Struggling to Enjoy the Journey in MoP Classic

As far as MMOs go, my attitude has long been one of enjoying the journey above all else. I've never really been able to relate to people who just want to get to "the end"/level cap/whatever and complain that everything along the way is boring and takes too long... until I played Classic Mists of Pandaria I guess.

It's not even that the quests are bad or anything. As I wrote last year while evaluating MoP Remix, aside from some specific plot threads, they were pretty decent overall. However, Remix is kind of the problem. I "just" did all of this content about a year ago, in an environment where everything was significantly sped up, it was easy to travel around with full flying enabled from the start, and killing mobs was a breeze. Re-doing the same quests while ground-bound and taking ten times longer to kill anything doesn't feel nostalgic to me right now, it just feels tedious.

I've been trying to "ease the pain" by picking and choosing my quest hubs so that I could focus on the ones I liked best, but it's still just so. Slow. At level 86 I pushed forward to the Valley of the Four Winds and did the majority of the quests there since I remembered quite liking them (plus there were a lot of animals to skin for my leatherworking), but since then it's been nothing but a drag.

I started running random dungeons on the side but they don't actually give that much XP - which I suppose is a good thing in some ways, as I noticed that people actually kill all the bosses and let others complete their quests, seeing how those things actually contribute significantly to your XP gains. (This is a contrast to retail, where people will skip absolutely everything just to get to the end as soon as possible and get the completion reward.)

In general, those dungeons were a bit of a weird experience initially, since my brain doesn't quite know whether to file them under Classic or retail. The way people tend to pull entire rooms in one go is certainly more retail-like, but then I was actually kind of surprised when I got my first pop-up to roll for loot, since I had expected everything to be personal loot already. I even had the option to roll need on items I couldn't even use, so I was briefly startled that I actually had to pay proper attention to which button to press. That's not meant to be a complaint; it just goes to illustrate that my brain seems to have different "modes" for Classic and retail, and MoP doesn't really fit either one at the moment.

I'm currently about halfway through level 88 and it feels like I still have an eternity to go. I did actually go ahead and do the quest to open the Vale of Eternal Blossoms early, but I soon ran into a "you're not seasoned enough to help us yet, come back later" wall, so I'll save that for another post.

On the plus side, after my initial reservations about MoP gameplay changes, such as the loss of my melee weapon or the new talents, the way hunter plays has actually turned out to be pretty fun, though I'd say the rotation is starting to veer into slightly too many buttons for my liking (Cata seemed close to perfect, while now there are pretty much always one or two that I forget to press regularly). However, the fact that they actually gave hunters full non-combat stealth with Camouflage in this expansion is wild to me and super handy for many quests (though it's also so alien that I sometimes still forget that I have it). 

Also, the farm! The farm and professions were not part of Remix, so I've been enjoying growing a few vegetables every day and working on my cooking again. It's just a shame that you can't unlock the full farm plot until max-level, adding yet another item to taunt me from the finish line if only I could get there sooner. I just need to knuckle down and grind out those last one and a half levels over a weekend some time, but WoW has just never felt slower to me.

MoP Pre-Patch Impressions

Mere days after I hit the level cap in Cata Classic last week, the Mists of Pandaria pre-patch dropped. I wasn't particularly excited about it, but I couldn't help but notice some changes as I logged into my hunter to do the daily cooking quest (like I said before, the profession dailies were easily one of my favourite things about Cata, so I'm still doing those until I max out my cooking and get the achievement for completing all the variations in all three capitals). 

The new talents were there, which I didn't particularly like in original MoP and still don't like now. Most notably though, my bow was in my bags and my hunter only had her staff equipped. Re-equipping the bow resulted in the staff going back into the bag instead.

Ah yes, remember how I said last month that one of the things I was enjoying about Cata was that hunters could still wield both a ranged and a melee weapon? R.I.P. to that particular class fantasy; I just never realised that this was a change that happened in MoP.

It actually made me realise that class fantasy aside, it's really kind of bizarre how Blizzard handled this. Survival didn't become a melee spec until Legion, so why would you let hunters equip a melee weapon only and then have them be locked out of using every single one of their combat abilities? Talk about a giant noob trap.

In fact, this is something that's still confusing in retail as I noticed the other day when I rolled up a survival hunter, because you still start with a ranged weapon and then when you hit level 10 and spec survival, you initially have like... one ability you can actually use, with everything else suddenly greyed out. It just feels terrible. Also, I only found out at that point that retail hunters no longer start with a pet for some reason? But you don't get a quest to tame one either, so... I have no idea how new players are supposed to figure this shit out. Anyway, I digress.

I had also logged into my feral druid briefly before the patch, to make the boat ride to Valgarde now that I'd remembered where to get on the right boat. Checking on her after the pre-patch, I was dismayed to be reminded that MoP was also when they did away with the whole notion of being a bear-cat, as feral was split into new feral (cat only) and guardian (bear only). I hadn't realised just how many gameplay changes that I didn't like actually came about in Mists of Pandaria. Both Wrath and Cata did things that I felt at least ambivalent about at the time, meaning I saw both pros and cons to them, but it seems MoP was when stuff got really bad, considering how many of its gameplay changes are triggering a pure "oh yeah, I remember hating that" response in me.

Anyway, with all those bad feelings, that likely would've been it for me and the pre-patch (other than to continue my daily cooking), but then I learned that Pandaren were already available and that you'd earn a free mount in retail for completing their starting zone in Classic, mirroring the promotion they had going on with a protodrake and the death knight starting zone during Wrath. I did that one in spite of feeling less than lukewarm about WotLK Classic, so re-doing the panda starting zone this time seemed like a no-brainer.

I'd actually only been through the Wandering Isle once before, about three years ago, so I was happy to pay it another visit. I also thought it would be interesting to do it as a monk this time, since I didn't create my first monk until BfA and therefore had no idea how different the class was going to be in its initial iteration.

The first difference was in fact immediate and very noticeable as my first ability was a move called "Jab" that actually hit my opponent with my staff, which I thought was delightful. In retail, monks don't use their weapons for anything, ever (which also makes the first Pandaren quest, which asks you to pick up a weapon and show that you can use it, quite nonsensical).

I made it to about level five, slowly jabbing things to death, when it occurred to me that while the Wandering Isle was very pretty, it was also quite boring to hit things to death so slowly. It was only then that I realised - oh right, we're in MoP, where you learn new abilities automatically and I guess they don't even show up on my bar? (Looking back, they did used to go on your bar in original MoP if there was space, so maybe this is just a bug.) Checking my spell book actually revealed new abilities I hadn't even realised I had access to, and that sped things up considerably, even if it was very weird to me to see Tiger Palm be a Chi spender instead of builder, which is the polar opposite of how it works in retail.

I was kind of surprised by how busy the island was, because on a lark, I had decided to create this "throwaway panda" on Hydraxian Waterlords, my old RP server home. Even though it was soft-merged into the regular PvE servers back in Classic BC and was meant to be closed down entirely in the run-up to Wrath, it's somehow still there, not just not closed, but not even locked for new character creation like most of the other old servers are. I figured it was going to be more pleasant to level in this more quiet environment without too much competition for mobs, so still seeing ~40 characters in the zone every time I played was a surprise.

When I got to Stormwind on the other hand, there were only about ten people there, and the auction house looked mostly empty. I wonder if there are any genuine holdouts still playing on this server or if it was mostly players like me who decided that levelling a throwaway character was more pleasant to do in a low pop environment.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Completing the storyline on the Wandering Isle, it was still a bit too linear for my personal taste, with a lot of running about, but overall pleasant. It's probably a better "island introduction" to the game than Exile's Reach to be honest. I was kind of surprised by how emotional the ending still made me.

The Alliance intro for Pandaren was new to me and was actually pretty funny! You meet with King Varian and he lectures you a bit about what it means to join the Alliance, but finishes by asking you to spar with him, because he's curious about the Pandaren fighting style. Now, when this duel starts, he has a buff that gives him 100% dodge chance, so all your attacks miss and he taunts you about it. Until... one hit suddenly goes through, and you get this slow-motion cut scene of him falling backwards and your companions looking absolutely horrified that you just punched the king of Stormwind, which I thought was hilarious. He just laughs it off and simply wanders off afterwards.

Anyway, with my free mount claimed and nothing else about the pre-patch looking particularly appealing, I'll probably coast by just doing those cooking dailies until the expansion releases properly and I can start my journey to the Vale. Though probably even that will have to wait at least a week or two, as I have no particular desire to compete with the launch day crowds.

Cata Classic: Halfway There

Progress on my little Cataclysm Classic project has been swift. I played a fair bit over the past week and already hit level 80. I'm still dithering in Northrend as I'm writing this because I felt like I was actually progressing a bit too fast and I don't want to move on to Cata just yet. It's one of those flaws with the way WoW does expansion content, that because of how much of it is concentrated at the level cap, when the level cap moves up, it requires a lot of effort to actually still take any of that content in because you'll just be sailing past it way too quickly.

The gameplay has been surprisingly enjoyable. For as much as Cata removed a lot of what made everything that came before feel "classic", there are still bits of flavour left in there that are now missing in retail, such as my hunter wielding both a melee and a ranged weapon. I always thought that was incredibly cool, even if I didn't use the melee weapon much - but shooting things with a bow from point blank range like you have to do in retail just feels dumb. My pet's AI also feels much better for some reason, with my pet actually reappearing reliably when I dismount (in retail I feel like I have to manually re-summon it every five minutes) and defensive stance working much more smoothly than the annoying split between assist and defensive that they introduced later and which makes your pet unresponsive at the most annoying times.

In general it's noticeable how damage rotations are still in a kind of sweet spot where they are more involved than Vanilla (requiring you to use, say, five different damage abilities instead of just one) but don't have all the annoying upkeep of buffs or temporary cooldowns that you're supposed to cycle through constantly in retail.

Not everything is great of course. After the War Within just made massive improvements to the way the game handles transmog collection, it's almost physically painful to be back to a system where collecting any appearances and even merely keeping track of what you've already got is strictly tied to your class and armour type.

Last week was also Darkmoon Faire week, so I hopped onto Darkmoon Island to do the rounds there like I do in retail. Since the Island was introduced in Cata, I didn't expect to notice many differences, but I was quite surprised. For example I had forgotten that there was originally no return portal, and the targeting circle for the "Target: Turtle" game was huge and incredibly inaccurate for some reason, making it feel much more difficult than in retail.

All that said, most of my levelling was spent in Northrend, flying around exploring the landscape, working on my professions and engaging with a quest hub here or there as the mood struck me. (As a hunter I just had to do the Nesingwary quests in Sholazar for example.) In-between I queued for dungeons - I have my gripes with Wrath, but the dungeons were pretty cool and I literally ran them hundreds of times back in the day. I initially expected that I'd have to look for groups manually, since I still remembered all the hubbub around WotLK Classic launching without a dungeon finder, but clearly they did decide to add it eventually.

I decided that I wanted to queue for all dungeons in order and even though that limited my selection and I was dps, my pops were always pretty quick. As if I needed confirmation that I wasn't the only one levelling a character now specifically for Mists of Pandaria Classic, I once ended up in a run with characters from two different guilds whose names implied that they were MoP levelling guilds, with the existence of a third guild implied.

At first I still tried to say hi and bye, but people rarely responded so I quickly gave up on that. in Dark'tharon Keep I got kicked at the end of the dungeon for declining to immediately re-queue as I was trying to hand in the quest at the end of the dungeon and it has some RP that requires you to wait for a bit. At least this didn't come as a complete surprise to me at this point, so I wasn't exactly shocked and dismayed, just slightly exasperated. I manually flew to the dungeon to see if I could re-enter and hand in my quest that way, but all the mobs were back and I couldn't get to the end. I didn't feel like re-queuing for the same dungeon and risking people do the exact same to me again, so I just abandoned the (completed) quest.

I did note that the unfriendly group that had booted me consisted entirely of people from Firemaw, which was at least on brand. With how few actually active Cata servers there are, server identity is clearly still a thing, and it figures that the PvP mega server still has the most jerks on it. People from the other PvE servers seemed at least marginally friendlier. In Halls of Stone a group from Lakeshire (a German PvE realm) even managed to convince the tank to do the two optional bosses.

Looking around on my own server (Mirage Raceway), it was interesting to see that even though it was largely alien to me (I'd just taken the free transfers at the start of Cata and had never really played on it) there were remnants of things I recognised, such as certain guilds or characters I remembered back from Nethergarde Keep or even way back from Hydraxian Waterlords. It did bring me a little bit of joy to see that some people have weathered the repeated server consolidations and expansion changes against the odds.

Anyway, I continued my levelling journey and got into Halls of Stone at 77 or 78. The queue for this took longer than for any previous dungeon I'd done, and I figured that the rush-rush people were probably intentionally avoiding the fifteen minutes of Brann RP. However, after opening my dungeon finder window again at level 79, I was surprised to find that Halls of Stone was just... missing from the list. I figure that's probably an even bigger reason for why the queue for it took so long.

At 80, things got even worse as most of the level 80 dungeons I still hadn't done also disappeared from the list. I found a forum thread about this problem going back to 2023, and it appears that this issue still hasn't been fixed two years later. I guess that tells us all about how much love Cataclysm Classic has been getting from the development side. So that's how my Wrath dungeoneering came to an end.

As I said, I'm still puttering around a bit as I haven't even explored Storm Peaks and Icecrown, and I want to get my leatherworking and first aid caught up. XP gains are already greatly reduced, but I expect to hit level 81 quite easily, by which point I'll probably feel the pressure to move on as XP payouts will likely go from reduced to near non-existent. I won't get away with getting as much levelling done in dungeons in Cata, as it says I'm currently ineligible to queue for any of them. I'm guessing they faithfully reproduced the mechanic where you had to find the dungeon entrance in the world before you could use the tool? I guess I'll just quest instead.

Checking in on Cataclysm Classic

Back in October, in a post about why Classic wasn't really vibing with me at the moment, I noted the following: "If they do make a MoP Classic, I have exactly one plan for it: to level a character high enough at the start of the expansion to see the Vale of Eternal Blossoms in its original state." As far as I can tell, MoP was the last expansion in which Blizzard permanently replaced a zone with an updated version, as in the years since, they've opted for the Bronze-Dragonflight-sponsored time travel option instead whenever they made major changes, which allows people to still access the old zone if they want to.

Since I made that post, Mists of Pandaria Classic has not only been announced, but also had a public beta and is currently scheduled to go live in mid to late July. As I hadn't forgotten about that goal of mine, I decided that it was about time to re-download Cataclysm Classic and get a character expansion-ready.

For those of you not keeping track, I last played "progressive" Classic at the end of TBC. I checked in extremely briefly both at the start of Wrath Classic and at the start of Cata, but did not feel drawn to either expansion. This meant that my characters were server-transferred last year as part of the latest round of soft server consolidations, but other than that, my hunter Tiirr (now with two Is and two Rs) was still level 70 and sitting in Shattrath.

I took the portal to Stormwind and started doing some maintenance to get her into a playable state. As an aside, I was surprised by how busy things were in Stormwind (and that's on a server that was flagged as having a medium population). Classic Cata is the currently live version of Classic that I've been hearing the least about in terms of people actually playing it, but clearly it still has its audience. Ironforge.pro has registered slightly fewer than 100k characters raiding in Cata Classic last week, which is about the same number as on the vanilla Classic anniversary servers. So for all the scoffing I've seen about how Cata is where the real Classic ended and surely nobody actually wanted it, there do seem to be plenty of players who've been happy to play it anyway.

Either way, my primary task was to get my bags in order. All my mounts and pets could be added to the new collections interface to no longer take up bag space. Toys were eligible too - the first time around, those didn't became part of collections until Warlords of Draenor, but in progressive Classic that part is already there. Likewise, the transmog interface is the one that was introduced in Legion, and the auction house is the new one that was added in Battle for Azeroth. I swear, this is going to make it harder than ever to remember which features were introduced in which expansion.

Anyway, other bag slots were freed up from selling items that had been turned into vendor trash, such as all my arrows, or things that were simply no longer relevant to a hunter in Cata, such as pet food and mana potions. One bag was filled with a bunch of random keys tied to various BC quests that I wasn't even on... I can only guess that those had been on my keyring when that was removed. Either way, more stuff to destroy. A few items, such a stacks of cloth, I decided to actually list on the AH since there were presumably still some people interested in them.

I had to visit the flight master to unlock flying in Northrend and the revamped old world. (Fortunately the ramp I was jumping off when I realised that I wouldn't be able to fly yet without this wasn't very high.) I stopped by all the profession trainers, as well as - after some initial confusion - my class trainer. (For some reason I'd had it in my head that Cata was also the expansion where they removed the need to train abilities, but no, that actually happened in Mists.) I dragged abilities from my spell book back onto my bar and spent my pet's talent points.

My hunter herself had no spec either, and my first impulse was to go Marksman as usual - but then I read some of the talents and went "eurgh" - right, Cata was when I went Survival, back when that was still a ranged spec, so I opted to revisit that particular setup. Still, I was kind of surprised by how incredibly boring all the talents looked, as I seem to remember quite liking the condensed talent trees during original Cataclysm.

Finally I was ready to pick up the breadcrumb quest to Northrend. It sent me to Borean Tundra when I would've preferred Howling Fjord, but in that moment I genuinely couldn't even remember where to board the right boat for that. So I just hopped onto the next ferry leaving Stormwind to start in the Tundra.

I miss boats being relevant. They are slow but they really force you to immerse yourself in the world for a few minutes in a way that portals don't.

I decided I could be picky with which quests to do, so I only did about a third of the zone (if that) and also made a trip to Dalaran and Howling Fjord to pick up some flight paths. Unsurprisingly I suppose, this was enough to net me two levels in that single play session. The Wrath portion of the levelling curve was presumably nerfed again with the release of Cata, there's another bonus XP event going on right now, and I was fully rested. Still, considering I'm not here for Northrend or the Shattering, I found the levelling speed heartening and it made the prospect of making it through the last two expansions I'd skipped less daunting. I expect that 80-85 might still be a bit of a pain unless they nerf it with the pre-patch or something, but we'll see. I'll probably do Vashj'ir since I haven't done that zone in ages... but first I need to actually make my way through Northrend.

Retail WoW & Me in 2024

Comparing the previous post and this one, I spent about two to three times as many hours in retail in 2024 than I spent in Classic. The uncertainty in the numbers mostly comes from the fact that I revived a lot of old characters this year for which I don't know how much of their /played actually happened in 2024 vs. ye olde days, but either way, the difference is pretty stark.

I just really enjoyed both the end of Dragonflight and the first few months of War Within. Aside from running dungeons with my guildies once a week, my play style tends to be somewhat on and off - I'll go through several weeks of binging quite hard and doing something or other on every single alt, to barely logging in outside of our scheduled dungeon runs for the next few weeks after. I know a lot of Classic players tend to think of retail as having lots of daily/weekly chores you "have" to do, but from my personal experience at least that's an image that's about two expansions out of date. Sure, there are lots of things you can do, especially as a more casual player, but I've found most of it to be very low pressure nowadays.

The two events that had the biggest impact on my stable of characters this year were MoP Remix, which resulted in me levelling five new characters to the level cap from scratch, and the introduction of Warbands with the War Within pre-patch, which suddenly gave long-forgotten characters relevance again now that cross-server and -faction play is almost fully supported and they all share an inventory via the warband bank.

Basically, aside from Shinfur the monk, all characters on this list that aren't on the Azjol-Nerub/Quel'Thalas server cluster were old favourites that got a revival this year.

Shindragosa - Azjol-Nerub

• Level 80 dracthyr evoker (+10)
  
• 24 days, 13 hours /played (+9 days, 18 hours)
  
• War Within professions: 83 Leatherworking, 100 Skinning, 73 Cooking, 144 Fishing
  
• Other professions (changed from 2023 only): Dragon Isles Leatherworking 100 (+10), 129 Classic Skinning (+129), 61 Outland Skinning (+61), 75 Northrend Skinning (+19), 23 Cataclysm Skinning (+3), 85 Legion Skinning (+4), 30 Kul Tiran Skinning (+23), 30 Draenor Cooking (+15), 300 Classic Fishing (+267, had to level that for the fishing pole, lol), 10 Cataclysm Fishing (+5), 30 Kul Tiran Fishing (+15), 855 Archaeology (+756, I randomly decided to max it out one day but gave up because of how terrible the last 50 skill-ups are) 

My preservation evoker remained my main throughout Dragonflight. With War Within, I had a feeling early on that I'd probably want to change roles in group content but I wasn't entirely sure yet, so because making decisions is hard, I still ended up levelling this character through Khaz Algar first and did all the story content on her. When there isn't new story to check out though, she's mostly chilling now.

Milita - Quel'Thalas

• Level 80 draenei warrior
  
• 4 days, 17 hours /played
• War Within professions: 83 Blacksmithing, 100 Mining, 36 Cooking, 48 Fishing
  
• Other professions: 300 Classic Blacksmithing, 295 Classic Mining, 13 Cataclysm Mining

The warrior I levelled during Remix ultimately ended up becoming my new "dungeon main" as I became the tank for our little group of friends doing M+ once a week. It's been... surprisingly chill? I mean, I only play with friends, not pugs, and we only do pretty low keys - I'm sure things become more demanding in high keys, but as it is, I'm finding it to be surprisingly low-stress. I learned to tank during Burning Crusade, where threat was a bitch and losing aggro on a single mob in a heroic could result in a dps or the healer getting insta-gibbed, so just pulling and AoEing things at a good clip while also rotating through my defensives doesn't feel very demanding in comparison.

Tilarea - AN

• Level 80 lightforged draenei priest (+10)
  
• 8 days, 9 hours /played (+2 days, 23 hours)
  
• War Within professions: 65 Tailoring, 61 Enchanting, 21 Cooking, 33 Fishing
  
• Other professions (changed from 2023 only): 300 Classic Tailoring (+200), 31 Northrend Tailoring (+26), 45 Cataclysm Tailoring (+43), 74 Dragon Isles Tailoring (+10), 15 Cataclysm Enchanting (+4), 21 Pandaria Enchanting (+1), 74 Dragon Isles Enchanting (+10), 39 Dragon Isles Cooking (+23), 59 Dragon Isles Fishing (+22)

My hobby priest continues to be just that: not my main and not really played a lot in group content, but I just like having a holy priest to do stuff on.

Hekatie - Earthen Ring

• Level 80 undead death knight
• 11 days, 23 hours /played
• War Within professions: 100 Herbalism, 71 Inscription, 31 Cooking, 42 Fishing
  
• Other professions: 300 Classic Herbalism, 75 Outland Herbalism, 75 Northrend Herbalism, 75 Cataclysm Herbalism, 300 Classic Inscription, 75 Outland Inscription, 75 Northrend Inscription, 75 Cataclysm Inscription, 300 Classic Cooking, 75 Outland Cooking, 75 Northrend Cooking, 75 Cataclysm Cooking, 300 Classic Fishing, 75 Outland Fishing, 75 Northrend Fishing, 75 Cataclysm Fishing, 180 Archaeology

This was one of the old characters I revived after the Warband patch and levelled to 70 via the Radiant Echoes event (you can kind of tell her age based on her having all profession skills up to Cataclysm maxed out). I wasn't actually that keen on death knights when they first came out (the first three posts about them on this blog were all about how death knights suck, lol) but I did eventually manage to get this one levelled up by the end of Wrath and then continued to have some fun playing her in Cata. In TWW so far, frost death knight has been pretty fun to play too - I wrote more about that here.

Tharisa - AN

• Level 80 human hunter (+10)
  
• 4 days, 15 hours /played (+1 day, 21 hours)
  
• War Within professions: 56 Leatherworking, 100 Skinning, 26 Cooking, 33 Fishing
  
• Other professions (changed from 2023 only): 140 Classic Leatherworking (+21), 42 Dragon Isles Leatherworking (+24), 6 Outland Skinning (+6), 75 Northrend Skinning (+5), 49 Legion Skinning (+16), 175 Classic Cooking (+46), 32 Dragon Isles Cooking (+18), 76 Classic Fishing (+76), 45 Northrend Fishing (+45), 46 Dragon Isles Fishing (+23)

I allowed my hunter to grow her hair out this year, but that's about as exciting as things got. I wrote more about my ambivalent relationship with retail hunters in this post. I'm also a bit worried about what the new year will bring as Blizzard is currently looking to take marksmanship hunters' pets away in 11.1, which is so utterly insane I don't even know how anyone could've thought that would be a good idea. There's still time to change course, Blizz!

Berrine - QT

• Level 80 night elf druid
  
• 1 day, 11 hours /played
• War Within professions: 100 Herbalism, 100 Skinning, 16 Fishing
  
• Other professions: 15 Classic Skinning

It's the druid I levelled in Remix. As mentioned in this post, she's kind of "my other tank" and I haven't done much with her other than level up her gathering skills and casually gear up a bit.

Helena - Darkspear

• Level 80 dwarf paladin
  
• 3 days, 14 hours /played
• War Within professions: 100 Mining, 100 Skinning, 4 Cooking, 9 Fishing
  
• Other professions: 300 Classic Mining, 55 Outland Mining, 3 Northrend Mining, 300 Classic Skinning, 74 Outland Skinning (I should really go get that last skill point), 12 Northrend Skinning, 300 Classic Cooking, 75 Outland Cooking, 135 Classic Fishing, 50 Archaeology

This is another old alt that got revived. I created her way back in the day, just to stall out at level 15. I then revived her in Cataclysm to explore some of the revamped levelling zones. Her professions seem to indicate that I did also spend some time in early BC content, but I've got to admit that I have absolutely no memory of that. This year, I levelled her to 70 via Radiant Echoes, and I wrote about what it was like to level from 70-80 as holy in this post.

Shinfur - ER

• Level 80 pandaren monk
  
• 1 day, 4 hours /played
• War Within professions: 100 Mining, 83 Engineering, 6 Cooking, 4 Fishing
  
• Other professions: 6 Classic Cooking

It's the monk I levelled in Remix! You can read more about my monk experiences in War Within here. Not much else to say about this one, other than that thanks to the inventing mechanic, engineering is by far the easiest crafting profession to level for some reason.

Groghue - AN

• Level 80 worgen rogue (+10)
  
• 2 day, 22 hours /played (+1 day, 4 hours)
  
• War Within professions: 87 Herbalism, 70 Skinning
• Other professions (changed from 2023 only): 267 Classic Herbalism (+8), 100 Dragon Isles Herbalism (+13), 184 Classic Skinning (+9), 43 Northrend Skinning, 33 Cataclysm Skinning (+10), 19 Dragon Isles Cooking (+15), 60 Dragon Isles Fishing (+25), 116 Archaeology (+9)

It's my rogue who I still don't particularly enjoy playing but hey, I need her to be able to open lockboxes. More about my experiences with rogueing in War Within can be found here.

Willowie - QT

• Level 74 human warlock
  
• 13 hours /played
• War Within professions: 48 Alchemy, 62 Herbalism
• Other professions: none

It's the warlock I levelled in Remix! I had to relog to take this screenshot because for some reason on the first attempt, the game had forgotten that she owns an incubus and was displaying the succubus instead. Now it's showing the correct pet but I don't know what's up with his wing appearing to go behind the tree in the background?! Small indie company, as the saying goes.

I was also shocked by how many herbs alchemy uses these days. I thought I had a good number of them saved up, but then I was like: "You want me to burn how many of these for each skill-up?!" I also still have no idea how to play this one and have died to random mobs that I aggroed while picking flowers. Part of me keeps thinking that I should just bite the bullet and look up a guide, but another part remains stubborn and maintains that if a class is this clunky to figure out, maybe it deserves to be played less. Make this nonsense easier to understand in game, Blizzard.

Mehg - AN

• Level 72 night elf demon hunter (+2)
  
• 10 days, 21 hours /played (+17 hours)
  
• War Within professions: 30 Mining, 25 Jewelcrafting
• Other professions (changed from 2023 only): 27 Cataclysm Mining (+10), 74 Legion Jewelcrafting (I don't think this is new, I must have forgotten to write down her old JC skills last year), 100 Shadowlands Jewelcrafting, 79 Dragon Isles Jewelcrafting (+10), 83 Dragon Isles Cooking (+15), 75 Dragon Isles Fishing (+23)

My demon hunter, who was my "main alt" in Shadowlands and remained one of my most played characters throughout early Dragonflight just quietly fell by the wayside towards the end of the expansion and I've only barely started levelling her in War Within. I'm not entirely sure why, though I think at least part of it was due to how much of a pain it was to sort out her inventory and the bazillion types of different ores and gems she'd accumulated over time. Once I also accidentally clicked the "clean up my bank" button and there are few things I've done in a game that I regretted as much as that one button click. I should be in a better place now though.

Shimeri - AN

• Level 70 dwarf shaman
  
• 4 days, 8 hours /played
• Professions: none

The shaman that was my "Remix main" has oddly ended up being the last of my Remix characters to get levelled in War Within, even though resto shaman is the healer flavour of the month right now. I'll get to it when I get to it.

Daerys - DS

• Level 70 draenei mage
  
• 30 days, 9 hours /played
• Professions: 300 Classic Mining, 75 Outland Mining, 75 Northrend Mining, 75 Cataclysm Mining, 305 Classic Jewelcrafting, 80 Outland Jewelcrafting, 70 Northrend Jewelcrafting, 32 Cataclysm Jewelcrafting, 300 Classic Cooking, 75 Outland Cooking, 75 Northrend Cooking, 300 Classic Fishing, 75 Outland Fishing, 3 Northrend Fishing, 11 Cataclysm Fishing, 7 Archaeology

This used to be my "main Alliance alt" back in the day. I wrote a bit more about her history and how I ended up reviving her for the draenei heritage quest in this post. Again, you can kind of tell that this is an old character that saw a lot of play up to Wrath from the profession skills. I plan to take her to 80 eventually.

Shinlu - AN

• Level 68 human monk (+7)
  
• 22 days, 14 hours /played (+5 hours)
  
• Professions (changed from 2023 only): 160 Kul Tiran Leatherworking (+10), 54 Northrend Skinning (+3), 100 Legion Skinning (+20), 29 Dragon Isles Skinning (+24), 63 Kul Tiran Cooking (+15), 16 Draenor Fishing, 690 Archaeology (+12)

My old Shadowlands main still hasn't really seen much love, but apparently gained seven levels in only five hours of play time, because that's how retail rolls these days. I remember trying out the follower dungeon feature on her when it came out, but other than that I don't think I did very much, though those profession skill-ups must have come from somewhere I guess.

Tidella - AN

• Level 54 Kul Tiran shaman (+6)
  
• 1 day, 21 hours /played (+4 hours)
  
• Professions (changed from 2023 only): 77 Outland Mining (+77), 3 Outland Engineering (+3)

Similar story here, with six levels gained in four hours of play, all of which were me going on a mining spree in Outland because I was after some old mats for some reason at that particular moment.

Isadora - Norgannon 

• Level 19 human paladin
  
• 1 day, 22 hours /played
• Professions: 130 Classic Blacksmithing, 121 Classic Mining, 109 Classic Cooking, 97 Classic Fishing

This is the very first character I ever created, a paladin on a German server. Like several other old characters, I decided to take her out for a spin after the Warband patch. It's kind of funny that I remember her being in her mid-20s before the level squish, but post-squish she got to quest through some of the human starter zones all over again, which was a nice nostalgia trip even with all the post-Cataclysm changes.

Eartha - AN

• Level 26 earthen shaman
  
• 2 hours /played
• Professions: none

I wasn't that keen on the earthen when they were first announced, but I did end up liking them in the story, so after I'd unlocked them I decided to make one just for the heck of it. Also, they have a racial that gives a massive boost to exploration XP... but that's a topic for another post.

More Levelling in SoD

I mentioned last month that I was getting back into Season of Discovery with the goal of eventually seeing the Demon Fall Canyon dungeon. Over the past couple of weeks, I got a bit distracted by some things in SWTOR, but I haven't forgotten about this project, so I wanted to jot down some notes about my most recent adventures.

In general, I've continued to be surprised by how not dead the SoD servers have remained after the launch of "Classic Classic". According to my census addon, there are pretty consistently about 1000 players online on Wild Growth Horde side, which is actually pretty close to my personal sweet spot in terms of server size: enough people to keep the auction house replenished, make it easy to get into a group for most dungeons and see plenty of activity out in the world, but not so many that you can no longer gather or quest without perceiving other players as a constant competitive nuisance.

The economy is a bit less good and feels quite inflated to me. People trying to charge one gold for a single Green Hills of Stranglethorn page feels quite ridiculous to me for example. I sometimes see complaints that prices on the era servers are inflated due to the servers' age, but at least on the PvE cluster, most things are pretty fairly priced even after more than five years. Occasionally someone will try to drive the price of certain goods up, but the thing with era players is: they've got time. If you charge too much, they can always wait and/or go farm for themselves. On seasonal servers there's more urgency to get stuff now and it's noticeable.

I also remember hearing that certain activities in earlier SoD phases really cranked up inflation (incursions awarding lots of gold or something?) and that's probably part of it as well. Either way the end result is that as someone returning after several months of absence, I find a lot of things on the AH quite unaffordable. If I find one of those lost supplies boxes, if I can't fill them with my own gathering and crafting skills, it's basically a no-go. I have managed to make a bit of gold by occasionally flogging some goods for (to me) rather silly prices as well, but opportunities for that are somewhat limited and partially luck-dependent so not really a reliable solution.

I think there's also bots? It's probably not as bad as on the anniversary servers, and I've stated in the past that people are way too quick to cry wolf about people supposedly botting, but sometimes you can definitely tell. (I remember one time in Elwynn when I saw a whole stream of low-level humans leave the village zig-zagging along the exact same path; that was eerie.) I haven't come across a lot of such cases on SoD myself, but definitely at least a suspicious number of hunters with unnamed or scrambled pet names.

As for myself, I continue to rotate through all my alts to use up some restedness and try to have them quest in different places for variety. My priest also healed a Razorfen Kraul and my mage did a Wailing Caverns and a Shadowfang Keep. The latter was a bit funny to me because I actually used the group finder tool for the first time and saw a group that was just missing a tank - with the three dps being a warrior, a shaman and a warlock, all three of which can tank in SoD. I sighed and just listed my mage by her lonesome... but within less than five minutes the other group had invited me anyway and we were off to the races.

It's also been fun to do more "discovering" of content and mechanics that are unique to SoD. The other day, I was in Stranglethorn Vale during the Blood Moon for the first time, and while I had the immunity buff on me, it was still a slightly odd experience. I didn't actually see any fighting for example, but lots of max-level allies running around killing my quest mobs. Does that give them rewards? I couldn't be bothered to do any deeper research on it. I did also run into this boss-type mob that was yelling and taking a swim in Lake Nazferiti for some reason.

In terms of questing, my hunter has offered the most interesting experience. I only noticed the other day that it's possible to place traps in combat now for example, something I'm pretty sure wasn't possible in the earlier phases. She also kind of struggles with the massive XP bonus, since it doesn't apply to pets, meaning her little tiger is currently three levels below her. I've tried to get him caught up by focusing a bit on mob grinding while unrested, but then I hand in one quest and bam, suddenly I'm another level ahead again. It's a bit annoying to be honest.

Another questionable adventure she had occurred around the AQ gate opening event. I mentioned previously that it worked a bit differently in SoD compared to normal, with the war effort completing automatically on a timer, but apparently the ten hour war - or at least the events tied to it - were extended significantly as well. I kept running into giant floating Qiraj crystals in levelling zones for days, which I think made farming Brood of Nozdormu rep a lot easier for people, but I'm not sure Blizzard fully took into consideration what this would mean for levellers. For example one of these crystals spawns right in the middle of Camp Mojache, so when I tried to pick up the flight path there, I swiftly got stomped into the ground. I couldn't even res and quickly click on the flight master, as I would instantly get put into combat and killed again. I think in the end I had to accept a spirit rez and use my hearthstone.

The other day I saw a video by WillE about what's new in SoD, and he mentioned that there are now vendors that sell all the runes for one copper each. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I was a bit concerned about how much of a grind it would be to find all the runes at this point, and this is definitely a nice solution for people who want to level more alts to raid. But I'm not looking to raid, and finding more runes was kind of part of the journey I was looking forward to? I mean, I can still gather them myself over time, that hasn't been disabled as far as I'm aware, but it does make me a bit worried whether people will be shirty in dungeons if you haven't just bought all your runes. Then again, so far everyone I've grouped with since my return has been very chill, so one can hope.

Another Five Down, Four More to Go

Back in September I wrote about how I've felt encouraged to experiment with alts in The War Within. This eventually escalated into me deciding that I wanted to have a max-level character of each class this expansion, a prospect that actually wasn't all that daunting considering I had one of each class at level 70 (the old level cap) by the end of Dragonflight. I've reached 80 on five more characters since then and wanted to jot down a few more impressions of the different classes I've levelled.

Until I took this picture, I hadn't realised that the Warband screen also follows the day-night cycle.

Marksmanship Hunter

My fifth character to 80 was my human hunter, and I'm honestly not even sure why. I think I wanted a character for easier solo farming and hunter kind of fits the bill. That said, I feel a bit ambivalent about the hunter class in retail. I've long loved the classic hunter with all its challenges of micromanaging ammunition and taking care of your pet, and I never quite got over how all of that was taken away in Cataclysm. In terms of pet interaction, the modern hunter feels more like a Pokemon collector (no actual investment in the pet needed, you can just collect as many as you like and I guess there's some appeal in hunting down rare models), and the supercharged shooting animations look a bit ridiculous to me in the way they make your character treat their bow and arrow like a machine gun.

I'm Marksmanship spec because I was never a huge fan of BM (while I liked taking care of my pet, I never liked the idea of my pet doing all the damage for me - I still want to be the hero myself, OK?) and being melee as a hunter still feels like an abomination to me. That said, I can't say that Marksman feels all that great to me right now either. It doesn't actually seem to me that it has too many buttons, but I don't like that you're basically not supposed to have a pet at all (I tend to just not take the Lone Wolf talent) and it does still feel to me like there are probably too many complexities involved in having a good damage rotation. I thought I had a pretty good idea of which buttons did the most damage, but when I did an LFR wing on this character, even though I was mashing my buttons like crazy, my damage output ended up around the same level as the tanks - way, way below the other hunters in the group.

I also don't have much to say about the hero talents for hunters, because they feel designed around the idea that you're an elf and want to cosplay as either Tyrande (who isn't even a hunter!) or Sylvanas, and I want to do neither. I did pick Dark Ranger because it sounded slightly more appealing, but just as I thought I was getting an idea of what to do with it, Blizzard completely revamped the way its main ability works and I'm once again back to square one. In summary: the class still lives up to the hunter's reputation of being decent for soloing stuff, but feels too fiddly for me in group content.

Guardian Druid

This would be the druid I levelled during Mists of Pandaria Remix. I still love watching her cute and fuzzy bear butt, but the way druid tanking works still feels a bit weird to me. I was initially a little confused why she seemed to be taking so much more damage than my warrior, until I realised that you're supposed to be using self-heals all the time (something which the warrior doesn't have as much).

I also don't really like the way the Ironfur buff works, expecting you to constantly pump rage into keeping up this mitigation buff that only lasts a few seconds. It was only later that I realised that protection warrior actually has something similar going on, I just hadn't been using it because at low difficulties you basically take no damage as a warrior anyway! I've only slowly started to adjust to that as we're starting to crawl our way up the M+ ladder. Still, the point remains that I'm not a fan of having this sort of "mitigation rotation" where you're supposed to constantly be mashing defensive buttons to keep all your buffs rolling.

Regardless, like the prot warrior, a druid tank is really good for soloing as well, so I've been using her to tank some easier content like Timewalking and sometimes to solo delves (tank who can also stealth and sneak past mobs = OP). 

For her hero talents, I went with Druid of the Claw because I bear, I maul things. Why would I want to shoot moonbeams or whatever?

Holy Paladin

Unlike with some other classes, I never know quite which spec to choose with paladins since I do actually somewhat like all three, but I figured I'd stick to healing with this one and see how paladins are doing these days. Funnily enough, I found it very pleasant to quest as holy - I'm starting to think I like levelling as tank or healer in WoW because they have such simple dps rotations - things may die more slowly but at least I feel like I know what I'm doing, as opposed to many dps classes where I mash buttons that look like they should be doing good damage but then don't because I either didn't string them together in the exact correct order or because I'm missing some crucial talent without which the whole build is destroyed.

Anyway, as I was feeling a bit insecure about my abilities as a paladin and knew that regular pugs could generate quite insane healing requirements, I decided to practice my healing by doing some follower dungeons first. Sadly, they turned out to be of limited usefulness for that purpose as Captain Garrick pulls quite conservatively, to the point where the required healing is minimal, and I didn't quite have it in me to try and "ninja-pull" more trash onto her to make things more challenging. Also, even when there was already almost nothing for me to do, the elemental shaman NPC would actually feel the need to throw off-heals around too? Bitch, let me do something here!

In search of a slightly more challenging environment I eventually healed some LFR wings, but there I once again couldn't quite shake the feeling that I was doing something very wrong because my healing was very low compared to other healers. That said, I also couldn't be bothered to do any research into how to remedy that. I may want to level every class to 80, but I have no interest in playing them all in endgame content.

As an aside, this character also taught me that it's possible to lock yourself out of choosing certain hero talents if you don't make the right talent choices because I was "only" allowed to choose Lightsmith. This should probably tell me that I'm not good at making my own choices when it comes to filling out the new talent trees, but if Blizzard is giving me all these choices I'm damn well going to make my own!

Windwalker Monk

Levelling my pandaren monk from Remix was a pleasant surprise, because I initially wasn't sure about all the changes that had been made to the class since Shadowlands. (During Shadowlands, my human monk was my main and was primarily a Mistweaver, but occasionally I'd spec Windwalker for questing and a lot had been changed since then.)

Unlike most of the other classes whose play styles I bemoan in this post, monk has been delightfully easy to pick up and play. I didn't put any more effort into learning the class than with the others (meaning I read all the talent tooltips and picked what I personally thought sounded most useful) but for some reason my monk seems to do decent damage even with me mashing buttons semi-randomly. I don't know why more classes can't be like this.

I was even more surprised when I looked up their current standing in terms of raid dps and Mythic+, and they're apparently... not very good? I can't say I got that impression at all while soloing.

Subtlety Rogue

Rogue's a class that has never vibed with me, but it's worse in retail than in Classic. At least I found my AoE finishing move again... at one point during Dragonflight, Black Powder disappeared from my bars and I still don't know whether that was an intentional change or me messing something up... either way not having an AoE spender for several months was super weird. It's back now, but sadly just alternating between Shuriken Storm and Black Powder on dungeon trash still leaves me barely outdamaging the healer.

Similar to death knight, rogue feels built around the idea of constantly having some sort of short-cooldown dps booster up, but for some reason where on death knight this feels fun to me, on the rogue it feels bad. My combo points always seem to fill up either instantly or incredibly slowly, with no in-between, and I just can't wrap my head around it. There literally isn't a single button that makes me feel like I'm doing good damage, it's always either just "virtually no damage" or "you just hit a cooldown, now have a little bit of damage". (While editing this, I actually decided to quickly google a guide for this one just to get an idea of how badly I was going wrong and... yeah, not happening!)

In terms of hero talents, I picked Deathstalker over Trickster because I thought it sounded a bit cooler, but ultimately it's another choice that didn't feel very meaningful to me. I know I won't be playing this character very much, but let's be real: The main reason I wanted a rogue at 80 was just to finally be able to open those damn Bismuth Lockboxes, so I don't really need to know how to play.

Now I only have warlock, demon hunter, mage and shaman to go.

Alts in Season of Discovery

While I'm not keen on seeing SoD's first phase come to an end, at least my priest feels like she's in a decent enough position for the next one. I've only run BFD and taken part in the Battle for Ashenvale a few times, but at least I had a chance to see how both work and also got a few pieces of loot in the process. I've maxed out all her professions bar needing a few more skill points in first aid and fishing, and I've collected eleven out of the twelve priest runes (after consulting guides on how to find the ones I was missing). The only one I don't have is the one that requires you to grind a bunch of stuff for the goblin in Ratchet, which I just couldn't be bothered with, especially since it's not granting a spell that's important to me. Maybe I'll get back to that in a later phase when it'll be easier to do.

My main goal before the arrival of the new phase though is to simply do a few more quests. Since I ran so many dungeons while levelling up, I skipped a whole lot of them on the way, and especially the lower-level ones aren't going to be particularly useful to me once the level cap goes up. It seems like a much better deal to run them for cash rewards right now, in preparation for buying my mount at level 40, plus to cover other expenses. It's never been this easy to make money at level 25 and I want to make the most of that while it lasts.

Hunter

In the meantime, I've also been working on some alts though, mainly to see what their "deal" is in Season of Discovery. Hunters are supposedly extremely overpowered, and they may well be in raids and PvP, but while out questing I haven't really noticed much of a difference to "normal" vanilla hunter levelling. The most unusual thing to me has been being able to use explosive shot in dungeons to do some AoE damage.

However, mostly I've been questing in the Barrens since she's a skinner/leatherworker, and you can pretty much step out of the Crossroads at any time of day in any direction and find a pile of dead animals to skin. She's currently level 20 after just having finished her business in Wailing Caverns, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to get her to 25 and somewhat "capped out" before the level cap increases, but I'm not necessarily counting on that.

Interestingly, hunters don't seem to have a special mechanic tied to their runes the way some (most?) other classes do; they just kind of find them out in the world from mob drops and by completing little puzzles. I guess that meshes well with the hunter/tracker archetype. I've got to admit that I was pretty chuffed when I figured out how to earn a rune for helping out the snake charmer in Razor Hill all by myself. My current pet is Raluk the white tiger, a SoD-exclusive that I also (partially) managed to find by myself. There does seem to be a pattern though with all the classes I've tried so far, which is to say that you find three to five runes easily and then it just stops because you have to go deep into enemy territory or otherwise do something in a very specific location to get more.

Mage

My undead mage is my tailor/enchanter - for whatever that's worth with her being only level 12 and still in Tirisfal Glades. So far the mage runes haven't particularly impressed me, and like with the hunter I'm largely playing as I would in a normal vanilla environment.

Mages have an interesting mechanic in the form of those garbled scrolls you may have come across in the world and which require a special new reagent to decipher. I felt a bit cheated though when one gave me a new rune, but the next one just gave me one of those low-level stat scrolls which was worth less than the cost of the reagent I'd spent on it. Not sure that's very fun.

Shaman

Finally, I have an orc shaman who's level 10. Their special class mechanic is that they loot green totems that you have to equip in the relic slot and for which you then have to perform a special task to learn a rune from them, such as taking nature damage ten times. This took me a little while to understand, as I initially didn't realise that I had to equip the thing to make it start counting.

Like with hunter and mage, I haven't been too impressed with the starter runes I've discovered. The first one you get, which buffs your lightning bolt, is certainly useful, but levelling as elemental was always my least favourite way to play shaman, and the buffed lightning bolt makes it feel like I need to prioritise using it even when I don't like it that much. Hopefully I'll eventually find a rune or two that fit my play style more. I really feel like I lucked out with the priest and having loved all the early runes I got.

Classic WoW & Me in 2023

Alright, here it is: the by now traditional annual look at my Classic characters and what progress I made with them throughout the past year.

The first thing to note is that this was the first year of me playing Classic that didn't leave me in a drastically different place at the end of the year compared to where I was at the start of it. I was playing on Classic era at the start of 2023, and I'm still active there at the end of it, even if my activity levels have declined. That bit of stability has honestly been kind of nice, though it also makes me wonder what's in store for next year. I love Classic era for what it is and I do like my guild, but at this point, I also feel ready for something a bit different again. At the moment that's just manifesting in me playing a bit less and spending more time in retail or SWTOR, but let's just say I wouldn't be surprised if 2024 brought with it some kind of change to my play patterns again.

Classic era - Horde

Shika - Pyrewood Village

• Level 60 Hunter
• +7 days played

My hunter continued to see the most play, just living the endgame life for most of the year: farming materials and joining raids. I even got to spend some time in Naxx (as you can see from all the tier three gear she's sporting in this screenshot), something I hadn't really planned for initially. It just got too time-consuming/clashed with other things eventually.

Sadly, since I stopped raiding I've been feeling woefully unmotivated to play her, except to keep logging in and crafting/selling Gyrochromatoms and Mithril Casings on the auction house. Hey, someone's gotta supply those levelling questers!

Shilu - PV

• Level 60 Druid
• +6 days, 8 hours played
• +54 Fishing (maxed out)

As my second most played character, my druid maxed out her fishing (with me adding another Stranglethorn fishing contest victory to my tally) and spent some time healing in the easier raids, mostly ZG. She actually hit exalted with Zandalar not too long ago.

She's still sporting her original feral/resto hybrid spec but I'm not sure I used it to tank even a single dungeon this year. I've just not felt motivated to do so.

Shintau - PV

• Level 53 Shaman (+12)
• +2 days, 21 hours played
• +25 Skinning (maxed out), +33 (Tribal) Leatherworking, +37 Cooking (maxed out), +40 First Aid (maxed out), +18 Fishing (maxed out)
  

My first Classic character from back in 2019, I swear this gal is going to be the slowest levelled WoW character ever (in terms of real time passed). How is the still not 60 after all these years?! The current hump to get over is that I really want to do a Sunken Temple quest run, but... effort. I'll get there one day.

Shinny - PV

• Level 44 Mage (+8)
• +1 day, 3 hours played
• +34 Tailoring, +22 Enchanting, +37 Cooking, +1 First Aid, +5 Fishing
  

Nothing too exciting to report here. I just made some progress through questing and running a couple of dungeons when the mood struck me. I also got my mount, woo!

Fooba - Mirage Raceway

• Level 26 Warrior (+10)
• +19 hours played
• +40 Mining, 124 Blacksmithing (changed from Skinning), no change in Cooking, +12 First Aid, +6 Fishing
  

I enjoyed levelling my food bank alt for a while, and even switched one of her primary professions from skinning to blacksmithing. I also remember having a good time fury-tanking Wailing Caverns and Shadowfang Keep. But then I just... stopped.

Gemba - MR

• Level 23 Warlock (+4)
• +12 hours played
• +32 Herbalism, +56 Skinning, no change in Cooking, +15 First Aid, +46 Fishing

My experience on my other bank alt was similar and I did play her a little, but not as much as I had planned. She still hasn't finished either of the quest chains for the succubus/incubus for example, even though I was keen to get to that a year ago.

Tir - Nethergarde Keep

• Level 14 Rogue (+5)
• +5 hours played
• +53 Herbalism, +82 Skinning, +1 Cooking, no fishing yet, +50 First Aid

My little troll rogue just did a few more quests in the Barrens; that's pretty much it.

Classic era - Alliance

My Alliance characters basically became completely neglected this year and nothing has changed about their stats compared to last year except for maybe a few minutes of play time here or there from occasional logins to check on something or other. (My hunter and paladin bounce some mails between them occasionally, and sometimes I remember to use my salt shaker cooldown on my hunter for example.)

The only characters that saw a little bit of action earlier in the year were my warrior and my priest, and the reason for this was that this was when I was at my most involved with the census project on the Classic era Discord, to the point that I also wanted to keep track of the Alliance population, and the best way to get scans (which can only be triggered by clicking about a hundred times at certain intervals) was to simply do a bit of questing every day.

Razorr - PV

• Level 33 Warrior (+3)
• +8 hours played
• +30 Mining, +57 Skinning, +12 Cooking, +46 First Aid, +4 Fishing 

I remember doing some questing in Stranglethorn Vale and I also seem to remember tanking a Razorfen Kraul with her, but I'm worried about my memories of this level range getting muddled with her "BC version".

Shintar - PV

• Level 32 Priest (+2)
• +7 hours played
• +4 Mining, +31 Engineering, +35 Cooking, +3 First Aid, +12 Fishing

Based on the robe in the screenshot I must have healed a Gnomer run, and I also have vivid memories of questing in Hillsbrad Foothills. Not much else going on though.

Isa - Gehennas

• Level 23 Paladin
• 1 day, 4 hours played
• 146 Alchemy, 179 Herbalism, 134 Cooking, 105 First Aid, 119 Fishing

Different server cluster, but since I did get her past level 20, I thought I should also give a quick shout-out to the little paladin I made on Gehennas. The "empty server experience" was fun for a little while, but to be honest I think I was hoping that things would pick up a bit with the way era was booming at the time, and when that didn't happen I eventually got bored.

Hardcore

Lossy - Stitches

• Level 22 Mage (deceased)
  
• 22 hours played
• 134 Herbalism, 82 Mining, 123 Cooking, 87 First Aid, 91 Fishing 

My stint in hardcore only lasted for a little while, but it seems only fair to give a shout-out to Lossy the mage for keeping me busy for almost a day of real time.

Season of Disovery

Shintar - Wild Growth

• Level 25 Priest
• 1 day, 12 hours played
• 140 Alchemy, 150 Herbalism, 150 Cooking, 129 First Aid, 122 Fishing

Finally, there is of course the new hotness, Season of Discovery. Aside from this priest, I've also created a few more alts there already, but as none of them have even hit level 10 yet, it doesn't feel worth calling them out at this point. I suspect that this might end up being my main Classic focus in 2024 (in one form or another), but only time will tell. Seeing all my era characters again does kind of make me want to play them again too...