Adventures on Gehennas

I mentioned in my last post that I made a little paladin on Gehennas just to have a look around, and I'm finding myself strangely enamoured with her. There's just something about human paladins... even if the first character I ever levelled properly was a night elf priest, the first character I ever made was a human paladin, and even though I rerolled to play with friends after only a few days, those first few days of playing the game as a human by myself clearly had a major impact on me.

I've got a lot of nostalgia for the early night elf starter zones as well, but for some reason I never imprinted on the Horde zones in quite the same way. Mulgore probably comes the closest in terms of filling me with warm, fuzzy feelings, but even so it's not really a contest when compared to human lands.

Revisiting all the quests in Elwynn Forest once again, I've got to say that the whole zone is just damn well done though; it's not just nostalgia. You can really tell that Blizzard built this starter zone first and had more time to reiterate on it than on any others. The quests flow together and across zone lines in a way that they rarely do anywhere else in the early game. There are lots of little details like NPC conversations taking place and neutral critters ambling about everywhere. And all the unique mob pathing! I remember Bhagpuss wrote a whole post about being fascinated by it when he played WoW Classic. Of course mobs wander around in all zones, but it seems to me that there's distinctly more complexity to it in the lower-level zones... I'm sure all the wandering Murlocs in Elwynn did their share to contribute to the whole species earning its reputation as a multi-pull menace.

I've only seen a couple of other players during my journeys so far, and I've been surprisingly unfazed by this lack of company. It may sound strange - deranged, even - but I kind of feel like I've transcended the need for other players in WoW. I still enjoy having them around, and I'm happy to see era's growing popularity, but I'm actually okay with playing by myself as well, and I realised that this makes me a rare minority.

Every day someone comes on the era Discord to ask how many players there are on this or that server, because they're scared of investing time into levelling a character somewhere where they can't do instances or shop at the auction house. I don't think I was ever that bad, but when I first started playing on era and it was still very quiet, I do remember having the occasional moment when I noticed that I was the only person in a given zone and it felt a bit like staring into the void. However, I persisted and found contentment in playing by myself when I needed to, and I feel like that's made me more resilient in a sense.

People install the hardcore addon to lock themselves out of the auction house to challenge themselves, but I'm simply playing on a server where there is no active auction house - though this hasn't prevented me from putting up a couple of auctions for useful lowbie items just in case someone does come by. I sold a pair of green mail trousers, so I know it can happen! Also, I just kinda enjoy seeing my name up there, being the only person to have items listed on the auction house. As far as anyone randomly checking in is concerned, I pretty much own this place!

Inventory management and making money have been the biggest challenges so far. I'm considering looking into buying some small bags from a vendor to fill my remaining currently empty bag slots, because I just don't have room for anything. I also always loathe to vendor things that could be useful to another player, but Gehennas just isn't in a place where anyone's looking for things like trade goods right now, so I've got to learn to bite the bullet if I want to be able to afford new skills at some point. I still don't expect to take this little levelling challenge very far, but for the time being it's a nice little distraction.