Riding the Winds of Mysterious Fortune

I've noticed that there's a very clear pattern to the way I've come to play retail WoW. It goes something like this:

New content! → Check it out on the main to see what it's all about → Repeat a few times for rewards if applicable → Occasionally do said content on alts for a while → Engage with said content less and less as rewards become less frequent/more RNG-dependent or I just get bored → New content!

The slump before the next new content patch is usually when I'm the most likely to start messing around on random low-level alts. I've got to admit that ever since I got one of each class to 80, I've started to question that gameplay a little bit ("Do I really need another shaman?" etc.) but sometimes it's just fun to revisit old zones and quests or try to learn more about a spec I've never played.

Lately, one of those characters has been the human paladin that was the very first character I ever created. She lives on a German server, so I had little reason to play her once I migrated to playing in English, but after the introduction of warbands made all those alts relevant again in a way, I decided to take her out for a spin. Originally I just did a bit of questing and gathering in her old human starting zone haunts (back in Vanilla I got her to level 20 or so), but eventually I decided that the Cataclysm versions of those zones just weren't doing it for me and that I'd rather take her to the Dragon Isles, since I'd been meaning to replay the Dragonflight story for some time anyway.

(Am I the only one who's feeling somewhat nostalgic for Dragonflight? I think The War Within is good, but I loved the zones and the general vibe in Dragonflight, and War Within just doesn't hit quite the same way for me.)

The other day I logged into her again (she was sitting at level 32) and did a couple of quests when I noticed that I had some "mysterious satchels" in my inventory. It was only then that I remembered that there's a levelling event going on right now, which is something I usually ignore since I think that levelling in retail is plenty fast and I don't necessarily need a boost to it. As such, I hadn't really looked too deeply into the special twist they added this time either: that you occasionally get these satchels as bonus loot from quests and drops, and they contain gear appropriate for your spec and level. The first one I opened contained a two-handed weapon that was a massive upgrade from what I had, and I equipped it with delight.

I then continued questing and was surprised by how much I fell in love with the whole satchel idea. It has long been my main complaint about levelling in retail that normal gear acquisition can't keep up with the speed at which you gain levels, meaning that if you don't wear heirlooms, you'll quickly get weaker and weaker due to scaling until even simple quests start to feel unplayable. These satchels came in so frequently that they finally addressed this problem.

You could tell that it was still a bit of a struggle, as even with the bags constantly showering me with new gear, each new piece would be about 50-100 item levels above the one it just replaced, but it was still a dramatic improvement from how this process normally goes. Some satchels also contained "fun" consumables instead of gear, such as the Night Elf Mohawk grenade making a comeback, which I certainly didn't mind either.

Within two days I blasted through several zones and gained close to 35 levels. I generally find Classic's slower-paced levelling more meaningful, but every now and then I achieve good "flow" in retail as well and this was one of those instances. I was really surprised though by just how well the little goodie bags addressed the usual gearing issue, and while it feels more like a band-aid than a "clean" fix for the scaling problem, I've got to admit I'm kind of hoping that they make these satchels or something similar a permanent part of the game as, at least for me, this would go a long way towards making random alt levelling more enjoyable again.

Dwarf Heritage

It's been a little while since I last wrote about one of the heritage quest chains... mainly because I kind of got caught up in the expansion and its endgame content. Fortunately the heritage quest lines are evergreen content that you can go back to at any time, and the other week while I found myself wanting to pass some time late at night, I decided to do the dwarf heritage quest chain.

Dwarves are one of those races I feel kind of "eh" about - which is to say I neither love nor dislike them - and there would've been others whose heritage I would've been more interested in from a lore point of view, but I don't have all of those races levelled up right now, while I do happen to have two dwarves at 80 so it was easy enough to just grab one of them and get going. I ended up choosing my paladin over my shaman.

The quest has you meeting up with Brann Bronzebeard early on and I've got to admit I winced a little. I don't know when this quest chain was added, but based on the fact that a trogg I killed early on dropped a piece of Tidespray Linen, I can only guess it was Battle for Azeroth. I think at the time going adventuring with Brann must've felt somewhat cooler than it does now, what with him having become everyone's delve companion and a big meme.

The quest also sends you down into Old Ironforge, which was opened up with Cataclysm from what I remember, but I'm pretty sure I can't have gone down there more than once or twice. There isn't actually very much of it, but I still managed to confuse myself during every step of the quest by basically going up when I needed to go down, and down when I needed to go up.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find two (presumably new) Earthen NPCs studying in one of the rooms I visited. If you talk to them they gush about all the exciting things they've learned about things like Ulduar and all the other races created by the Titans. I just thought that was a nice touch to find in a location that is unlikely to even be visited by many people.

The quest chain itself was... solid, though not hugely exciting in my opinion (though part of that might be my not-particularly-dwarf-loving bias coming in). Without spoiling too much, you reforge an old suit of armour from a Bronzebeard ancestor, which seems like a thematically appropriate thing for a dwarf to do, and travel to Thelsamar and Ulduar.

It just feels like there could've been more to it somehow? Even I know that dwarf lore has a lot more going on, what with the different clans and their family dramas. Though I guess we got a bit more insight into that in the War Within levelling campaign at this point.

I would expect players who've done multiple heritage quest chains to rate this one as kind of mid - not bad, but not amazing either. Which you could see as damning with faint praise, but I did enjoy it.