A Guild and Grind

I joined a guild again. It wasn't planned, but as I was sitting in Darkshire looking for people to polish off my last couple of group quests in Duskwood, a person called Pawsy whispered me to ask if I was unguilded for a reason, which I thought was an interesting way of starting a recruitment conversation. We talked for a bit, I told them about how I wasn't playing very much and had ended up somewhat disappointed by the last guild that I'd joined randomly, and in the end I agreed to join their brand-new levelling guild called "Mending". It really was brand-new, as according to the guild info it had been founded only about two weeks prior.

I was pretty impressed by the leadership's recruitment efforts, as they were apparently whispering people like crazy, to the point that they were joking about how they were getting "no, I don't want to join Mending right now" replies as soon as they even said "hi". I was impressed because while they didn't seem to be very discriminating with their invities, they did genuinely try to engage people in conversation in the process.

I asked about the group quests in guild chat and half an hour later they were done. Boom! That's why you joined a guild in Vanilla.

Of course, it also took only a few hours until I had my first impulse to ragequit, when I saw some guy repeatedly use the word "jew" as an insult in guild chat and realised that another guy called Donaldtrumps (the name says it all really) who had come across as kind of trollish in general chat was in the guild as well. However, I decided that I didn't want to be hasty, as the guild is still very new and one has to wait a bit to see how these things shake out. A few bad apples don't need to necessarily ruin it for everyone, depending on how they are received by the rest of the guild, and I've already seen a fair bit of pushback against people saying overly stupid/rude things in guild chat as well. In short: we'll see.

In terms of gameplay, after having gained a few levels in Stranglethorn Vale, I was starting to hit a bit of a wall there, in the sense that I ran out of quests that I could easily solo. Plus, the Horde players I was encountering were starting to get on my nerves a bit... like that troll shaman 7 levels above me that tried to gank me on the road twice, though both times I managed to keep myself alive for long enough for other Allies to come by and kill him instead. Then there was another troll shammy, only 2 levels higher or so, who tried to kill me near Nesingwary's camp, but I kept healing myself. By the time I was nearly dead due to running out of mana and he was out of mana as well, I handed in two quests so that I dinged and was instantly back to full health and mana, hah! Unfortunately that was when another troll shammy (is there anything else in STV?) who was 9 levels higher than me and had been fishing nearby decided to join in to kill me. Anyway, the point is - all those troll shamans were getting in my way a bit and I decided that it was time to visit Kalimdor again.

I took the boat to Theramore and crossed Dustwallow Marsh, the Barrens and Thousand Needles on foot. Seeing the old Thousand Needles again made me so happy, even if its design and textures seem kind of bland by today's standards. I missed those windy canyons. I unlocked the flight path in Gadgetzan and picked up the artisan cooking quest there, since my cooking is a bit ahead of my level, though I'll need to level up a couple more times before I can effectively farm the materials for the quest.

Then I decided to go do a couple of quests in the Shimmering Flats. I vaguely recall not doing those on my priest back in the day, because I was already too high level for them by the time I arrived in the area, so I was only ever peripherally aware of them. It's safe to say that I didn't miss out! They are all super grindy and anything that doesn't require you to simply kill things or pick items off the ground has a terrible drop rate. Salt Flat Venom or Hardened Shells, anyone? I was OK with it though, because honestly, I needed something to grind and these quests just gave me an excuse to pick on turtles and scorpids.

Also, an orc rogue who was something like 7 levels lower than me tried to kill me and failed; I killed her instead. Definitely preferable to Stranglethorn Vale.