Roguish Charm

One thing that makes playing my little rogue so appealing is that it feels very fresh and new to me. I've never had a rogue at the level cap at any point in the game, and even the mid-levels are something I didn't reach until later expansions, by which point a lot of quests and class mechanics had already been changed.

For example, I'd kind of forgotten that Ravenholdt was a "thing" for rogues - by which I mean: if you'd asked me about it I would have been able to tell you that it's a faction that's associated with rogues somehow, but it hadn't occurred to me that I should be visiting the place or anything. It was only around level thirty that I noticed that my class trainer had gained an extra dialogue option which hands you a letter telling you to visit Ravenholdt Manor. (Apparently that had already been waiting for me for about six levels.)

It took me ages to even find the place again, because for some reason, that particular mountain path is not one I generally come across in my travels. I happily followed the instruction to pick the pockets of the locals, which resulted in me cleaning out the entirety of Durnholde Keep in one go, but after that the next step asked me to fetch lockboxes of a level for which I was still too low. Not the most exciting piece of questing, I've got to say. Nice place, though.

The other notable adventure my little rogue had in the past few weeks was a visit to the Dor'Danil barrow den. I was finishing up the last few quests I had in Ashenvale when I was sent to this network of caves that I recalled as being a very unpleasant place. In fact, it was even more unpleasant than I remembered because I'd forgotten that it's filled both with mad druids and forsaken rogues - the presence of the latter means that it's actually not so bad to visit as Horde since the rogues at least are friendly, but as Alliance it's just a very claustrophobic place sporting an extremely high density of hostile mobs.

I'm a rogue though, I thought to myself, and the quest is just to kill three guys. I can sneak in and bypass most of the annoying trash! Now, if you're thinking "I bet it wasn't that easy", you'd be right, but my plan did work in principle, and I suffered no deaths. What happened though was that - somewhat to my surprise - it ended up being an extremely immersive and satisfying experience.

I could sneak past a lot of mobs, but the tight corridors - combined with the fact that the undead rogues liked to lurk in stealth themselves sometimes - meant that I still had to do a fair amount of fighting as well, sometimes because I aggroed something by accident, sometimes because I felt I just needed to create a bit of breathing space in a certain spot by removing the mobs from it. This made me feel like a proper assassin, and it felt oddly in-character to view the narrow corridors through my night elf's eyes and imagine her unhappiness at having to kill those poor druids.

The gameplay was also really interesting, because rogues have so many tricks! On most classes, pulling unexpected extra mobs is something that I find very alarming and that often gets me into trouble, but as a rogue it was surprisingly easy to stay collected and calm, even in the confines of a densely populated cave. I just had this mental checklist of steps I could take every time something like that happened (hit evasion, drink health potion, gouge and bandage, vanish if worse comes to worst); it always felt perfectly controlled. You'd have to mess up pretty badly to find yourself in a situation where none of your cooldowns are up.

It's just been surprising to me how much enjoyment I've been getting out of this character, when rogues have always been firmly on my "not interested" list when it comes to WoW's available classes. To be fair, I think in a group context I'd still largely prefer to play almost anything else... but for these occasional solo adventures I've been undertaking, it's been working out surprisingly well.