The Magical World of... Whatever

When I last encountered the Mage-ocracy of Dalaran in the World of Warcraft, it was 2010. 

Sure, I’d parked the original Neve there, retired from adventuring and permanently having a drink at The Legerdemain Lounge, but there’s a big difference between hanging around at a tavern and actively using a place as your home base.  

Back then, I had little idea as to what Dalaran really was. I knew where it should have been; you can’t miss the Dalaran Crater if you quest through Alterac and Hillsbrad Foothills, and I was so confused when I’d see Souldat’s location as “Dalaran” when I checked out the Social tab that when I hit L70 I went back to the Crater to see if something had changed.

Narrator: It hadn’t.

You bet your ass I'm bringing this
screencap back out.

It was only when I began playing through Northrend that I began to realize that Dalaran was actually up in Northrend itself, hence the crater. 

In fact, reaching Dalaran was also my first exposure to phasing in World of Warcraft: Soul was escorting me (on Quintalan, my Paladin) on the way from Sunreaver’s Command in the Dragonblight, and when we drew close to the Kor’koron Vanguard he vanished.

“Uh,” I said in Vent, “You disappeared.”

“I did?” he replied.

“Yeah, you just faded away.”

“Let me backtrack.”

A few moments later, he reappeared.

“That’s weird,” I said, doing my best Captain Obvious impression.

“Oh, I know why,” he realized after a very long pause, “you haven’t done The Wrathgate yet.”

“The what?”

“Don’t worry, you’ll get there. For now, just go up to the flight point at the Vanguard, grab it, and then head east. I should reappear shortly.”

Sure enough, Souldat reappeared once we got far enough away from the Kor’kron Vanguard, and we continued up into the Crystalsong Forest.

For some reason, I was ignorant of the quest at L74 to enter Dalaran, because when we got to the teleportation crystal on ground level beneath the city I couldn’t use it.

There was a long pause while Soul checked something out. “Oh,” he said finally, “You can’t get there until you’re L74. Well, that sucks.”

My memory is hazy after that, so I don’t know if I either waited until L74 to get the quest or we got Soul’s wife –who played a Mage—to port me to Dalaran. It’s probably the latter, because I don’t recall the quest until my next series of toons, Tomakan and Neve, made it to Northrend after Cataclysm was released.

Upon my arrival, I looked at Dalaran as simply another home base in much the same fashion as Shattrath was before it: a place for the Horde and Alliance to congregate before heading out to do stuff in Northrend. It was a safe hub in a PvP world (on a PvP server) and this was where you could get access to some of the daily quests, such as the cooking and fishing dailies. I was ignorant of anything resembling Dailies for instances (I believe the Heroic ones were replaced with the automated LFD dailies that didn’t require an official “Daily” quest), raid gear, or even that this was where you could purchase Heirloom gear.*

I’m sure that today, in Wrath Classic, that’s what Dalaran is to most people: just a place to hang out and crafting stuff done.

But to me, I've found myself reluctant to be inside Dalaran in Wrath Classic.

***

As I told my questing buddy a couple of weeks ago, she's probably seen all the times I've been in Dalaran, because it's a place to open a portal to after an instance (or a raid). The city is centrally located, so if you're trying to get somewhere after having run an instance on the edge of the map, such as Gundrak or Halls of Lightning, it's easier to have your Friendly Neighborhood Mage (tm) open a portal to get to Dalaran first. 

The few times I've been in there, the place hasn't changed: the streets, the lights, the sounds, the NPCs. Everything is still as it was back in the day.

Then why don't I like hanging around Dalaran much?

I changed. Or rather, my circumstances changed.

Back in the day, I hadn't any concerns about things such as guilds, raiding, or endgame in general. The servers I was on, first Stormscale-US and then Area-52-US, were huge servers with a good sized Horde population. A-52 was approximately 10:1 Horde back then (the ratio is much worse now), and more importantly there was no such thing as layers, so a crowded Dalaran was just that: a huge mess of a crowd. 

Normally I'd avoid crowds anyway because I dislike them, but I quickly discovered that crowds as found on A-52 brought anonymity with them. Nobody knew me, and using the automated LFD tool meant most people I found via the tool didn't know me either. Since I didn't raid, I had no titles next to my name. No Gearscore to worry about, either, since that was only utilized in reference to pugging raids. I mean, if you had people looking for Gearscores of 5000 to run Heroic Halls of Lightning, they likely wanted to be carried. Even the non-"friends and family" guild I eventually joined with Soul and his wife, The Grey Death Legion, was small potatoes compared to the rest of A-52.**

Now, in Classic, the script has been flipped. 

Atiesh-US is a much larger server than A-52-US ever was, but due to layering there aren't many crowds in Dalaran. You'd think that was a good thing for an introvert who doesn't like crowds much, but because so many people from Myzrael-US migrated to Atiesh-US, I always see people I know the few times I enter into Dalaran. Especially ex-guildies.

It's a constant reminder to me that I left Valhalla by remaining behind while everyone else migrated to Atiesh-US, and I fully intended to remain mostly on Myzrael-US until I was recruited into the 10s raid that I'm presently in.*** So here I am, mostly on Atiesh-US these days despite my original intentions, and while I've made it plain that Deuce is not OG Cardwyn, people still whisper me periodically about how I'm doing and whether I'll join the franken guild. 

Yes, I'm doing fine. No, I'm not joining.

So far, my explanation that Deuce predates any migration (or even the announcement) from Myz and I wasn't planning on Maining her until I got recruited into a raid has been enough to satisfy people who inquired. However, I do know at least a few people who --if given half a chance-- are going to ask "why?" and won't take a simple "It's a private matter" as an answer.****

I've seen enough guild drama to last a lifetime, and I'd rather not cause any more.

***

That aside, there's a larger reason why I don't hang around Dalaran: it doesn't feel like home to Cardwyn.

This is 100 percent due to my fiction. Card has been around; she's traveled, she's fought against powerful enemies, and she's even spent time away from the fray due to PTSD from the fight against Kel'Thuzad. Her initial idealism about Mages was deflated early on in her career and replaced by a certain degree of cynicism. This has been encouraged by her first teacher, Evelyn, who grew up in Dalaran and saw the shades of gray and blindness in that community that allowed a Kel'Thuzad to grow and flourish before his betrayal and creation of the Cult of the Damned.***** The full extent of Evelyn's involvement with Dalaran is unknown to Card (before you ask, yes, I know what it is) but Card knows enough that she can see beyond the utopian veneer presented in the avenues and shops to acknowledge the reality that Dalaran is not what it seems. 

To a Mage who is not part of the Kirin Tor, Dalaran can feel... well... like your know-it-all "Golden Boy" sibling who, despite their best intentions, always feels like they're perpetually mansplaining things to you. What'd be especially grating is that in the aftermath of the rise of the Scourge and the destruction of the Northern Kingdoms, Dalaran turned tail and hid behind it's own bubble, belying all their lofty aspirations. 

"Oh no," a Dalaran Mage tells you early on in the Nexus War questline, "We're not allowed to torture people to extract information from them. But you can." The implication --that we can't get our hands dirty performing tasks that are beneath us-- would grate on Cardwyn. 

"Either you believe in torture or you don't," Cardwyn would have replied. "Just because I act as your proxy doesn't mean you're absolved from any guilt, so don't give me any of that 'holier than thou' bullshit."

That little exchange could have set the scene for so many more "shades of gray" interactions with the Kirin Tor that I'm disappointed that Blizz didn't head in that direction. Instead, that quest was a bit of an outlier in the whole "We're magical Paladins!" feel that I got out of interacting with the Kirin Tor this time around. 

It all boils down to whether Cardwyn would want to be associated with a society like this, and based on Card's backstory and personality, I'd say no. Or maybe grudgingly so.

***

Finally, there's one picture that came out of Retail several years ago that haunts me to this day:

This is Disney in a nutshell.

That pic, from Legion, looks like it'd be something out of Spaceballs. 

Or maybe a Disney Channel mashup of Star Wars and Cinderella's castle.

Darth Vader: Where are the plans to make a Genie's Lamp?

Cinderella: I don't know what you're talking about. I'm on a diplomatic mission to see Captain America!

Vader: You are a member of the Princess Alliance and a traitor! Take her to the Black Pearl!

Either way, it has to be one of the sillier things I've ever seen. 

*Yes, I was aware of Heirloom gear at the time, and while I was leveling I was insanely jealous of all the people who had been at Max Level and were populating their toons with Heirloom gear. It was such an obvious advantage for a player to speed level with gear that essentially was like having Blue gear that scaled with you all the way to that Max Level, particularly if you ever set your foot inside a random Battleground, that a new person felt like a scrub until they finally started getting gear from Heroic instances once they reached max level.

**It was mostly notable for being a guild that wouldn't let you curse in Vent or guild chat. That didn't prevent the guild from blowing up due to the difficulties in ICC, however.

***About 3-4 weeks ago while I was on OG Card for something or other I was contacted by a leadership member of the franken guild asking if I was going to join them on Atiesh. "Not planning on it," was my reply. And that was that.

****How do I know this? Because I've seen them do this before. And that's part of the reason why I'm not in the franken guild; that some people in guild leadership are people I simply can't respect.

*****And Neve won't ever let anyone forget that in addition to being the Prince of Quel'thalas, Kael'thas Sunstrider once was a member of the Kirin Tor.