BRD Quest Run

I commented on one of Bhagpuss' posts a few weeks ago that I quite like the way WoW Classic introduces you to group content in a gradual way by slowly ramping up the percentage of group and dungeon quests as you level. I've seen many more modern MMOs get criticised for guiding you through a very solo-centric levelling game just to have you run into a metaphorical wall when you're suddenly supposed to group up for most if not all endgame content. I don't think anybody can really claim to be surprised in this manner when it comes to the group-centric endgame in Classic.

Now, while I generally think this is a good thing, I won't deny that it has its issues. Your quest log can only hold up to twenty quests, and when you pick up a dungeon quest you're usually not going to go and get it done right then and there; it will likely sit in your log for a while until an opportunity arises to get a group for the dungeon, effectively reducing the amount of slots you have available for solo questing in the meantime.

By level sixty this can become a real problem. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the main thing that's been putting me off playing my hunter most nights has simply been the overabundance of dungeon quests in her log, which had reached a point where she couldn't really pick up more than one or at most two solo quests at a time without dropping something else.

And I did drop some dungeon quests - or declined to pick them up in the first place, usually because I figured I wasn't likely to do that particular dungeon any time soon, or because it was given close to the entrance and I could hope that I'd remember to pick it up at the appropriate time. However, others were handed to me at the end of chains located in a variety of places, and I figured that if I dropped them, I'd likely never remember to pick them back up. And I did want to do them!

The worst offender in that regard was Blackrock Depths. It's an instance with a reputation for being huge and sprawling, and it has the quests to match. At some points literally half my quest log consisted of nothing but missions telling me to go to BRD. Worse, because of the nature of the dungeon, you could well run it once and not get more than one or two quests done, simply because the group didn't want to go to all the places you needed, which are likely located all over the map. For example I joined a run that was advertised as being an MC attunement run - and in fairness, I did get that done! However, part of me still wanted to cry a little, walking right past so many places and bosses that I needed as well but that simply weren't going to be part of this highly focused run.

I did join a run that was advertised as a "quest run" once, which did net me the Shadowforge Key among other things, but just after we'd killed Angerforge the tank suddenly "had to go", dropped group and hearthed out. (In hindsight I'm guessing he'd just viewed it as an opportunity to have another shot at the fabled Hand of Justice.) It didn't do much to alleviate my quest log problems.

Today though! I had the most epic and true-to-its-name quest run I ever could have imagined. Oddly, it actually helped that the group was led by a level 55 dps warrior who had been hesitant to take the tanking role because he was, as per his own admission, not super familiar with the dungeon, and others weren't always completely sure where to go either. This had the amusing side effect that everyone could basically go "over here, we should go over here" whenever they realised they were near one of their quest objectives, and nobody would object. We eventually called it at the entrance of MC, after we'd spent three and a half hours inside the instance and people were getting hungry as it was way past lunch time.

It didn't take us three and a half hours because the group was bad or anything though. We only had one wipe, which was based on me giving bad intel. ("I don't think he calls for help, but I'm not sure" just before we engaged Golem Lord Argelmach...) The rest of the time we just went absolutely everywhere, killing all the things. When I left, every single one of the BRD quests in my log actually said "complete"... for the time being, because there are always some follow-ups.

If you count the money from vendoring loot and item quest rewards, I also made more than fifty gold from that one run alone. I was so elated, I went ahead and finally picked up all those Blackrock Spire quests that I had been avoiding... just to immediately go back to having eighteen of my twenty quest log slots filled up. I'll just have to keep looking for more quest runs in LFG I guess...