What Would Frank Think?

"I hate this song. I HATE THIS SONG! I got it up to here [with] this God damned song!"
--Frank Sinatra on My Way, 1979

 

Last Thursday, when I finished and posted this post around lunchtime, I was about halfway through L69. Several hours later, after work, it became obvious to me that if I wanted to ding 70 I could do so Thursday night.

I'd been working on both Shattered Halls and Karazhan attunement via the quests and pugs --and courtesy of a serendipitous encounter in Netherstorm-- I didn't have to try to find someone to group up with to finish the last quest up there. The XP from those quests alone took up about a 1/4 of a level, so by the time the evening rolled around I only had 1.5 bars to finally cross the finish line and complete leveling Briganaa.

So, I took the rest of the evening off and helped my leveling buddy with her L34 Priest by killing mobs for her. Oh, and in the process I worked on leveling my skinning as well.*

I'd been at L69 for a couple of days by then, and I'd started getting whispers from people saying that surely I was going to ding soon.

"Soon enough," was my typical reply.

My leveling buddy knew I was close and accepted that I was going to do what I wanted to do. She'd been patient with me while I bitched about how TBC Classic had played out on the server**, and she was happy to get a chance to get her Priest leveled a bit as I'd left it in the dust a couple of weeks ago. So we knocked out about 4-5 levels for her while I brought my skinning to the point where I needed to head out to the Hinterlands to work on pushing it closer to 300.***

***

Even then, she sprung a surprise on me during a conversation we had early in the week. The conversation began with my concerns about getting enough gold for flying, because that was going to be the big sticking point in Karazhan attunement. She told me not to worry, because the gold rewards are a lot higher than even I'd be expecting. "You're talking upwards of 20 gold for quests in Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley," she told me.****

"So how are the quests in Shadowmoon Valley?" I asked.

"I wouldn't know, because I've been waiting for you to reach L70 so we can quest there together."

My breath caught. She'd been at max level since shortly after I arrived in Outland, which while it had been a short time overall, it felt like an eternity to someone who leveled a Shaman from scratch. "You waited for me?" I finally typed out.

"Sure! Why?"

I completely lost it. 

I put my head in my hands and began to cry. "Because all of my MMO career," I finally typed out, "nobody has ever waited for me. Ever."

"Isn't that what friends do?"

"Well, yes, but.... That's never happened to me before."

This Penny Arcade comic from 2004
has been my MMO experience. And I'm
never the one on the cat.

For me, the MMO experience has largely been a solitary one because everybody I ever made contact with or joined up with while leveling has eventually left me in the dust in the pursuit of max level. Or, in the case of my current situation, I was already at max level so there was nothing to wait on. But the past month and a half has been an exercise in awakening all of the old resentments and demons concerning leveling out in the field, and how isolating that can be when you want to be playing with friends. 

I guess I'd just gotten used to raiding with regulars that reverting to my solitary MMO experience has been a shock to the system, particularly when bare lip service has been paid to the Leftovers while everybody else has been "leveling together".

But this.... This was proof that someone was out there who cared enough to do something I'd never experienced in game before. And I proceeded to lose my composure for about 10 minutes. Thank goodness I wasn't on voice, or that anybody else in the house wandered over during that time.

***

The promise of questing together weighed on my mind while people who hadn't said crap to me during the entire leveling Death March suddenly started becoming interested in my progress just as I was finishing up. It was then that I decided I wasn't going to give people the pleasure of self congratulation by saying congrats to me that evening.

I was going to ding my way, and my way was doing it when nobody was looking.

After helping my leveling buddy get her Priest 5 levels, I logged for the night with several completed quests in my queue. If things worked out right, I'd be on first thing Friday morning before work and get this done.

As the sun rose on the 25th, I got up, helped get my wife out the door to work, and settled in with some coffee. I logged in, found that I was literally the only person in guild online, and smiled.

I ran over to drop off several different quests, and afterward I found myself about half a bar short. 

"I suppose I could drop by Blade's Edge and knock out a quest there," I mused.

Then a request to assistance kill Teribus came across LFG.

"I can help," I replied, and rode over to the eastern side of the wasteland surrounding Auchindoun.

Even though Teribus has three people recommended, we knocked it out with just the two of us. It helped that the other player was a Hunter, and between their pet and my Fire Elemental (courtesy of the Fire Elemental Totem) we one shot Teribus.

I rode back to turn the quest in, and found myself exactly 1000 XP short. So I flew up to Blade's Edge mountains. During the flight one person in guild logged in, but I wasn't too concerned about that. I landed, found a couple of lynxes, and....

There was nobody in Blade's Edge either
that morning.

I nodded in satisfaction. It was done and only one person was online to notice.

And that person didn't notice for 10 minutes or more, in which I got a belated "I didn't notice you'd dinged!" gratz. 

At lunchtime, I logged in, got some quests done, and much to my delight nobody noticed. Or noticed enough to say anything that one of the Leftovers had finally made it to L70.*****

After work I logged in to run some more quests and I joined up with my questing buddy to start work on Shadowmoon Valley.

 

Some things about Shadowmoon Valley never change.

By then I got maybe one or two whispered congrats of the "I didn't notice you'd dinged" variety. My standard response was "I snuck in the back door first thing in the morning, when nobody was looking. Pretty much as I liked it."

That night was a guild first attempt at Gruul's Lair, and I was happy to not be in attendance. I had gold to make via questing and a mount to attain. By early evening, I was sitting on about being 150 gold short if I pooled all of my gold, and I blinked. "That's a lot closer than I was at the beginning of the day," I told my leveling buddy.

"Have you been looking at the gold rewards? They're 10+ gold per quest."

"Well yeah, but I still wasn't expecting it to rise that rapidly."

Later that evening, my leveling buddy took off for the Gruul raid, and I continued to quest and get across the the gold finish line. Sometime before the raid started, I pooled all of my gold, took a deep breath, and set off for Shadowmoon Valley again. I handed over what was for me an obscene amount of gold for the flight skill (800 gold), and then selected the nondescript "standard" looking griffon as my flying mount (another 100 gold).

And, because I'm me, I was flying around in Blade's Edge and accidentally dismounted.

Oops. And given the proximity of all those
baddies, I had to take rez sickness. Double oops.

 

At least I provided entertainment.

***

And then, after supporting me for so long, it was my turn to support my leveling buddy.

She went into the raid feeling like her DPS was lousy and that she was going to be carried by all of these players who'd raided Naxx while she hadn't gotten inside the place at all. Luckily for me, one of the raiders streamed the Gruul event, so I hopped on to watch.

I turned on my analytical mind and watched the first couple of pulls on the first boss, and I was impressed by what I saw. "You're doing really good," I told my questing buddy. "Seriously bringing the heat there!"

"Yeah, but we wiped."

"That happens. It's how it was for us in Naxx: we work and get things down and then finally once we figure it out we've suddenly got it."

And then they brought down the King on a subsequent attempt.

"Did you see my DPS?!!" she asked excitedly.

"Hell yeah!! You're doing great!!"

Gruul Dragonkiller was next.#

I watched the first couple of wipes, and although the spacing wasn't the greatest, I saw the potential. 

"You've got this," I told my leveling buddy on the third try.

The first shatter phase came and went with minimal deaths.

"As long as they can keep Team Evil## upright, you've got the DPS to take him out."

Another shatter phase, and then another, and critical DPS pieces stayed alive.

"GO TEAM EVIL!"

Gruul was rapidly approaching a growth point where he'd simply deal too much damage for the healers to keep up with, but the DPS was still there and steadily bringing him down. 

"10%."

"7..."

"5..."

"3..."

"1..."

"Boom!"

"Yay!" my questing buddy exclaimed. 

"You did it!!"

It turned out later, courtesy of Warcraft Logs, that the Gruul kill was the "worst" on the server. One healer mentioned that her gear was so bad that she didn't even get a parse rating. That, to my mind, means that without the gear it was mostly skill --and some luck-- that helped bring about the kill.

And I was incredibly proud of my questing buddy, who acquitted herself well.

 

*Let's not talk about my Leatherworking skill level. Let's just say that it's in the Apprentice range.

 **I continue to hear stories about how people quit their guilds based on the behavior of guild leadership and others favoring one raid over another or one group over another. All of this was entirely preventable given enough planning and proper management, but the more I see how things shake out the more I realize that "proper management" is sorely lacking in the majority of guilds out there.

***I did that later, and then after a bit of time in Eastern Plaguelands, aka "nobody goes there to skin so it's a good place to skin if you want to be left alone", I moved on to Silithus. When I was skinning there, the average number of toons in the zone was... 6. Pretty much how I'd always found the place before Classic came along.

****Again, I didn't record the conversations in this post, so it's approximate.

*****There's an addon that the guild promotes for use, called Guild Roster Manager, that has a ton of automatic tracking features and alerts when things happen, such as leveling or when people go AFK for a while. Maybe that's good for a large guild to have officers use it, but from my perspective it's pretty damn invasive for joe average to utilize. And, as it goes without saying, every level that I made that I never got a gratz on (unlike the main leveling bubble that sprinted to Outland the moment the Dark Portal opened) is highlighted there by GRM and their users, so I knew pretty much that a decent subset of the guild didn't give a crap about the Leftovers if they weren't gonna say anything even though the alerts were right in their faces. 

#To be perfectly clear, I'm not exactly sure why we're trying to kill Gruul at all. Anybody who kills all of those Black Dragonflight dragons is an okay person in my book, but that's how the raid goes.

##My nickname for the Warlocks.

At the Crossroads of Practicality and Desire

I am now at a very weird intersection in my leveling process: I want it to slow down. And I'm not even sure that I can slow it down, either.

Well, let me clarify things a bit: the reason why I want to slow the leveling down is because I'd prefer to get flying right as I ding 70, and my preferred leveling process appears to be working against me for that.

***

When I arrived in Outland, Brig had 40 gold in her pocket. 

That's right: 40. Not 400.

I don't have a toon that has all my gold, either. Until Brig came along, Card has the most gold of all my toons at roughly 50-100 gold depending on which day of the week it was. Naxx put a gigantic crimp on my ability to earn gold, as I spent a lot of time farming mats so I could attend the Naxx raids. And for those who would say to just farm herbs to sell on the Auction House, I was doing that until the cost of the potions and/or raw materials on the AH outstripped my ability to sell the herbs I was farming. And once the price of Firefin spiked, well.... I grabbed my fishing pole and hit the shores of Wetlands.* It was only in the final few weeks of Naxx that my gold situation began to trend upward as we wiped (and I died) less and less in Naxx itself.

One more point: I did get world (or BoE) drops that I would try to sell on the AH, but I rarely was able to pull that off. I mean, I even got the Disgusting Oozling as a drop in Western Plaguelands, and even putting it up at less than half of the price of the other sellers I couldn't get any takers. Go figure. It's only now, with the new expac out there, that I'm getting some takers on the greens and Enchanting mats I've been putting up.

Still, the leveling of 1 to 60 was an exercise in speed, not wealth generation, even though the only things I bought were food and water.

***

Until a Shaman gets Water Shield around L62, they are a huge water hog. 

And I do mean huge.

I'd be slowly gaining ground on gold while leveling, and two things would happen: I'd ding and have to go get trained, and the price of water kept going up. I'd have a couple of stacks of water on me when I'd go out into the field, and every time I came back in to sell junk and get more water, the overall fluctuation would be such that I'd net a lot less than I thought. And once I hit the range for the L45 water.... I'd net zero.

The obvious answer was to get a friendly Mage to give me some water, but I was in such a hurry (and on at weird enough hours) that the alternate method of finding a random player, create a group, switch to Card, add Card, and have Card make and distribute water. I did that once, and afterward I thought "This is stupid. All this work for a couple of stacks of water." It may have been free, but as every other goblin in game will tell you, "Time is money, friend." And I didn't have that much time to sit around and do that on a regular basis.**

So, I did what any other slightly insane leveling Shaman would do: switch to L35 water and change my rotation to minimize spellcasting.

It may have been rough at times, but in the end it did help me become a better Shaman because of one thing: Enhancement Shamans are supposed to be masters of White Damage (aka the 'regular' non-magic damage). So I learned to be patient and let my White Damage attacks do their job and only cast when I'd get maximum impact from something. It stretched out my mana use, and it also helped me manage totems (when I used them) better.

And getting Water Shield has been a godsend. I rarely drink when out in the field, and when I group with people for quests or instances I typically get some water given to me as a courtesy.

You know, just like how it used to be.

***

Back to the original point of this post, getting to Outland has been a gold boon for me, but like I alluded to last week the gold demands are higher. My need for water has lessened, but repairs have gone up. 

And the training costs....

Blowing 30+ gold per level on training hurts. A lot. And the way the Shaman's toolkit is designed, I can't not skip some training in favor of others.

All of this has added up to the reality that I'm sitting at L69, partway through the level, and I'm about 500 gold short of the total cost of flying (skill + mount). 

So I'm doing other things rather than questing: working on my Skinning skill, which will (eventually) net me some gold on the AH, helping other players level, and running instances that are on the lower end of the scale (the first two SSC and HC instances, respectively) to help out lower level toons get leveled.

Still, I think it likely that I'll have to ding L70 to gain access to the excess gold gained by having no more XP to accumulate. It'll be a blow to my pride, but I can wait on getting to the Tempest Keep instances. 

***

One final note....

I have decided to honor my commitment to the Raid Lead team through Phase 1, but I will re-evaluate things after Phase 2 is announced. While I'd like to think things will improve, I believe it highly likely I'll want to go back to where I was and leave the guild. To do that will require me to give up my Raid Lead position, and I'm fine with that. I will have given things a fair shot, and if it's not working out for me it's not working out. 

And I do have options, so it's not like I'm giving up on WoW Classic.

*Other people liked Stranglethorn Vale, but I preferred Wetlands due to the lack of competition.

**Before you ask, no, I didn't ask any of the other Mages in guild. They were all busy running instances and leveling since the Dark Portal had opened. Some of them had friends from their old days join them in guild, and they've been running with them as much as they can. So why bother them?

Friday Thoughts: TBC Classic Edition

By the time this posts, I will most likely be sitting at L66, somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of the way through the Terrokar quests, and will have gathered enough playing time to get a better feel for TBC Classic. It still feels distinctly weird to see a crowd in Shattrath City* or at the Inn at Honor Hold, but I'm getting used to it.

So without further ado, here are my thoughts about The Burning Crusade Classic, 18 days after launch.

***

It takes a lot of effort to NOT level in Outland.

Seriously.

I get it, I get it. This is kind of my thing.

 

Running instances will net you XP. Questing will net you XP. Exploring will net you XP. And all of that adds up.

Quests back in the Old World? Yes, you get XP for them. I actually got 4 bars' worth of XP just going back and forth, finishing up about 5-6 old questlines still in my quest pile. So even if you do NOT go to Outland but instead pick up, say, Silithus quests at L60, you can get a surprising amount of XP. 

About the only thing that does not net you XP are the gathering professions, but you end up with "surprise" XP simply because you have to kill the occasional mob standing on top of a gathering node.

So the fact that I'm almost L66 means that I've been logging in and actually doing things in game. It may sound like a lot, given that I'm 7 days into Outland by now, but really it isn't.

***

TBC Classic brought in quite a few retail players, and it shows.

The most obvious flag that you've encountered a retail player is their casual disregard for politeness when out questing. You see, in retail, as long as you get a hit in, that enemy counts for you as well as anybody else. In WoW and TBC Classic, that ain't the case. Here, it's "first hit gets the reward." And since the Retail crossovers frequently can't be bothered to discover those little quirks of the system, they come across as colossal jerks. Especially when you politely whisper about grouping up to take down mobs. 

I recently was questing in Zangarmarsh when an Ally toon ran past me and pulled about 6 Naga in the surrounding area, and once they DPSed the large pack down the toon threw me an invite. I honestly don't know what the fuck that player was thinking --maybe that I'd be grateful that I'd have such a badass that I'd be grouping with-- but I immediately turned it down. A few minutes later, I met up with a Mage who suggested we group together to finish the quest we were both on, and for the next 15 minutes we had a pleasant time, talking about Magecraft while killing Naga.

In fact, I received more assistance at times from Horde toons out farming/questing than my Alliance counterparts, such as just this morning when a Horde Warlock and I each traded turns killing Torgos over on the western edge of the Bone Wastes. Since the quest is a 2-person one, he went first and pulled aggro, then I came on and helped. On my turn, we reversed the order but after initial aggro I let the Lock's Felguard take aggro from me, as it's a more natural tank. I had to do it twice as Brig pulled aggro back and died, but that's the breaks. And the Horde Lock stuck around while I had to go get another bloodied kill to lure Torgos in, which is more than some of my fellow Alliance players would have done.

***

Gold does come quicker in Outland, but never quick enough.

If you're like me, who was gold poor due to the constant need to farm for mats for Naxxramas, heading to Outland was like Mana from Heaven.

Within 2 days I had over 100 gold, enough to splurge and buy a pair of Fist of Reckoning maces off of the Auction House, which should last me through most of my leveling time in Outland. 

But in spite of the influx of gold into my bank account, the amount of gold needed for Fast Ground Riding remains just out of reach. I now have just enough for the riding skill itself, but I'd also need enough for a mount and the wait has been annoying the crap out of me.

Oh, and repairs cost quite a bit more than before, too. So my first (and so far only) foray into Slave Pens and Underbog netted me a nasty repair bill, higher than any I experienced in Naxxramas on Cardwyn.

So more gold != flush with cash.

***

While not everybody is following the Meta, enough are that it will have an impact on Auction House prices for quite a while.

One of the "side bonuses" of following the Meta of spam running dungeons for rep is that you'll get to L70 with a lot more quests to run. And instead of XP, those quests will yield extra gold instead. This has been the case with the original WoW Classic, so it's not a big surprise. People are using the extra gold to try to get Epic Flying trained (at the cost of 5000 gold), but there will be enough extra gold pumped into the WoW economy that it will impact prices on the Auction House.

People can afford the higher prices, particularly on items they need for professions or raiding, so they'll pay more. And that will keep the prices higher, just like how inflation works in the real world. Eventually all that gold will get depleted, but it will take quite a while for that to happen. And it may not happen at all, depending on just how many alts people will take into Outland. So if you're not following the Meta, maybe it's time to go into farming some mats to help out your gold situation.

***

Respawns are hell.

I can't tell you how many times I've killed a mob only to have it immediately respawn and attack. I'd say about 4/5 of the time it's not a big deal, but if you kind of really need to drink or take a short break, that instant respawn is a major problem. Most of the times that I died when I was out questing an instant respawn was to blame.

***

I am outleveling zones.

I still don't understand why she didn't just
kick me into the next county.

 

As I mentioned I'm somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of the way through the Terrokar Forest's quests, and it was the first zone where I entered it being slightly overleveled for the zone. I have since caught up in quests to level appropriate ones (~L65 or so), but when I move on to Nagrand (probably Saturday at this rate) I'll be slightly over the targeted level for over half of the zone itself. And at this rate I'll likely ding L70 somewhere in Blade's Edge Mountains.

That has good effects (access to better spells and gear) and bad ones (finding said gear).

***

I should probably look into doing a few more dungeons.

As of this writing, I've run 9 dungeons.

Total.

Compare and contrast those who used the Meta, who likely saw the inside of 9 dungeons in less than 2 days in Outland. 

In my case, over half of the dungeons were Hellfire Ramparts, with a full breakdown as follows:

Hellfire Ramparts: 5
Blood Furnace: 2
Slave Pens: 1
Underbog: 1

I ran Ramparts 4 times that Sunday after I arrived in Outland, not because of the Meta but because I was hoping that the Bracers of Finesse would drop. (They did, once, and the Hunter won the roll.)

While I don't feel like I'm missing out here, I ought to run them just for the chance at improving my gear set, which hasn't budged much in the past couple of days. However, most of the LFG entries I've been observing have been for the "endgame" and "attunement" 5-person dungeons, which don't help me at all. With the current state of things, I expect that by the time I'd be ready for, say, the Tempest Keep instances a lot of people would have moved on to Heroics.

***

I have not forgotten what it took to get to Outland, and I still carry a lot of resentment.

I mean, there's a reason why I've
been on Neve quite a bit. Also,
Farstriders FTW!

 

As you may have noticed from the previous musing, I have been utilizing the in-game LFG channel for a lot of my dungeon running. 

That is not an accident.

While two of the Leveling Shamans and I have been to Blood Furnace, Slave Pens, and Underbog together, I have been taking advantage of LFG where I could. I've pugged most of my MMO career, so unlike other people who dislike pugs I actually prefer them.

Plus, I've some issues right now that will take quite a while to work their way out of my system. If ever.

The other day there was a post in the Guild's Discord LFG channel, asking if people were still leveling at all. That brought a pretty swift response from Guild Leadership, pointing out that many of the Shamans are still leveling, and the Healers are way behind too. Normally I'd have ignored that exchange, but for some reason it incensed me. The total lack of awareness that a significant number of people --all of whom are critical for the 25-person raids-- were still leveling in Outland made me get up from my work and take a short walk to cool off.

To add fuel to the fire, it's only now, after people have gotten themselves leveled to L70, attuned, and have entered into Karazhan, that I've started to see posts on guild Discord saying that they can help by running instances with people. 

Thank you, Dana Carvey.
I was thinking the exact same thing.

Right now, I'm not certain whether this altruism is motivated by a desire to help or the reality that these people finally have reached the point where they actually need the rest of us, but either way I'm planning on taking a hard pass on any of these offers. If they weren't around when we needed them, how can I count on them helping out if a better offer comes along?

The current set of guild dynamics reminds me a lot of the old Twilight Zone episode, The Shelter**. A family is hosting a dinner party when it is interrupted by news of what looks like an impending nuclear attack. The family hosting the dinner party goes to the shelter they'd built in their backyard, while the other families, none of whom had built a shelter, try to claw their way in by any means possible. Just as the other families manage to pry open the shelter door, the news calls off the alarm, saying that it wasn't a nuclear attack at all. The other families try to return to a semblance of normalcy, saying "hey, let's hold a block party so that we can get back to normal." But the husband doesn't think so:

Jerry Harlowe: Hey that's a great idea, block party, anything to get back to normal, huh?

Dr. Bill Stockton: Normal? I don't know. I don't know what normal is. I thought I did once. I don't anymore.

Jerry Harlowe: I told you we'd pay for the damages, Bill.

Dr. Bill Stockton: Damages? I wonder. I wonder if anyone of us has any idea what those damages really are. Maybe one of them is finding out what we're really like when we're normal; the kind of people we are just underneath the skin. I mean all of us: a bunch of naked wild animals, who put such a price on staying alive that they'd claw their neighbors to death just for the privilege. We were spared a bomb tonight, but I wonder if we weren't destroyed even without it.

I don't think anybody will know the true long term effect from what happened after the Dark Portal opened, but I do think a lot of people won't like it in the end. 

As for me, I will honor my immediate commitment, but I also will take a long hard look at whether I want to continue raiding in this situation. Knowing that I am less valued for me and more valued for the body I bring to the raid has been eye opening for me.

***

There are people in game who do read my blog, but I also know that there are very few in guild who do so. I've kept my blogging quiet because I don't want to necessarily draw attention to myself, but there are a few guildies I have mentioned to --in a private manner-- that I do blog. 

However, I do know that of those people who I have confided in, only one actually reads Parallel Context. 

How do I know? Because nobody else has mentioned to me about the content of the TBC Classic posts. And believe me, my opinions would generate a bit of heat right about now.

*Yes, I have finally arrived in Shattrath, taken the tour, and selected Aldor. I passed through a couple of times when helping my leveling buddy with a quest chain that yielded a nice piece for her, but I never considered it an actual "arrival". I still haven't taken the portals back to the Old World yet, either, preferring instead to leave via the Dark Portal; but that's because I'm thumbing my nose at the expectations surrounding the expac.

**In his book Danse Macabre, Stephen King has a very insightful view of The Shelter, as "rarely has any television program dared to present human nature in such an ugly, revealing light as that used in 'The Shelter', in which a number of suburban neighbors along Your Street, USA, are reduced to animals squabbling over a fallout sheltere during a nuclear crisis." Thanks to Twilight Zone Vortex for jogging  my memory about both the King book and the quote. I'd forgotten I'd read the book, and that was before I saw the Twilight Zone episode itself. Only much later did I realize the connection.

 

EtA: Fixed a few grammatical mistakes. That's what I get for writing/editing while sleepy.

I Can't Carry It For You, But....

Three levels a day. 

That was my goal.

Some days, that was easy. Some days, not.

The higher my levels climbed, the greater emphasis I placed on the XP gained on quests and the less on whatever gear I might get. My ability to get mobs down began to nosedive once I hit the mid-50s; I was wearing a green chestpiece that was a quest reward in Feralas, for example, and nothing I encountered in my singular pursuit of leveling changed that. I replaced my last piece of Deadmines clothing in the upper 40s (the cloak, in case you're curious) with another green that was a random drop. My daggers --the newest of which dropped from Amennar the Coldbringer in Razorfen Downs-- were in dire need of an upgrade, so I broke down and bought a cheap green mace on the Auction House that I could use in the low 50s to pair with a drop from Un'goro Crater*.

But I kept going.

Blizzard's Ode to Legend of Zelda.

 

And it felt disorienting that I would be in Western Plaguelands on Monday, seeing the levels of the Scourge in Andorhal and avoiding the place like it had the... Well, you know... And then two days later I'd be back to discover that it was I who who outleveled them.

One of the few times that I've ever done
this quest line. It gives a better understanding
of Ol' Emma and why she's in Stormwind.

 

I began Wednesday at L55, and after earning a quick ding from turning in quests, I settled into a long, demanding grind in the Plaguelands and Winterspring. Around midnight I got that second level, and the only thing that stood between me and L58 --the level everybody else goes to Outland-- was a lot of traveling and a lot of involved quests in WPL. I sighed and kept going.

Then the stars aligned.

"Anybody for Alas, Andorhal?" was the call out by a Warrior in Gen Chat.

Oh hell yes.

"Sure," I replied, "but if you can share the quest I'd appreciate it."

"Did you do the Watchtower quest?" 

"Yes, but I didn't pick up Alas, Andorhal because I didn't think I'd find a group for it."

"lol yeah. I'll send you an invite." 

So that is how I knocked out that nice, juicy quest.

And then a bit later, I knew about the one quest in WPL giver near the tower whose mobs drop the Crusader enchant, and so I headed out there only to discover the person who set up the group from earlier in the evening. 

"Killing the Scarlets?" he asked.

"Yep."

So he sent me another invite, and we spent a half an hour killing mobs and turning in quests.

"How far are you?" he asked.

"I've got a couple of bars to L58 left, but I'm planning on going to Outland on L60."

"How come?"

"Because I want to experience TBC the way it was intended, and I was cheated out of that by being min-maxed through Hellfire when I got there in 2009."

"Oh cool. I get that."**

We turned in all the quests, and I was.... 60 XP short of a level.

I cursed a bit in group chat, but the other guy was perfectly happy to kill one last mob. And that was that. 

The Warrior cheered, wished me luck in Outland when I got there, and split for the night.

And so did I.

***

Even though I wasn't going to Outland, I literally felt a weight taken off of my shoulders. 

I could relax.

Although I suppose I could have left for Outlands right then, the person I'd be cheating was myself. So I stuck to my guns and said to myself that I'd grind out the last two levels on Thursday and then take Friday off.

"Two levels instead of three? Oh, I've got this," I said to myself as I logged for the night.

***

By noon on Thursday I was starting to get worried. The initial quests from Tirion Fordring's quest line weren't that hard on paper, but the drop rate for one of the quests was so abysmal that I felt I was never going to complete that questline. By early evening, however, I finally got those quests knocked out and rushed around Azeroth, completing some long outstanding quest runs to get to L59. 

It always pays to be polite to a powerful
Water Elemental. Another quest line I rarely finished.

Then it was off to my least favorite zone in the Old World, Silithus.

The place doesn't exactly lend itself well to solo questing. Back in Vanilla Classic, a lot of the mobs were elites, and you had to have enough gear plus a high enough level to even solo some of the mobs, and others.... Well, let's just say I never bothered with a lot of the Silithus quests. 

This time, however, I had an ace in the hole.

A friend of mine had just brought her Bear tank to Outland, but was having difficulty killing mobs there. She needed a leveling buddy.

And guess who was sitting at L59.  

I didn't mind being a leveling buddy, since it makes the time pass by more enjoyably, but I was kind of aware of my lack of gear. "My gear is made of cardboard and held together with baling wire," is how I've described it before.

"We'll work on that," I was told.***

So she hopped back to the Old World, headed over to Silithus, and met me while I was killing Sand Dredgers.

Almost immediately she handed me a piece of Blue gear, some Ravager Dogs and.... a fish.

"You gave me a gray fish?" I asked.

I could almost hear her snort in reply. "Yes, you can vendor it for 6 gold."

My jaw dropped. That would be the equivalent of about 4-5 good vendored items in the Old World. And then I saw the rejuvenation rate from the Ravager Dogs, as well as the buff.

"Is Outland Texas or something? They say 'Everything is bigger in Texas'..."

She laughed. "I like Texas."

"Thank you, but I don't know what to say. Keep this up and you're going to make an old man cry."

"LOL!"

We continued to kill mobs. "Did you pick up this elite quest?" she asked when we were down south. 

"No."

"Well, that was silly."

I rolled my eyes, realizing I was implying her tanking skills weren't up to the task. "I know that now." 

The next hour or two passed by pleasantly, because if you're in Silithus, soloing things, saying the word "pleasant" would get your head examined.

And the banter was totally worth it. 

"We need to get you a fast mount in the worst sort of way," she said. "Do you regret getting it on Card?"

"No, because she got it as the Alterac Valley rep reward, so it was cheap."

"We may have to do that for Brig."

"Uh... That's a long rep grind. I'm sorry I'm so poor in game."

"We'll get that corrected."

"Well, I suppose that I could sell weed."

We zeroed in on the quests that were a) easily doable and b) would net the most XP per turn in. Once we completed a bunch that seemed like it would be enough, we headed back to Cenarion Hold and she hopped onto her main, so that she could congratulate me on reaching L60.

I turned the quests in and....

"I'm half a bar short," I sighed. "I'll go do the other quest in NW of the zone."

"You need a hand with that?"

"No, I can handle that one. I'll let you know when I'm on the way back."

"Okay."

"And if you get into a dungeon run, that's fine too."

"Okay."

I rode up to the northwest corner of Silithus, known more colloquially as the place you go to finish the Thunderfury quest line, and set about picking up Twilight tablets. There were a ton more air elementals nearby, as I guess the invasion portion of Silithus --the one you rarely saw while Silithus was being used for AQ20/AQ40 as well as regular farming-- was in full swing. But hey, I didn't get this far without knowing when to run like hell.

"I'm on my way back," I told her, and bolted for the Hold.

At one point I looked behind me and saw a huge trail of air elementals following behind me, and I began to laugh. Then I got knocked off my mount by a Silithd.

Oh shit, I thought, but switched to Ghost Wolf and kept on going.

"Don't die here, don't die here, don't die here...."

My health bar kept going down. 

"MOVE FASTER! MOVE FASTER!! I AM NOT GOING TO BE EMBARRASSED BY DYING ON MY LAST QUEST!!!"

"Dad, are you okay?" my oldest asked, coming over.

"Yeah yeah yeah," I replied in a calmer tone once the air elementals finally gave up the chase with me sitting on about 1/4 to 1/3 health left. "I'm okay. It's that it's almost all done."

"Oh, you're about to ding? Cool!" She sat down in the chair next to me.

I reached Cenarion Hold and made it to the quest giver. "I'm here now," I told my questing buddy. "Ready?"

"Ready."

I turned in the quest and dinged.

I was slow to do a screencap of the ding itself.
I was a bit loopy at the time as well as relieved.

 

"It's done! At long last!!" I exclaimed to my leveling buddy.

"Yay Dad!" my daughter exclaimed, hugging me.

Guild chat erupted with congratulations.

"Gratz Cardwyn!"

"Yay Card!"

"Way to go Brig!"

"Woo!"

"Thanks," I replied multiple times, then took a deep breath. "And now I'm gonna go blow my gold on training, and.... go to bed."

***

As I alluded to before, there were a few people who reached out to check on me while I was mired in the worst of this leveling hell. For those people, a big thank you. You kept me going. For those who came out and were my leveling buddy, especially when I needed it most, thank you. For those in our group who crossed the line ahead of me yet kept in contact to keep me going, thank you. 

A special thank you to my leveling buddy on Thursday. Were it not for her, I'd have never have crossed the finish line when I did. When it was all finally over and the kids had let me alone, I might have cried a few tears of relief. (It could have been someone cutting onions, but you never know.)

And for those leveling Shamans for the raid still out there, I see you and I'm gonna help you get across the line too.  

I owe you that much.

*Or was it Tanaris? It all blends together after a while.

**That's the usual reaction I've gotten when I bring up my reasons why I wanted to delay my trip to Outland until L60: the initial puzzlement, followed by the "Oh!" and "How cool!" moments. Typically followed by "Hey, have fun when you get there!" But for some reason, a minority of people can't not min-max things, I suppose.

***Again, these are approximate conversations. I didn't record the whole thing, mind you, so I put what I could remember. I was a bit loopy at the time.

 

EtA: Corrected 'stupid' with 'silly'. I was informed by the questing buddy I got that part wrong.

A Bit of Catharsis

Sunday's post generated more introspection --and more explicit commentary-- than usual for a post here. I guess given it's content, that's to be expected. When I hit 'Publish' and posted it, I felt that I needed to get the full extent of my feelings out there, and even then I missed a few points.* But putting my feeling into words helped somewhat, because that process forced me to articulate exactly why I felt the way I did.

Last night, several of the members of the Left Behind Club joined with one of our ex-members, who'd made it to Outland and volunteered to tank for us, and we headed for Sunken Temple. 

I won't provide many details about that instance run, but it felt good to be with people who were experiencing the same feelings I was about a wide swath of issues. And it felt good to laugh for a while and enjoy the camaraderie and the (strong) opinions on things from leveling to plunging into the Outlands grind to getting geared up for the upcoming raids. There were a few things I had to self censor, because of that raid lead stuff, but I knew where everybody was coming from and how the long slog had affected them. 

The quote one of the others made that I can share, and one we were all in agreement about, was that "Nobody else in guild will ever understand what we went through to get to Outland."

And that's the truth.

***.

While I enjoyed the run a lot, I wouldn't have called it 'fun' in the traditional sense. It was more cathartic than fun, I suppose, to release those pent up feelings about the hand we'd been dealt among people who truly understood. 

We're also not leaving anybody behind. One member of the Left Behind Club is going on vacation now, and when she gets back we're going to help her all we can to cross the finish line and get her to Outland. I don't even need to take Brig for that: I mean, I've got undergeard (Linna) and overgeared (Card) toons ready to assist for that final push.

Here's to hoping the end comes out better than the first two parts.

*Such as that the min-maxing at the major WoW Classic websites that just about everybody and their grandmother are following to how to 'do Outlands correctly.'

On The Outside

It comes as no surprise that I've been busy these past seven days.

I finished all of the work surrounding graduations and moving on Sunday, and instead of logging onto Classic I promptly zonked out for about 13 hours. Waking up on early Monday, I said "oh crap" and resolved to start work immediately on leveling Briganaa.

So if you're looking for a report on how things were when the Dark Portal opened, you're in the wrong place. I've not set foot in Outland on any toon, but instead had a steady diet of leveling a Shaman. When the Dark Portal opened, I was in Hillsbrad, grinding gnolls and naga.

However, I was not unaware of things, because Guild Chat was all about the Dark Portal and what lay beyond. And about five minutes after the portal opened, I saw people in the /who in guild in Hellfire Ramparts. And then Blood Furnace.

And other instances.

I also saw the numerous requests for groups, and tons of "grats!" on leveling.

And I was still in an empty world, slogging away.

Yeah, it probably doesn't help that I was on
a 90s kick. And if you think Cake was
appropriate, you can guess what's coming later.

 

***

I will not lie. The FOMO --the Fear of Missing Out-- is very real.

And for those of us left behind, leveling Shamans, it remains real. 

It is hard to watch, so I decided to ignore the Guild Chat tab as much as I could from Monday onward. 

Every "Ding!", every gear drop post, every "Look at all the levels!", every "Isn't it great we're all leveling together!", all it served was to remind me that I was not there, where I wanted to be.

I even dropped Mage Chat, because it became too much.

All of it is unintentional, but it is also completely tone deaf.

And I am not the only one left behind who thinks that way.

I've chatted with a few of the others left behind, and they all have agreed that it is hard to watch, that the FOMO is real for them. And the occasional "gratz" thrown our way does absolutely nothing to ease the raw deal that we're under. 

 If you guessed Beck, you were correct.

***

The guild does have Shamans in Outland, by the way. 

Those who had a free couple of weeks were able to grind (or instance boost) their way to being Outland ready, and they're out with the rest, having fun.

But those of us who had real life, such as graduations, vacations, and whatnot, didn't have that luxury. 

***

That past week has taught me a few things about empathy.

First, that I'm glad that I was not greedy.

If I were a bit greedier about wanting to play Card, someone else would be in my place. And I sure as hell would not want that at all. It's bad enough to be here, but if I knew I sentenced someone else to doing this.... I would have a hard time dealing with the guilt.

Second, that you learn who your friends are.

I've had a few people reach out to me, checking in to see if I'm doing okay, and I'm grateful for that.* Those interactions mean a helluva lot more to me than every occasional "gratz" I got after a level. And I won't lie, in those 'Dark Night of the Soul' moments, they kept me going. 

I can't possibly begin to count how many times I've thought about quitting this past week; quitting the grind, quitting the lead position, quitting the guild, and either faction changing or quitting the game entirely. But at each critical juncture, there has been one person who reached out at exactly the right time to check in on me with more than just a "hey, gratz" but a "Hey, are you doing okay? You've been quiet and I wanted to check on you."

For those people, you kept me sane and kept me going. And for that I'm eternally grateful. And words can't express that enough.

Third, that if you feel like you've been left to your fate, reach out to the rest in the same situation and form your own bonds. Shared experience forges friendships and camaraderies like no other, and I've reached out to the rest of the leveling Shamans to keep everybody's spirits up, to keep people going. And the others have responded in kind. All of this has made me resolve that I am not going to leave anybody behind when I get to 60.

***

I suppose I ought to get this out now: I am NOT going to Outland at L58.

Back in 2009 I did that and bought the t-shirt. It did not end well; as even as a (then Holy) Paladin I was far too squishy for those first quests. And Hellfire Ramparts? Don't make me laugh. The only thing that saved me from double digit deaths was that the tank --the person who got me into WoW in the first place-- was already roughly 67-68 at the time (I think) and could easily handle all sorts of aggro. I'll be heading to Outland in meh --at best-- green gear with the occasional blue thrown in, and I'll need al the BC Clown Gear drops I can get.

And it goes without saying that if people start asking me to join Ramparts runs at L57, saying they'll port me over, no thanks. I'm doing this the right way, and that means L60 onward.

Furthermore, I'm not going to go the "spam instances until Honored and then go questing" route. I am going to do things my way in Outland, and that means questing until I need to go to an instance. Then I'll do the instance. I'll have gotten to L60 doing things my way, and I'm not going to change that.

Which reminds me, I ought to train riding. With the Ghost Wolf form, I haven't needed to train riding at all. Sure, it's only a 40% mount, but it's just enough to keep me from spending the gold on riding. And believe me, I need all the gold I can get. 

***

Brig sits at L48 as of this writing, and I've been shooting for 3 levels per day. (I've done 2 so far, so I'm going to login and get that last level soon.) So by the time the week is out, I ought to be at L60.

Catch ya on the flip side.

*I have insisted, however, that I not get any instance boosts. I need to learn to play my class, and that does absolutely nothing for me. Yesterday I was in a true at-level Razorfen Downs group, and a Zul'Farrak group that consisted of all at-level except for the tank, who was a friend of mine who isn't taking this toon to Outland until I reach it. So we were close enough in level that it wasn't a boost so much as an actual instance run with a really good tank; we were able to get a chance to use our abilities and work our way through them as much as we could.

All Crossed Up

Maybe it's just me, but I'm starting to wonder how useful the cross server lowbie zones have been lately.

Sure, there are more people in the zones, but I've been surprised at how quickly the zone population plummeted a month after release.

I've been cruising the lowbie zones up through Arathi Highlands and Stonetalon Mountains, and if there have been more than ten other toons in a zone with me I'd be surprised.  And before you point out that I play at odd hours, I've also been on in the evening and midday this past week and found no difference to the zone population.  If anything, I've found more people on Darkshore in the early morning than in the evening (which is also typically raid time).  What bothers me is that I've seen even fewer Horde than Alliance in Ashenvale, and that used to never happen.

Why have I been out and about?  Leveling Skinning and Leatherworking to fill in the gaps in my gear.  Of course, leveling these professions means that I have to range far and wide to collect skins and/or leather, so I see a lot of the zones.  I've also seen my FPS drop as soon as I enter a new zone; not the official FPS, mind you, but there's a visible slowdown on screen on some zones* that I can only attribute to the cross-server manipulation.

I was hoping that the lack of toons in Darnassus was just a blip on the radar, but that seems to not be the case.

This whole cross-server change has made me wonder just how many servers they merge at one time in a zone, and whether this is dynamic or not.  While I do have to admit from a technical standpoint it's pretty impressive, I'm kind of disheartened by the knowledge that things would be even worse if Blizz wasn't performing their wizardry.

Let's call the cross-server zones what they really are:  Lowbie Server Merges.  They're indicative of an increasingly visible problem that WoW has:  most of the toons are at or close to max level, and there's a lack of new blood coming into the game.

Okay, now with that declaration there is a big caveat.  Blizz encourages new players to go to "New Player" servers.  A brand new player --not one invited to play by a current player-- will most likely end up there, meaning that those servers will have a disproportionate share of lowbie toons.  However, those "New Player" servers have a reputation for having such a small server population that they couldn't even rate "Low" on the activity listings.**

I've hashed all this before when the cross-server merges were first announced, but having seen the Mists wave come and go I think this discussion has to be reopened.

To fix this problem, I'd so something that for Blizz would be truly radical:  Make L1-L60 playable without a subscription.  That doesn't mean completely F2P, since you'd have to buy the game (+expacs if you want to play a Pandaren, Goblin, or Worgen), but after that purchase having the first 60 levels free would bring in a lot of activity to the game.  I'm also amenable to extending the Starter Edition to L60, which would get a player to Outland and just enough to whet their appetite for more.

Would Blizz lose money on this idea?  Maybe, maybe not.  It depends on how many people convert to a subscription, and how much money it would cost to handle the server load, versus how much technical expertise it would take to expand the lowbie zone merges seamlessly.  

Now, this might wreak havoc with the auction house, given that gold farmers will use this to flood the market with goods for sale, but you never know what might go down.  A subscriber won't necessarily need a separate account, but the subscriber's children or significant other might.  An occasional player who can't afford a sub can keep in touch with guildies.  The player who left and wants an extended test run can do so.  The Old Timer who grouses that the only way AQ40 should be run is at level can now do so.

And maybe it will make some of those old L55-60 zones more relevant again.  Okay, that's probably asking too much of Silithus, but the others....

*Ashenvale and Stonetalon are two of the worst.

**I overheard this one once in Gen Chat in the "yo mama" vein:  "Your server is so empty that it dreams of the day it can be classified as a New Player server."

It's the Endorphins!The Endorphins, I tell you!!

There are people who play primarily a single toon or a single class/style/archetype of toon.  There are also those who may have a main yet tinker around, never feeling truly satisfied.

And then there are the altoholics.

I used to boggle at the people who had no qualms about leveling one of each toon all the way to max level.  I knew how long it took me to level one toon, never mind a dozen, so for the average altoholic I used to take that and multiply it by 8-9-10.  All I could do was simply shake my head.

How could someone actually level so many alts?  What about exploring other things in-game?  What about raiding or PvP?

Well, I figured there was no way I'd ever find myself bitten by the altoholic bug when I was staring at the grind from L1-L90.  For me, there simply weren't enough hours in a day to level a full stable of toons to max level before the next expac came out.  Besides, the WoW story is pretty much the same with all toons on a faction; with the exception of the two weapons quests, Blizzard has removed the old class quests from WoW.  If you want to see pretty much everything outside of the intro zones these days, all you have to do is level a toon on each faction.  That's it.

While I was confident that altoholism wasn't going to afflict me in WoW, I hadn't counted on the bug in another MMO.

LOTRO and Age of Conan also suffer from the overly long leveling process (L85 and L80, respectively), but TOR has a much lower level cap at L50.  TOR also has something that the other games don't have:  an actual class quest chain.  I presume companion romances are a bonus, but I'm sure that there's a significant portion of the playerbase out there that doesn't care about that sort of thing.

The TOR class quests are something that keep the game interesting.  Just like there are only so many times you can enter the Amani Tombs before wanting to claw your eyeballs out, there's only a limited number of trips into the Chemworks Factory in Taris before you start throwing in the towel.  But when you throw in a class quest chain into the mix, you find yourself wondering what might come next.

I'll never forget when I leveled Quintalan and received the class quest chain that ended in the Thalassian Charger and the Blood Knight tabard.  Sure, due to changes in the game I was able to get the Charger "officially" at L40, it was only when I finished all of the side quests, accumulated all the mats, and showed the Scourge, the Scarlet Crusade, and the Argent Dawn who was boss that I finally earned my place as a Blood Knight.  I'll also never forget the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when Lord Bloodvalor chuckled maniacally as he gave me my tabard; it was then that I realized just how far the Blood Knights had truly strayed from the Light.  Although not part of the class quest itself, Lady Liadrin's appearance before the Sha'tar was intensely personal, signaling the beginning of the end of the old Blood Knights.

Likewise, I'll never forget when I leveled my Gunslinger and he finally got his starship back.  "Where... Is... My... Ship?!!" he demanded of the flunkies that Skavak had thrown in his path.  And then, when he finally boarded the ship only to find someone else inside...

While the Blood Knight class quests were great, for some reason I never had the urge to try out other WoW classes.  Other TOR classes, however, beckoned.

So I've found myself with a complete stable of classes on both factions, slowly leveling them all.  Given my rate of gameplay, I'll probably finish them sometime by the end of next year at the earliest.  But you know what?  I don't mind.  I'm just along for the ride.  Perhaps that's the enduring legacy of the altoholic:  the desire to learn everything about a game, manifesting in an urge to just follow the story to the end.  ALL of them.


EtA:  Got bit by the editing bug and replaced a "while" at the beginning of the seventh paragraph.  That's what I get for being in NaNo mode and skipping editing.

Where's my Peace and Quiet?

Anybody who has created a new toon in WoW the past several years knows that with a few exceptions, the starting zones have been empty of life.  Sure, there was the surge in Goblins and Worgen the first few months of Cataclysm, and there was the Death Knight invasion at the beginning of Wrath, but in general you simply don't see a lot of activity in the starting zones.*

The situation is so bad that Blizz is considering a specialized form of server merge to make the intro zones seem more active, on the premise that Blizz is losing potential new subs because "there's nobody on WoW".

The funny thing is, among the MMOs I've played, WoW is the deadest game at the low levels.

Sure, you could argue that the F2P nature of some games like Lord of the Rings Online and Age of Conan means that you'll see higher numbers of people trying those games out.  In the case of AoC, detractors will point out that the Tortage intro area is the best developed part of the game as well.  LOTRO has the benefit of name recognition among non-gamers, and has a more developed F2P area than AoC.

Then we come to a title like The Old Republic.

Sure, it's got that name recognition, but so did Star Trek Online.  It's also got its detractors, saying that the game is dead and a failure.

Then why are the intro and lowbie zones so busy?

When I tried TOR on one of the free weekends a month or two back, I found the intro zone for the Trooper and Smuggler filled with people (>100).  This was before any talk of server consolidation became a reality, and according to some statistical analyses contains the least played class (Smuggler) in the game.

After hemming and hawing about it,** I picked up the game last week, logged in to get access to the Smuggler I started, and found over 100 people in Coruscant alone.  Each planet I've been to since (Taris and Nar Shaddaa) has had a similar population level in the (late) evenings.  These aren't twinks, but people leveling actual toons.

When was the last time that you saw 100+ people in (Ashenvale + Northern Barrens) or (Loch Modan + Wetlands) that didn't involve a holiday event?  Outside of the first month after 4.0.1 dropped, I can't think of any the past 3-4 years.  Hell, the past month or two the population in Stormwind in an evenly divided server (Ysera) has been averaging 45-50 people a night.  That's right:  the big central home for an entire faction is averaging less population than a lowbie leveling zone in TOR.  Is it the end of an expac?  Sure!  But do you expect more than 50 people in your home city on an average night, even at this late date?  Yes!  And the week after D3 dropped, the population plunged to 20-25 people before recovering.

Getting back to the low level zones, perhaps the maturity of WoW hurts it the most in these areas, since the entire MMO is geared toward endgame.

Look at it this way:  how many recent posts geared toward Mists are talking about endgame already?  How many are saying "well, if your guild wants to raid you have to be at L90 by XXX date after launch, so you'd better get ready"?  How many are plotting out all the class changes for Mists, so you'll be ready to get to L90 and raid as soon as you can?

To me, this means that the focus of the two MMO populations is completely different.

Design intent or not, the TOR population's values are different than WoW's.  I could make a very successful argument that WoW's population is big enough that you can't make any generalizations, but at the same time the focus of WoW's expansions and content are mostly on the endgame.  When they did attempt to rework the Old World in Cata the results were incomplete at best, and Blizzard took a PR beating from people who complained there wasn't enough to do once they got to L85.

TOR suffers from the "there's nothing to do at L50!" stigma, so maybe the leveling activity is part of a desire of people to explore all of the Class stories.  I tend to doubt this, however, due to one other item:  Gen Chat itself.

Unlike the other MMOs I've played, I've noticed a lot more basic MMO questions in TOR's Gen Chat.  Yesterday, I fielded a question about using the word "drop" in MMO parlance, and I could tell by my conversation that the person on the other end was completely new to the game and MMOs in general.  People were less inclined in Gen Chat to say "L2P noob!" as well, in an almost LOTRO level of tolerance.  That doesn't mean that TOR is free of spammers in Gen Chat; on Taris there were enough Chuck Norris jokes I quipped that "Barrens Chat has been reborn in Taris."***

Does this mean that TOR is better than WoW?

No, it doesn't.  It just means that TOR is different than WoW.  Pronunciations by the suits and pundits aside, TOR caters to a different sort of player than WoW does.  Sure, the mechanics are similar, and most of the 'under the hood' character development is similar, but TOR seems to have taken over the mantle of "the first MMO you'll ever play" from WoW.****

Blizzard knows what it is good at --endgame and an expansive world that somehow works (if you ignore the story continuity issues)-- and if it sticks to that for Mists, it will do well.  If it tries to somehow 'outdo TOR' to lure those new MMO players over, it may be making a Cataclysm-sized mistake by trying to turn a game with a high intro cost into something it's not.  Mists is set to drop probably by October at the latest, and we'll see what Blizz has in mind with their marketing campaign.

Until then, I guess it's safe to say that if you want peace and quiet in your leveling, go hang out in Azeroth for a while.




*And lowbie zones.  Of course, when 4.0.1 dropped and all of the quests changed, the lowbie zones were a hive of activity for a month and a half until Cata dropped, then they almost instantly dried up.

**And running the numbers for the budget.

***I got several LOLs from Gen Chat on that quip, which made it worth my while.

****Although for my money, I'd suggest people try LOTRO first.  It's F2P, after all, so you're not out of money if you don't like the concept.

Lost in the Basin

Sholazar Basin has to be my least favorite zone to level in.

This, in spite of the presence of the Avatar of Freya and the amusement surrounding the "Why is everyone looking at me like I crashed the ship?" banter, and the Frenzyheart vs. Oracles quest line.

I suppose I should be happy about a series of quests that are blatant in that they're the "kill ten rats" variety --that's what you get with Hemet and Co, really-- but all I feel is "please please PLEASE just let me get through this quickly!"  At one point I looked up and checked the number of quests I'd finished in the Basin, saw it was around 15, and blanched.  I had about sixty more quests to go?

I needed a beer.  Badly.

Of all of the zones in Northrend, Sholazar is the one that feels the most 'tacked on'.  The Scourge only start to take center stage once you get through all of Hemet's quests and almost to the end of the Oracle/Frenzyheart quests.  Yes, you could skip around and head straight to Freya, but in the end there's no avoiding the Nesingwary and O/F stuff.

When I made it to Sholazar Basin the first time on Quintalan, I'd already finished up Storm Peaks and most of Icecrown, and I'd paid the (then) 7k gold to get Cold Weather Flying.  However, that did me little good in Sholazar because of the tree cover.  Having returned to it twice now, I've found that it is harder and harder to navigate because you have to fly so low to the ground.  I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but the more obstacles to fly through and constantly change directions with give me headaches.  In much the same way that first-person shooters give me motion sickness, flying through Sholazar --like Un'Goro or Feralas-- is a chore for me.  Then, when you add the numerous 'kill ten rats' quests of Nesingwary and Co, Sholazar makes my head spin.

I thought about other forest zones that don't give me such problems, such as Ashenvale and Felwood*, and two things do stand out:  the density of the foliage and the gaps in the forest.  Ashenvale and Felwood are temperate forests, and the density of the trees at flying level isn't so bad.  Or rather, you can fly at a decent level above ground and see where you're going.  You also get breaks in the forest where you can get your bearings and not feel so closed in.  With Sholazar (and U'G and Feralas), that feeling of claustrophobia can come on strong, along with the disorientation of a forest that looks alike in every direction.

Maybe with some Dramamine Sholazar Basin wouldn't feel so bad.  At the same time, however, it is pretty much a dead-end, storywise.  I'm not sure if that's what's intended, but the impression I get is that Sholazar is the odd-man out of the Northrend story Blizz wanted to tell.  Sure, there's an Avatar there fighting the encroachment of the Scourge, and you have a connection with Un'Goro, but as far as the focus on progressing the story toward the Endgame, Sholazar stands apart.  It takes you nowhere.  Normally I wouldn't mind, given that it expands the overall feel of the game world, but given that the three expansions after Vanilla got away from the "sandbox" type of game, Sholazar just feels out of step from the rest of the design goals for Azeroth.


*I would include the Ghostlands too, but you can't fly there.  Yet.

Habitually Speaking

Back when I first started playing WoW, I developed a lot of bad habits while leveling. 

My first 45 levels or so, Quintalan was Holy Spec, but since I rarely went into instances at that time all I knew how to do was quest --and kill things-- using my weak Holy Spec capabilities.  To compound the problem, I looked at gear the way I would in my pencil and paper RPGs:  a little bit of Intellect and a little bit of Strength never hurt, and look --something with Agility!  It never occurred to me that maybe I ought to concentrate on one stat and let the other gear fall by the wayside.

After I switched to Ret --at Soul's suggestion-- I developed another set of bad habits.  For example, I'd use tanking abilities in my attacks, which really don't go over well when you get into an instance.  And when leveling, I didn't have a concept of a rotation.  Sure, you could argue that Ret Spec in Wrath didn't have a rotation --and I'd not disagree with you either-- but the basic understanding behind a rotation escaped me.

Oh yeah, I was a noob.  I had my share of "HEY STOOPID!" moments out there in WoW.

It wasn't until I started pugging and got serious about understanding how a Ret Pally works that I finally broke out of these habits.  I tinkered with key bindings and how much you could load onto one button until I realized I needed more granularity than that.  (Such as saving Avenging Wrath for Bosses; you don't need it for trash.  Therefore, don't try to bind it on any of my attacks but leave it on a separate button.) 

Even when 4.0.1 dropped I didn't have moments quite like those first few months of playing WoW, and for that I can thank Tomakan.  He was mired somewhere in the 40s when 4.0.1 was released, and so I had plenty of time to work out how the new Ret rotations ought to work without all the clutter of higher level Ret capabilities.

But now, after having spent time leveling in the Cata zones, I've kind of backslid a bit.  I slack off on my rotations because I can, unless I'm dealing with multiple enemies at once (or an elite).  I've got some nice new skills on both Neve and the Pallys, but I haven't really adjusted my key bindings.*  I know that the Cata instances are harder than Wrath, but I haven't tested the limits of how quickly I can go through my rotation without pulling aggro.

WoW is still a learning process.  Maybe if you work at it hours a day for most days of the week, yeah, you can top out at a high level.  But most of us don't have that amount of spare time.  To get competent at your class, you need to dedicate some time, but nowhere near the levels seen by the elite raiding guilds. 

Unlike my noob experiences, I know what I need to do to get back on track.  I need to get into more Cata instances.

Am I worried about getting into Cata pugs?  Not really.  I like to be prepared, and if I can't be prepared, at least be overpowered.  What's killing me is the time factor.  I don't have the time to set aside two hours to cover a pug right now.  I can run BGs more quickly than what I've discovered via the Cata pugs I've been in, so I end up queuing for them instead.  (When Alterac Valley is looking to be quicker than a Cata pug, you know you've got time issues.)

So for the time being, I'm going to continue to quest and accumulate a punch sheet of things I need to do.  I'll get around to it.  Someday.  Maybe. 


*I instead lust after a Naga Razr, thinking about adding buttons there rather than upset my current balance.

What's that old line about patience again?

I noticed that I haven't been posting as much the past month or so, but it's not like I haven't been doing anything.  I'm still plugging away at getting Tomakan and Neve to the Cata zones (they're L76 and L77, thanks for asking), and I'm continuing to pug my way through instances and BGs.

My posts about foibles in instances have been few and far between because, well, the number of worthy failpugs has dropped dramatically.  My speculation is that people are working on all of their toons in the Cata zones, and given the commentary about failpugs in Cata instances, I might not be too far off the mark.

One thing I have noticed is that LFD isn't really random.  My instance selections while leveling in the Wrath zones have been waves of a single instance at a time:  first Utgarde Keep, then Ahn'kahet, and now Violet Hold.  Scattered in between have been occasional forays into Azjol-Nerub, The Nexus, and Drak'Tharon.  I'm not sure how LFD determines the criteria for an instance, but I suspect that certain instances are ranked higher than others depending on your level, your gear's iLevel, and your role selection.  That role selection is subdivided if you're DPS into ranged vs. melee.  Finally, you're put into a pug based on need.

Anyway, I'm still plugging away in mostly abandoned areas of Azeroth.  Last week, when I had some off time, I spent a morning and part of the afternoon on Tom, and between leveling mining and questing in Zul'Drak, I think I saw a grand total of a half dozen other toons.  The power levelers have long passed through with their new alt combinations, and at least one guildie in Neve's guild has already lapped her and is closing in with a third toon.

I'm now starting to get antsy about making it to the Cata zones and see all of those spoilerific things that I've been avoiding on other people's blogs.

"Would it help if I got out and pushed?"

"It might!"


Convoy to L85 Progress
Tomakan - L76
Nevelanthana - L77  ("I'm almost L78!"  "How old are you, 10?")

Time for a Convoy

I think it's time for an experiment (of sorts).

Quintalan is basically sitting around Dal, cooling his jets, while I've been leveling Tomakan and Neve.  I could send him straight into the Cataclysm zones, but I've been reluctant to do so.  It has nothing to do with being put off by the Great Cataclysm Race, but a realization that if I push ahead with Q I'd shelve these other two for a long while.

There's also a bit of a daredevil mentality at work here.  Just how hard is it to hop on an 18-wheeler and drive a toon straight up through L85 without stopping to farm heroics?

I've read online a lot of "you can go straight to L85 without stopping, but it will be a bit harder," but exactly how hard is "harder" the posters kind of left blank.  When you ding L80, you typically have a bunch of iL187 and iL200 gear, with a mixture of lower level gear thrown in.  This is especially true if you've been leveling through instances like I have, and you don't get those questing gear drops to round out your equipment.  For example, I only recently replaced Tom's cloak; he'd been using something he picked up circa the last two Scarlet Monastery instances all the way through L66 simply because he didn't get a DPS type cloak to drop that entire time.  (Well, one that he won in a roll, anyway.)

What this means is that it's entirely possible Neve or Tom could ding 80 and still have a residual piece of BC gear on them.  And those are the toons I'll be taking straight into the Cataclysm zones.

Okay, I'll eventually get around to getting Q to L85, but right now I've got a good thing going:  leveling Tom in the early morning, and Neve in the lunchtime (or late afternoon).  I figure to ride this convoy straight to L85 and see what happens.  I'll make a point of taking a gear snapshot of each toon once they ding 80 and see how things change over the Cat leveling experience.

Fun and Excitement with Questing

I was catching up on Darth Solo's posts on WoW Alone when he commented in this post about how he couldn't stand questing in the Old World (Classic WoW's locations), and how much better Outland and Northrend are by comparison. That got me to thinking about my own questing experiences; while I can see Darth's point, there are plenty of quirks out there that balance out the questing throughout the WoW environment.

It's no secret that I'm a bit of a quest whore -as Souldat calls me- and I've an ultimate goal of having Quintalan reach that Seeker achievement. I'm roughly 600-650 quests away from Loremaster, and from there only about 100 or so to reach 3000 and the Seeker. For my alts, I'm not planning on being so thorough; there's no need, really, with the exception of the class specific quests. (By comparison, an achievement such as Explorer on a PvE server isn't nearly as impressive as on a PvP server; there aren't many Alliance gankers you have to worry about when exploring on a PvE server.) Nevertheless, there are some major differences in how the quests were designed to push a character along in Classic WoW vs. the two expansions.

Blizzard designed the quests in Classic WoW to push a player from region to region when the appropriate quests opened up. This is still used in BC and Northrend, but instead of viewing each expansion continent as a whole, Blizzard focused more on individual regions. You can see that in the quest achievements themselves; in the Old World, the quest achievements are for each continent, not for completing quests in a given region. BC and WotLK have achievements for clearing each region which add up to the Loremaster meta-achievement.

It seems that in the Old World there were more options for leveling in a specific range, say for the 20s: you could go to Hillsbrad, Thousand Needles, Ashenvale, Duskwood, Stonetalon, Wetlands or even Stranglethorn if you're feeling brave. The breadth of locations to work with means that you can work on your questing as, say, a Tauren and never have to visit the Eastern Kingdoms at all. Blizzard seems to have compensated for this by putting in these oddball quests that have you traipsing back and forth between two continents just to talk to different specific people, who then tell you to go hunt for stuff in an instance. For example, you're in Arathi and you stumble on the quest chain that leads you to Tarren Mill, the Undercity, Senjin Village, Zul'Farrak, and lord knows where else. It's clever on the face of it, but without flying mounts you have to make more connections than trying to get from Atlanta to Anchorage on Jet Blue. The travel time gets to be tedious, and you often start to wonder whether the quest chain is worth it.

Outlands quests narrowed the scope to a more manageable level -and the addition of flying mounts helped tremendously- but there still is a maddening tendency to insert cross region dependencies on some quest chains. This wouldn't be that big of an issue unless you're trying to reach the Loremaster of Outland achievement, where you find you're perpetually short of quests in a region (Nagrand and Hellfire Peninsula are two big offenders) until you come across a quest in Shadowmoon Valley that sends you to those regions.

With Wrath of the Lich King, the quests evolved further. The maturing ability of Blizzard to mix in an overarcing quest chain with the more narrowly focused ones really kept the pace brisk. That was most felt in Dragonblight (Wrathgate), The Storm Peaks (Thorim and Brann Bronzebeard), and Icecrown (Argent Crusade and Knights of the Ebon Blade). Blizzard's fancy phasing tech has a tremendous impact here as well; no more equivalents of killing Dar'khon and then finding him respawn a few minutes later. "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome Necromancer?" (Apologies to King Henry II for that little quip.)

I must admit that the phasing technology has me biased toward the Northrend quests; I found them much more interesting than some of the grinding you feel like you're doing on the other regions. Ironically enough, I like the Outland quests the least. Perhaps it's because the changes were half baked, but I often felt like I spent hours hunting around Outland for an individual quest that would put me over the top for an achievement, and I would spend an equal amount of time perusing thottbot and wowwiki as well.

Classic WoW has a bizarre sort of appeal to me. It was by design big and broad, and the concept of trying to check out everything is a daunting task. The things that Blizzard put in place for Classic WoW may have made sense when they designed it, but the creakiness of the Old World is pretty apparent these days. Yes, I hope that Cataclysm will bring a Northrend style focus to old Azeroth, but I've a certain amount of fondness for the meandering (and maddening) nature of some of the Old World questing.