A Window into the Past

 As time has gone on this past year, I've seen people come and go on Classic.  I've gotten to know some of them fairly well, and others I met via an instance, friended them after a great time, and never saw them online again.

Perhaps the greatest example of this phenomenon is the friends' lists of Az and Card. 

I was thinking about this the other day when I realized that almost nobody from Az's friends list was on, but Card had a ton online. Given that Az leveled first, I suppose it was inevitable that some of the people I encountered in September and October 2019 would have moved on. I've even seen a couple of people I battle tag friended in that era online, but either on other Classic servers or even on Retail. 

But I also think it's a measure of the type of group that Az would get involved with versus Card. 

Melee DPS isn't nearly in as much demand for instances as ranged DPS is. If you're interested in a speed run of, say, Blackrock Depths, getting 2 or 3 Mages together can wreak havoc on an instance. On the flip side, if you're in an instance that favors lots of single target attacks and/or you have tanks with issues holding threat, a Rogue's threat reduction and single target specialty has an advantage over ranged DPS without threat reduction.

I also think that a Rogue or a cat Druid, when stealthed, has advantages that a Mage doesn't have if you're new to an instance. Both can scout ahead and inform the group of what is around a corner (highly useful in RFK and RFD), and the Rogue (with Improved Sap) can provide CC in those scenarios where not pulling aggro is critical. If, however, you want a ranged pull + CC at the same time, a Mage's sheep pull is highly useful.

All of this analysis boils down to one simple fact: different groups require different classes, and the groups that Az would run with aren't going to be the same --especially at lower levels-- than those that Cardwyn would run with.

Perhaps the purest form of this is when I see somebody I know looking for DPS for an instance, and I whisper them "which do you want, Card or Az?" Sometimes they're fine with Az, sometimes they're fine with Card. Depends on the situation and the current group makeup. And because of those differences, whom I put on my friends' list on Az is likely to be different than on Card.

As a result, Az's friends list reads like a view of what Classic looked like in the Fall of 2019, while Card's friends list is a window into Classic's current status. 

And because of the impending release of Shadowlands, I have to wonder just how much of Card's friends list will turn into Az's in a few months.