Three Short Classic Tales

Monday

I've been trying to look into some guilds on Alliance side, not because I'm in any way unhappy with my Horde guild, but because I figure I've got all these high-level characters on Alliance, it would be nice to be able to also take them out for a spin at least occasionally. I've been finding it more difficult than expected to find a good fit, but that's really a story for another day. The point is that I finally did my first era raid on Alliance side on Monday!

It was a bit of a weird evening as there was nothing in particular going on in SWTOR, my Horde guild had no event on, this Alliance guild I'd been watching had no event on, and the Alliance guild I had just joined on my hunter and pally was running Naxx, for which you (understandably) have to be vetted in another raid first. But hey, the local French guild was hosting an MC pug! I decided to sign up on my holy paladin Sarelle, since they seemed to be short on healers and there's some good healing loot in MC that was potentially going to be useful for her, and then parked myself in Blackrock Mountain well ahead of time.

Unfortunately, when I logged in just before raid time, there were only a small number of people there, and there was some talk about going to Zul'gurub instead since there weren't enough sign-ups. I whispered one of the organisers for confirmation and sadly that was indeed what was happening. I spent about a minute quietly pouting to myself. I had got myself all hyped up for MC! Did I even want to go to ZG? Plus there may not have been "enough" sign-ups for MC, but there were more than twenty, so not everyone would get to raid now anyway.

Then I wondered what else I was going to do that evening and whispered the guy again to ask for an invite to ZG after all. Fortunately Sarelle's hearthstone was still set to Booty Bay for world buff reasons from back in the olden days, so it was easy enough to get down there.

And honestly... it was a nice enough run! We didn't do Edge of Madness and the fish boss, but the pace was good and we only had one wipe on the trash leading up to Mandokir when we somehow got overwhelmed by those life-draining trolls and they slowly wore us down.

It was a bit odd to raid with a group of primarily French people though - they asked everyone to join Discord, but apart from the occasional instruction in English such as "sheep diamond" all the chatter was in French so that I didn't really understand most of it. I did find myself thinking that for someone like me who really values the banter during raids, this was not an optimal solution. At the same time I'll say that even though I didn't understand most of it, the French chatter generally sounded pretty upbeat, and the overall mood did feel good as a result.

I didn't win any boss loot, but a BoE world epic dropped on trash, I won it and was able to sell it on the AH for a couple hundred gold, so I certainly can't complain.

Tuesday

Tuesday was an office day for me, which meant that I came home late and very tired. Even so I still did a BWL clean-up and my first Onyxia with my Horde guild. Sadly the latter didn't drop the sinew I needed for my bow, however I did win both her head and the hunter tier helm. As I said to my guildies: one dragon head to hold and one to put on my head. As they were continuing to Naxx afterwards, I bowed out at that point and popped over to my little rogue on Alliance side.

I quickly decided that I was too tired to do anything "proper" but she had a bunch of breadcrumb quests to talk to people in different zones, so I figured I could just do a bit of running around before bed time. I was just emerging into Stormwind from the Deeprun Tram, when the GM of the little social guild I joined asked whether anyone wanted to join for a Stockades run.

I've mentioned in the past how I'm not too fond of dungeon boosting, but context matters and it seemed serendipitous that he had one spot left and had popped the question just as I'd arrived in Stormwind after not spending any time there in weeks. So I joined and got two quick runs through the Stockades which effectively earned me a "free" level before going to bed. Really can't complain.

Wednesday

After another office day I was once again not feeling up to much, so I just logged through a few characters to check on their mail, auctions etc. However, as I did so on Horde side, a guildie piped up that Azuregos was up and they were forming a group for it. I learned last time that Horde claiming an Azuregos kill as the minority faction is a rare occasion, so I wanted to help out even though I didn't need anything from him anymore.

I hopped on a Windrider from Orgrimmar (getting to Azuregos is one occasion where Horde has it sooo much easier than Alliance) and soon a bunch of us were assembled around the big blue dragon. It took us a while to kill him, but we did manage and a number of people were able to claim some nice loot.

I really like how Classic has these kind of slow and not too rewarding activities that involve a lot of running around, meaning you have reasons to be online and do stuff, but at the same time it's easy to abandon what you're doing in favour of some more exciting group activity without feeling like you're losing out.