Retail WoW & Me in 2025

What with the 80/20 split in play time mentioned in my previous post, it seems hard to deny that I'm more of a retail player now, even if it still feels weird to me. I still prefer the way many things work in Classic, but with retail being the mode that both my husband and many of my friends prefer, it's easy for me to end up spending more time there.

I'll have to change the way I do the character round-ups this time, since we got the new warband character selection screens this year! It's technically still possible to take individual shots of each character by dragging them out of their groupings, but that's too much extra effort for me, so I'll just follow the groupings I've created for myself in this post as well.

Oh, and I've decided that I'm not going to get into Legion Remix at all in this post. I'll just note that I created twelve new characters for it, most of whom have had very little play time, have no professions (since those are disabled in Remix) and I don't quite know yet what I'm going to do with them going forward. I intend to make a separate post about that whole experience later down the line. Meanwhile, let's look at the best of the rest:

Mains

My main warband screen contains the four characters that I've played the most throughout the year.

Milita - Quel'Thalas

• Level 80 draenei warrior
• 16 days, 16 hours /played (+11 days, 23 hours)
• War Within professions: 100 Blacksmithing (+17), 100 Mining, 48 Cooking (+12), 139 Fishing (+91)
• Other professions (changed from 2024 only): 66 Outland Blacksmithing (+66), 15 Cataclysm Blacksmithing (+15),  5 Kul Tiran Blacksmithing (+5), 58 Dragon Isles Blacksmithing (+58), 300 Classic Mining (+5), 75 Outland Mining (+75), 75 Cataclysm Mining (+62), 28 Pandaria Mining (+28), 14 Kul Tiran Mining (+14), 100 Dragon Isles Mining (+100), 7 Outland Fishing (+7), 4 Kul Tiran Fishing (+4), 7 Archaeology (+7) 

Towards the end of last year, the warrior I levelled in MoP Remix was still kind of transitioning into being my new main, but 2025 was definitely her year entirely, as no other character came close to accumulating even half as much play time. At the start of the year I was still tanking M+ dungeons for guildies, but I dropped M+ entirely at the end of season one, for a variety of reasons. I continued to have lots of fun duoing delves with the husband though, which probably took up the majority of our time. I also did some work on professions though, some of which I talked about in this post. (No, that second Thunderfury binding still hasn't dropped.)

Shindragosa - Azjol-Nerub

• Level 80 dracthyr evoker
• 27 days, 2 hours /played (+2 days, 13 hours)
• War Within professions: 100 Leatherworking (+17), 100 Skinning, 100 Cooking (+27), 250 Fishing (+106)
• Other professions (changed from 2024 only): Legion Leatherworking 3 (+3), 218 Classic Skinning (+89), 69 Outland Skinning (+8), 5 Pandaria Skinning (+5), 31 Draenor Skinning (+31), 100 Legion Skinning (+15), 36 Kul Tiran Skinning (+6), 31 Kul Tiran Fishing (+1)

I still feel attached to my Dragonflight main because I loved that expansion so much, but she got the least play time of the four characters in this group because preservation evoker just hasn't felt good to play for me ever since War Within dropped. It's not terrible, it's just felt slightly off all expansion, leading me to prioritise my priest whenever I felt like healing.

Tilarea - AN

• Level 80 lightforged draenei priest
• 12 days, 9 hours /played (+4 days)
• War Within professions: 100 Tailoring (+35), 100 Enchanting (+39), 39 Cooking (+18), 88 Fishing (+15)
• Other professions (changed from 2024 only): 75 Northrend Tailoring (+44), 75 Cataclysm Tailoring (+30), 76 Dragon Isles Tailoring (+2), 300 Classic Enchanting (+204), 51 Outland Enchanting (+25), 25 Cataclysm Enchanting (+10), 78 Dragon Isles Enchanting (+4)

... this being the aforementioned priest. She remains that character that serves no particular purpose in our little group's adventures; I just really like playing holy priest sometimes. I also did some real work on her professions this year, levelling up enchanting and tailoring skills from several old expansions. 

Shinfur - Earthen Ring

• Level 80 pandaren monk
• 4 days, 20 hours /played (+3 days, 16 hours)
• War Within professions: 100 Mining, 100 Engineering (+17), 36 Cooking (+30), 63 Fishing (+59)
• Other professions (changed from 2024 only): 12 Classic Mining (+12), 7 Legion Mining (+7), 3 Classic Engineering (+3), 5 Outland Engineering (+5), 6 Draenor Cooking (+6) 

The monk I levelled during MoP Remix ended up supplanting my human monk from Shadowlands somehow, maybe because I'd levelled the latter primarily as a healer while this one gets played as windwalker all the time. She's the one dps character I have on whom I feel moderately competent and who was also the one on whom I beat Zekvir's Lair on ?? difficulty.

Melee dps alts

I've had kind of mixed feelings about my melee dps alts all year. I mostly decided at one point that I wanted to have one of every class at 80, plus more alts allowed me to work on more professions. But when push comes to shove, I only have so much time to grind delves or whatever other gameplay to gear up, which was mostly invested in the mains, meaning all of these ladies came out only now and then whenever the mood struck me.

Mehg - AN

• Level 80 night elf demon hunter (+8)
• 12 days, 12 hours /played (+1 day, 15 hours)
• War Within professions: 100 Mining (+70), 100 Jewelcrafting (+75), 40 Cooking (+40), 53 Fishing (+53)
• Other professions (changed from 2024 only): 290 Classic Mining (+274), 39 Outland Mining (+39), 44 Cataclysm Mining (+17), 11 Classic Jewelcrafting (+11) 

Hekatie - ER

• Level 80 undead death knight
• 12 days, 16 hours /played (+17 hours)
• War Within professions: 100 Herbalism, 100 Inscription (+29), 43 Cooking (+13), 63 Fishing (+21)
• Other professions: no changes this year

Groghue - AN

• Level 80 worgen rogue
• 3 days, 15 hours /played (+17 hours)
• War Within professions: 100 Herbalism (+13), 105 Skinning (+35), 25 Cooking (+25), 12 Fishing (+12)
• Other professions: no changes this year 

Isadora - Norgannon 

• Level 80 human paladin (+61)
• 3 days, 8 hours /played (+1 day, 10 hours)
• War Within professions (new in 2024): 44 Blacksmithing, 100 Mining, 25 Cooking, 30 Fishing
• Other professions (changed from 2024 only): 43 Dragon Isles Blacksmithing (+43), 15 Northrend Mining (+15), 94 Dragon Isles Mining (+94), 23 Dragon Isles Cooking (+23)

The paladin (who was the very first character I ever created, located on a German server) probably had the most interesting journey as I decided to level her up on a whim during a Winds of Mysterious Fortune event. 

Ranged dps alts

Yes, that's right, there's only three of these! I guess there's a job opening here for whenever I hit level 80 on another ranged class.

Tharisa - AN

• Level 80 human hunter
• 5 days, 19 hours /played (+1 day, 4 hours)
• War Within professions: 88 Leatherworking (+32), 100 Skinning, 32 Cooking (+6), 53 Fishing (+20)
• Other professions (changed from 2024 only): 20 Outland Skinning (+14), 53 Legion Skinning (+4)

Hunter is a class I kind of want to like and play more since I loved classic hunters so much, but for some reason Blizzard just keeps making the retail version of the class worse and worse. I still think that turning survival into a melee spec in Legion was a mistake, and trying to take MM hunters' pets away in War Within just to appease raiders was even worse. They just don't seem to have any kind of clue what hunter players want from the class, and this reddit post on the subject I saw this year really resonated with me.

Willowie - QT

• Level 80 human warlock (+6)
• 1 day, 16 hours /played (+1 day, 3 hours)
• War Within professions: 100 Alchemy (+52), 100 Herbalism (+38), 37 Cooking, 45 Fishing
• Other professions (changed from 2024 only) 2 Classic Alchemy (+2), 11 Classic Herbalism

My perception of warlock gameplay tends to oscillate between "this is terrible" and "wait, this is fun" but then Blizzard changes something again, I get confused and lose interest again. This is the warlock I levelled in MoP Remix by the way. 

Daerys - Darkspear

• Level 80 draenei mage (+10)
• 31 days, 6 hours /played (+21 hours)
• War Within professions (new in 2024): 100 Mining, 53 Jewelcrafting, 25 Cooking, 1 Fishing
• Other professions (changed from 2024 only): 4 Legion Mining (+4), 6 Legion Jewelcrafting (+6) 

Honestly, I just levelled this one so I would finally have all classes at 80. And so someone could wear the banging tier one mage transmog once I'd finally completed the set. 

Tank and healer alts

Yeah, so... I already have a tank and two healers in my "mains" group, how much time could I realistically have left for these guys? They just exist for the occasional change of pace at this point. 

Berrine - QT

• Level 80 night elf druid
• 2 days, 16 hours /played (+1 day, 5 hours)
• War Within professions: 100 Herbalism, 100 Skinning, 1 Cooking, 32 Fishing (+16)
• Other professions: no changes this year

I'll say that my bear druid came close at one point to getting some more play time, after I kind of ran out of things to upgrade on my warrior main, but for the rest of the year Blizzard was very good at drip-feeding me just one more upgrade over and over again, which kept me chugging away at the warrior until the very end of most seasons. 

Helena - Darkspear

• Level 80 dwarf paladin
• 4 days, 12 hours /played (+22 hours)
• War Within professions: 100 Mining, 100 Skinning, 4 Cooking, 9 Fishing
• Other professions (changed from 2024 only): 7 Northrend Mining (+4), 300 Classic Skinning, 28 Northrend Skinning (+16), 56 Archaeology (+6)

Shimeri - AN

• Level 80 dwarf shaman (+10)
• 5 days, 2 hours /played (+18 hours)
• War Within professions (new in 2024): 93 Alchemy, 100 Herbalism, 25 Cooking, 1 Fishing
• Other professions: none 

Recent levellers

The last grouping I'm going to feature here is... a bit of a lie, because none of these have actually been levelled "recently". They had been when I named the group though. 

Surly - QT

• Level 25 blood elf hunter
• 5 hours played
• Professions: none

Surly was originally created because I had picked up a "bound to warband" polearm that I thought would be good for a survival hunter. Not that I ever levelled her that far. Instead I just got a bit of a first impression of melee survival (extremely clunky in the first few levels) and got to revisit the blood elf starting zone (pretty nostalgic). She was also my first test subject for doing Lorewalking on a low-level character.

Spinny - QT 

• Level 21 goblin monk
• 3 hours played
• Professions: 34 Classic Herbalism, 20 Cataclysm Skinning

Spinny was created so I could refresh my knowledge of goblin lore before the release of Undermine. After that I couldn't quite decide where to level next and ended up going nowhere.

Tidella - AN

• Level 55 Kul Tiran shaman (+1)
• 2 days, 1 hour /played (+4 hours)
• Professions (changed from 2024 only): 292 Classic Mining (+186), 9 Cataclysm Mining (+6), 245 Classic Engineering (+105) 

When I first looked up this character I was like "what, I gained a level, I didn't think I even played this character this year" but then I checked the profession stats and oh right, I guess I worked on her Classic mining and engineering at some point. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also ran:

No more warband screens, just two more characters for whom I noted down some minor changes: 

Shinlu - AN

• Level 71 human monk (+3)
• 22 days, 16 hours /played (+2 hours)
• Professions (changed from 2024 only): 12 War Within Skinning (+12)

Again, I hardly remember playing my old monk from Shadowlands this year, but apparently she gained three levels. I think I took her to Khaz Algar and did a couple of easy delves to explore more variants back before they made it so you can see the delve variant of the day on the map.

Eartha - AN

• Level 52 earthen shaman (+26)
• 8 hours /played (+6)
• Professions: none 

Finally, this character! I mentioned last year that I'd created her to benefit from the earthen racial bonus to exploration XP and that I was going to write about that... but then I didn't. We'll see whether I eventually get around to it or not.

Retail Bits & Bobs

I'm actually having more fun in Cataclysm Classic than in any other version of the game right now, how weird is that? Still, things haven't exactly been quiet in retail either, rather the opposite - it's just that nothing has been particularly sticky for me. Some notes on what's been going on: 

Retribution Paladin

I finished levelling the paladin I wrote about last month. I didn't get to the cap before the bonus XP event ended, but I was well into War Within by that point and the last few levels didn't take me long at all.

I can see why retribution paladins are so popular. People loved the idea of that class even back in Vanilla, when it performed really poorly in terms of output, so I'm not surprised that it's still popular now that it's more balanced and comes with a lot more shiny effects attached. Fighting as a retribution paladin is basically a massive light show with literal bells and whistles going off everywhere and hammers flying around, and it's just plain fun.

With the free delve keys you get from Renown it was surprisingly quick and easy to get her into a set of decent gear, but now I already find myself thinking "what now" again. Still, it was nice to actually play and level my first ever character in current content after all these years, even if I'll continue to primarily think of her as the one that first explored Elwynn Forest, fought gnolls in Redridge, protected weaker party members on a moonlit night in Loch Modan and got yelled at for tanking badly in the Deadmines.

Horrific Visions

The current patch (11.1.5) got criticised a lot for drip-feeding its content with too much time-gating, which is something I really don't mind, but what is true (for me at least) was that each part of the patch that was released later was less interesting to me than the previous one.

I loved the Nightfall event even if it was buggy and farmed my way to maximum Renown with the associated faction, but the return of Horrific Visions (a feature that was originally part of Battle for Azeroth) was already a lot less interesting to me. The husband and I actually dabbled in these a bit at the end of BfA when we first started playing again, but we didn't stick with them for very long, for reasons I can't recall now.

This time around, I think I already said during the second or third run that I could see these becoming boring really quickly. Sure, repeating content is a big part of WoW and MMOs in general, but there's just something about these little scenarios that makes the repetition even more blatant and tedious. It's become a bit more interesting as we've started to challenge ourselves a little with the higher difficulties, but I still wouldn't want to do these more than a couple of times a week.

Dastardly Duos

Finally, the latest part of the patch to be released belatedly was something called "Dastardly Duos", which I'd heard content creators praise while it was on the PTS, but my personal experience with this feature was comically bad. You see, the husband and I queued into them, and I thought that they would scale to your group size like delves and visions do. There were helpful NPCs at the start, but again I was thinking of Horrific Visions - where the general recommendation was to dismiss the help since it just increased mob health and wasn't actually all that helpful - and simply dismissed them.

This turned out to be a big mistake, as the content is clearly intended for five characters, and your gear is scaled down as well (something I had no idea about), so we got absolutely smashed and soon found ourselves camped at the spawn point. There was a timer on screen so I thought "oh well, let's just let the timer run out" but that did not complete the instance. We couldn't find any exit button either! I eventually distracted the mobs for a bit so the hubby's mage could hearthstone out, and I managed to get out the same way a bit later. It was just funny and bizarre but also totally killed any desire we'd had to engage with this content. Nothing like being thrown into an instance where you can't tell what's going on, get spawn-camped by NPCs and can't figure out how to leave.

I did eventually go back and complete a couple of rounds with the NPC group as intended, but I still didn't really understand what was supposed to be the point and it just didn't look particularly fun. There are plenty of more entertaining things for me to do instead of struggling to figure this out. 

In fact the next patch, 11.1.7, is already supposed to launch this week, so there's already something new to check out, yet again.

Legion Remix

During PAX East, something that was already floating around as a rumour was officially confirmed: that there'll be another Remix event like last year's Mists of Pandaria Remix, only this time it's going to be for Legion and it's going to launch towards the end of the year. I ultimately ended up liking MoP Remix quite a lot, so I'm looking forward to this, but at the same time my own experiences with Legion weren't that long ago and I didn't play the expansion at all when it originally came out, so I'm not currently feeling a lot of nostalgia for it.

I also have a character of every class at the level cap now (plus the extra paladin mentioned above) so what would I even level next? Another one of every class on the opposite faction, trying out different race and class combos? Not sure where I'll end up landing on all this. 

Housing Hype

And because all of this clearly isn't enough, Blizzard also keeps trickling out more news about housing. There's been a few dev blogs on the subject, such as this one and this one, and last month they had an event where different content creators got an early preview of how things are going, which resulted in a lot of them making gushing videos about the experience.

I'm following all this with interest but at the same time I'm not that much of a housing enthusiast that I'm on the edge of my seat (which is why I haven't felt the need to post about any of the above until now). In fact, a lot of the more advanced features don't sound all that interesting to me because I don't think I'd ever use them, so I was mainly relieved that it's been stated that there'll be a basic editor for players like me who just want to keep it simple.

One quote that amused me and that stuck with me (though I sadly can't remember now where I heard it) was something along the lines of: "Interior and exterior are completely separate, so your house can be much bigger on the inside, like the TARDIS. Or as we should say in WoW, like Naxxramas." 

Another Five Down, Four More to Go

Back in September I wrote about how I've felt encouraged to experiment with alts in The War Within. This eventually escalated into me deciding that I wanted to have a max-level character of each class this expansion, a prospect that actually wasn't all that daunting considering I had one of each class at level 70 (the old level cap) by the end of Dragonflight. I've reached 80 on five more characters since then and wanted to jot down a few more impressions of the different classes I've levelled.

Until I took this picture, I hadn't realised that the Warband screen also follows the day-night cycle.

Marksmanship Hunter

My fifth character to 80 was my human hunter, and I'm honestly not even sure why. I think I wanted a character for easier solo farming and hunter kind of fits the bill. That said, I feel a bit ambivalent about the hunter class in retail. I've long loved the classic hunter with all its challenges of micromanaging ammunition and taking care of your pet, and I never quite got over how all of that was taken away in Cataclysm. In terms of pet interaction, the modern hunter feels more like a Pokemon collector (no actual investment in the pet needed, you can just collect as many as you like and I guess there's some appeal in hunting down rare models), and the supercharged shooting animations look a bit ridiculous to me in the way they make your character treat their bow and arrow like a machine gun.

I'm Marksmanship spec because I was never a huge fan of BM (while I liked taking care of my pet, I never liked the idea of my pet doing all the damage for me - I still want to be the hero myself, OK?) and being melee as a hunter still feels like an abomination to me. That said, I can't say that Marksman feels all that great to me right now either. It doesn't actually seem to me that it has too many buttons, but I don't like that you're basically not supposed to have a pet at all (I tend to just not take the Lone Wolf talent) and it does still feel to me like there are probably too many complexities involved in having a good damage rotation. I thought I had a pretty good idea of which buttons did the most damage, but when I did an LFR wing on this character, even though I was mashing my buttons like crazy, my damage output ended up around the same level as the tanks - way, way below the other hunters in the group.

I also don't have much to say about the hero talents for hunters, because they feel designed around the idea that you're an elf and want to cosplay as either Tyrande (who isn't even a hunter!) or Sylvanas, and I want to do neither. I did pick Dark Ranger because it sounded slightly more appealing, but just as I thought I was getting an idea of what to do with it, Blizzard completely revamped the way its main ability works and I'm once again back to square one. In summary: the class still lives up to the hunter's reputation of being decent for soloing stuff, but feels too fiddly for me in group content.

Guardian Druid

This would be the druid I levelled during Mists of Pandaria Remix. I still love watching her cute and fuzzy bear butt, but the way druid tanking works still feels a bit weird to me. I was initially a little confused why she seemed to be taking so much more damage than my warrior, until I realised that you're supposed to be using self-heals all the time (something which the warrior doesn't have as much).

I also don't really like the way the Ironfur buff works, expecting you to constantly pump rage into keeping up this mitigation buff that only lasts a few seconds. It was only later that I realised that protection warrior actually has something similar going on, I just hadn't been using it because at low difficulties you basically take no damage as a warrior anyway! I've only slowly started to adjust to that as we're starting to crawl our way up the M+ ladder. Still, the point remains that I'm not a fan of having this sort of "mitigation rotation" where you're supposed to constantly be mashing defensive buttons to keep all your buffs rolling.

Regardless, like the prot warrior, a druid tank is really good for soloing as well, so I've been using her to tank some easier content like Timewalking and sometimes to solo delves (tank who can also stealth and sneak past mobs = OP). 

For her hero talents, I went with Druid of the Claw because I bear, I maul things. Why would I want to shoot moonbeams or whatever?

Holy Paladin

Unlike with some other classes, I never know quite which spec to choose with paladins since I do actually somewhat like all three, but I figured I'd stick to healing with this one and see how paladins are doing these days. Funnily enough, I found it very pleasant to quest as holy - I'm starting to think I like levelling as tank or healer in WoW because they have such simple dps rotations - things may die more slowly but at least I feel like I know what I'm doing, as opposed to many dps classes where I mash buttons that look like they should be doing good damage but then don't because I either didn't string them together in the exact correct order or because I'm missing some crucial talent without which the whole build is destroyed.

Anyway, as I was feeling a bit insecure about my abilities as a paladin and knew that regular pugs could generate quite insane healing requirements, I decided to practice my healing by doing some follower dungeons first. Sadly, they turned out to be of limited usefulness for that purpose as Captain Garrick pulls quite conservatively, to the point where the required healing is minimal, and I didn't quite have it in me to try and "ninja-pull" more trash onto her to make things more challenging. Also, even when there was already almost nothing for me to do, the elemental shaman NPC would actually feel the need to throw off-heals around too? Bitch, let me do something here!

In search of a slightly more challenging environment I eventually healed some LFR wings, but there I once again couldn't quite shake the feeling that I was doing something very wrong because my healing was very low compared to other healers. That said, I also couldn't be bothered to do any research into how to remedy that. I may want to level every class to 80, but I have no interest in playing them all in endgame content.

As an aside, this character also taught me that it's possible to lock yourself out of choosing certain hero talents if you don't make the right talent choices because I was "only" allowed to choose Lightsmith. This should probably tell me that I'm not good at making my own choices when it comes to filling out the new talent trees, but if Blizzard is giving me all these choices I'm damn well going to make my own!

Windwalker Monk

Levelling my pandaren monk from Remix was a pleasant surprise, because I initially wasn't sure about all the changes that had been made to the class since Shadowlands. (During Shadowlands, my human monk was my main and was primarily a Mistweaver, but occasionally I'd spec Windwalker for questing and a lot had been changed since then.)

Unlike most of the other classes whose play styles I bemoan in this post, monk has been delightfully easy to pick up and play. I didn't put any more effort into learning the class than with the others (meaning I read all the talent tooltips and picked what I personally thought sounded most useful) but for some reason my monk seems to do decent damage even with me mashing buttons semi-randomly. I don't know why more classes can't be like this.

I was even more surprised when I looked up their current standing in terms of raid dps and Mythic+, and they're apparently... not very good? I can't say I got that impression at all while soloing.

Subtlety Rogue

Rogue's a class that has never vibed with me, but it's worse in retail than in Classic. At least I found my AoE finishing move again... at one point during Dragonflight, Black Powder disappeared from my bars and I still don't know whether that was an intentional change or me messing something up... either way not having an AoE spender for several months was super weird. It's back now, but sadly just alternating between Shuriken Storm and Black Powder on dungeon trash still leaves me barely outdamaging the healer.

Similar to death knight, rogue feels built around the idea of constantly having some sort of short-cooldown dps booster up, but for some reason where on death knight this feels fun to me, on the rogue it feels bad. My combo points always seem to fill up either instantly or incredibly slowly, with no in-between, and I just can't wrap my head around it. There literally isn't a single button that makes me feel like I'm doing good damage, it's always either just "virtually no damage" or "you just hit a cooldown, now have a little bit of damage". (While editing this, I actually decided to quickly google a guide for this one just to get an idea of how badly I was going wrong and... yeah, not happening!)

In terms of hero talents, I picked Deathstalker over Trickster because I thought it sounded a bit cooler, but ultimately it's another choice that didn't feel very meaningful to me. I know I won't be playing this character very much, but let's be real: The main reason I wanted a rogue at 80 was just to finally be able to open those damn Bismuth Lockboxes, so I don't really need to know how to play.

Now I only have warlock, demon hunter, mage and shaman to go.

Classic WoW & Me in 2023

Alright, here it is: the by now traditional annual look at my Classic characters and what progress I made with them throughout the past year.

The first thing to note is that this was the first year of me playing Classic that didn't leave me in a drastically different place at the end of the year compared to where I was at the start of it. I was playing on Classic era at the start of 2023, and I'm still active there at the end of it, even if my activity levels have declined. That bit of stability has honestly been kind of nice, though it also makes me wonder what's in store for next year. I love Classic era for what it is and I do like my guild, but at this point, I also feel ready for something a bit different again. At the moment that's just manifesting in me playing a bit less and spending more time in retail or SWTOR, but let's just say I wouldn't be surprised if 2024 brought with it some kind of change to my play patterns again.

Classic era - Horde

Shika - Pyrewood Village

• Level 60 Hunter
• +7 days played

My hunter continued to see the most play, just living the endgame life for most of the year: farming materials and joining raids. I even got to spend some time in Naxx (as you can see from all the tier three gear she's sporting in this screenshot), something I hadn't really planned for initially. It just got too time-consuming/clashed with other things eventually.

Sadly, since I stopped raiding I've been feeling woefully unmotivated to play her, except to keep logging in and crafting/selling Gyrochromatoms and Mithril Casings on the auction house. Hey, someone's gotta supply those levelling questers!

Shilu - PV

• Level 60 Druid
• +6 days, 8 hours played
• +54 Fishing (maxed out)

As my second most played character, my druid maxed out her fishing (with me adding another Stranglethorn fishing contest victory to my tally) and spent some time healing in the easier raids, mostly ZG. She actually hit exalted with Zandalar not too long ago.

She's still sporting her original feral/resto hybrid spec but I'm not sure I used it to tank even a single dungeon this year. I've just not felt motivated to do so.

Shintau - PV

• Level 53 Shaman (+12)
• +2 days, 21 hours played
• +25 Skinning (maxed out), +33 (Tribal) Leatherworking, +37 Cooking (maxed out), +40 First Aid (maxed out), +18 Fishing (maxed out)
  

My first Classic character from back in 2019, I swear this gal is going to be the slowest levelled WoW character ever (in terms of real time passed). How is the still not 60 after all these years?! The current hump to get over is that I really want to do a Sunken Temple quest run, but... effort. I'll get there one day.

Shinny - PV

• Level 44 Mage (+8)
• +1 day, 3 hours played
• +34 Tailoring, +22 Enchanting, +37 Cooking, +1 First Aid, +5 Fishing
  

Nothing too exciting to report here. I just made some progress through questing and running a couple of dungeons when the mood struck me. I also got my mount, woo!

Fooba - Mirage Raceway

• Level 26 Warrior (+10)
• +19 hours played
• +40 Mining, 124 Blacksmithing (changed from Skinning), no change in Cooking, +12 First Aid, +6 Fishing
  

I enjoyed levelling my food bank alt for a while, and even switched one of her primary professions from skinning to blacksmithing. I also remember having a good time fury-tanking Wailing Caverns and Shadowfang Keep. But then I just... stopped.

Gemba - MR

• Level 23 Warlock (+4)
• +12 hours played
• +32 Herbalism, +56 Skinning, no change in Cooking, +15 First Aid, +46 Fishing

My experience on my other bank alt was similar and I did play her a little, but not as much as I had planned. She still hasn't finished either of the quest chains for the succubus/incubus for example, even though I was keen to get to that a year ago.

Tir - Nethergarde Keep

• Level 14 Rogue (+5)
• +5 hours played
• +53 Herbalism, +82 Skinning, +1 Cooking, no fishing yet, +50 First Aid

My little troll rogue just did a few more quests in the Barrens; that's pretty much it.

Classic era - Alliance

My Alliance characters basically became completely neglected this year and nothing has changed about their stats compared to last year except for maybe a few minutes of play time here or there from occasional logins to check on something or other. (My hunter and paladin bounce some mails between them occasionally, and sometimes I remember to use my salt shaker cooldown on my hunter for example.)

The only characters that saw a little bit of action earlier in the year were my warrior and my priest, and the reason for this was that this was when I was at my most involved with the census project on the Classic era Discord, to the point that I also wanted to keep track of the Alliance population, and the best way to get scans (which can only be triggered by clicking about a hundred times at certain intervals) was to simply do a bit of questing every day.

Razorr - PV

• Level 33 Warrior (+3)
• +8 hours played
• +30 Mining, +57 Skinning, +12 Cooking, +46 First Aid, +4 Fishing 

I remember doing some questing in Stranglethorn Vale and I also seem to remember tanking a Razorfen Kraul with her, but I'm worried about my memories of this level range getting muddled with her "BC version".

Shintar - PV

• Level 32 Priest (+2)
• +7 hours played
• +4 Mining, +31 Engineering, +35 Cooking, +3 First Aid, +12 Fishing

Based on the robe in the screenshot I must have healed a Gnomer run, and I also have vivid memories of questing in Hillsbrad Foothills. Not much else going on though.

Isa - Gehennas

• Level 23 Paladin
• 1 day, 4 hours played
• 146 Alchemy, 179 Herbalism, 134 Cooking, 105 First Aid, 119 Fishing

Different server cluster, but since I did get her past level 20, I thought I should also give a quick shout-out to the little paladin I made on Gehennas. The "empty server experience" was fun for a little while, but to be honest I think I was hoping that things would pick up a bit with the way era was booming at the time, and when that didn't happen I eventually got bored.

Hardcore

Lossy - Stitches

• Level 22 Mage (deceased)
  
• 22 hours played
• 134 Herbalism, 82 Mining, 123 Cooking, 87 First Aid, 91 Fishing 

My stint in hardcore only lasted for a little while, but it seems only fair to give a shout-out to Lossy the mage for keeping me busy for almost a day of real time.

Season of Disovery

Shintar - Wild Growth

• Level 25 Priest
• 1 day, 12 hours played
• 140 Alchemy, 150 Herbalism, 150 Cooking, 129 First Aid, 122 Fishing

Finally, there is of course the new hotness, Season of Discovery. Aside from this priest, I've also created a few more alts there already, but as none of them have even hit level 10 yet, it doesn't feel worth calling them out at this point. I suspect that this might end up being my main Classic focus in 2024 (in one form or another), but only time will tell. Seeing all my era characters again does kind of make me want to play them again too...

Retail WoW & Me in 2023

Ever since the release of WoW Classic in 2019, I've been doing an end-of-year summary at the end of December to track my progress throughout the game, by listing the characters I've been playing and what they've achieved in the last year. This has turned into a very interesting tradition, as a lot can happen in a year and my interests and aspirations have completely changed direction in that time more than once. Without this track record I wouldn't have nearly as clear a picture of that.

I haven't done the same for retail WoW, except for musing on the progress I'd made after a year back in 2021. As my investment in that side of the game has grown, that has increasingly felt like an oversight, so I've decided to fix that going forward. So without further ado, my retail characters and what they've been up to in the past year... and to some degree since 2021, since I'm not always sure when exactly I did certain things and only have that old post as a reference point right now:

Shindragosa

• Level 70 dracthyr evoker
• 14 days, 19 hours /played
• Dragonflight professions: 90 Leatherworking, 100 Skinning, 100 Cooking, 100 Fishing
  
• Other professions: 56 Northrend Skinning, 20 Cataclysm Skinning, 31 Draenor Skinning, 81 Legion Skinning, 7 Kul Tiran Skinning, 15 Draenor Cooking, 66 Classic Fishing, 5 Cataclysm Fishing, 15 Kul Tiran Fishing, 99 Archaeology

The hero class that's new with the expansion became my main, who'd have thought? Even though their healing isn't as obviously OP compared to other healers the way dps and tanking were for other hero classes when they were first released (at least as far as I'm aware), I've come to enjoy the unique play style... plus to be honest, at the start of Dragonflight, just the idea of being able to go into the expansion with an empty inventory was extremely appealing (as opposed to sorting out my monk's bags and figuring out what to keep and what to throw away after Shadowlands). For how generous retail WoW is with bag space, it also has a weird habit of filling your bags with absolute tons of crap at endgame.

The fact that her leatherworking is still not maxed out this far into the expansion is a reflection on how the changes to the crafting system haven't really worked for me, even though I initially liked the sound of them, but that could be a whole post of its own really.

Mehg

• Level 70 night elf demon hunter
  
• 10 days, 4 hours /played
• Dragonflight professions: 100 Mining, 69 Jewelcrafting, 68 Cooking, 52 Fishing
  
• Other professions: 16 Classic Mining, 17 Cataclysm Mining, 100 Legion Mining, 150 Shadowlands Mining, 18 Classic Cooking, 31 Legion Cooking, 75 Shadowlands Cooking, 74 Classic Fishing, 70 Legion Fishing, 27 Shadowlands Fishing, 800 Archaeology
  

The demon hunter that became my first max-level alt in Shadowlands is still my main alt, I think because it's a relatively straightforward class to play at a basic level among a sea of overly complex rotations in retail. Earlier in the expansion she felt a bit squishy (regardless of gear), but that improved a lot after one of the most recent patches. She also still has the same transmog because I really like that set from the demon hunter starting experience... I just change the look of her glaives sometimes.

Tilarea

• Level 70 lightforged draenei priest
  
• 5 days, 10 hours /played
• Dragonflight professions: 64 Tailoring, 64 Enchanting, 16 Cooking, 37 Fishing
  
• Other professions: 100 Classic Tailoring, 75 Outland Tailoring, 5 Northrend Tailoring, 2 Cataclysm Tailoring, 64 Pandaria Tailoring, 100 Draenor Tailoring, 65 Kul Tiran Tailoring, 100 Shadowlands Tailoring, 96 Classic Enchanting, 26 Outland Enchanting, 25 Northrend Enchanting, 11 Cataclysm Enchanting, 20 Pandaria Enchanting, 25 Draenor Enchanting, 16 Kul Tiran Enchanting, 49 Shadowlands Enchanting, 2 Classic Cooking, 6 Shadowlands Cooking, 15 Outland Fishing, 11 Shadowlands Fishing, 13 Archaeology
  

This was the first alt I levelled without any involvement from my husband, simply because I wanted to be a priest again! She's pugged dungeons, done some PvP, worked on her professions and run a fair few old raids for transmog (as you can tell from her sporting the old tier two set). I just still love being a holy priest.

Tharisa

• Level 70 human hunter
  
• 2 days, 18 hours /played
• Dragonflight professions: 18 Leatherworking, 100 Skinning, 14 Cooking, 23 Fishing
  
• Other professions: 119 Classic Leatherworking, 205 Classic Skinning, 70 Northrend Skinning, 5 Cataclysm Skinning, 9 Draenor Skinning, 33 Legion Skinning, 129 Classic Cooking, 37 Archaeology
  

Ah, my old human hunter. I eventually levelled her up because I really wanted to have a better understanding of how retail hunter compares to its classic version. It's still a bit weird. I'm currently marksman spec because that has been my go-to for many expansions, but I don't know if it's still the best option for me in retail. I do still like having a pet, and with the new talent tree you can actually opt out of the "petless" marksman talent, but I have no idea how viable that is and haven't been able to find any discussion about it. Not that it matters, considering that I'm not doing any hard content on her, but I guess it would be interesting to know.

Groghue

• Level 70 worgen rogue
  
• 1 day, 18 hours /played
• Dragonflight professions: 87 Herbalism, 105 Skinning, 4 Cooking, 35 Fishing
  
• Other professions: 259 Classic Herbalism, 175 Classic Skinning, 23 Cataclysm Skinning, 21 Classic Fishing, 10 Cataclysm Fishing, 107 Archaeology
  

Enter Grogu (silent h, silent e), though she also responds to "rogue" (silent g, silent h). I created her during Shadowlands and actually made a post about it at the time. Considering how much time I spend running around aimlessly while levelling, I think her /played time goes to show just how fast retail levelling is nowadays. You can also tell from her professions that she's hardly seen anything of the world, having only really quested in the old world and on the Dragon Isles. I guess that's probably fairly typical of the modern retail levelling experience.

I also learned from levelling her that I'm terrible at playing rogue. Maybe it's just the subtlety spec, but in an interesting contrast to how the class works in Classic, it feels like you need to be hitting some sort of dps cooldown non-stop or you do basically no damage. In one heroic I did, I was struggling to out-dps the healer...

Oh, and she doesn't have a hump; that's a backpack. It just always looks a bit funny on the character selection screen.

Shinlu

• Level 61 human monk
• 22 days, 9 hours /played
• Professions: 50 Outland Leatherworking, 16 Northrend Leatherworking, 150 Kul Tiran Leatherworking, 100 Shadowlands Leatherworking, 14 Classic Skinning, 75 Outland Skinning, 51 Northrend Skinning, 40 Cataclysm Skinning, 80 Legion Skinning, 175 Kul Tiran Skinning, 150 Shadowlands Skinning, 5 Dragonflight Skinning, 300 Classic Cooking, 75 Cataclysm Cooking, 48 Kul Tiran Cooking, 75 Shadowlands Cooking, 300 Classic Fishing, 39 Outland Fishing, 12 Northrend Fishing, 75 Cataclysm Fishing, 16 Pandaria Fishing, 100 Legion Fishing, 175 Kul Tiran Fishing, 200 Shadowlands Fishing, 678 Archaeology
  

My old Shadowlands main gained a bit of XP from doing stuff like the human heritage quest chain, but other than that she's mostly been chilling in Stormwind since Dragonflight. I feel a bit bad about it because I do still love her, but the thought of having to sort out her bags (there's probably still a dozen different kinds of anima in there for example) terrifies me.

Shinnins

• Level 60 worgen druid
  
• 17 days, 10 hours /played
• Professions: 300 Classic Alchemy, 75 Outland Alchemy (Transmutation), 75 Northrend Alchemy, 75 Cataclysm Alchemy, 75 Pandaria Alchemy, 10 Shadowlands Alchemy, 300 Classic Herbalism, 75 Outland Herbalism, 75 Northrend Herbalism, 75 Cataclysm Herbalism, 75 Pandaria Herbalism, 43 Shadowlands Herbalism, 300 Classic Cooking, 75 Outland Cooking, 75 Northrend Cooking, 75 Cataclysm Cooking, 75 Pandaria Cooking (with all the different "cooking ways" maxed out too), 12 Shadowlands Cooking, 300 Classic Fishing, 75 Outland Fishing, 75 Northrend Fishing, 75 Cataclysm Fishing, 75 Pandaria Fishing, 22 Shadowlands Fishing, 608 Archaeology

My main from my brief flirtation with retail during Mists of Pandaria. Back in 2021 I bemoaned that I never even finished all the zones there, but I did actually get the husband to go back with me and do Townlong Steppes and Dread Wastes in Chromie Time. Then I did a little bit of Shadowlands, but I didn't even get to start on my covenant story before Dragonflight came out.

Pishin

• Level 60 pandaren priest
  
• 5 days, 13 hours /played
• Professions: 4 Classic Herbalism, 100 Draenor Herbalism, 56 Shadowlands Herbalism, 21 Pandaria Inscription, 100 Draenor Inscription, 64 Shadowlands Inscription, 6 Classic Cooking, 6 Cataclysm Cooking, 105 Draenor Cooking, 17 Shadowlands Cooking, 100 Draenor Fishing, 17 Shadowlands Fishing, 117 Archaeology
  

Ah, my "piss priest", who levelled through WoD with the husband's monk and then did a bit of Shadowlands endgame. We actually never quite finished all of WoD - maybe once the level cap goes up again, I'll make him do the missing zones with me in Chromie Time, just like I did with the druid.

Other than that, I've been feeling a bit lost with this character. For a while, I logged her daily to tend her garrison, but eventually I had more resources than I could possibly use and gave up on it. I also levelled her as discipline, and regardless of the many changes Blizzard made to that spec over the years, I've pretty much disliked every single iteration of it. I thought I'd try respeccing to shadow, my original love, but all that nonsense with insanity and tentacles is just totally alien to me as well. It's weird to still love the priest class while not getting along with two of its three specs.

Tidella

• Level 48 Kul Tiran shaman
  
• 1 day, 17 hours /played
• Professions: 106 Classic Mining, 3 Cataclysm Mining, 140 Classic Engineering, 3 Cataclysm Engineering, 40 Classic Cooking
  

This character was part of a levelling group with guildies, but we stalled out after the issues we ran into with Wrath dungeons described in this post. Since then she's been sitting in that weird limbo where I kind of don't want to play her because I'm still holding on to the idea that we'll pick things up again one day and the reality of having to accept that this probably won't happen.

Violan

• Level 46 void elf mage
  
• 14 hours /played
• Professions: 8 Classic Herbalism, 61 Legion Herbalism, 2 Classic Skinning, 74 Legion Skinning, 40 Classic Cooking, 8 Legion Fishing, 30 Archaeology
  

After unlocking all those allied races, I thought I should actually create some characters using them. I made a void elf mage because it seemed like a good combo and I didn't have a mage yet. She's currently levelling through Legion.

Marquess

• Level 45 dark iron dwarf death knight
  
• 11 hours /played
• Professions: 139 Kul Tiran Herbalism, 80 Kul Tiran Mining, 15 Kul Tiran Fishing, 28 Archaeology
  

Same story for this dark iron death knight - plus I kind of wanted to level a plate-wearer to unlock certain transmog pieces. She's making her way through BfA one chunk of rested XP at a time, but because she's both a miner and a herbalist, she actually gets to do very little questing between all the gathering (which awards absolutely stupid amounts of XP).

Kehnan

• Level 19 dwarf paladin
  
• 7 hours /played
• Professions: 71 Draenor Blacksmithing, 2 Classic Mining, 3 Draenor Mining
  

This was actually my first attempt at getting a plate-wearer levelled up, but I haven't logged into her in so long that, before I did so to get her /played number for this post, she'd been marked as inactive and eligible for the free gear boost. I had this idea for taking another character through WoD while also checking out the state of paladin tanking, but the garrison quickly sapped me of all enthusiasm.

Kara

• Level 59 orc warlock
  
• 1 day, 3 hours /played
• Professions: 50 Zandalari Tailoring, 7 Classic Enchanting, 45 Zandalari Enchanting, 26 Zandalrai Cooking, 68 Zandalari Fishing, 80 Archaelogy
  

My one Hordie, about whom I've also written a bit here. She's currently level-locked at 59 to see the rest of Horde-side BfA without outlevelling it, and also picked up all the different quests to unlock the BfA allied races at the same time. She's got a long way to go, but at least it's something different.

(Vanilla) Classic Class Personalities

The other day I was looking at a conversation in my guild's Discord and thinking to myself how these warriors always talk about the same things over and over when it suddenly hit me: All the classes seem to have a very distinctive personality profile when it comes to the people who prefer playing them. I wrote a post like this about SWTOR more than a decade ago, why have I never done this for WoW? Well, let's do it now.

Druid players live up to their class's hippie image in my opinion, in that they are usually very friendly and easygoing. They play druid because they like that the class is both self-sufficient while soloing and versatile in group content, and they are happy to play whatever role is needed to make things go smoothly. Just don't cause any stress, man.

Hunters have a reputation for being lazy and stupid, which means hunter players have to be willing to put up with that. In some ways that means the class is a great fit for anyone wanting to take an ultra-casual approach to the game, because if you unexpectedly go AFK, forget to enchant your gear or just generally don't know how to play your class, nobody's going to be surprised. However, if you actually like to min-max and play your class to the best of its capabilities, you won't last long as a hunter main, because you'll never get any buffs and will perpetually be tarred with the "huntard" brush. Dedicated hunter mains therefore stand out for having an outstanding ability to just ignore everyone and not give a damn about anything.

Mages enjoy that their class brings a lot of unique tricks to the table, and while they're not generally attention-seekers, they do thrive on the way their class's toolkit inherently grants it to them anyway. This can manifest in a number of different ways, from impressing random bystanders with flawless kiting of a dangerous mob to being the one to repeatedly plop down portals after a raid until the very last person has made their way home. The point is, you'll notice a good mage and they enjoy that.

Paladins are Classic's dreamers. Depending on which spec they choose, they may envision themselves as stalwart protectors, vengeful smiters of evil or as powerful healers... but of course, in Vanilla they can't really truly deliver in any of those roles. Still, they persist in their class fantasy, even as everyone else wonders why they didn't just roll a warrior or priest, and they take solace in the knowledge that their buffs at least guarantee them a raid spot.

You don't roll a priest in Vanilla if you're not a team player wanting to play nice with others, so priests are always the caring type... one way or another. However, being a priest also means depending a lot on other people's help, and anyone who's levelled one will have been repeatedly let down in that regard, which means they're also incredibly cynical and jaded. Whenever I wonder what a Classic priest player looks like in real life, I picture Hide the Pain Harold.

Contrary to what their class mechanics would make you think, the one thing rogues never do is just fade into the background. They can be naughty or nice, but they are always in your face. In the nice variant, that means constantly wanting to hang out or offering to help out in some way, while the naughty variant can manifest in anything from shit-talking to bullying to ganking. They'll just never shut up and be quiet.

Shaman mains are Classic's brainiacs and multitaskers. I suppose this comes naturally for a class that has to juggle more than a dozen buffs across four totems, some of which only last for mere seconds and constantly need to be refreshed or moved around. They will often find themselves in roles of responsibility, such as officer or master looter, or they may employ their talents more stealthily by acquiring rare profession recipes that others need or quietly carrying the healing team. You just know that you can always rely on your shamans.

Warlock mains always give off a vibe of being stuck somewhere between slight annoyance and confusion. All they wanted was to play an evil character who dominates demons and does massive damage, yet debuff limits in raids mean they're forbidden from using their tools to their full potential, while people keep pestering them for health stones and summons as if they're meant to be nice and helpful. It just feels wrong. They're at their happiest when they're allowed to just act insane and burn themselves and their enemies to death with hellfire.

Warriors are both the best tanks and dps in Classic by a mile, and players who choose to main a warrior usually know this. They pressed the "I win" button at character creation on purpose. Like a monarch dealing with peons, the average warrior has little interest in what "lesser" classes are doing unless the tax isn't paid on time they're missing windfury or some other dps buff. They will simply charge ahead, confident in the knowledge that they're the best and certain that everyone else will acknowledge this and follow their lead. They only really enjoy the presence of other warriors, with whom they'll be fiercely competitive on the damage and threat meters.

What do you think? Does this match your own impressions of people who main these classes? (Anyone can make an alt of any class of course.) Or do you completely disagree? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

Classic WoW & Me in 2022

I love that this end-of-year summary post has become a tradition, because every year I look back at the previous ones and every year so far my situation has been totally different 365 days later, in ways I never would've been able to predict.

Last year I was - after some struggles - quite happily playing Burning Crusade Classic, and hopeful for the near future, though I said even then: "Blizzard seems to want to push us through all the phases pretty quickly, so I reckon we'll either be in Sunwell or might even already be looking at a Classic Wrath of the Lich King by the end of the year. And what I'll do when that happens, I genuinely don't know."

What ended up happening in practice was that my guild fell apart in early spring, and Blizzard announced that there weren't going to be any BC era servers, which killed any and all motivation I had left to play BC Classic. I bummed around in retail for a bit until I made the decision to give Classic one last try by investing into Classic era, and I've been playing that ever since.

Giving an overview of my era characters is going to feel a bit weird when looking back at previous year-in-review posts, since their stats will be based on where they were at when era split off from BC one and a half years ago plus whatever time I've invested in them now, which means that Alliance characters in particular might look like they've effectively regressed since I last played them... but it is what it is.

Horde

So, thanks to the fact that I found myself invited to a friendly Horde guild soon after I started playing on era, my focus shifted back to Horde side for the first time since 2019.

Shika - Pyrewood Village

• Level 60 Hunter
  
• 25 days, 11 hours played
• 300 Mining, 300 (Gnomish) Engineering, 300 Cooking, 300 Fishing, 300 First Aid

The tauren hunter I originally created because all my friends abandoned me about a month into Classic has returned to being my main, and she's also the character that made the most progress this year, going from the hodgepodge mix of greens and blues pictured in my 2019 year-in-review post to a mix of tier 2 and 3.

I'm not sure she'll stay my main in the long run, but for now she's not going anywhere.

Shilu - PV

• Level 60 Druid
  
• 9 days, 20 hours played
• 315 Herbalism, 300 Alchemy, 300 Cooking, 246 Fishing, 300 First Aid

Not much to say about this one, considering that I just wrote a whole post about getting her to 60! She's a feral/resto hybrid since I like being able to tank dungeons and heal in raids without respeccing. I expect to have some fun next year gearing her up a bit.

Shintau - PV

• Level 41 Shaman
  
• 5 days, 2 hours played
• 275 Skinning, 232 Leatherworking, 263 Cooking, 282 Fishing, 260 First Aid

My original Classic main, the resto shaman. Being part of a guild now, she might actually have a future, but levelling as resto is very meh when you're mostly playing solo and there are no dungeon pugs to speak of. Still, I continue to make progress in baby steps - levelling her leatherworking in particular has been fun. And at least she reached 40 and got a mount (which was graciously financed by my hunter).

Shinny - PV

• Level 36 Mage
  
• 3 days, 1 hour played
• 254 Tailoring, 121 Enchanting, 235 Cooking, 172 Fishing, 255 First Aid

My troll mage is back to having the same job she had in 2019: disenchanting stuff and making bags. I level her a bit every now and then when it feels like her bags are too full and I really need to make some sort of progress. Sometimes I wonder whether it would be good to get her to max level solely because there are very few mages in the guild for some reason - it's not unusual to have a 40-man raid with only a single one.

Gemba - Mirage Raceway

• Level 19 Warlock
  
• 16 hours played
• 65 Herbalism, 94 Skinning, 2 Cooking, 34 Fishing, 98 First Aid

This is the orc warlock I made to store gems and other valuables - it's in the name! However, I've also levelled her a bit just for fun. I'm actually kind of excited to do the incubus quest line soon, one of the few pieces of content in era to completely deviate from #nochanges.

Fooba - MR

• Level 16 Warrior
  
• 14 hours played
• 84 Mining, 75 Skinning, 20 Cooking, 1 Fishing, 81 First Aid

My bank alt for food and consumables - again, it's in the name! Also done a bit of levelling but not much.

Tir - Nethergarde Keep

• Level 9 Rogue
  
• 3 hours played
• 30 Herbalism, 25 Skinning, no secondary professions yet
  

So I moved/renamed my Alliance characters before Blizzard had finished purging the old clones, which meant that Tir had to become Tirr and Fali became Faly - but then they actually did free up the old names eventually and I had this sudden anxiety about someone else getting "my" name. So I created new characters with names like Tir and Shintar just to hold on to the names. This is the only one I've levelled a bit, because I thought that having a rogue on Horde side as well would be neat.

Alliance

Aside from the little night elf rogue I created to re-familiarise myself with era, my Alliance characters have seen very little play, but I'm still glad that they're there, so I'll at least list them all this one time to note down where they're at. Who knows what the future will bring?

Tirrona - MR 

• Level 34 Rogue
  
• 2 days, 21 hours played
• 208 Herbalism, 154 Mining, 175 Cooking, 197 Fishing, 144 First Aid

My night elf rogue turned into a rarely-played side project once I moved to Horde side, but I still love her for being the character that helped me get back into era. Starting over really helped with familiarising myself with the culture and environment of era from the ground up instead of (unsuccessfully) trying to jump straight in with a cloned character at max level.

She's also in a super-casual guild led by an older guy who actually used to play on Hydraxian Waterlords too. I didn't really know him there, but just having that little tie to my past still makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Tirr - NK

• Level 60 Hunter
  
• 36 days, 6 hours played
• 300 Skinning, 300 (Dragonscale) Leatherworking, 300 Cooking, 300 Fishing, 300 First Aid

I actually joined a guild called <The Old Raiders> on Tirr (my old Classic main), when I still had this idea that I could maybe casually join for the occasional Naxx run or something, but while guilds are clearing Naxx on era, it's not an easy thing to do and understandably they don't want to take any old random who might jeopardise their chances of success. So I thought about how I'd first have to attend x number of other raids to build up a reputation, on top of mainly playing on Horde side and doing other things, and... I just gave up because it sounded like too much effort. I just log into her every now and then to check her mail (I got some arrows crafted "just in case" which I keep sending back and forth between Tirr and Sarelle because I never end up using them) and to use her salt shaker.

Sarelle - NK

• Level 60 Paladin
  
• 20 days, 13 hours played
• 300 Mining, 300 Weaponsmithing, 300 Cooking, 284 Fishing, 300 First Aid

As my other Naxx-raiding character, Sarelle was subject to similar considerations as Tirr, especially since she had several T3 pieces in her bank that she never got to trade in back in the day due to a perpetual shortage of plate scraps. However, ultimately she's in the same boat as Tirr. I healed a ZG on her and went and won the fishing contest, but that's about it.

Jehna - NK

• Level 60 Mage
  
• 7 days, 13 hours played
• 295 Tailoring, 250 Enchanting, 281 Cooking, 122 Fishing, 300 First Aid

My mage was that character that hit level 60 just before the expansion pre-patch who never really did anything at max level, and she's still that. About the only thing I did on era was buy her an epic mount, since I realised I had enough gold between my other characters to afford it. Oh, and one time I went and randomly farmed satyrs in Felwood for an hour.

Faly - NK

• Level 57 Druid
  
• 8 days, 21 hours played
• 300 Herbalism, 300 Alchemy, 292 Cooking, 225 Fishing, 300 First Aid

My night elf druid became one of my favourite alts in Classic BC, but on era she's not even 60. Sadness. I did a few quests and a bit of flower-picking in the Plaguelands at some point, but not enough to make her level.

Shintar - PV

• Level 30 Priest
  
• 1 day, 17 hours played
• 121 Mining, 141 Engineering, 146 Cooking, 114 Fishing, 142 First Aid

I cloned this one but basically did nothing with her. The memory of how much fun I was having playing priest in Classic BC just before everything fell apart still lingers.

Razorr - PV

• Level 30 Warrior
  
• 1 day, 20 hours played
• 130 Mining, 178 Skinning, 150 Cooking, 61 Fishing, 150 First Aid

I did do a bit of questing on this one, and played the tank in a three-person Stockades run. Her biggest "achievement" however was being handed 500 gold by a random level 60 in Stormwind who said that he didn't really need it because he wasn't playing anyway. 😅

Tirutak - PV

• Level 20 Warlock
  
• 23 hours played
• 132 Herbalism, 150 Skinning, 32 Cooking, 27 Fishing, 78 First Aid

This was my little summon alt back in Classic, and also a bit of a silly RP idea as I levelled her purely by farming mobs in the Barrens. I originally left her behind on Hydraxian Waterlords "just in case" anything ever happened over there but eventually decided to just move her as well, because what's the point of a summon alt who's got nobody to summon?

As for what'll happen next year? I do think we'll get a full year of Classic Wrath of the Lich King, but after that: who knows? Either way this hopefully shouldn't affect me too much as I hope that Classic era can continue to just chug along in peace. It would be nice if for once, I won't find myself in a situation a year later where everything's changed completely yet again.