Closing in on the Halfway Point

It's been 4 months since the WoW Classic Anniversary servers opened, and here's where Operation Spread the Love stands right now:

The toon levels as of March 25, 2025.
Shaluna was the name I assigned to my Druid on
Classic Era. (Oops.) She's also the first toon
to ever wear that Corsair's Overshirt (above)
that drops from Edwin Van Cleef in The Deadmines.

I'm probably a week away from having at least one toon at L30, and that depends upon getting a toon or two into Blackfathom Deeps. Both the Paladin and Warlock have class quests that involve a visit to Blackfathom Deeps, so they're likely to go. Other toons I don't intend to take into instances much due to the expectations that they'll be healing (Shaluna) or tanking (Taldanifal). I can handle pugging dungeons as DPS, but healing and tanking bring along extra expectations that I would rather not meet. 

As it is, I spend a lot of my time running back and forth between the Wetlands, Duskwood, and Ashenvale, with the occasional side trip to Stonetalon Mountains along the way. 

People who played Classic back in 2019 will tell you that Stonetalon Mountains is typically one of the emptiest zones in the Old World. It takes a bit of time to get there, and the Alliance flight point is stuck at the top of Stonetalon Peak itself, so it's far out of the way for any questing in the zone itself. That zone also has some of the first "go see people on the other side of the world" quests to perform, and consequently a lot of people simply skip it entirely. Cardwyn used to visit Stonetalon because it was so empty, so she could farm Light Feathers off of the harpies there without bothering anybody. 

Except the harpies.

Well, dip me in molasses, cover me in feathers, and call me a chicken, but on the Anniversary servers Stonetalon was incredibly busy every time I've set foot in the place. 

I've never had to fight for mobs there in the past, not even in 2019, so this is a new experience for me. Here we are, 4 months into the 20th Anniversary servers, and new toons are still out there, questing in Stonetalon. 

My questing buddy suggested they were part of the 4th or 5th wave of toons coming up, and she's likely not wrong. I put some of the toons I've encountered in Deadmines on my Friends List, and they're now at either max level or are in the L50s. So if those players go and make (another) alt, they'll likely lap me another time or two while I'm leveling.

***

I have begun going back to Classic Era a bit lately.

This past weekend was Alterac Valley weekend, and when the 20th Anniversary servers first opened you couldn't find a single AV battleground up and running on Classic Era, even on AV Weekend. This weekend I finally saw some good signs that players have returned, because about 3-4 AV battles were going the entire weekend. 

It felt weird to be back in a battleground after months of being away, but after a day or so I got out of my awkwardness and settled into the organized chaos that is a WoW battleground. I suspect that some players, having gotten to max level on the 20th Anniversary servers, are now raid logging over there and are coming back to Classic Era to play in the interim. I don't have any evidence of that, of course, but given that the Blackwing Lair raid just opened on the 20th Anniversary servers I suspect people are focusing on raids there and then returning to Era for everything else. 

I think I might stay on Classic Era more as my leveling slows down, because it provides me some variety over what I've got on the so-called Classic Fresh servers. I don't mean in terms of class breadth, because I've got 8 toons of various classes I'm leveling at once on those Anniversary servers, but in terms of being satisfied where I'm at. On Classic Era I have two max level Mages and one max level Rogue, and I just have no real desire to level another toon there. I've taken OG Cardwyn through Naxx and she has the full T3 set to prove it, so I don't really have any desire to go to a raid team and do regular raiding. I suppose if somebody offered me a shot at an Atiesh that'd be nice, but I have no desire to "jump the line" and bypass a bunch of people that have been raiding in an established raid team to get it. (Plus I think the staff looks ugly. Big turn-off, if you ask me.)

I still think it looks like a sulphur ball
attached to a stick. Gandalf's staff, this ain't.
From Wowhead.

***

As far as how other people are doing on the Classic Fresh/20th Anniversary servers, my questing buddy discovered AoE leveling in Zul'Farrak and got a second toon, a Mage, to max level last week. I knew she was going to get a second toon to max level, yet despite her insistence that she was not going to speed level a second toon after her experience with her Druid, she still did it anyway. She claims she's not going to do that again with a third toon, but stay tuned.

I told her I should start a betting pool on how quickly she levels a third toon.

Let's see...

One of our group stopped logging in, but that was to be expected as he got kicked from the guild he was in for being an asshat in chat even after he'd been warned. I should have had a betting pool going for that, because he was that sort of player who was guaranteed to get gkicked at some point. 

Someone who shall remain nameless once asked me how I stood for that player's behavior. 

"I don't," I replied shortly. "I don't encourage it and I don't defend him. Sometimes people need to feel the consequences of their actions."

Others in our group have made it to L60, and still others are far enough ahead of me that they'll get to max level soon.

***

With the roadmap for these Fresh servers having bumped the opening of the Dark Portal to early 2025, I've got even more time to get to max level than I thought. My suspicion is that a two month window for raiding Naxx is likely too short for most players --I know it would be for me-- so Blizz is likely extending that phase by a couple of months. 

I've been starting to think what I intend to do when TBC drops and the Dark Portal opens. 

While it'd be nice to actually experience the expansion without rushing through, as I'd originally intended, I'm not sure what everybody else is going to do. The optimal strategy for leveling in TBC Classic was to chain-run instances until you got to max level, then start questing, so it might be that the actual zones might not be crowded at all. If they are crowded, however, I could just default back to the Blood Elf toons I intend to create and roll with them for a while. And maybe a Draenei too.

That being said, do I want to raid? 

Maybe? I do want to see Kael'Thas die so I can have some closure from my time as a raid lead in 2021-2022, but my entire TBC experience has been as an Enhancement Shaman, so doing this as a Mage would be somewhat different. Most raid teams will only take 2-3 Mages at most because that's the optimal configuration, so I might once again be faced with the choice of either playing a Shaman in a raid or simply not raiding beyond the occasional Karazhan run. 

And I don't want to be part of a raid where I'm carried, either. I'd rather eat ground glass.

Yummy.
From Budget Glass Nanaimo.

*Used when casting Slow Fall. I've since been told that Priests use Light Feathers too for a spell --Water Walking or something like that-- but I never saw Priests over in Stonetalon. Only the occasional Mage.