29/08/2019

A Cow Goes To Westfall

After two days of binging on World of Warcraft Classic, I've already got so many stories to tell that I hardly know where to begin... but since what I'm thinking of today is a particularly easy post to make, I'll jump right ahead and tell you how my little shaman and friends went to run the Deadmines as Horde.

Basically, Nemi and I were undecided last night: we wanted to run another dungeon but couldn't decide which one. We'd just done Wailing Caverns in the early afternoon (and it had taken quite long), so we didn't want to do that again right away, and we weren't really of a high enough level yet to go for the next obvious targets, Shadowfang Keep and Blackfathom Deeps.

Then she had an idea: How about... doing Deadmines as Horde? It's quite a hike and there are no quests, but it would certainly be an adventure! A quick shout-out in the guild we've joined immediately yielded some volunteers.

After a brief discussion about what would be the quickest way to get to Westfall as Horde, we took the zeppelin to Grom'gol and made our way from there, trying a number of different routes. Personally I went for "trying to swim up the coast", but being too close to the beach I got killed by crocolisks and murlocs multiple times. I should have followed the example of our priest, who had ventured much further out into the water and didn't die once from what I could tell.

 
I found it quite interesting to see this giant gate at the very Northern edge of Stranglethorn - presumably that's where the Defias ship actually goes out into the sea (if you ever wondered how and why there is a ship inside a cave).
We hung out at the meeting stone for a few minutes while some members who had travelled differently had to wait for their res sickness debuff to wear off. A number of Alliance came over and gawked at us, understandably. I'd been similarly surprised when I crossed a group of Alliance players upon exiting the Wailing Caverns earlier in the day.

Our group was quite a nice one, and the rogue amused everyone by insisting that the mage should conjure water for him too because he was thirsty, and then sat down to drink with the casters every time. (We're not on an RP server by the way.)

Also, at one point another guildie noticed our location and basically broke out in giggles in guild chat about what a mad bunch of nerds we were.

Most of the run was pretty smooth (not least because we were on the high end of the level range for Deadmines) but we did suffer two near wipes: one on an accidental pull of Captain Greenskin with loads of trash and one on Van Cleef himself. Someone with a res always managed to escape by jumping off the ship though, which caused the mobs to evade and then the rest of the party could be revived without having to do a corpse run.

As mentioned there are no quests for Hordies in the Deadmines, but I briefly got excited when I could loot the quest item that drops from Van Cleef. It turned out to just be a racist letter though.

Overall, it was a fun little adventure to occupy our evening. It's not something I'd ever done back in Vanilla or on private servers. However, one thing that's quickly becoming apparent about Classic is that it invites people to be playful and that old content is no reason not to have new adventures.

10 comments:

  1. On my server we have a fun little argument about Deadmines. Should it be called DM (Deadmines) or VC (Van Cleef)? People have different experiences with the initials and given Dire Maul isn't a thing yet, DM seems reasonable, but for me Deadmines will always be VC, :)

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    1. That's a very common discussion, not just on your server. I've always been firmly in the DM camp. VC are just the initials of the last boss! And even with there being two DMs, a quick check of the level of the person doing the LFG-ing should always make it clear which one they mean. ;)

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    2. > And even with there being two DMs

      There are 4.
      * Deadmines (DM)
      * Dire Maul East (DM East)
      * Dire Maul North (DM North, or Tribut if you do the tribut run)
      * Dire Maul West (DM West).

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    3. That just makes it even clearer though that there really are no grounds for confusion between low-level and high-level DM. :P

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    4. Sometimes folks on my server would be specific with DM (North, East, West), but generally it was just DM. Rarely it was "Tribute Run" but those were unlikely to be pugged.

      Scarlet Monastery was another with wings that was almost always just called SM. Wings were discussed once everyone was in the group.

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  2. I was in Elwynn Forest last night (can only train swords in Stormwind and when I got there I didn't heve enough to pay for it so I neded up doing a level in Elwynn and Westfall) and that discussion was going on in General. I had no idea what VC even stood for and no-one felt the need to explain so nice to find out.

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  3. Sounds like you're having fun :)

    I already regret rolling on a German server this time. People are generally nice, but our static group didn't go as planned so far and so some of us already rolled up alts that surpassed the original dungeon group that's waiting for all 5 to be Level 14+ for RFC.

    But the queues are the worst. I am on vacation this week (by pure chance, not because of the launch) and my MO is logging in the morning without a queue and logging off latest by noon when I've had enough anyway. Sucks if I want to get in again on that day, though...

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    1. Let's just say I sympathise with static groups not going as planned. Knowing the people involved, I guess I should have seen it coming though...

      Hopefully the queues will get better. Blizzard said that they already greatly increased the capacity of each server (by allowing more layers I guess?) and it did help to shorten the queues on PV tonight for sure.

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    2. Yeah, also hoping here, but I didn't notice any real change so far on Everlook.
      Sure, they might have gone down from 4+ hours to "just 2h, but at 10 pm" - that's all just a simple "playing won't happen on a week/work night"

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