So, Thursday we got the original Classic band back together on 5 58 characters, ready for Outland. Or not completely ready, as it turned out. Three of us sitting in Thrallmar, eager to start at 7 pm sharp, but two still in Orgrimmar. Two Mage ports and a little riding fixed that and so went off. Kinda glad the original rush had already died down, so the first quests all went kinda smoothly, even collecting the wood and metal near the Orcs. It wasn’t half bad until we got to the Boiling Blood quest in south Thrallmar, which is always a bit meh, but in a group of 5 that’s a lot of Orc to kill for a lot of blood. And then a lot of scarabs to nuke down. Once we handed it in our Hunter player spoke up that this is simply no fun at all and that was the last quest. The absolute last quest, not today. It had been clear already from voice chat, the relatively unusual silence and a few remarks out of game, but I had hoped for a little longer run than a third of a zone, or 2 hours, or one level. So we continued on as a quartet, mopping up the south, then the demon camps in the North, and a little more. We got to Falcon Watch and Level 60, then stopped for the night, to be continued next Thursday. The remaining setup is Tauren Arms Warrior (me), Tauren Resto Druid, Troll Frost Mage, and Orc Enhancement Shaman, and we hope we’ll be able to pug a third DPS once we reach 61 or 62 and go into Ramparts and Blood Furnace, and then hope I’ll be able to tank it, because I don’t really want to go Prot while leveling.
In Retail, Friday was supposed to be our regular raid (and the penultimate one, probably) but our guild/raid leader was gonna be at least an hour late and we were only 9 without him, unsurprisingly, so this was cancelled. This was already looming and had been half-announced, so this would’ve been good for me, but for other reasons I had to push my Friday tabletop night to next week, so I’m gonna miss the last raid of this tier and this will probably make the raid not happen without a second tank. My conscience is relatively clear though, it’s the first raid night I’ll miss since we started in December and I’d been there for all 290 wipes on Heroic Sire Denathrius.
On Saturday the Torghast 4 man group met to level our Vulpera/Nightborne group, continuing with the campaign. We’d finished Bastion last time and were ready to go to Maldraxxus, sitting at level 55/56ish. These are the same four players from the TBC Classic group, minus the Enhancement Shaman, so the unwilling Hunter player is the Mage here, and just not enjoying Classic, but very much into Retail, on the other hand the Shadow Priest is not keen on Retail but happy enough to play with the group a few times per month. It’s… complicated. Despite starting a little later and finishing a little earlier we made it through Maldraxxus, but due to being a little over the level the XP tanked and so we stopped at 57 and a third or so. It’s uneventful, but overall we’re all positively surprised how most things work fine even when doing them in a group of four, only occasionally something doesn’t count for everyone, or we’re phased and need to kill stuff solo, a chance where everyone (including the Resto Shammy) gets to laugh at my Blood DK’s bad DPS, relative to the others’ numbers.
And because I’m a little pissed off at raiding atm, with my guild not making AOTC, and overall not really enthusiastic about anything in 9.1*, I’m not sure I’ll raid at all. Or if I do, I might do Normal and then bow out like half my guild did. Or maybe I’ll try raiding with the guild of the other half of the Torghast team, they’re Alliance at least, but on the wrong server. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but to prepare (and because I was nosy and like Rogues) I started getting my Subtlety Rogue through Shadowlands today, the Gnome Rogue that’s on their server cluster from an earlier guild of theirs I was in, many years (and expansions) ago. At the start it was really squishy and I think it has too many buttons, but now at Level 55 and two zones done it’s a lot better. Nearly 6 levels and two full zones via Threads of Fate on one day? Yeah, I was also very surprised. I was on 150% rested XP obviously, and I didn’t actually play the whole day, so this is really, really quick now.
* I’m really not excited about 9.1 or any of the associated grinds. Maybe I was binging too hard in Winter/Spring this year, maybe I raided too much (but it’s not like I could’ve gone out a lot, duh), but I reaaally was looking forward for a raid break after we had killed Sire on Heroic. That never happened, so we never had a break, so now it’s still this slog. Korthia doesn’t sound interesting at all, I still hate the Maw, and nothing I read, heard, or saw about the new raid made me excited. I had thought about switching mains after this raid tier, but I kinda lost interest in my alts even more than in my main. Retri Pally was fun for a bit, Resto Shammy is always fun, but I don’t want to heal progression right now, but none of the other specs were really enjoyable, which sucks. Or maybe it was simply too much WoW in these last 6 months… We’ll see
