit more. Just go to Silvermoon City and realize just how empty the place is, and you wish that there were maybe three times as many NPCs wandering around than what there are. And yes, I did check months ago when I went to go try to see if I could get XP merely by fishing, and the NPCs are the same as always. There's something comforting about it, but still there could be more Sindorei around the sole remaining major Elven city.**

While I was clowning around with Livona, I took her via tram to Ironforge to see if some of the Dwarven housing is still there. You know, the empty "houses" carved into the insides of Ironforge, typically more well known today as the place where Horde raids hide out in when they invade Ironforge.

Cardwyn and Azshandra have died many times
assaulting the Horde in this exact place.

Again, these areas remaining intact is quite comforting. By comparison, some areas changed quite drastically:

Where'd it go?

What you don't see above is the side area of the Cathedral of Light where the Paladins would hang out. You'd find the trainers there, opposite the First Aid trainer area to my right (and off screen). In a post-Cataclysm world, the now non-functional Paladin class trainers*** are lumped in with the First Aid trainers (now called something else, the name escapes me) in a single side area. Obviously this was done for ease of use, but changing the formerly well-used Cathedral to make interactions quicker made the space feel somewhat less impressive than it used to be.

Of course, you could say that Stormwind in general kind of got the short shrift as far as dramatic changes go because Orgrimmar's visuals are significantly different:

Vanilla Classic...

...and post-Cataclysm. I borrowed the
original Quintalan, still in his Tier 9 armor set with
Quel'Delar strapped to his back, for that screencap.

Despite the changes, it's those little things that go to make up a world, make it feel lived in, and less of a game than a place. Wander into Blackrock Depths, poke around the city of the Dark Iron Dwarves, and you'll see what I mean. When I still ran instances with Valhalla back in Vanilla Classic, a group of us were in Blackrock Depths when someone piped up that Blizzard would never made an instance like this again. "It has that grandeur of a real city and you can lose yourself inside for hours," he said. I can't speak to a post-Mists Retail, but I agree with the sentiment that Blackrock Depths and Maraudon are two huge living places that take a long time to navigate. They bear a closer resemblance to an old D&D module such as the Slave Lords or the Giants modules than a modern MMO dungeon.

*Think of it as a glorified lobby for a multiplayer game such as Call of Duty.

**I think it's the sole remaining Elven city, given that Darnassus is kind of crispy.

***I discovered that the class trainers were non-functional when I visited the Rogue Class Trainer, Syurna, in Darnassus. Because I'm a glutton for punishment.

Just How Fresh is it?

I wasn't that enthusiastic about the prospect of new so-called "Classic Fresh" servers, since I was already fine with hanging around on Classic Era. The nicest thing about Classic Era is that it's (theoretically) not supposed to change. There is absolutely no rush or FOMO or anything in Classic Era, because it's simply not going anywhere. There's nothing new coming to the servers, so if you want to take years to finally get around to raiding Naxxramas, that's fine. If you want to gradually get to Rank 14 in PvP, sure, take your time.*

That's the thing about Azeroth in Classic Era: sure, it's static, but it also means the entire place is relevant. (Yes, even Azshara.) You don't have to worry about broad areas of the game being cast aside and not played by 99% of the player base because it's not part of the latest expansion, because there simply aren't any expansions.

My Questing Buddy and I have discussed at length the only weakness in Classic Era: the lack of TBC Era or Wrath Era servers. If you've read this blog during the period of TBC Classic, you know I have issues with The Burning Crusade expansion, but to be perfectly honest the issues were less with the expansion itself but more with my interactions with my guild and its transition into a hardcore Meta-driven raiding guild.** If we'd have been given the opportunity to keep our old toons in TBC Era, I would have done it if for nothing else than to give me a chance to enjoy TBC on my own terms without the external pressure to be something I'm not.

As far as my Questing Buddy goes, she loved how the Warlock played in TBC Classic, but probably even more than that she missed her Draenei Priest, who became her main in Wrath Classic.

So when I logged into Classic Era the evening after the 30th Anniversary video release, I should have known she had opinions on the matter.

"CARDY!!"

"hey there"

"There's gonna be new Fresh Servers that go to TBC!!!"

Yeah, you could say she was excited.

***

I'm somewhat less enthusiastic, because I don't intend to give up Classic Era. If these servers become --or transition to-- TBC Classic Era servers, I'd be fine with that. I suspect, however, that they'll move on to Wrath Classic just like the current progression Classic servers do. And since they're Fresh servers, I won't be able to transfer my original Cardwyn over either. I would have to do all the things she'd done, and I'm not sure I really want to. 

But in the end I did agree with my Questing Buddy that I'd spend about half of my WoW time in these new servers. I suspect that among our friend group I'll be the last person to L60, because I do dawdle a bit when I don't have a goal in mind. 

*You can't de-rank in Classic Era due to inactivity; that was part of a change to the PvP ranking system put in place in Era presumably to combat the issues with a lack of people playing Era servers when they first appeared. The changes made also make it harder to get to Rank 10 and beyond, but I've learned to cope with that. After all, I never got past Rank 9 in original 2019 Classic.

**I think the biggest loss for me in that TBC Classic period was how that naked pursuit of hardcore playstyles wrecked relationships in the guild. I should have never accepted a raid leadership position, because I was exposed to the conflicts within guild leadership which manifested in a fracturing of the guildies. That I was one of the Leftovers, the leveling Shamans abandoned when the Dark Portal opened, didn't help. I would have been much better off staying separate, within the confines of my old guild Retail Orphans, and tried to hold onto Cardwyn as my main instead of volunteering to level a Shaman instead.

These Aren't the Toons You're Looking For. Move Along...

I haven't been writing much about any adventures in MMOs lately --okay, for the past couple of months at least-- but to be perfectly honest, there's not much to report. 

Okay, last weekend was Alterac Valley
weekend, so there's that...

There's also been my Questing Buddy and I sneaking into the 20 person raid Zul'Gurub to farm Bloodvine...

Like a god is going to listen to me...

Or just hanging around at Darnassus, watching the Trade and LFG Chat and doing some buffing of people as they go by.

I have to admit that guild advertisement for
"Vanilla" (in the chat window) was pretty damn good.

One thing I've not been doing much? This.

This was on my login screen the other day.

That's pretty much the extent of Classic's participation in the anniversary events, and Classic Era has none of that going on at all.

I suppose I could have watched the video today, but I really don't see any reason to do so. The only time Blizzard cares about Classic Era is when they want to "improve" things without consulting the player base, or when they update Season of Discovery and break things in Classic Era as a consequence. The widely rumored official Classic Fresh servers are likely to have been announced, but given that I've already got toons on Classic Era I'm not sure if I'd bother with going to a new series of servers at this time.

In the meantime some of the people in my friend group have migrated to mainly playing Retail since you can solo almost everything in the game now --yeah, they don't like pugs, and they don't push Heroic or Mythic content. Even my Questing Buddy has been playing Retail a bit with her husband, while another member of the friend group has poked their nose into Cataclysm content a bit.

As for me, the deck took priority, and now that I'm done with that I'm just going to chill for the most part. Well, if the Horde calls me "That fucking crazy ass Mage", I'm fine with that too...

We were stomping them pretty good in this battleground.

Maybe I ought to play a bit of Baldur's Gate 3. I haven't touched that game in months, so I'm still in the Shadow Touched Lands. Well, I also have some studying to do, because there's a test I'd like to take sometime before Spring, but whenever I sit down with the books in question --yes, there's more than one-- I end up falling asleep. I really need to read at lunchtime or something...

There's probably somebody who reads the blog
who recognizes this small part of the book.

EtA: Corrected grammar.

Channeling My Inner Boss

I've been dipping my toe back into some raiding. Nothing crazy, mind you, just regular old Molten Core on Wednesday nights. One of our little group got into that MC on his Paladin, and when I happened to login earlier than usual on that Wednesday, he asked if I wanted to come. My wife was already beat and was going to bed early, so I said sure.

Hmm... Have I been here before?

It didn't hurt that the Good Twin got a couple of pieces of gear, the Azuresong Mageblade --it's made for a Mage, because it has "Mage" in the name!-- and the (Mage Tier 1) Arcanist Bracers. Between those two pieces of gear --plus an offhand I had obtained as a reputation piece via Alterac Valley-- my damage on an unbuffed per Frostbolt hit went from mid-600s to mid-700s. Which ain't so insignificant when you think about it.

***

There's also been all sorts of sneaky activities that my Questing Buddy and I have gotten ourselves into.

Because I simply can't keep my mouth shut.

She and I --on my old Classic Rogue, Azshandra-- have been sneaking into Zul'Gurub and picking herbs, hoping for Bloodvine to drop. 

In case you're wondering, Az's spec is a customized mixture of Combat and Subtlety. I designed it so that I could go just far enough into Subtlety to pick up Improved Sap and then into Combat to get the bonuses for dual wielding daggers. (Oh no, a Dagger Rogue! And a non optimized one, too!)

Eh, it works for me. She's not raiding. As a bonus, she has advantages in stealth that a regular Combat Rogue would never have, and that means she can help my Questing Buddy with Operation Bloodvine.

When we're not dead, that is.

There's a reason why I'm still hidden.

Those of keen eyesight among you might notice that my Questing Buddy's Druid doesn't have any real gear on, and that's because she'd died enough times that her gear broke.

The idea is that we target an herb node, she casts heals on herself, mounts up, and pulls the nearby mobs. Then I stealth in and grab the herbs and any nearby Hoodoo Piles, then stealth away before the mobs come back. She typically manages to avoid the mobs long enough to find a reset point, but as you can see above she occasionally pulls too many enemies or she runs into one during her escape.

Still, the reward of Bloodvine for some of the best non-raid gear in Classic Era is worth it. The Bloodvine 3-piece cloth set is great for Warlocks and Mages up through Blackwing Lair, and only starts being replaced in the AQ40 T2.5 set pieces. Back in the Fall of 2020, once I obtained my Bloodvine set on OG Cardwyn, I kept it until I began getting replacement pieces in Naxxramas.* My Questing Buddy was hunting for Bloodvine to make the set for herself, but Bloodvine alone is worth a pretty penny on the Auction House. 

So the lure of "free gold" --minus the gear repair bills-- is strong.

When my Questing Buddy is running back from having died, I find myself with time on my hands. So I've taken up dancing and singing while hidden. Because I can.

Yes, I remember Born in the USA quite well.
Between that album, Purple Rain, 1984, and
a host of other classic albums, 1984 was a good year.

***

Oh! And I ran into an old friend in Feralas.

Fancy meeting you here.

It's good to see Rexxar out and about like this, and not tied up at a Horde-only base in Outland.

***

And, uh, this person is back too.

/sigh

Sometimes you just can't win.

*Why is it so good? Because the Bloodvine set has two distinct advantages over most other gear: it has superior spellpower bonuses, and it also has hit bonuses. If you want to go raiding, a Mage has to get to roughly +17 to their Hit bonus to reach the cap and have the greatest chance of hitting a raid boss that's roughly 3 levels higher than you. The Bloodvine set alone gets you a +4 to Hit, netting you a quarter of the bonuses you need to become "Hit Capped". The drawback is that there are absolutely no Stamina bonuses to the Bloodvine set, so you don't have even close to as much health as wearing Tier raid gear will get you. That is.... kind of deadly in places such as Blackwing Lair or AQ40.

EtA: Apparently I can't spell the word "keen". Fixed.

How Much Choice is Too Much?

One of the reasons why I prefer an MMO such as WoW Classic Era is that it simply doesn't have that much choice when it comes to in-game activities.

Sure, you can go wherever you want in the two continents, you can go into dungeons, Battlegrounds, and raids (if high enough level), and you can even do some repeatable quest grinding out in Silithus if you're so inclined. Or just hang around and fish or just kill things. It sounds like a lot, but compared to a lot of other MMOs it isn't.

Even compared to other video games it isn't that much.

In the early part of the Summer, I played through My Time at Sandrock, the sequel to My Time at Portia. 

That was about the best I could do to create
another Redbeard. Considering I was supposed
to be a "youngster" of about 18-20-ish, it'll do.

Compared to the original game, the new one has several quality of life advancements and presents more of the post-apocalyptic world than ever before. The story, while a bit grimmer than that found in My Time at Portia, is well done.* If you've ever played a sort of building / creating game such as My Time at Sandrock, you know that romancing and potentially marrying a character is a big part of the game. 

And that, my friends, is where I fell down on the job.

There are potentially 21 romanceable options to choose from, and based on my own personal preferences I've whittled it down to 9.** Well, I couldn't make a decision, so I kept putting it off and putting it off, and then... The game ended. 

Damn.

That wasn't what I had in mind. I was going to focus on someone, but I found the options presented to me so appealing that I couldn't make a choice before the game ended.*** All of the characters spoke to different aspects of my personality and what I found attractive, yet no single option presented itself above all others. 

Again, in my experience real life doesn't operate like a video game in that manner --the Tinder-fueled appeal of hookups notwithstanding****-- so when you get right down to it, I had nine options to choose from and I couldn't select one. When everything has a certain level of appeal, trying to decide which option to choose leads to a form of analysis-paralysis.

***

This is not a new phenomenon, as it's been studied before. One of the more recent studies, conducted by researchers from the University of Buffalo's Department of Psychology, discusses how trying to make a choice between options that have a high level of importance make people freeze with indecision based on the number of choices presented. Maybe selecting what you want for dinner from a menu may not be a life altering choice, but if you present it in the context of a first date or a business lunch with a client, the stakes are raised and selecting poorly may cost you in other ways.

Or, to put it another way, take a look at Covenants in a recent Retail WoW expansion, Shadowlands.

You'd think that Blizz or Wowhead would have a usable
graphic, but nooo.... I had to go to a boosting service's
website, Boosting Ground, to find a good version.
Still, just remember that you're DEAD if you're looking
at this. Well, theoretically so, and handwaving is involved.

When you reach the end of the main questline where you have visited and quested in all four Covenants, you're asked to choose one. One of those four would provide a good buff to your abilities, but if you choose the wrong one, you originally had to work hard in-game to be able to switch Covenants to the "correct one". 

If you don't have any knowledge of which Covenant to select --"What is this Wowhead you speak of?"-- you kind of just have to wing it. Knowing WoW players as any MMO player worth their salt does, if you don't pick the "correct" one you're going to get crapped on in group content. And let's be honest, switching Covenants as originally designed would have put you far enough behind any friends you play with that, well... Yeah, the stakes are pretty high here.

Sucks to be you, homie. 

                    --Blizzard, probably

So while the number of choices isn't high, the stakes were high enough that the potential was there to simply freeze with indecision.

Blizzard eventually learned their lesson and eased the restrictions on Covenant selection, lowering the stakes a bit, but one place where they haven't really learned their lesson is in the volume of activities found in Retail WoW.

***

In Retail WoW you don't suffer from a lack of things to do.

This is no means an exhaustive list, but off the top of my head as a Classic Andy here's what you can do in Retail WoW:

• Quests
• Main Questline
• Leveling Questline
• Max Level Questline
• Side Quests
• Daily Quests
• Weekly Quests
• Monthly Quests (are these still a thing?)
• Grind Reputation(s)
• Darkmoon Faire
• Transmog Collecting
• Professions
• Crafting Orders
• Weeklies (no more dailies, is that correct?)
• Just craft/gather to sell (or wait for a queue to pop)
• Delves
• Dungeons
• Normal
• Heroic
• Mythic+ (Coming soon!)
• Raids (Coming soon!)
• LFR
• Normal
• Heroic
• Mythic
• Battlegrounds
• Arenas
• Various 2x2 through 5x5
• Solo Shuffle (have I got that right?)
• World PvP
• Marked as PvP (or whatever it's called now)
• Duelling
• Are there flying races that could technically be put in here?
• Pet Battles (Is this still a thing?)
• OLD STUFF
• Things to do from previous expansions
• Level an alt
• Sit in a capital city and talk smack on Trade Chat

On the face of it, all of this choice must be good, right?

But to me, I look at this list and kind of mildly freak out. It's like going to Jungle Jim's here in Cincinnati and trying to figure out what hot sauce to buy:

Look, this is only half of their display; the other
side has just as many different hot sauces.
From Reddit, but since I go several times a year,
I can confirm that this is accurate.

If you know what you want, great. If you're planning on following whatever Wowhead or Icy Veins tells you to do, kudos. If your guild has already mapped out what you should do --and you're fine enough with being told explicitly what you're supposed to do with your time-- go for it. But if you're new, interested in trying something new, or you have no particular choice in mind, well... Good luck with that.

Yes, this list above does cover a wide range of activities, but if you're new/returning to the game, the number of choices alone can induce analysis-paralysis.

Or you feel like you have to do all the things, and that induces burnout. Just ask Battle for Azeroth or Shadowlands veterans about all of the activities you were expected to do if you were on a raiding team, as if you were just checking off boxes on a daily checklist at work, and they'll tell you the burnout was real.*****

All of these choices might not be readily apparent to long-time players, because they've slowly been added to over the years and as a consequence they're used to them. It's only when you take a step back, walk away for a while, and then return do you realize just how much there is to do and how it can easily confuse people. And that's not even counting all of the systems changes over the years. 

The problem is that the game is going to be 20 years old in a few months, and 20 years is a long time for a video game to acquire baggage. But every time Blizzard actually cuts things from the game --didn't this happen with trimming abilities back in Warlords or Legion or something?-- you get a certain subset of the player base who goes absolutely ballistic. 

The thing is, to grow the game Blizzard will have to do something about this huge list. Something will have to get trimmed out, and some players are going to get butthurt about it. Otherwise, Blizzard will only cater to those who have kept up with the game, and that's a finite number of people. Those people over the years have already prioritized and ranked what they're going to focus on, so they don't have the analysis-paralysis that new or returning people will have. 

Unless someone already has things planned out for you...

To be honest, I'd imagine that there will be
a Generative AI solution for all of this work
in a year or two. Just have an addon play
the game for you and do all of the busy work
before you need to re-engage in time for raiding.
From Maru and Reat via Reddit.

*I can see that --in terms of gameplay-- people may look at Sandrock and think it's pretty much exactly like Portia. That being said, story-wise there's quite a few differences. Well, that and the personalities involved. The moment I arrived at Sandrock, I took an instant dislike to my new boss and I liked the other new builder, which was the reverse of what I experienced at Portia. There are twists and turns to the story, and there were at least a few times where it went in a direction I didn't expect. 

**Of course, real life doesn't work like that, but bear with me on this one.

***Yes, the game does apparently continue after the credits, but... Come on. The game ended. That's like the "Just one more turn..." option in Civ IV after you win the game. You've already ridden off into the sunset, so to speak, so whatever you do doesn't really change anything.

****I could go into a long post on how my psyche works in terms of the hookup culture and how on the surface it might seem fun but that hookups aren't appealing to me, but that's not something I'm going to talk about. Besides, My Time at Sandrock isn't a hookup-fueled game anyway; you first have to become a friend with the person and then you can move into a relationship. That is, if the person agrees to do so, as some of your romance options can push you off and say "nope, not now, I'm busy" or "maybe later" or something to that effect. In that respect, that can be more representative of real life than the "you hit 8 hearts and now they'll say yes" that you get in some games such as Stardew Valley. Even if you do enter a relationship, there's no guarantee that they'll agree to marry you in the end either. (I found that out in My Time at Portia.)

*****As in most expansions, if you come back to it after it's been supplanted by newer expacs, you'll find things not that bad. That confuses the point, however, since you don't have to grind and grind and scrape your way through upwards of two years of doing similar things on an endless treadmill, so yeah it feels better. I discovered that doing the Quel'Danas grind was not my cup of tea in TBC Classic when you have people in guild and outside of guild yelling at people to DO YOUR DAILIES! to progress the story in the Isle. But when I did it on my own back in Cataclysm, I had fun just noodling around Quel'Danas. My past self would never have believed you if you told him what happened in TBC Classic.

Wake Me Up When September Ends*

We are now into September, but as far as weather goes that doesn't mean much.

What it does mean is that Blaugust is over, and I participated without ever signing up or mentioning it directly in a post.

Yeah, it's kind of hipster-ish to participate by not participating, but I've found that when I do explicitly participate in something by signing up for it --I'm looking at you, NaNoWriMo-- I never actually get close to actually doing much. Therefore, I decided if I was going to try to post once per day for an entire month, I was going to do it my way and without drawing any sort of attention to myself.

When you throw in the several trips that I've had this month, including the Big One up to Milwaukee, I'm surprised that I pulled it off. Another funny thing is that since I don't play Retail WoW, I didn't rely upon the new expansion's release to fill my content. Based on the tags I put out, I only had four posts that referenced Retail WoW, the second one being the only one that addressed my dislike of the direction the Modern game has taken.**

I kind of wrote about things that were of interest to me, such as re-discovering some of the radio material in storage and some of the adventures I had as people returned to Classic Era and began playing Alterac Valley once more. 

What you don't see very much of are adventures pertaining to more "traditional" MMO activity, such as leveling, questing, raiding, dungeon running, etc. I don't level alts much at all, which I already covered, and I don't really want to bother with a regular raiding schedule either. I'm fine with simply hanging around and not doing much; this is a form of social media that I'm fine with. If I did play Retail WoW right now, I'd probably be one of those people who would just level a toon by fishing, because I really don't need to rush out and do all the things (or see the content).

I mean, I am that guy who leveled a toon to max level in TBC Classic by not setting foot in Outland.

I still have the proof of that.

Actually, that does bring up the question as to how slow can you intentionally level in Retail WoW and still be considered to be "leveling"? I know of DoubleAgent and their factionless Pandaren who has leveled to max level by just gathering herbs and ore in the Pandaren starting zone, but is that really the slowest way to level? Can you go even slower? If you go even slower, you could probably level so slowly that by the time you get to the starting point for the current expansion the price of The War Within would be 75% off or more. When I last was in Retail, I leveled the original Azshandra from scratch at the beginning of Mists, and by the time I was ready to head out to Pandaria it was nine months or more after release. Actually, if you level slow enough, you could level so slowly that you don't even have to pay for The War Within, because the pre-patch for the next expac would be released.

Hmm... I wonder...

Of course, I could just fish in Classic Era and do effectively the same thing.

***

Still, looking ahead, September is going to be busy all by its lonesome. I'll be working on the deck some more, probably going to at least one of my youngest's concerts down at UofL, and my wife is already getting itchy to visit our oldest up in Milwaukee.

And somewhere in the middle of all that I'd like to actually relax a bit.

*Holy crap. That Green Day song is 20 years old.

**As for the 'Green Eggs and Ham' crowd of 'try it and you might like it', I've seen enough cutscenes to know that I don't like it without playing the game at all. (In fact, I didn't 'play' the game much from early Cataclysm until I officially stopped playing in 2014, but I instead only played Battlegrounds.) My dislike of the PvE game has nothing to do with how a class feels or the quest design or systems or anything like that; I'm sure if you play that you'll like it. I simply don't like playing a godlike character. Well, that and after 20 years I begin to ask the "doesn't this seem like an awful lot of world-ending events to happen to one world over the course of 20 years?" type of questions. I'm sure there's some in-game handwaving there too, like "well, all the other titans are dead so Azeroth is this one special place where they can be birthed once more." (I'm going off of The Last Titan as the name of the last of the trilogy of expansions; I have no understanding of anything regarding the story since... probably late Cataclysm?)

EtA: Grabbed the wrong screencap. The original screencap was for me hitting L68, as proof that I could go to Outland. I replaced it with the one for L70 itself.

#Blaugust2024

Rawr, She Said

My Questing Buddy has been going into Alterac Valley with me the past week, as she has her eye on some gear that you can buy once you become Exalted with the Stormpike Guard. I know she'd had a rough time in Warsong Gulch in TBC Classic when one of her BiS pieces was available from the Silverwing Sentinels, but I think I might have miscalculated how her competitiveness was going to surface in AV.

#Blaugust2024

Wicked Mortals!

I have been enjoying the opportunity to play Alterac Valley this past week, and Friday night my Questing Buddy and I participated in something I haven't in quite a while...

The summoning of Ivus, the Forest Lord:

Needless to say, we won this one.

Yeah, I didn't make the leaderboard, but I also was holding down Iceblood Graveyard so that we could keep our side in the fight. Sometimes, the smarter thing to do is do the small things so that the team can win.

#Blaugust2024

Sigh. Really? Again?

Sometimes oddball stuff just happens.

Saturday night, I wasn't doing much, just hanging out in Darnassus in between Alterac Valley runs. 

Or a raid. Or a dungeon run. Or...
You get the idea.

Until this happened...

I looked up from my typing and found this:

Yeah, your eyes don't deceive you, she was up close in my grill:

I wasn't planning on moving, but I certainly entertained the thought. Of course, that could be what she wanted, so I flirted back just to call her bluff.

But nothing happened. She didn't respond, and neither did I. Since I knew the Alterac Valley Battleground was going to pop in probably 5 minutes or less, I decided to just stand there and watch a YouTube video with WoW up in the background until that happened.

It was an uncomfortable silence.

But then the BG finally alerted, so I winked and went to the Battleground:

I haven't seen her since.

Good riddance.

#Blaugust2024

Thoughts on Leveling in WoW Part 2: What if we go off the rails a bit...?

Here's an interesting thought: what if Blizzard simply eliminated leveling entirely in Classic Plus and made everything skill based?

As in: if you do something --blacksmithing, fighting with a sword, casting spells, etc.-- your skill ranks go up. If you get high enough skill ranks, you can wield better gear, but that gear doesn't impact your abilities nearly as much as your own skill ranks do. The primary focus of the game is doing things so you get better at them. 

But here's the kicker: you can't get better at those things in instances or in PvP. You have to get better at your skills by doing quests out in the open world. Each quest is assigned a skill level --for example, the quest to kill Defias Pillagers in Westfall would be a skill rank of 30-- and if your weapon skill you're using to kill the Defias Pillagers is less than 30, it would be harder to accomplish because the Pillagers would have more weapon skill than you. But if you head back to beating on lesser enemies for a while to get your skill up, you'll find that those Pillagers are a lot easier since you are now equal to or higher than their own weapon skill. In one respect your skills are similar to class levels, but your skill ranks don't go up after completing a quest (you do get gear and/or gold for that). You go up in skill ranks by performing actions out in the world irrespective of whether you're doing the quests.

If you want gold or gear, do the quests. If you just want better skill, go beat on enemies out in the field.

If you want to gain skill ranks faster, kill enemies above your skill rank or perform actions that stretch your capabilities. People are used to that if they try to farm something in WoW (such as ore or herbs) and fail. If you only stick to killing enemies worse than you, you gain skill ranks more slowly or not at all. And if you're grouped up, the number of hits you make on an enemy determines your skill rank adjustment, so you can't join a group where one person pulls the entire dungeon, killing enemies so you get the XP.

That would eliminate the boosting process, because the only way you would be able to get better and yet not be the person doing the work would be to have someone take over your account and do it for you, which would not only be dangerous to your personal finances but likely a violation of your Terms of Service. 

However, that would also require compelling gameplay and story to drive people's interest in playing, and let's be fair, Blizzard has had its ups and downs as far as crafting a good story.

I'm probably overthinking this, because Blizz is never going to deviate from their tried and true methodology of levels and XP acquisition, because there are too many people who like it just the way it is. They may complain about it --okay, WoW players complain about everything-- but when push comes to shove they aren't giving it up one bit.

#Blaugust2024

Thoughts on Leveling in WoW Part 1: Forgotten Fun

The main reason why I enjoy WoW's Classic Era is that the leveling process is slow and steady.

Yes, it can be grindy, but the basic design of Vanilla WoW was that leveling was a good portion of the game, and the WoW community in general has moved on from that perspective to a primary focus on Endgame. If that weren't the case, in-game boosts and leveling guides and even externally paid level boosts* wouldn't exist. 

For all people like to claim that it's not the destination, it's the journey, we certainly see plenty of people ignoring that journey in their rush to get to the end.

Thank you, Prince Humperdinck.
From Imgflip and The Princess Bride.

But for me, the slow yet steady leveling pace of Classic Era takes all of the pressure off of me. I know where I'm going, but I already have been to the mountain, so I'm not worried about how quickly I get there.

And besides, I only know how to play two classes in Era --Mage and Rogue-- so I'd have to start from scratch to learn how to play a new class.** Nowhere better to start than in a game that has the journey as one of the key design pillars. 

***

I realize that even in Classic Era I'm in the minority, judging by the number of people who get boosted or advertise for boosts. The reality is that I can't make somebody like a leveling experience if they're predisposed to not enjoy it, and it is foolish to try. All I can do is point out that the pace of leveling in Classic Era is perfect for Classic Era. Accelerating it, as has been done in Season of Discovery, only served to push people to whatever the Endgame was at each phase of the seasonal release. Given that Classic Era doesn't have all that many things to do at Endgame, there's an increased risk of losing your players because "there's nothing to do!"

Still, I need to point out that the leveling environment in Classic Era just works. You get a few levels, you have to spend gold to train. Your gold is depleted, so you go craft or gather and sell on the market, go out and quest some more, and go up a few levels. Rinse and repeat.

There's only one major area where this breaks down, and it's the low L40s. Questing kind of dries up for a while because the quest chains out of Dustwallow Marsh and Azshara were left in an incomplete state, and the major instance to visit, Uldaman, has low L40s content only in the first half of the dungeon. Once you hit the mid-L40s, the rest of Uldaman becomes viable and Zul'Farrak and Maraudon open up. 

But I'm willing to give Blizzard a mulligan on that gap, because overall the game simply works.

Life is a journey too, and I'd hate to wake up one day at 80 years old, look around, and say, "What did I miss?"

*Whether to Blizzard or some nebulous third party.

**I did that in TBC Classic as an Enhancement Shaman, but only at a highly accelerated rate. Were it not for those low levels, however, I'd not know how to play Enhancement at all.

#Blaugust2024

A Returning of Sorts

Under the header of "Everything is Cyclical", people are returning to WoW Classic Era.

How do I know, you might ask?

Because we actually have Alterac Valley Battlegrounds being played when it isn't even AV Weekend.

What you see here are the number of Alterac Valley Battlegrounds in the mid-afternoon on a Monday. 

For six months or more, the number of AV Battlegrounds you'd see --no matter the time of day-- would be ZERO. Unless, of course, it's AV Weekend, where you get bonus honor for playing Alterac Valley on those days.

This past weekend was most definitely not AV Weekend, yet there were on average three or so AV battlegrounds happening concurrently. Even at 1 AM Server Time. It felt good to see that BG window pop within 15 minutes, whereas it had been simply not popping at all. 

I don't know the reason why people are coming back to play in Era once more (go ahead and post your wild speculations in the comments if you're inclined) but it is good to see them here. 

#Blaugust2024

How to Rest on Your Laurels

OG Cardwyn is finished, gear-wise, for Classic Era. That's not exactly a surprise to anyone who knows that this particular toon was there to see Kel'Thuzad die*, and she had enough DKP at the end of Vanilla Classic to splurge and get the full T3 set.**

Okay, so she didn't get the Wraith Blade, which was BiS if you weren't in line to get the Atiesh legendary staff, but that's not a big deal. I think our raid team had more Atiesh staves created (2) at the end of Vanilla Classic than Wraith Blade drops (1), and that's saying a lot about the quality of our raid drops.

The traditional World of Warcraft reason why someone would want to play a toon, to get gear and/or complete a raid, is not really there. And if I were the sort to stand around and show off my stuff, I'd not be hanging out in Darnassus, the least active Alliance city, like I traditionally do. 

But I do spend a decent amount of my time in Classic Era logged in to her.

***

OG Cardwyn, the Evil Twin, does have her uses. Okay, 90% of the time those uses involve her being used as a DPS mule...

The Good Twin could have handled this fight
too, but due to the punier damage and smaller
mana pool would it have been more of a challenge.

...but I don't mind. While it's nice to see enemies melt a lot faster than on the Good Twin, the main reason to bring OG Cardwyn to a fight is because her mana pool is large enough that I don't have to drink to recover mana nearly as much.

***

Honestly, I prefer to simply do things on the Good Twin simply because I like Frost Mages better than Fire Mages. I could change the Evil Twin to being a Frost Mage, but... Eh, I don't mind having two mages with two separate specializations. If I ever wanted to join an AQ40 or Naxxramas raid, the Evil Twin is available for use. And given that I figure the best geared I can get the Good Twin while still remaining as a Frost Mage is the gear out of AQ40***, I'm kind of fine with how things are as-is. 

Is there anything I might want, or want to do in Classic Era, Mage-wise? Trying for Atiesh, maybe?

Eh, no thanks. 

There are three four reasons for that lack of interest in the original caster legendary staff:

• To get in line for Atiesh, I would have to join a raid team actively raiding Naxxramas and likely raid twice a week at minimum to get in line for Atiesh. I really don't have the time I can presently dedicate to raiding at that level, hardcore or not, so it'd be silly to sign up and then have to constantly put myself on the bench.
  
  
• If I want to get Atiesh, I have to prove myself to any prospective raid team. Just because I have the gear doesn't mean that I'm "good enough" to get to the front of the line for Atiesh. After all, I was Fourth out of Six Mages, DPS-wise, and of the three Atiesh staves that our raid team eventually built our top Mage was actually the last of the three people to receive their Atiesh, that coming after the Dark Portal opened.**** If I wanted to justify receiving an Atiesh, I would have to do more than just show up and do my job; I'd have to get sweaty, and I'm not doing that.
  
  
• This is admittedly personal, but I think that Atiesh looks as ugly as hell; until I examined it more closely I thought it was a walking stick with a sulfur ball stuck on the end of it. 
  
  
  

  

  Kind of like this, but without James Burke.
  A screencap from Connections Episode 2,
  "Death in the Morning", at roughly 28:03.

  
  I now know that's it's a carving of a raven on top, but it still looks ugly to me. 
  
  
• I really just don't want it and everything it represents. I'm one of those people who zig when everybody zags, and I look at Atiesh and instead of looking at the staff as an achievement I think of all of the politics that have to be played to actually get one. For my money, I'd rather keep my hands clean and pass on all of that crap.*****

***

So, I've got a toon that doesn't really "need" anything. But I do login as her and just hang out; watching the chat channels, buffing baby Night Elf characters as they run by, and helping out my friends as-needed. And that's fine; I don't have to be doing anything when I login, and I've found that I derive a lot of joy from merely being present in the game. 

*Just how many times had he died canonically? Three? Four? I'm thinking three, unless he makes a reappearance in WoW after the Mists of Pandaria expansion.

**For reference, the full Tier 3 sets for Vanilla Classic are different than that in subsequent raid tiers in that the full set is nine pieces, including the ring that you can get as a drop. The so-called 'full set bonus' is for eight pieces; while OG Cardwyn does have all nine pieces, she isn't wearing the belt as the belt that came out of AQ40 is better for Fire Mages.

***For the most part, the three piece Bloodvine set are the best Chest, Legs, and Boots until a Mage reaches AQ40 and gains access to the (so-called) Tier 2.5 gear, the Enigma Set. Typically, that's also when a Mage will switch from Frost specialization to Fire due to the inherent bonuses with stacking several Fire Mages together. That being said, I know of some guild raid teams who let people bring their Frost Mages into AQ40 and Naxxramas. That latter one does puzzle me quite a bit, given that Frost is definitely at a disadvantage there in the same way that a Fire Mage has real damage problems in Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. But hey, those guilds are sticking to their "bring the class/spec you want" credo.

**** Yes, a Warlock and a Resto Druid were ahead of all of the Mages. Typically a person tagged to receive Atiesh is not merely the highest DPS or healer, but performs services to the guild above and beyond the average raider. In the case of the first two Atiesh staves, they went to a co-Guild Leader and the Guild Officer who ran all of the non-progression raids for the guild.

*****You are talking to someone who had an Onyxia Head in OG Card's bank that I'd completely forgotten about. I rediscovered it in Era while I was moving items around to free up some bank space, and when I mentioned the head to my Questing Buddy, she told me "I'm not surprised."

EtA: Corrected a few sentences.

#Blaugust2024

If We Had The Chance

Can it be that it was all so simple then
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we? Could we?

--The Way We Were, Barbara Streisand (Written by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman, and Marvin Hamlisch)

The other day I was helping out my Questing Buddy with a run through Uldaman --that mid-L40s dungeon out in the Badlands that is actually the archaeological excavation of a titan city-- when I mentioned something amusing I saw when I got to the Ironforge Flight Point to head out.

"One of the people from [the guild I occasionally help out with Onyxia] was here at the Ironforge FP and they did a keyboard turn as I ran by on OG Card," I reported. "It was as if they saw my full Tier 3 set and said, 'Wait, isn't that the Mage who never reserves anything in Ony?"

"LOL"

I'm sure I got recognized, since that Mage Tier 3 set is pretty distinctive, and having it also means that I was raiding Naxxramas in Vanilla Classic long enough to actually get the full set. In a 40 person raid where you have --on average-- 5-6 Mages, 3 Warlocks, and 3-4 Priests vying for the same drops-- you're competing with over 1/4 of the raid to get 9 pieces of gear.

Too bad I didn't say out loud "I'm the EVIL twin!!" before I took the FP, but because my brain only thought of that now, oh well.

"Maybe they're waiting on the T6 set," my Questing Buddy added.

"They'll be waiting a long time for that," I replied. We both knew that the T6 set was released in Burning Crusade, and Classic Era is permanently set at Vanilla Classic.

After a short pause, I said, "I never got a T6 set. Or a T5 set, for that matter."

"Neither did I." 

Our TBC raid team disbanded after only one try in Sunwell Plateau*, and since I was Loot Manager for our raid, I was also aware of her struggles to get gear in the two Tier 5 raids, Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Cavern.

"IIRC, Tier 5 wasn't that good for Enhancement Shamans," I mused. "Maybe two of the pieces were good, but overall Tier 4 gear was more desirable."

"I didn't even get Tier 4 gear at all," she replied, "since Fire Spec Warlocks used the Spellfire set."

"Ah, the Tailored set?"

"Yep."

That was the set that required a Tailor to make Spellcloth every couple of days. While it's one of those 'it sounds great in theory' concepts to spread out the gear acquisition process, what ended up happening in TBC Classic was that people would fanatically level alts just for the purpose of cranking out tons of Spellcloth for their gear. I knew one Mage who actually had FIVE toons making Spellcloth so they could get the gear needed for raiding.** (Yes, they also had a 'normal' full time job.) Somewhere in the back of my head I would have liked to get that set for Cardwyn or Neve, but I looked at how sweaty people were at working for that set, threw up in my mouth a little, and walked away.

The next day, we were killing pirates in Stranglethorn Vale when talk about TBC Classic came up again. 

"I find it surprising, but I'm now kind of missing TBC Classic," I said. "It would be nice to go back and do things differently."

"What would you do differently?" my Questing Buddy asked.

"First thing is that I wouldn't switch to being an Enhancement Shaman," I replied with some heat.

She laughed.

"I'm a Mage, and while I love melee, I absolutely hated the totem-twisting rotation. If you were off by just a smidge everybody's DPS would tank. I know I'd lose my raid spot, but that'd be the case only on the hardcore guilds."

"Yeah, I'd do a lot of things differently," she added. "I loved Warlock Fire, and I hated giving that up to tank [Leotheras the Blind]."

"I don't miss raid leading." Being peripherally involved in guild leadership drama wasn't worth it, particularly the perception that we were the "casual" raid despite our once per week raid trying hard to keep up with the multi-day per week hardcore teams.

"I miss Jesup." Jes ran a lot of alt raids, and she was the one who originally created the Friday night Karazhan run before handing it off to me. She'd burned out on all those alt raids in TBC Classic, but she came back to run some in Wrath Classic.*** 

"How is she doing?" another of our friends asked.

"I haven't heard from her in months," I replied.

Now that we're a few years away from the end of TBC Classic, I find that I've come around to agreeing with Shintar's desire to have a few TBC Era servers around. For all those worried about the player base being fractured, to Blizzard a sub is a sub is a sub, so if they keep you "in the family" in some fashion rather than having you unsubscribe to go play FFXIV or Elder Scrolls Online during content droughts, then Blizz has succeeded.

Preach talks about the "keeping it in the family"

concept here, so it's not just me who thinks that...

I know I'm not the only one who misses the concept of TBC Era servers, given the community driven "fresh" server push on PvP-RP Classic Era servers, as highlighted by WillE here:

Apparently Microsoft/Zenimax is pushing hard

to promote ESO's Gold Road expansion with
all of these sponsorships...

He is right in that Vanilla Classic seems to be an evergreen thing, where there's continual interest in starting over every few years, but another part of it's appeal is that in an Era server you have all the freaking time in the world. You don't have to rush to the end and then start on the progression raiding treadmill because you know an expansion will be coming out in a few years. That's kind of why in LFG and Trade Chat there's an ongoing argument about why pay for a level boost when most of the Vanilla Classic experience is in the leveling itself. 

With Cataclysm Classic in full swing, there is now no ability to see the Old World + Outland + Northrend as it was, so Blizzard is effectively creating a demand by simply going through the progression of World of Warcraft's expansions. While it's not their primary motivation for creating Cataclysm Classic, I'm sure that the WoW Classic team is aware of it. I'm also completely sure that Blizz has at least kept an eye on the private server community to see if there's an uptick in interest in TBC and Wrath Classic servers. 

But we'll see. After my experience in TBC Classic, I never thought I'd be circling back to want to try it again, but here we are. Maybe it's a shot at redemption, or maybe it's a chance for me to finally get some closure from all of the shit that myself and the other leveling Shamans went through, but if I did go back it would be on my terms, not anybody else's.**** 

And that's a start.

 

*That's where you get the Tier 6 gear, along with Mount Hyjal and Black Temple.

**And to sell on the Auction House.

***I'd have loved to have run with her in those, but since she was doing them under the franken guild's name and some people I no longer respect participated, I refused to join. I'm not so desperate to raid that I was willing to overlook bad behavior, which judging by commentary in social media makes me feel like I'm some sort of unicorn.

****Even just writing that last paragraph gave me flashbacks to that insane month I spent and how miserable it was. Slaying that soul-sucking psychic vampire would be very much worth it. Now, where's my fucking wooden stake?

Like That Pat Benatar Song

Word disseminated across the Classic community a couple of months back that a bunch of older servers were going away --my original home of Myzrael-US among them-- and there were free migrations off of those servers to other locales.

My Myzrael-US toons had already migrated to Old Blanchy well over a year ago, where they sat while I began playing Classic Era on the Mankrik Cluster, but I figured I ought to move them before the opportunity was removed. 

The West Coast PvE destination for all of these toons was... Atiesh-US*, which has apparently been suffering from player loss as well. Since I already had a stable of toons on Atiesh-US, that wasn't much of an option. I'd have preferred to migrate my Old Blanchy toons to the RP-PvE server, Bloodsail Buccaneers-US, but that wasn't an option. So, I selected Pagle-US on the East Coast, and that was that.

Or so I thought.

Somewhere shortly after that migration, I began to wonder about the nascent Classic Era West Coast Cluster. After all, I'd saved a copy of the original Cardwyn on the Era version of Myzrael-US for posterity, and when the price dropped to $5 before the ability to save a toon on Era was lost forever I went ahead and saved my two bank toons and my Rogue, Azshandra, as well. These toons were sitting on a dead cluster when all the Era activity was on the East Coast Cluster, and I began to wonder if Blizz in their desire to get people to compress onto fewer Cataclysm Classic servers had also opened up free migrations in the Classic Era realms as well. I was absolutely not going to pay Microsoft to migrate the toons to the East Coast Cluster, but if it was free...

TL;DR: Migrations off of the West Coast were available for free.

The limitation is that you had to move your toon to Mankrik-US in Classic Era, but since I created my current Era toons on Pagle-US, that wasn't an issue.

So.... I now have two Cardwyns on the same Cluster. 

One is Fire,

Ignore the kinda-sorta icy glow.

and the other is Ice.

I SAID, the other is Ice.

That's better.

I still prefer the utility of Frost, but I can't deny the sheer firepower of Fire. That OG Cardwyn is practically at full best in slot, gear-wise, that also means that she brings the pain from that angle as well. I'd like to get newbie Cardwyn up to a much better gear level, but since I'm not planning on switching her from being a Frost Mage there is a certain ceiling to her damage potential. And that's fine. 

*That's the server where my franken guild moved to, and that's where Deuce (Cardwyn Mk. 2) resides.