Before I run out of weekend I just wanted to post a really quick update to my last WoW Journal post. No sooner had I posted that than I logged into WoW and turned in a quest (I’d already completed the work but I sometimes like to quit just before a quest turn-in to get that boost when I start my next section) and it turns out it was the last quest of the main campaign.
So Dragonflight is completed though I’m guessing maybe there is a Raid or something to put the absolute final period to it because the Dragon Queen mentioned there was one more rock to be activated but didn’t ask me to help.
Anyway with the quest line completed WoW now unlocks something they call Adventure Mode which as far as I can tell is similar to what classic used to be. You are now free to move about the cabin. World quests unlock, faction quests/collecting seems to unlock. It’s now a matter of going out and doing what you want.
I pretty much IMMEDIATELY started having more fun. Did some world quests, did a Follower Dungeon (which I love and which maybe deserve their own post) and did some “little guy” quests which I often find fun and charming. At the top of this post is a screenshot from the last quest I did this weekend. These two little Tuskarr (walrus-people) kids are trying to befriend a lost, starving gnoll pup and they needed some fish to befriend him with. So I went fishing. And the gnoll cub got a new home. Hope that all works out for them.
But I enjoy these kinds of street-level heroics.
Anyway, that’s it. Just wanted to say that for me at least, WoW gets WAY more interesting once you finish the campaign. I’ve got about 15 levels to get through before I can move on but I suspect they’ll go quick. I made I think 5 since I posted earlier today.
It’s been nearly a month since Part 2 of this journal. I bet you thought I’d given up on it, or given up on World Of Warcraft. I’ve come close a few times, but not yet. Having pre-paid for 3 months of time has done what I’d hoped it would do and kind of convinced me to keep going.
The reason I’m back writing is that finally, just in the past couple of days, I’ve really started to enjoy myself. My character is about level 50 now and around 23 hours old.
So in my last journal I talked about how WoW hadn’t really been grabbing me and as mentioned, that continued to be the case up until just recently. I think I’ve finally figured out why and it is partially self-inflicted by FOMO and partially just the way Dragonflight is structured. (Maybe all the expansions have been structured like this but Dragonflight is the first I’ve played (almost, so far) all the way through.)
So quick refresher, I started a new character, and did Exiles Reach to get to level 10. That was fine and fun and really short. Then I wound up in Stormwind and from there headed off to Dragon Land. The fact that I have no idea what the correct name of Dragon Land is, and that I can’t name a single zone there, is our first clue.
I first started playing Dragonflight the same way I used to play what we now call “Classic WoW.” I took every quest I saw and got ready to grind levels. But there are a LOT of quests and what I really wanted to be playing was The War Within which folk kept sharing stories about. I also heard from friends who’d hit level 70 in Dragonflight and then just got shunted over to The War Within against their will.
I figured if I was going to invest in Dragonflight I wanted to see all of it before level 70 happened so I stopped doing side quests and just did the main campaign quest. That started a whirlwind tour of Dragon Land. I moved through the various parts of the island so quickly that I had no sense of place and no connection to the land or the story. Once I got a flying mount, I just took to the skies and flew from quest giver to quest location, did some super trivial content, and flew back.
The story so far is…there are dragons and they come in various colors and some are good and others are bad and we’re helping the good dragons fight the bad ones. I’m not sure why the bad ones are bad exactly. There are 6 limbed dragons (4 legs, 2 arms) and 4 limbed dragons (4 legs, no arms.) I’m not sure why. And there are dragons that we just ride on and they seem to just be beasts? The 4 limbed intelligent dragons are only dragons sometimes, other times they take on the form of one of the WoW races though I’m not sure why. I guess to get arms? The main characters are… I have no idea. I can’t name a single one. There’s a queen and her I recognize because she is WoW-hot and then some dudes with multi-syllable names that go in and out of my head like the wind. Our goal is to awaken some stones which I think then awaken more dragons? I have no idea.
Myself and a 6-limbed dragon watch a 4-limbed dragon doing something nefarious
There is very little challenge to the gameplay and I’ve never had to grind at all, or do side missions to keep my level up. I guess they’ve moved all the challenges to the dungeons, which I haven’t done. New gear is granted from doing quests. I at first struggled with trying to put together some kind of “build” because there are a lot of talents to pick from, but then someone pointed out there’s a built-in build system you can follow so I’ve been letting the game tell me what to pick. There are random buffs that you get just from being in the zone to make things even easier.
So essentially for the first, I dunno, 30 levels of Dragonflight, it kind of all felt like an elaborate game of solitaire. Something kind of mindless to do to kill time.
Then finally things started to change. Right around the time you (finally) get to the Dragon home city (and can finally access your banks and optionally leave the Dragon Island to go do other things if you wished) I started having to do a few quests in the same region, which meant I was fighting the same kinds of enemies more than once and learning which ones did what and how best to combat them. And I was getting a sense of place. It still was damned easy but at least it felt a little like exploration.
Then that whole questline seemed to stop and I was shunted over to a time travel questline which I understand is eventually used to go back and play through earlier expansions. But THAT was fun and interesting. There were some boss fights, the story was neat, we visited different times in WoW history and learned some lore about the world. This section was over all too fast. I did learn that Chromie the Gnome is actually a dragon. Apparently they’re everywhere hiding in plain sight.
So that brings you up to speed. I’ve probably played more in the past 2-3 days that I have in the rest of the month since I was finally getting interested in the world. I think I’m almost done with the Dragonflight campaign and it looks like I’ll need to make up some levels somewhere before I can move on to The War Within. Presumably I can go back and do side quests or move back to the mainland. Whatever I do I’ll pick a spot and focus on it because my nature is more completionist than fast-tracker and being fast-tracked through this content hasn’t felt super fun.
Really looking forward to getting to The War Within and finally feeling like there’s no rush and I can just work on what I want, when I want. Hoping to get there soon.
I have to admit I’ve not really been playing World of Warcraft as much as I had anticipated, but I do pop in now and then. I’m not sure why I don’t play more. There’s nothing about it that bothers me or anything. I mean partially it is just due to playing so many games at once, but it’s partially that it hasn’t REALLY grabbed me yet. I am not playing through The War Within since I don’t have a level 70 character. I’m playing the last expansion, Dragonflight.
So far it has been a pretty chill experience, and maybe that is actually part of the issue? When I log in I play for a while and then I tend to get a little sleepy and so I log out. Mind you recently almost everything can make me feel a little sleepy (I need to talk to my doc about tweaking my meds so I’m not borderline narcoleptic). I started out doing every quest I saw but then decided instead to focus on the main questline to see how far that would take me and to see what it will unlock.
I have the new (?) dragon flight system that gives you skills to boost speed and height and a stamina bar. That’s pretty fun. And of course the area is new to me, though I’m not sure I appreciate it as much as some might. It is clearly intended to nudge you towards using the new flight tools since there’s a lot of vertical movement, but it’s also your typical fire and brimstone type biome. All lava and barren rock. At least the part I’m in now is. I honestly tend not to use mounts in games too often; I kind of like running around taking my time. And while I think you CAN get anywhere in this area by running to it, you’d spend a LOT of time circling spires looking for staircases.
I also don’t have any history with the characters so even though they talk about the years we’ve spent fighting side by side, I have no idea who they are. Without any context it’s a little hard to care about them.
I feel like a lot of this comes down to me becoming refamiliarized with the game and the lore to some extent. This should get better as I build some history with the NPCs I’m interacting with. There is nothing in the plot or the gameplay that I can point to and say “I’m not playing because I don’t like THIS.” It is all fine. It’s just not super compelling yet.
Huh, I didn’t intend to write such a ‘down on WoW’ post. OK not ‘down’ on it but maybe apathetic? Anyway, in fact I wanted to write this post because of something I really did enjoy! I did my first Dungeon yesterday using the new “Dungeon Diving with NPCs” system (not the actual name) that I think was added with Dragonflight? It was Neltharus, a Dragonflight dungeon, anyway. This NPC was loitering about outside the dungeon and offered to help. I said “OK let’s go” and the game asked me what role I was going to fill. I said DPS and bam, there I was inside with 4 NPC companions including a tank, a healer. a DPS and honestly not sure what the last was. Support? I dunno. [I of course forgot to take any screenshots.]
You can choose to lead the party or you can ask an NPC to lead. I did the latter and Captain Garrick, one of the NPCs and someone I know from Exile’s Reach, bellows “I’ll keep you safe” and takes off running. I have to say it was really just like playing with a PUG but without any attitude. Garrick ran from boss to boss. I struggled to keep up and follow everything that was happening, so just like playing with people! I felt awkward and dumb but I kept reminding myself “these are NPCs, they don’t care” and that was pretty nice. And at any time I could click a button to take back the lead and everyone would stop and wait for as long as I needed. No judgement from the NPCs!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE! this system. I let the NPC lead this time, but I might go back and do it again with me leading. The fight wasn’t really challenging at all but I definitely need practice with targeting and resource management and getting back the knack of watching the enemy, the party, and my own skill bars all at once. Being able to practice this without worrying that I’m irritating other people is amazing. And my assumption is that if I was playing with a friend, we could do the same thing and just get 3 NPC companions? I am not 100% sure on that, but Gwyn in case you are reading and are thinking of going back to play with Glo! (Though my understanding is this system only works on some of the newer dungeons.)
I know it’s a little weird to choose to play an MMO and then be delighted that I don’t have to play with other people, but that’s me in a nutshell. FF XIV has a similar system and I remember loving it there, too. I like being able to actually take my time and look around and appreciate the work that goes into these dungeons!
Got this 2-handed mace — they call it a mace, I’d call it a maul — as a drop during my first visit to a dungeon
For my trouble of doing the dungeon I got a couple of nice gear upgrades, so it was worth it from that point of view too. I’m looking forward to doing more of these and generally it made me excited to get through this content and into The War Within where I know they’ve really leaned into this system.
Meanwhile I hit level 25 with my new character, putting her at the same level as my once-upon-a-time level-capped pre-smush characters.
So I continue to push forward. Once I get these dragons sorted I look forward to going to fight the mole men or whomever lives in the bowels of the world in The War Within!
If you asked me a few weeks ago if I was thinking of trying World of Warcraft again I would’ve told you a very firm “NOPE” but here I am.
Just to recap the journey up to now. First played WoW in the Friends & Family Beta when the only race you could play were the Undead. Or Forsaken? I can’t even remember the race name. The skeleton characters. Played at launch heavily up to the release of the Burning Crusades then quit. For a while I’d go back to try new expansions, and whichever one the Blood Elves were in was the last time I spent any amount of time at all playing.
At some point post-Cataclysm I tried again but, not knowing any better, I treated it like “Classic WoW” and just went to Northshire Abbey then Goldshire then Westfall just like I’d always done. I leveled so fast and gameplay was so easy I didn’t stay long. Maybe tried the same thing for Night Elves? Then I tried Classic but that was too far the other way, if you know what I mean. I’d done those first zones so often they just felt tedious and THAT leveling was too slow! All this stopped quite a few years ago. 3? 4? 5 maybe? A long while ago.
OK that brings us up to now, and if you’re playing WoW this will all be stuff you already know. I’m writing this more for friends who, like me, haven’t played in a long time.
I rolled a new character (because of course I did) and ran through the new starter zone called Exiles Reach. (You do have a choice of starting in your racial staring zone). I liked Exiles Reach because there was a nice group of characters from various races there which was a good reminder to me that this was “New WoW”. If doesn’t take too long to run through even doing everything (I think I did everything) and when you get out you’ll be about level 10 and you get ported to your race’s main city, in my case Stormwind. Good old Stormwind. It was kind of nice to learn I still knew my way around it without much trouble, aside from that new-fangled Harbor zone. When did Stormwind get a harbor?
Then I had a few choices. The game nudged me towards two, one of which was Dragonflight, the last expansion (this was before The War Within had launched) and the other was, I THINK, the ‘pre-patch’ zone that I’ve heard friends talking about and which didn’t look super interesting from what I’d seen. Seemed just a place to grind up levels, but I could be wrong and maybe that wasn’t even what choice #2 was. They don’t make it very clear (though once you decide on a ‘campaign’ they make it pretty hard to get lost). And if I didn’t want to do either of those I could’ve headed down to Elwynn Forest or something, but I knew I didn’t want to do that, at least not right away. There are also ways to go back and play earlier expansions but I think you need at least one high level character before you can access that system. I’m not sure how interested I am in that, anyway.
It’d be pretty hard to get lost in the campaign. If you forget to accept a quest the game will remind you, and while it is hard to see here, there’s an icon on the map showing exactly where you need to go
In the end I went with Dragonflight, a zone I’d never been to in a game that was both familiar and very alien. I feel like the narrative is much heavier than it used to be, which I’m enjoying. Not only do we get some cut scenes but also there are NPCs with conversation bubbles over their head. When you interact with these it kicks off a discussion between a few NPCs that you just eavesdrop on. I’m eating that stuff up.
There’s now a metric sh*t ton of stuff to collect and a lot of it is account-wide. I was over the moon when I checked the Mount collection and my Nightsaber mounts that my old main used to ride were in there. And you can ride immediately. [That’s Petra riding a Frostmane at the top of the post, though next to Cadet Sendrax both she and the cat look tiny!] Remember when you had to hit level 40 before you could even use a mount? There’s a ton of systems I know nothing about, but I could still take skinning so I can skin my kills and sell the leather, so that felt really familiar!
There’s now the Warband stuff where all your characters across all servers are part of an extended family. Aside from showing a group of them on the login screen I’m not sure what real impact that has. There is a shared bank vault for anyone in your Warband but it costs 1,000 gold which seemed crazy until I saw how fast gold accumulates in “new WoW”. So that’s something fun to work towards. I guess in the newer zones you can set things so that quests that you’ve already done on other characters are hidden which will be handy if I start running alts.
Like collecting things? There’s 48 pages worth of “Toy Box” items to collect.
And 42 pages of appearance items!
As for the actual minute-to-minute gameplay, that still feels like good old WoW to me. I’m playing a Paladin which I’ve played before. There’s now a specialization system (3 per class I guess) and you get skill points to spend as you level up. I honestly cannot recall if that was in vanilla WoW or not but it seems like another alt-friendly system. I THINK you can switch specializations at will, but I’m not sure.
I’m playing on a low-population server and noticed a lot of other characters had an * after their name. According to Google this means they’re from a different server. I’m not sure exactly how that works…did they choose to come play on Kirin Tor or does the game just magically move them to balance things out. Not sure. To be fair I’ve not interacted with anyone anyway. Even chat is quiet, to the point where I wondered if some channels defaulted to off but it didn’t seem that way. There’s a lot of odd things that don’t unlock until you get a few levels (like area looting unlocked at level 8 or something) so maybe the game is protecting me from “Barrens Chat” as we used to call it.
So yeah, having fun so far. Love learning about these dragon-people, which I didn’t know existed. New cultures with new lore is always fun. The old routine of grabbing 1 ‘big’ quest and then 2 or 3 ‘kill ten rats’ quests that happen in the same spot is both familiar and still enjoyable. Nothing like running back and handing in 3 or 4 quests all at the same time and watching the experience bar move! As I mentioned I’m really digging the heavier story telling.
So that’s where I’ll leave things for now but as I learn and experience more stuff I may be back with more WoW Journal Entries. While everyone else is talking about The War Within you can listen to me yammer on about Dragonflight!
Well I did it. I subscribed to World of Warcraft for the first time in I don’t know how many years. And my first hour or so was just WEIRD.
First strange thing is, just a few weeks ago I started a new character using the “Free until level 20” system and I played him for maybe 10 minutes before thinking “Nope, this isn’t for me.” This time I once again started a new character and enjoyed it. What changed? I guess my mood, or maybe it was because that first character was an ugly human male and this time I made a more attractive human female. Maybe I really AM that shallow!
Although Krikket had kindly invited me to join her on her server, I ended up rolling on good old Kirin Tor which is an RP server. I take it that what server you are on doesn’t really matter these days and I doubt anyone still role-plays but JUST in case, I wanted to play on an RP server. Not that I RP much but back in ye olden days I used to enjoy watching role play while acting almost like an ‘extra’ in whatever drama was going down.
Then finally I started playing and there were a lot of things I’d forgotten. Little stuff like, to open your inventory you don’t hit I, you hit B, for Bags. When you loot a corpse I’m not seeing a “Take all” option but I figure it has to be in there somewhere; maybe I need to check the options or something. With stuff like this, I don’t know if things have changed or if back in the day I had keys rebound or mods to help. But it felt slightly awkward and I was happy to be playing a new character, who is in a zone I’ve never been in before which sorta helps my brain process changes better. If I was at the Northshire Abbey I’d be hella confused.
There’s a lot of other little things I don’t understand, like some characters have an * after their name. Some NPCs have 3 dots over there head. I THINK that means they’re waiting for you but I’m not sure. There’s now a Newcomer Chat channel and folks were actually being helpful in it! Stranger still, I had questions!
There’s now the Warband stuff that gathers all (??) of your characters under one umbrella. For me it’s a little odd since I’ve used the same name over and over on different servers so I had several characters with the same name appearing on my login screen. Finally figured that one out: the characters you have tagged as “Favorites” show up on that screen so I shuffled some low level alts up there for the screenshot at the top of this post.
I had a moment of panic when I couldn’t find my old “Main” character from Vanilla WoW, but then I remembered the “level smush” they did a few years back. I’d heard about it but never experienced it. Turns out that very handsome level 25 hunter named Meglivorn on the left in the screenshot up there is my vanilla WoW level 60 hunter. I have several Meglivorn characters which is why I didn’t put it together right away, then I noticed his Warg Companion and blank tabard and realized THAT was him. I’ll have to wake him up eventually.
[Vanilla WOW trivia: Back when I was in a guild Meg the Hunter would be who pulled the boss in several dungeons. Imagine if a DPS pulled today! But he’d pull the boss and kite him for as long and as far as possible while the rest of the group burned down any sub-bosses or other riff-raff, then they’d give me the word and I’d have Meg Feign Death to drop the aggro. The boss would then turn and walk back to his starting point where the rest of the party was all set to pound him.]
In for a penny, in for a pound. I signed up for a 3-month subscription just to try to incentivize myself to stick with it, AND I pre-ordered The War Within. So we’ll see how this goes. I only stopped playing last night because it was getting late, so that’s a good sign, I guess! As to the cost, it struck me that with virtually EVERYTHING going up in price these days, a WoW sub costs the same as it ever has, which makes it feel like more of a bargain than it used to. That 3-month sub cost me about the same as what we spend on a fast food dinner for 2 and a movie rental on a Saturday night, and it’s for 3 months. So not so bad, really. Maybe I’m just justifying… 🙂
The default positioning of UI elements on a widescreen seems a little inefficient since I have to look back and forth so much
Next step is to ask around to see what mods are hot these days because of course even if I could remember the UI mods I used to use, that doesn’t mean they are still supported. I also may need some tips on the best/most efficient way to play on a widescreen. I feel like some important data is now out of my central viewing area, if that makes sense (see screenshot). And I need to read up on what exactly this Warband stuff is for. I do know that some quests told me that another member of my warband had already completed it (presumably the other alt I’d rolled up a couple weeks back). And I think I’ll go through and delete some of these alts because I have a ridiculous number and many of them are VERY low level (like under 5). So there’s some tidying to be done.
And here is where I was going to share the “Warcraft Story” for one of my old mains, but none of them seem to be findable, probably because they haven’t been logged in for years and I’m not really ready to deal with logging them in yet since I know a cascade of random pop-ups will happen when I do. My new character, Petrarav (did you know WoW doesn’t allow spaces in names? Her name SHOULD be Petra Rav, which is the name of my Guild Wars 2 character, Petra being a character in both Destiny 2 and Horizon Forbidden West, and Rav being a shortened version of Ravach, a name I often use for male characters — particular those that lean toward barbarian or boisterous cultures.) doesn’t have a story yet either, presumably because she was just born.
So that’s my WoW story for now. With trying to play Guild Wars 2 and Diablo IV and World of Warcraft AND Fallout 76…well obviously either something has to give or I just won’t make any progress anywhere, but as I said the other day, I’m just feeling rather self-indulgent right now, and I’m gonna play what I want, when I want, at least while this PC gaming honeymoon period is on-going. I’m not in any guilds anywhere or anything so if I just vanish from some of these games, no one but me will notice.
The best part about writing about World of Warcraft is coming up with silly post titles.
As I am sure you are aware, World of Warcraft has a new expansion, The War Within, that is in the midst of rolling out. Early access has started and full launch is, I believe, Monday. Normally a WoW expansion wouldn’t interest me at all. The last time I seriously played WoW was before the Burning Crusade expansion. Mind you I was big into what we now call vanilla WoW. I happened to be playing when I was laid off from a job at the start of one summer and decided to just chill out and look for more work in the autumn, and I spent that summer just LIVING in World Of Warcraft. Joined a guild, made friends, chatted with them constantly. The classic MMO experience. It was a really nice time. Then it was back to real life and full-time work and for whatever reason Burning Crusade didn’t hit me right so I left.
I’ve jumped back in many times since but it has never really stuck. And now it is time to jump back in again. And honestly it probably won’t stick but as long as I have fun for a while, does it really matter?
So why now? Two main reasons and I’m going to be honest. Mostly it is due to game developer, influencer and all-around great guy, Dusty Monk. If you don’t know Dusty, he’s one of the nicest people I’ve met online and I think you should subscribe to his relatively new YouTube vlog, I’m Still Playing. (He is just starting out with this project and having more subscribers will help get his channel pushed to more people via the YouTube algorithm, so even if you’re not normally a YT viewer subscribing would still help him out.) I’ve had the pleasure to know Dusty for a number of years and I know that he and I have similar tastes in games. If he likes something I probably will too. He is pretty psyched for The War Within and he’s been getting me psyched too. Here’s the post, from earlier this week, that pushed me over the top:
And if you read the comments you’ll see:
Me: Dammit Dusty, stop tempting me!
Dusty: Brutha I had you in mind when I made this video cause I know you’re like me! C’mon check it out!
I mean how can I resist that? I can’t! I just can’t!
I do tend to play MMOs solo and I do tend to drift away when I run out of content that is solo-able. In some games I can join in with other people to do un-organized group events and I enjoy those, but the idea of waiting around to Form A Group at this point in my life isn’t very appealing. I am just past the point where I can sit down and know I have 2-3 straight hours to play, and like Dusty mentions in that video, you don’t want to finally get in a group then say “Sorry, gotta go.” I am just not that kind of person.
And this solo-friendly aspect of The War Within isn’t just something that Dusty has imagined. At Gamescom, Tina Fong, Associate Art Director on The War Within, when talking about the new Delves feature, said “something that is a priority to us for delves is that it really caters to a group of our audience that historically has been a little underserved by the end game progression loop that we have..” and she goes on to talk about “overworld” players, as she calls us soloists, while Game Director Ion Hazzikostas spelled it out, saying they are “making sure there is a deep solo experience“. In addition to Delves there’s now something like Final Fantasy XIV‘s trust system where you can do at least the main quest dungeons in the expansion with a group of NPCs. No more waiting for a group to take your DPS character through a dungeon so you can continue with the story. Dusty does a great job of going over all the solo-friendly aspects of this new expansion in the video above.
And if you want to watch The War Within segment from the Gamescom 2024 Xbox show (where the Fong and Hazzikostas quotes come from), here it is all queued up for you.
And in addition to that, just on the off chance WoW does ‘stick’ this time (there’s probably a dozen or more “Back to WoW” posts on this blog from throughout the years… probably some are showing in Related Posts down below this post), the start of an expansion which in itself is the start of a new storyline seems like an excellent time to dive back in. It’ll presumably be 4 years (the story is supposed to stretch over 3 expansions and I’m assuming one per year) before that happens again.
So yup, I’m going to do it. Of course I’m still playing, or trying to play, Guild Wars 2 (between overtime at work, following Gamescom and writing a post every day I’ve had little time to actually play this week), and I doubt I can do justice to two MMOs at the same time, but y’know, I’m not getting any younger. I’m going to play what I feel like playing when I feel like playing it and stop agonizing over my choices. It’s just games, right? There’s like a 98% chance that by mid-September I’m playing something other than Guild Wars 2 OR World of Warcraft. That’s just me, chaotic good. Ok maybe chaotic neutral. 🙂
Just for grins and because I don’t mind making fun of myself, I decided to see how many “back to WoW” posts I’ve written over the years. It actually wasn’t as many as I thought, but here we go.
WoW Classic: Why I won’t go home again (8/27/2019) Including this one because it is a lie. I DID break down and subscribe to WoW Classic and logged in maybe 2-3 times before giving it up again.
Back to WoW?! WTF? (8/09/2015) Beer was involved with this decision and it initially didn’t end well, but I guess I gave it a 2nd chance since a week later I blogged about having completed 3 zones and reached level 20 but I was about ready to set it aside.
Back to WoW again! (11/27/2010) Looks like it had only been a few months since my last return so not sure why I jumped back in, but I did. I blogged about it for about a month, ranting about how it was too easy and I guess doing some cross-blog arguing with another WoW blogger.
Back to WoW? (09/06/2010) This post pairs with the one below. Between July and Sept I logged in once. This “back to WoW” reads more like “farewell to WoW”. Which lasted 2 months. LOL
When I played WoW… (07/23/2010) This is not technically a ‘back to WoW’ post but I do mention at the end that I’d purchased Wrath of the Lich King so presumably I played at some point soon after.
Willpower saving throw: Failed (11/24/2008) FOMO got me and I was damned grumpy about it, but soon after I joined Casualties of War (anyone remember that guild) and had some fun for a week or two.
World of Warcraft (3/23/2004) Not “a back to WoW” but a ‘there’s this new game World Of Warcraft” post. It appears to be my earliest WoW post. I was playing in Beta at the time and having a ball.
Gillain’s Journal – Day 1 (3/24/2004) And just for grins, an in-character journal of my character’s time in the beta.
I was a very early adopter of World of Warcraft. Thanks to a friend I played in the Friends & Family alpha and I kept playing pretty heavily until Burning Crusade came out. Then I quit, for reasons I don’t recall.
In the years since I’ve gone back a few times but it always felt…lonely, I guess. When I was hardcore in WoW I was in an active guild and we would play and chat for hours and hours. One of the few times in my life I’ve found a gaming group I really fit into.
Going back and them not being around was like going back to your hometown and visiting your old hang-outs, but your friends were no longer there.
With enough adds even Elywnn Forest can be dangerous
Every so often my Twitter timeline has a surge of folks who’ve gone back to WoW and I generally ignore them. For some reason, this time my FOMO overcame my reticence and I logged back in.
It’s a much different game
A LOT has changed in the 13-ish years since I played seriously. I DO remember going back after Cataclysm and HATING it. I zoomed through zones so fast and leveled so quickly it just felt frantic and bland. I’m that (apparently) rare player who enjoys reading the quest text and enjoys the leveling process and just exploring.
This time back, I started a level 1 character, human, in Elwynn Forest, same as I’ve done a dozen or more times. Difference is, this time I’m really enjoying myself. Maybe its just been long enough that I don’t feel lonely any more. Or maybe its the system itself.
The biggest change is that zones now scale. I can putter around Elwynn as long as I like and the mobs scale to my level, which keeps the gameplay really fun. I much prefer this to having a bunch of ‘gray’ quests to kill trivial enemies, and I like that I don’t feel pressured to move to the next zone. There’s a 100% experience buff so I am leveling like mad but Elwynn remains a place where I can and do die if I’m not careful (bloody murloc swarms).
No quest giver will lead you to this big spider, but it drops decent newbie loot
Questing quietly
It is also really quiet in the low level zones. I DID try to return when WoW Classic launched and the newbie zones were packed. Chat was so toxic I immediately turned it off, but I couldn’t turn off competing for spawns and being annoyed at knuckleheads cavorting around like a bunch of 8 years olds that just came home from an ice-cream eating contest where absolutely nothing was sugar-free.
I have nothing really earth shattering to reveal about a game this old that has been extensively covered my just about anyone who writes about games. But if like me you’ve been away for a LONG time, well…it just might be worth it to take another look. You can play to level 20 for free, so it won’t cost you anything to try. You might find there’s some fun to be had.
In my Twitter timeline it is full-on WoW Classic Mania this week. While it’s fun to see everyone taking delight in retro-gaming, I haven’t joined in.
Part of the reason is that while I played and enjoyed WoW, it wasn’t, y’know, life-changing for me from a gameplay point of view. MMOs that were life-changing for me personally: MegaWars III (my 1st MMO) and Ultima Online (the one MMO that I played to a point where it started having a negative impact on my real life). WoW was just another in a LONG line of MMOs that I played and enjoyed.
It did happen to land in a weird time in my life. I had gotten laid off and decided to chill for a few months; do some freelancing and live off savings for a bit. Because of that I could devote massive amounts of time to WoW. I joined a guild, became friends with a lot of those people and often spent upwards of 8 hours a day online with them. I knew them, knew their partners and kids, new about their real lives. We were very much a family.
But once I started working again I couldn’t maintain that lifestyle and I drifted away. By the time The Burning Crusade came out, I was ready to move on from WoW. I’ve re-subbed a few times since but without my “family” it just felt kind of empty. Which is strange since I mostly solo in MMOs and am not much of a guild joiner. But in my head, WoW = these friends I’ve lost touch with.
My favorite WoW memories have little to do with gameplay. One thing I love about WoW is how time mirrors real life and, back then, people sought out servers in their time zone. It would be 3 am, the world would be pretty quiet as most players would’ve gone to bed. A friend and I would head out to Westfall and sit near the lighthouse and watch the light play across the sea and talk about life and troubles and whatever and just enjoy the night.
Other fond memories involve silly roleplay in Stormwind, or the time friends stuck with me for 6 hours helping me get a rare pet for my hunter.
Going back to WoW, visiting those zones… it would just be sad for me. Those friends are gone and even if I could find them, it’d be like that awkwardness you feel at a school reunion. People change over time.
I’d rather keep these fond memories as they are. I don’t remember any of the pain points that there must have been. I just have wonderful memories of a good time in my life, and going back could only taint them. So no WoW Classic for me.
I’ve been back in WoW for a week now (though I’m still playing other games too). In that time my level 8 Rogue has gotten to level 23, which means I’ve done Elwynn Forest, Westfall and Redridge.
On one level I’m enjoying the new questlines in these zones. If you haven’t played in many years (like I hadn’t), so far there’s basically been one solid quest line in Westfall and Redridge (I’d done parts of Elwynn years back when I created this character so I kind of re-entered it mid-way through so I’m not sure how much it has changed). A lot of secondary quests have been removed but each zone now tells a little story. A cheesy story, I’ll grant you, but they lead you through the zone along a clear path and at the end all your quests are finished, nice and tidy, and you’re ready for the next zone.
While these quest lines are fun, they make the game even more into a themepark. You take a quest and it leads to the next quest and the next. You might get ‘kill ten rats’ sidequests but you complete them more or less naturally in the course of doing the ‘main’ quest. If you’re not doing dungeon runs (and I’m not) it’s all pretty linear. Whether that’s good or bad depends on how much you like wandering about. Of course I could bounce around and go quest in other low-level zones if I really wanted to change things up.
The overall result, to me, is that WoW feels like a game now, and I remember in the past it feeling like a place. It all feels much sillier, too. There are people riding motorcycles, for one thing. As Bhagpuss talked about the other day, the quests riff off of popular culture. Westfall apparently spoofs CSI, which I didn’t really pick up on since I’ve never watched CSI. But Redridge spoofs Rambo and even though I’ve never seen Rambo-the-movie I’ve certainly seen Rambo-the-character with his red headband, so I got what they were going for there. It all starts feeling pretty modern. Then add in a lot of fart and poop jokes (at least more than I remember) and it starts to feel like it’s aimed at kids, too. Any sense of being in a kind of pseudo-medieval world is long gone. This is a video game, for sure.
That’s not bad, it’s just different. The Azeroth that was my home away from home for a time many years ago is gone. It took a period of adjustment to get past that, but once I did I was OK with it and I’m trying to appreciate this new Azeroth on its own terms.
What I’m really struggling with is the pace of combat. I’ve played too many faster-paced MMOs lately, I guess. My rogue is hoarse from saying “I don’t have enough energy” since I’ve become un-accustomed to letting auto-attack run on its own while I wait for resource meters to refill. I also get a lot of “It’s too far away” messages even though I feel like I have my face pressed against the mob. It’s taking real willpower for me to chill out and let my guy fight on his own while I wait impatiently for the opportunity to DO something.
At the same time, let’s talk about easy mode. I finally died once at level 20 but it was kind of a trap and kind of a bad decision on my part. You have to get a key from a stump in the midst of a pack of sleeping wargs, and I stealthed in and grabbed it. When I grabbed it, stealth broke, the wargs woke up and killed me almost instantly. Aside from this one event I’ve never been close to dying, and some named mods seem to have a self-destruct mechanism, they die so incredibly quickly.
At level 20 I got to learn a riding skill and basic mounts are stupid cheap. 9 silver, maybe? Put it this way, I bought 3 of them just to have some variety. A far cry from the days of scrimping and saving to get a mount! Having a mount is pretty handy though my goodness do these models look terrible when riding. My rogue looks like he’s cut from plywood when he’s on his horse, the model is so stiff and upright. Maybe some day Blizzard can find the time and money to redo the riding animations.
On the other hand, if you want a bag, forget it. I looked on the auction house and bags beyond 8 slots are super expensive for a new character. Like hundreds of gold, when I have 6 gold! Balancing that out is that there are flight paths EVERYWHERE so it’s easy to recall or fly somewhere to sell your junk loot.
I also got my first set of spiky shoulder armor, so now my rogue looks like a proper WoW character. 🙂
I don’t see myself sticking with WoW for very much longer. It’s been fun seeing how they’ve redone the low level zones, but not really fun enough to spend $15/month to play. I’m a solo player so I won’t be doing dungeons or anything which means most of what I’m paying for I won’t use. There are enough decent F2P games to scratch my solo MMO player itch. That’s not a fault of WoW’s though; that’s just who I am.
