Classic Rogue Thoughts

One of the first things I noticed while levelling my new rogue on era was how good the levelling felt, to the point that I constantly found myself looking for opportunities to play just a little more - and that despite of not being too keen on rogue as a class. I ended up looking back at this post from September 2019, a month after Classic's launch, in which I noted how well levelling in Classic seemed to be balanced, with everything tying into everything else just so.

That was less than three years ago - it's funny how quickly we forget. A few months ago I noted how levelling in BC Classic felt ever so slightly "off" to me, and I did remember it feeling better before the levelling nerfs, but I'd forgotten just how good it feels, with everything always driving you forward.

As for my dislike of rogues, there are mainly three reasons for it: Firstly, I prefer playing support over dps, so therefore I'm not a fan of classes that can't spec into the former. Secondly, when it does come to playing dps, I vastly prefer range to melee - and thirdly, stealth is slooow, especially at low levels.

Fortunately I'm in no rush whatsoever when it comes to this character - after all, it's just me, and as far as the game itself is concerned, Classic era itself isn't going anywhere either. I can take my time slowly stealthing around things without feeling too bad. I think just finishing business on Teldrassil took me almost eight hours of /played.

I'm still not great at being a rogue - which is actually the fourth reason I don't like rogues and which I almost forgot to mention. Rogues are all about careful movement, choosing your targets, going directly for the kill and then disappearing again. When properly executed, this actually feels pretty cool and almost overpowered... but if anything goes wrong, you're usually toast, especially at low levels (WTB Vanish). If you're caught out by an extra mob in the middle of an area you stealthed into, it's not even like you can run away, because you'll be surrounded on all sides. This has already happened to me quite a few times and caused a number of deaths.

However, this is Classic and I've been able to (mostly) take these setbacks with grace, especially since the penalty for reviving at the spirit healer is significantly reduced at low levels. And it's not as if it's been death and frustration all the time. That one time I was sent to assassinate a furbolg chieftain, I managed to sneak into his camp and hide on a grassy knoll until he walked past, at which point I pulled him with my throwing knife and then proceeded to take him out by himself. Perfect assassination! As a bonus, a rare mob walked past as well and could be taken out the same way. (One upside of the levelling zones being very quiet is that there are rares everywhere.)

The level ten rogue quest was also pretty fun. I mentioned in the comments on my previous post that I'd had trouble finding the rogue trainer in Darnassus, but once I did, she sent me to pickpocket from a satyr, which resulted in one of those "I can't believe I've done this zone how many times and yet I never knew this was here" moments as I found myself sneaking out onto a (relatively) thin limb of Teldrassil to steal from a mob that promptly teleported away before I could reach him and then reappeared some distance behind me. I was so startled by this development that I fumbled my movement and plummeted to my death, because of course I did. Death by falling off Teldrassil, once again: very old school.

Also, despite my preferences, the gameplay has actually been kind of fun (whenever I'm not dying). Remembering that Gouge was a good move to combo with Backstab, especially if I failed to open from stealth, was like being reunited with an old friend. Rogues have some very interesting skills, if you're only able to figure out how to best use them.

And all the while I'm keeping an eye on chat to find out more about the community of era. It's not super obvious that there is one if all you do is log on in Stormwind or Ironforge and count the people idling by the bank. My first attempts at selling something on the auction house were all returned to me unsold, but since then I've been successful at auctioning off about half of my finds. I've also seen a couple of guild recruitment messages, as well as someone asking for people for an MC pug. That one almost tempted me to log one of my clones, but ultimately I decided that it's too soon to get dragged into anything like that. I want to observe and learn some more first.

Level 40 the 3rd

Well, who saw that coming? I certainly wouldn't have guessed, looking at my roster at the beginning of the year, that my third character to level 40 would be a brand new nelf hunter, but here we are. I'm just enjoying the solo experience as a hunter way too much, and playing as Alliance feels refreshingly different after focusing on Horde side for months.

I even remembered to take a ding shot:

This one doesn't have the money to buy a mount yet, but I decided not to fret about it this time. So instead of proudly showing off my new ride, have some random screenshots I took while levelling on Alliance side:

 

The very first screenshot I took of my hunter in the starting zone. It was raining so hard that night! Also, I really love the female night elf bow-drawing animation.

The night I made the run to Ironforge. I never realised how you can see the city's lights up on the mountainside at night.

 

Remember when the Titans were this big mystery from Azeroth's past instead of overused and annoying?

 

Ashenvale contains a fair number of ruins, but it didn't really hit me just how pompously those elves must have lived back in the day until I considered the sheer size of that half-buried statue.

There's this quest in the Wetlands that has you fighting cursed undead, and one of their abilities temporarily passes their curse on to you, turning you into an undead as well. To my great amusement this applies to pets as well, meaning that I ran around with a pet undead for a while. (And I guess it confirms that Spotty is a girl? Unless everyone gets turned into a female undead.)

Hunting at night on the Shimmering Flats. I've said it before but I'm astounded by how beautiful I find Thousand Needles in Classic, because I don't remember being particularly fond of it in Vanilla.

Always gotta keep your eyes open on the road through Duskwood, you never know when you'll run into Stitches!

Whenever I spotted him wreaking havoc in Darkshire, I sometimes decided to help out.

I noticed there's an impressive amount of yells associated with Stitches spawning as well. It's interesting and somewhat old-fashioned design if you think about it: There is no quest to kill him, he's just a really hard mob (for the level of the zone) that spawns when someone completes a certain quest and is basically like a cat set among the pigeons, making the road unsafe and killing lonely questers left and right if they aren't careful. Makes for a very memorable experience.

Stranglethorn can be quite beautiful when you take a break from killing wildlife and trolls every now and then.

Logging in one evening I was baffled to find such a crowd in Stormwind, considering the server's usual population levels. Turns out it was just before someone dropped Onyxia's head to give everyone a buff. There is a whole system to this where guilds take turns I think, everyone assembles just before the event to get buffed, then mages put up portals to take the big guilds away to raid and the city empties out again. Quite fascinating to watch.

The Hall of Explorers in Ironforge is such an RP place, with all those oddities on display, including plaques that you can actually read.

Looking out over the beauty of Loch Modan. Destroying that was one of those things I could never quite forgive Cataclysm.

Finally, a sunset over Theramore.

For the Alliance!

I'm surprised it took me this long to start playing an Alliance character, considering my long history of playing both factions... but last week I finally caved and logged into the night elf hunter whose name I had reserved on the RP server Hydraxian Waterlords before launch.

The most immediate culture shock was that HW seemed positively deserted compared to Pyrewood Village. It's actually classified as being at medium capacity, and I'm sure it's busier in places like Ironforge and the higher level zones, but I could still hardly believe my eyes when I only met a single person during my entire time in the immediate starting area.

The thing is: It actually felt really nice, too. Big populations have their advantages when it comes to finding groups, but at the same time I have to admit that when it comes to simply enjoying the feeling of being in a mystical forest, hiking across snowy mountains or crossing a vast desert, jostling elbows with five other players every other step is detrimental to the experience more than anything. It's more magical to have the wilderness mostly to yourself, with the passage of other players actually being something noteworthy instead of so much background noise.

I was a bit worried that I'd feel tired of Teldrassil, considering that it's a zone I've done on private servers twice in recent years, but the questing didn't feel repetitive to me just yet. Of course it helps that to me, Teldrassil just feels way too much like home. I get that the night elf aesthetic isn't everyone's cup of tea and would agree that the quest flow is far from the best, but I still love it anyway.

It's also been an interesting reminder of the funny way in which memories work. For example I had completely forgotten that there is an actual group quest to kill an elite called Oakenscowl, even though after getting it, the memory of doing it on the private server came back to me... but I think on my first trip through the area as a genuine noob elf, I must have done it when I was already way over-levelled, or maybe I even abandoned it going: "Screw this, I'm not going back to that lake again!" Either way I have no memory of doing it back in the day, and it seems that because of this, its existence still surprises me every time.

The barrow with the Relics of Wakening quest in it on the other hand I always recall being a pain, so I always make sure to save it until I'm almost done with the zone and somewhat over-levelled for it.

Trying to make my nelf a bit different from my tauren hunter, I made her a leatherworker and tamed a cat. For a brief while I was actually pondering whether I should make some sort of death run again to get a skin that's rare among lowbie Alliance players, but then I kind of fell in love with the spotty saber I had to tame for my level 10 quest and simply got another one of those once I was able to tame my permanent pet. The most cliché of cliché nelf hunter pets: the saber right out of the starter zone. Then again, with how keen everyone in Classic seems to be on having rare pets, my common choice might well end up being unusual in its own way. Or I might just get a different cat when I'm higher level. We'll see.

The Alt

I haven't had much time to play WoW this week. Who'd have thought that working full-time, playing three MMOs at the same time and blogging about all three of them would take up so much time?

I've been finding myself logging into WoW mostly in the evenings, when I'm too tired to pay attention to the story in SWTOR or the action combat in Neverwinter. Slowly grinding away at twenty wolves and fifteen spiders while listening to a podcast in the background is relaxing and requires a lot less focus. I had kind of forgotten how good WoW used to be at this (before they took away most reasons to grind and made combat more demanding).

The only downside is that I'm always a little sad when I see a LFM request going out for content that I would desperately like to do but for which I simply don't have enough time just then. (Not to mention that a dungeon or group quest would require a lot more focus.) As I'm slowly climbing up the levels by soloing, the elite quests are piling up in my log and I hate the thought of abandoning them. We'll see if I'll manage to get in a good, long weekend play session some time soon to reduce their numbers.

In the comments on my last post, reader Shandren suggested that if I was having issues with bag space, I should roll up a bank alt, or at least an alt that I could temporarily mail things to in order to free up bag space, even if the other character wasn't meant to help with long-term storage. I took this as an excuse to recreate the night elf priest who was my main throughout Vanilla and early BC. It feels kind of wrong to create an alt before I've even hit level thirty on my current "main". However, I don't think it took me very long to create an alt back in 2006 either... in fact, I have a screenshot from back then that shows a level 1 warrior on the character selection screen next to my level 13 priest, though I think I ended up deleting that one without ever playing her.

I only played my little night elf through Shadowglen and then immediately parked her at the nearest inn, but I could easily see myself coming back to her to play some more. I just have so many fond memories of the early night elf zones, even if they feel a bit empty now without the friends that levelled with me back then when I was a new player.

This post includes a screenshot of my priest from original Vanilla WoW as well as one from Kronos. Can you guess which is which?

Dogs chasing squirrels and vice versa

So after I made my last post, I thought that would be it for a while. I had expressed some interest in Warlords of Draenor, but it's going to be many months until the new expansion actually goes live, and I still don't care for pandas.

However, a certain someone took my post as a cue that we should return to WoW right now, and promptly gifted me a month of game time. Sigh, can't very well let that go to waste, can I?

Since he had never played Alliance before, we rolled up a couple of worgen, a druid and a warrior. I've never been particularly keen on their looks and animations, but the older character models bug me even more now. Plus I'd only done the worgen starter area once.

It's funny how much you forget, being away from the game for more than one and a half years. The names of zones, of NPCs. Just how beautiful parts of the in-game world are. Yet at the same time it's funny how much you remember instantly, as if you'd never been away. That there's a quest over there. Where all the trainers in Darnassus are. As soon as I spotted the profession trainer in the worgen starter zone, I was reminded of the issues I had with finding him during my first playthrough, and instantly pounced on him to learn everything I could this time around.

A lot of things have changed too. In fact, my very first reaction upon logging in on my new druid involved some confused squealing about what they'd done to Wrath. "What is this? That doesn't look like a nature spell! It's all... yellow! Makes me look like I'm shooting fire or something, that's just wrong! I'm a druid, not a mage!"

The act of levelling up, the actual "ding", is depressingly boring now. No training needed, ever. It feels particularly striking in the worgen starter area, where they made sure to have trainers for all classes travel with you through the continuous phasing, who are nothing but useless remnants of a forgotten age now. I miss the act of actually choosing to train my new abilities. It gives you time to acknowledge their acquisition and what they do. If they just appear on my bar on their own, I tend to miss them. I'm not even sure when I got bear form now, it was just there all of a sudden and I went: "Huh, where did that come from?"

I also miss the old talents already. There's just no reward for levelling up. You can moan all you want about how choosing "+1% spell damage" or whatever was meaningless to you, but at least it was something. Right now I feel like I have zero agency in growing my character. And when you do finally hit one of the milestones where you get to pick one of the new talents, it's something like a slight increase to your run speed. Wow, that sure feels so much more meaningful and is totally worth not getting any other talents for fifteen levels... [/sarcasm]

One of the more pleasant surprises for me was the new druid travel form. I vaguely recalled reading about it somewhere ages ago, but I thought it required a glyph or something. But nope, gorgeous stags are the default now. Really can't complain about that one, though I'll miss ye olde cheetah a little bit.

I feel pretty, oh so pretty...

We finished off the worgen starter area without any issues and then loitered around Darnassus for a bit. It was fun to watch my partner in crime, new to the Alliance and having been away from the game for even longer than me, approach many things with almost newbie-like innocence and delight. We even spent some time fishing in Rut'theran Village together, just because we could. No rush.

After we'd decided to continue to Darkshore and had been bumming around Lor'danel for a little while, we discovered pet battles. They were one of those features of Mists of Pandaria that sounded interesting in principle, but that I simply felt completely indifferent about on a personal level, not being a massive pet collector and never having played Pokemon or anything like it. I have to admit that I'd heard nothing but good things about this mini-game from people who actually tried it though.

In this particular instance, things played out like this between me and my partner in crime:

Him: Ooh, there's a pet battling trainer here.
Me: [only vaguely interested] Oh? Where?
Him: Over here.
[Pause.]
Him: I'm picking a fight with a squirrel.
Me: Er, what?
Him: And... apparently I'm being killed by a squirrel.
Me: What? You're being killed by a squirrel? [giggles maniacally]

After that introduction we were both hooked and actually struggled to get any "proper" quests done for a while as we were just chasing green paws on the mini-map to get into epic battles with squirrels, rabbits and snails. It felt utterly ridiculous ("World of Sparring-with-fuzzy-critters-craft!") but it sure was fun. It's just a shame that it doesn't really make for a good group activity, because while you can kind of watch the other person battle, it's not amazingly interesting to spectate, plus you kind of compete against each other for the best pets to fight and capture.

We'll see how things go from here.