One of the first things I noticed while levelling my new rogue on era was how good the levelling felt, to the point that I constantly found myself looking for opportunities to play just a little more - and that despite of not being too keen on rogue as a class. I ended up looking back at this post from September 2019, a month after Classic's launch, in which I noted how well levelling in Classic seemed to be balanced, with everything tying into everything else just so.
That was less than three years ago - it's funny how quickly we forget. A few months ago I noted how levelling in BC Classic felt ever so slightly "off" to me, and I did remember it feeling better before the levelling nerfs, but I'd forgotten just how good it feels, with everything always driving you forward.
Fortunately I'm in no rush whatsoever when it comes to this character - after all, it's just me, and as far as the game itself is concerned, Classic era itself isn't going anywhere either. I can take my time slowly stealthing around things without feeling too bad. I think just finishing business on Teldrassil took me almost eight hours of /played.
I'm still not great at being a rogue - which is actually the fourth reason I don't like rogues and which I almost forgot to mention. Rogues are all about careful movement, choosing your targets, going directly for the kill and then disappearing again. When properly executed, this actually feels pretty cool and almost overpowered... but if anything goes wrong, you're usually toast, especially at low levels (WTB Vanish). If you're caught out by an extra mob in the middle of an area you stealthed into, it's not even like you can run away, because you'll be surrounded on all sides. This has already happened to me quite a few times and caused a number of deaths.
However, this is Classic and I've been able to (mostly) take these setbacks with grace, especially since the penalty for reviving at the spirit healer is significantly reduced at low levels. And it's not as if it's been death and frustration all the time. That one time I was sent to assassinate a furbolg chieftain, I managed to sneak into his camp and hide on a grassy knoll until he walked past, at which point I pulled him with my throwing knife and then proceeded to take him out by himself. Perfect assassination! As a bonus, a rare mob walked past as well and could be taken out the same way. (One upside of the levelling zones being very quiet is that there are rares everywhere.)
The level ten rogue quest was also pretty fun. I mentioned in the comments on my previous post that I'd had trouble finding the rogue trainer in Darnassus, but once I did, she sent me to pickpocket from a satyr, which resulted in one of those "I can't believe I've done this zone how many times and yet I never knew this was here" moments as I found myself sneaking out onto a (relatively) thin limb of Teldrassil to steal from a mob that promptly teleported away before I could reach him and then reappeared some distance behind me. I was so startled by this development that I fumbled my movement and plummeted to my death, because of course I did. Death by falling off Teldrassil, once again: very old school.
Also, despite my preferences, the gameplay has actually been kind of fun (whenever I'm not dying). Remembering that Gouge was a good move to combo with Backstab, especially if I failed to open from stealth, was like being reunited with an old friend. Rogues have some very interesting skills, if you're only able to figure out how to best use them.
And all the while I'm keeping an eye on chat to find out more about the community of era. It's not super obvious that there is one if all you do is log on in Stormwind or Ironforge and count the people idling by the bank. My first attempts at selling something on the auction house were all returned to me unsold, but since then I've been successful at auctioning off about half of my finds. I've also seen a couple of guild recruitment messages, as well as someone asking for people for an MC pug. That one almost tempted me to log one of my clones, but ultimately I decided that it's too soon to get dragged into anything like that. I want to observe and learn some more first.
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OMG, yes about never knowing that limb for the Rogue quest was there! When the original Az was leveling it was late Cata/early Mists, and those class quests had gone the way of the dodo, so it was all new to me. Despite my ol' fumblefingers reputation, I didn't fall to my death at that time.
ReplyDelete(I, uh, did plummet to my death in Zangarmarsh on Linna, by jumping over to a mining node and misguessing the distance, and.... oh well.)
Glad you are enjoying the rogue! That was my class when I restarted classic and also why I quit. Stealth is so slow, and absolutely terrible if you don't spec into improvements on pvp servers.
ReplyDeleteAs for the little hidden things in Teldrassil, it's so much a part of what makes it seem so large. In my opinion it was what made WoW seem so massive back then, what with every little cranny having something in it.