More Hardcore Horde Adventures

I've continued to level my hardcore troll priest in small bursts of activity, and she's now up to level 20.

I initially struggled with more interface problems, as I could tell that I still wasn't seeing all the death announcements, even after joining the server-wide HardcoreDeaths channel. Some googling revealed that there's an additional drop-down in the in-game settings nowadays where you need to select how many deaths you want to see, and it's set to show only those of guild members by default.

I was happy when I finally got that sorted out and could see everything, as the discourse from the peanut gallery about deaths is always interesting. There were some raised eyebrows about a wipe in Ragefire Chasm for example, and when a level 52 died to fall damage in Tirisfal Glades there were exclamations along the lines of: "Why not wait five seconds for the zeppelin to actually dock, man?!"

Aside from that, guild chat sadly remains a bit confusing because they expect you to install an addon called "Greenwall" to connect it with the guild chat of sister guilds, which I've refused to do so far because I don't like the thought of having an extra addon just for that. That said, it makes reading guild chat a very disjointed experience right now as it's very obvious that people are frequently responding to things that I'm not seeing. I might cave eventually.

I've been surprised by how regular world buffs are dropping on hardcore. I think I mentioned this before, but still... I know that people raid on hardcore, but I figured it was more of a fringe activity considering the risk vs. reward. The number of world buffs going out on the regular seems to defy that assumption though.

After accidentally picking up some buffs in Orgrimmar one night, I decided to venture forth into Skull Rock at level 12. I knew that was probably a risky move, but I was feeling brave and was hopeful that I wasn't going to be the only person there. Indeed, I ran into a male troll hunter as soon as I turned the first corner. At first we continued fighting separately, just leap-frogging each other with our mob pulls, but then I spotted the rare elite warlock around a corner and suggested we group up to kill him. We did and then continued killing more together - grouping up is such a force multiplier in era (particularly as a priest!), it never ceases to amaze me.

Just as we were about to go out, a mage entered the cave and asked to join. I invited him, but of course he was only just starting his quests. The hunter thanked everyone politely and took his leave, but I stuck with the mage to help him get his quest done too. Then a druid showed up as well! I enjoyed the grouping experience, but at that point I was getting a bit worried that I 'd gotten myself caught in an endless loop of helping out new joiners. As if he'd read my mind, the mage said that he'd stay with the druid to help them complete their quest, but that I was free to go. I thanked everyone and took my leave, happy that the most deadly place in Durotar had gone so well for me.

Up next, I started questing in the Barrens. One funny experience I had there was when I was killing centaurs around the Forgotten Pools and a death announcement popped up that "a Stonearm" had killed someone at my location. For all the hours I've spent in the Barrens over the years, I had never heard of "a Stonearm" before, and I was rather alarmed to hear that this unknown entity was apparently killing people in my vicinity. A quick Wowhead search revealed him to be a rare centaur, and about five minutes later he killed another player. I was looking over my shoulder with some serious paranoia now, wondering whether he was a patroller or something, but he was not. I eventually spotted him guarding a chest near some tents but decided not to engage after the earlier carnage. When I came past the tents again a few minutes later, someone else had successfully killed him though.

At level 15 I wanted to run Ragefire Chasm. My first attempt to find a group in the evening wasn't successful - I saw that another group was already looking for a tank, so I didn't fancy my chances and went off to do something else. This turned out to be a good decision though, because when I logged in the following Saturday morning, I didn't even have enough time to type "LFG RFC" into chat before someone had already whispered me to ask whether I wanted to go there.

It was a smooth enough run, but it also highlighted to me that healing in hardcore feels like a much bigger responsibility than usual. We had a level 18 shaman tank, which was fine enough, but there was also a level 15 warrior with a two-hander and a mage that liked to go up close to spam Arcane Explosion, and they both got aggro on more than one occasion, which resulted in sudden damage spikes on them, and that at a point when I didn't yet have Flash Heal or anything... I think I saw the mage chug a healing potion once and when the warrior got low, the other shaman in the group threw him a quick off-heal. Usually I'd be mildly offended by people "panicking" like that as soon as someone's health drops below 50%, but in hardcore I understand wanting to be safe rather than perma-dead.

We also made the most out of the experience (seeing how you can do each dungeon only once per day) and even went to kill the troggs in the little cul-de-sac to the left, something I hadn't done in donkey's years.

We'll see how things develop as I go up in levels. I do love how much everyone seems to appreciate being buffed with a priest's fortitude. I do it all the time on the road and people will often stop what they're doing just to whisper me thanks - I like knowing that those extra HP might really help someone out in the world. My next personal goal is probably going to be to get into a Wailing Caverns run, but there's no rush.

Hardcore after the Hype

I'm in a bit of a funny place with WoW at the moment - a lot of things are happening and many of them good (in my opinion) but I'm still somewhat undecided on what I want out of Classic in specific right now. On a whim, I decided to pay the hardcore servers a visit again. It's been about six months since the death of Lossy the mage, so I was ready to give it another go.

I'm also slowly coming around to some of the arguments that people used to make to me about why they love hardcore - that it's not so much about the permadeath and more about how it changes levelling. I used to say that nothing stops you from taking your time levelling in "normal" Classic either and that I have indeed generally played that way, but I can't deny that the older Classic gets, the more it feels like a certain min-max culture starts to permeate every aspect of it, which can make slower and more casual play styles feel unwelcome. Sure, there were people like that in 2019 as well, but at the time I still felt that I could get away from their influence myself, while it seems harder now somehow.

Anyway, both hardcore realms in Europe at least are low population nowadays. Since I played Alliance on Stitches last time, I decided to create a troll priest on Nek'rosh this time around. The low population meant that my census addon no longer struggled to complete scans, though the numbers are still somewhat larger than those of the era PvE cluster. It also feels busier than era because characters are more spread out across the levels. On era, about 40% of all characters are at max-level, with many of them presumably raid-loggers, while the nature of hardcore means that people are constantly forced to roll up and level new characters, and less than ten percent of all characters my addon registered were level 60.

The addition of self-found mode at the end of February doesn't seem to have made much of a splash, though I did see a fair few characters with the buff in the starting area. I was surprised to find out though that Blizzard cut out the "solo" part of the challenge, so these characters can still group up too. Either way, this is something I'm definitely not interested in, as trade is an important part of earning money for me and I bought a wand from the auction house as soon as I could afford it.

When Blizzard released that video about the top ten causes of death in hardcore, it was noteworthy to me that most of them happened in Alliance starter zones. Looking at things from the Horde side, it definitely stood out to me how much less dangerous questing in Durotar seemed to be, with no caves full of kobolds or lakes guarded by murlocs. There are basically only two really deadly places: Skull Rock (which I've avoided so far) and Fizzle Darkstorm's camp. I was lucky and ran into a druid when I approached the latter, because even though I knew it was dangerous, I was still taken aback by Fizzle's almost instant respawn and how easy it was to aggro more and more adds... needless to say, if we hadn't grouped up, the druid and I most likely would've both been toast, but as it was we were fine.

In general all my interactions with other players have felt very positive. Drive-by buffing is alive and well, and someone randomly traded me some low-level herbs after they saw me making potions in the alchemy shop. A level 42 randomly whispered me to ask if I was French - not sure what that was about.

When I got a polite and unobtrusive invite to what's supposedly the server's biggest levelling guild, I took it. I was kind of missing the death announcements to be honest (and I didn't want to install the addon for that). Weirdly though, I still didn't see any even after joining the guild, even as I could see others responding to death announcements seemingly happening somewhere. Eventually I figured out that Blizzard apparently moved all death announcements to its own dedicated global channel called HardcoreDeaths, and for some reason it's not turned on by default. It was good to see that random deaths were still a thing after I joined it, though with a lower (and presumably more experienced) population they were few and far between compared to the craziness of hardcore's launch.

I'm not sure where this is going to go, if anywhere. Maybe I'll just die again in a few levels (which seems like a likely scenario, to be honest), but for the time being it's a nice distraction.

Level 15 in Season of Discovery

Season of Discovery has been out for less than a week but apparently the no-lifers have already run the BFD raid to death and are bored. I haven't heard any complaints in my guild, but I've certainly seen my share of min-maxers there as well and I've got to admit it makes me a bit anxious. I'd forgotten how quickly the threat of "being left behind" looms when you're playing with people like that, and I'm glad they at least have nowhere else to go past level 25 for now. I hope Blizzard stick to their guns and give this phase time to breathe, without being tempted into raising the level cap too soon just to appease certain loud voices.

My little undead priest is level 15 so far and probably won't get to 25 for a while as SWTOR is deploying a major patch today. In my last post I talked about how I found my second rune, but I didn't mention what it was: it's called "Homunculi" and conjures three little mini-yous to fight by your side. The spell's cooldown and duration are the same, so you can have them up all the time unless they die. They don't hit particularly hard, but they do apply some very useful debuffs to your enemy and can serve as life-saving distractions in tough situations. Though they also do the opposite sometimes, by running off to attack a random mob by themselves that you didn't actually want to fight. I'm not sure about the logic behind that... either way, it's a fun little spell.

Around level 12 I left Tirisfal to pick up all the quests for Ragefire Chasm. One of them has a pre-quest in Skull Rock in Durotar. I wrote a bit about just how deadly that place is in the context of the orc voidwalker quest, but it's well-known as the deadliest place on Horde side in hardcore mode as well. Still, all the knowledge in the world couldn't have prepared me for what I encountered there in SoD: it was absolute carnage.

The moment I stepped inside I found the whole floor littered both with dead NPCs and player skeletons. There were both people and hyperspawns everywhere, which led to the bizarre situation of it being both hard to tag things and easy to get overwhelmed by respawns at the same time. An orc shaman threw me a group invite which I immediately accepted; later we were joined by two hunters. I was quite happy to let them do most of the killing and just do some healing. They seemed quite pleased with that and responded with friendly emotes more than once. However, both of the hunters left quietly the moment they'd completed their quests, so then it was just me and the shaman again. At one point I died - no shade on the shaman there, as I said it was weirdly easy to get overwhelmed out of nowhere - but then he just looted his quest item and also dropped group quietly, leaving me to run back to my body by myself. I've got to admit that felt kind of crappy.

I later joined another group and eventually got my own quest item, plus one of the mobs dropped a third rune for me. All in all, I must have spent about three quarters of an hour in that cave though, which is definitely too long.

On the plus side, getting into a group for RFC was fast and easy after that. When everyone arrived at the instance entrance I asked who was tanking since it wasn't obvious, and it turned out to be a shaman. Funnily enough, my first thought was "ah yes, I guess at low levels shamans can tank too" and only my second thought was "oh wait, in SoD shamans are meant to be legitimate tanks". It was only then that I noticed that they had a buff on them that indicated increased health and threat. Their tanking seemed to involve totems somehow - I'm not sure how it worked, but they did a good enough job with it. We only had one scary moment when we accidentally overpulled and the tank died... however, I managed to survive with something like five hitpoints, so we were able to res up and continue.

While in Org, I also saw Monty again, the priest who first gave me the Loa buff in Tirisfal Glades, asking for someone to /pray and give him the two buffs again. It felt like proper karma to be able to return his favour so quickly.

I've now moved on to Silverpine but will probably start working on the Barrens soon, if nothing else to get ready for Wailing Caverns. I haven't found another rune since the one in Skull Rock... but my plan is to just go with the flow until 25, and maybe then look up what I missed.

I've also been levelling all my professions on the side because that's the kind of thing I always enjoy. I've been surprised by how easy it's been to find herbs; I would've expected every zone to be absolutely picked clean with how busy it's been, but maybe Blizzard just made the respawns really fast in this iteration of the game or herbalism is a less popular profession than it used to be.

I Started an Orc (Heritage)

I've been enjoying alt play a lot more in Dragonflight and have a whole bunch of them working on different things. One such alt is my orc warlock Kara. (Yes, apparently you can still get a plain four-letter name in modern WoW sometimes... creating the character on a low-pop server presumably helps.) I originally created her about two years ago because I wanted to see whether Exile's Reach was any different on Horde side compared to Alliance, to which the answer was no, which is why that didn't become a blog post. Then it occurred to me that I'd never seen the Horde-side story of Battle for Azeroth, which was completely different from Alliance side, so going through that content became her next purpose - this is a project that's still in progress.

The reason I made her an orc is that orcs are the only one of the original Horde races that I never played, mostly because I thought they were too ugly (sorry). Even if the ladies were very buff and all that, I just couldn't get over their weird little pug noses. However, I think it was after watching a video where someone was looking at all of the new character customisations that Blizzard added at some point in Shadowlands that I suddenly went: Wait, it's possible to make an orc now that I might actually enjoy playing? (The answer is yes!) I also made her a warlock because that's a class that never meshed with me in Vanilla, but which seems to have changed a lot in retail, and I just wanted to get an idea of what it was all about now.

Recently, when I was doing my research on heritage quest lines, I learned that many people considered the orc heritage chain one of the best ones, if not the best, so I thought getting Kara up to and through that chain might be another interesting thing to do with her.

And I gotta say, I can see why people like it, which is why I won't go into too many spoilers. It hits all the right buttons by having you go back to nostalgic locations in Durotar and featuring a lot of famous as well as lesser-known orc NPCs. It was interesting to see Thrall and his family again - I had no idea that his older son was almost a teenager (?) now. Based on how excited the lad was while following me around while I did the cooking quest, I can picture a future as a chef for him. Also, it took me until about halfway through the chain to realise that Aggra's voice actress sounded strangely familiar... turns out she's voiced by Athena Karkanis, aka the voice of the female Jedi consular in SWTOR.

I liked the bit where you get to choose a clan - I figured that for a warlock, representing the Bleeding Hollow was the most appropriate. My second favourite bit was probably when you return to the Valley of Trials and this dying young orc gives you a side quest to return her bag of cactus apples. For some reason the reaction from the quest giver hit me right in the feels... "No one is supposed to die over these! I just ask all the young orcs to do this! It's supposed to be easy!" Not to mention the flavour text on the reward:

Anyway, I still personally prefer the human heritage quest line simply because I've created so many human characters over the years. But I really liked this as well despite never having played an orc before, so I can totally see how it might end up being someone's favourite if they always had a thing for orcs in the past.

Holy Crap, That Orc Voidwalker Quest

About two months ago, I mentioned that I created two Horde bank alts on era and played them up to level six - an undead warrior for my food and consumables, and an orc warlock for currencies and miscellaneous valuables. I've played them a little more since then (being a bank alt doesn't mean you can't get play time) and got them both past level ten.

Warlocks get the quest to learn how to summon a voidwalker at level ten. While I've never got a warlock to a very high level, I previously levelled a few of them past that point at least, and I didn't recall the voidwalker quest ever being a big deal. However, I noted that the orc version of the quest sends you to loot a tablet from a chest inside Skull Rock, the cave east of Orgrimmar full of Burning Blade cultists, and even though it had been a while since I last quested through Durotar, I had a vague memory of that place being pretty unpleasant.

So I stuck my nose in the door just to remind myself of how bad it really was... and it was very bad. The cave is mostly populated by two types of mobs: fanatics, who are melee fighters that aren't too hard to kill, though it's noteworthy for warlocks that they are immune to fear; and apprentices, who are warlock types themselves and come with a voidwalker pet of their own. It was mostly the latter who reminded me of why I remembered the place as nasty: at level ten you don't really have the tools yet to deal with multi-mob pulls very well, and due to the voidwalkers being tanky adds with a lot of health, every single apprentice was basically a multi-mob pull by itself. I quickly noped out of there and decided that it was more prudent to come back in a couple more levels. After all, I was doing just fine questing with my imp and there was no rush.

I decided to return at level thirteen, after having completed every other quest in the zone (bar the other ones that also ask you to go inside the cave), and confident that I was surely strong enough by now to rock the place. Spoiler: I was not.

I mean, I did slowly make my way through the cave and completed the other quests, but the apprentices hit really hard, and even with chugging health potions and eating healthstones, I still died a couple of times on the way.

Still, eventually I reached the back of the cave with the chest - however, it was guarded by no less than four mobs: a named level 14 with a voidwalker pet who drops a quest item, and a an elite(!) rare spawn, also with a voidwalker pet. My following attempts to get at the chest are a bit of a blur - I know I managed to kill the level 14 at least once, as I did get the quest item from him, but mostly I just died a lot.

I consulted the Wowhead page for the quest, and was quite amused by the old Thottbot comments that were advising people that it was much easier to travel to Undercity and do the voidwalker quest for undead instead, until Blizzard made it impossible to do that. There were also some comments about how you could deal with two mobs at once by setting your imp on one mob and fearing the other and then quickly looting the chest, but that didn't account for the two additional mobs I had to deal with. Bottom line is, I died a few more times and eventually respawns all around me doomed the whole endeavour, resulting in me giving up for the day.

I hadn't gained any more levels when I eventually returned, but there had been one piece of advice in the Wowhead comments that stuck with me: If you have a level 60, just clear out the cave with that, and then relog your lowbie warlock to quickly run in and grab the quest item. I decided to give it one more go the regular way (after all I'd had some success the previous time), but with my hunter parked at the entrance in case things went badly and I ran out of patience.

And it did go badly again - in fact more so than last time, since the level 14 spawned closer to the entrance this time, and he and his voidwalker jumped at me from around a corner and killed me twice. At that point I was like "screw this", relogged my hunter and had her carve her way through the cave. Naturally the rare elite next to the chest was up again too.

The funny thing is, when I relogged my warlock, I quickly revived and started running without healing up, since I just wanted to get the chest and get out, but even though I'd just cleared out the cave with my hunter, a fanatic respawned right on top of me as I was running. I instinctively tried to fear him, but of course he was immune, so I started running again, just to die right next to the chest and find myself being forced to do yet another corpse run. Fortunately after that, I was finally able to grab the tablet and hearth out. The part of the quest where you actually summon the voidwalker and fight it was complete cake in comparison.

The really funny thing though was that when I logged back on my hunter a little later to get her out of the cave, I found the space around the chest completely empty - not because anyone else had been through, but because the rare hadn't respawned, and the level 14 had respawned in a different, out-of-the-way location inside the cave. So I'd basically been very unlucky to encounter both the rare and the level 14 next to the chest several times in a row. Still, what a quest! I'm not against making some of the class quests in particular somewhat challenging to make them memorable, but that was just brutal.

A troll druid's first fifteen levels

I've decided to tackle the huge amount of new low-level content with (new) alts. I know that some people prefer to just do it all on their level eighty main instead, but to me that would feel cheap. All game content is much more fun at the right level, so I'll make sure that I experience it that way first, and maybe I'll go through it again on my main later on for the sake of being a completionist. Right now I just hate it when I try to do a low-level quest - and there's plenty of competition from other alts anyway - and some eighty decides to come breezing through and one-shots every mob in the area. Gee, thanks.

Anyway, the first alt that I rolled was a troll druid, native to Argent Dawn since I have no empty character slots on Earthen Ring anymore. And oh my god, troll druids are popular. I swear there were hundreds of them in Durotar last night, turning the place into the new Barrens chat. On the whole it was kind of fun to see all these different-coloured kitties bounding across the landscape, but there were certain "choke points" in the quest lines where the sheer number of players caused problems. For example the third quest or so that you get as a new troll requires you to fight a captured naga in a miniature arena, and this can only be done by one person at a time. When I finally managed to spam-click the NPC that starts the event before anyone else, someone else ninjaed the actual mob from me. RAGE! Even worse was a bit where you were supposed to kill a named guy on a hill and he had a respawn timer of five minutes or something. When I last left the place, there were no less than a dozen new troll druids camping the spot in hopes of getting there first with a well-timed moonfire. Not exactly much fun.

Still, on the whole I rather enjoyed the first five levels of new troll life, and I pretty much got exactly the opposite impression as Tobold, who thinks that the new troll starting zone is too complex and will confuse new players. I doubt many people who quit WoW before reaching level ten did so because they thought that the game was too complicated; more likely they just didn't find it very engaging or their kind of game at all. Personally I think it's great that Blizzard tries to teach new players important abilities (such as different ways in which a quest item can be used) from the start now. They might not get it right immediately, but the zone is very forgiving. You don't encounter actively hostile mobs until a few levels in (and unlike the sudden neutering of the old starting zones, having more neutral mobs actually fits the story here). When you do meet hostile mobs at last, a friendly NPC accompanies you and he's quite good at killing things, so an accidental overpull or mobs spawning on top of you isn't going to get you into any trouble.

At the end of the zone, you get into a big boss battle (yes, at level five). Tobold criticises that the strategy to defeat the boss isn't detailed in the quest text, but fails to mention that instructions flash across your screen in giant letters during the fight, raid-warning style. How often have people pointed out that WoW's single player content doesn't prepare people in any way for what they'll encounter in dungeons and raids later on? Well, here we finally have an attempt at a solution to this, by giving people a taste of what a boss fight will look like as early as level five. And it's still very forgiving as far as I could tell, as the friendly NPCs that fight with you seem to be quite good at keeping the boss busy on their own, so it's no biggie if you can't figure out what you're supposed to do right away. I didn't check my combat log, but I got the impression that I was receiving heals as well.

As I moved on to mainland Durotar, I noticed that other random mobs had also been upgraded to be more interesting: human soldiers would heroic leap at me, others dropped bombs or traps at their feet, scorpids spat poison circles on the ground... they still weren't difficult fights, but again giving the mobs abilities that players also encounter in dungeons and raids later on strikes me as a good move on Blizzard's part, as it teaches people early on to watch out for bad stuff on the floor and to engage their brains to figure out whether they have any spells that can counter a particular mob's signature move. Dare I hope that this might make the next generation of players a little smarter a little sooner?

But enough of gameplay. Let's talk about the landscape, lore and quests. I'm actually a bit undecided about the new troll starter area in terms of looks, as I felt that too much of it was taken up by the training area - surely the Darkspear don't spend all their time preparing for war? Do they always have to swim to Sen'jin Village if they want to do as much as have a beer?

Lore-wise the conversation between Vol'jin and Garrosh was a bit of a shocker. I mean, I cheer for Vol'jin saying it as it is, but at the end of the day he pretty much makes a death threat against Garrosh there! I'm surprised that trolls are allowed back into Orgrimmar at all.

Durotar as a whole hasn't changed a lot, except for the western half of the zone having been partly flooded. It was actually kind of funny - up until I got to that part of the zone I was progressing very quickly, because things mostly looked the same, but the moment my kitty felt the (new!) long grass tickling her belly, I almost forgot all about what I was doing and just started randomly bounding up and down and wasting time in this wonderful new world that I had discovered.

The quests are pretty similar to the zone's looks in terms of changes, meaning that I was initially surprised by how little certain things had changed. The centaurs are gone and humans from Northwatch took their place, but the quest to destroy their attack plans is still exactly the same. Where you used to kill Kul Tiras marines you now get exactly the same quest, only with the mobs being called "Northwatch" something-or-other. Fizzle Darkclaw has drowned in the flood, but you're still supposed to get him.

But just like with the look of the zone, you might find yourself moving on quickly because you think that you've already seen it all... and then you suddenly run into something completely new and different that blows you away.

I have since moved on to the Northern Barrens, where I've encountered a similar pattern so far. Yes, there is still a Plainstrider Menace quest, but at least the quest giver doesn't pretend that they really are dangerous this time around, and you get to ride on a caravan kodo afterwards, which is quite fun.

Having reached level fifteen, I'm keen to try out some dungeons now to see how they have changed.

Zalazane's Fall vs. Operation: Gnomeregan

So I want to talk about the world event that started with the latest patch, partly to simply record my thoughts on the matter so I'll be able to remember them later, but also to share them with others. This post will be pretty spoilerish, so if you haven't participated in Zalazane's Fall or Operation: Gnomeregan yet and want to be surprised once you do the associated quests, don't read any further.

I started off with Zalazane's Fall since I mainly play Horde and my main is a troll as well. They also happen to be, if not my single favourite race, then at least tied for first place with the tauren. I also really like Vol'jin and hate how he always seems to get treated as nothing more than Thrall's appendix, so this event had me pretty thrilled. I even put on a set of roleplaying gear before I went to Sen'jin, something I hadn't done in a while.

The first quest for the trolls has you collecting frog critters and imbuing them with magic at the local shaman's sentry totem. I can only assume that this was meant to be a nod to shaman players and their love/hate relationship with what's undoubtedly one of the least useful abilities in all of WoW. That made me grin. You then get to ride a bat and "deploy" the magic frogs on the islands to work as spies. Frog-bombing... I thought it was funny.

Meanwhile the local captain also sends you to Razor Hill to gather some troll volunteers for the cause. I was childishly delighted by the fact that the NPC followers I collected were clever enough to mount and dismount in accordance with what I was doing.

Back in Sen'jin you get a quest that imbues you with a tiger spirit, which makes you look like a sort of were-tiger and allows you to walk on water. In this form you discover a hidden troll druid on the Isles who agrees to join your cause. One of my guildies complained about this, saying that he thought it was a "lame" way to introduce troll druids. I'm a bit undecided - I liked that Blizzard bothered to give them a lore introduction at all, but does this mean that these druids won't join the Cenarion Circle? Since their shapeshifting was apparently learned elsewhere... would be a bit of a shame.

Finally you were supposed to consult the spirits for support, but I hadn't even figured out what I was supposed to do for that quest when I already got a "completed" message. Apparently the point is just to trigger some NPC talking, but he was just finishing up from someone else starting it and I got credit automatically. Oh well.

And then came the actual battle: it was a lot like the Battle for the Undercity, which is a quest that I consider overrated, as I mentioned before. I have to give credit where credit is due though and admit that I liked this quest better, and not just because it's about trolls. I think the main thing that made a difference for me is that due to this being a limited-time event, everyone is doing it at once and you're likely to almost always have quite a lot of people around. This means that everything dies quite quickly, so the event doesn't take as ridiculously long as the Undercity battle, and being surrounded by lots of other players generally makes the whole thing feel more fun and like a real battle (as opposed to some NPCs soloing everything while you can pick your nose).

That said, I still didn't feel like I was making a meaningful contribution, especially as a healer. I was actually trying to heal people at first, but with the massive survival buff nobody needed it anyway. And throwing piddly smites at zombies just didn't feel very satisfying.

Eventually I decided to just lean back, run along and try to enjoy the story being told. There were considerable NPC walls of text (though they were fully voice-acted also, which I found commendable), and those are always a mixed bag. I mean, I was absolutely willing to get into it and tore up a little when Vol'jin emphasised that he was asking the help of the spirits only for his tribe, not himself, but other players interjecting with random comments about how bored they were (one guy felt the need to yell "BLA BLA BLA" for example) was rather off-putting. And this is with Earthen Ring supposedly being a roleplaying server! It was rather shameful.

Still, overall I enjoyed the experience and I'm looking forward to seeing what the Echo Isles will look like in Cataclysm, fully taken back so to speak. Operation: Gnomeregan had a lot to live up to.

I started the Alliance version of the event with a slight sense of embarrassment: the letter in my mailbox told me to help the gnomes in Ironforge and immediately got annoyed when I couldn't instantly figure out where in Ironforge the quest givers were. Where are my easymode quest markers to show me where to go? /cough. The quest starts in Tinker Town, which makes sense of course.

The gnomes start off with a recruiting quest like the one for the trolls, except that, being gnomes, they use technology to "convince" people to help out - and typical for gnome technology, it doesn't always do what it's supposed to do. One of my potential recruits got turned into a rabbit for example. It made me laugh. This trend continued when the next quest sent me to participate in "brutal and rigorous" gnome training, which consisted of things like emoting /cheer at the drill sergeant in unison.

Gnomes being gnomes, all the rest of their quests were about doing something or other with their machinery: testing ejection seats, controls and weapons of their tanks. Nothing special but not boring either. There was also a "bombing" quest to measure the radiation coming out of Gnomeregan's vents. Gnomer has vents? Since when?

Finally you're supposed to test some drafts of a speech for Mekkatorque, which is again pretty amusing, as some of them are quite silly. Then you deliver the final speech to the High Tinker near Gnomer and get ready for the Alliance version of the second Battle for the Undercity.

Now, I kind of liked that this one felt more fast-paced as there was less NPC chatter going on, and the messages you did get from Thermaplugg were pretty amusing. However, it did have one big disadvantage as it bugged out just as we were about to go underground; the High Tinker just stood at the entrance for ten minutes or so until he finally reset and anyone with good sense suddenly had to make a run for their life, being faced with respawned elite mobs and no invincibility buff. If one raging player who apparently experienced this before was to be believed, it's caused by people running down into the tunnel too early. I don't know if that's true, but there you go.

On the second attempt I managed to complete the event, but the ending was a bit disappointing in a way. Unlike the trolls, the gnomes don't actually get to kill their big bad, and Mekkatorque's pride in having taken back the surface feels hollow, considering that said area only contained a couple of buildings with leper gnomes in them. I can understand Blizzard wanting to keep Thermaplugg around so Gnomeregan can remain an instance, but couldn't they have allowed the gnomes to retake most of the city and at least push him back into deeper tunnels or something? As it is I feel kind of sorry for the gnomes; they definitely got the short end of the stick here (no pun intended), only being able to retake a really small area while their archenemy continues to hold most of the city and in fact managed to take the radiation levels in it to new heights.

All in all I think I liked the Horde version better, but that's probably largely due to my racial bias and the annoying bug in the Alliance version. I also think that the trolls tell a more engaging story, but I do have to give the gnomes credit for making me laugh. What did you think of these quests?