WoW

Last night I saw that my WoW guild has a raid planned for Sunday so I claimed my WoW token and am now a subscriber for the rest of March. I just spent around 2h progressing the 9.2 content and while it’s not great, it’s not bad either. The only “argh, really?” moment was at the end where I had two quests left: “Go to Hub A” and “Go to Hub B”. I accepted 2 dailies and went to Hub B, then did my 2 dailies. Then I went to Hub A and the followup quest was “fill this bar by doing World Quests and Dailies.” Well thank you, I just did 2 dailies, and of course the progress didn’t count. /slowclap

So this tweet came out like 2h ago and as someone who has been playing for over 15 years (with breaks) my only reaction is: WHY? WHY NOW?

I played nearly exclusively on Horde from 2005 to 2014. I had a few lowbie alliance alts on random servers, and then one Rogue in a guild on the same server. I joined that guild full-time when I came back for BfA. Then I transferred my main off last summer, to another Alliance guild.

Had this been in the game in 2018 I wouldn’t have had to level all chars again on the other faction. Well of course no one pressured me to do this but I would have absolutely stuck with my old “Horde” chars if I could’ve played with my guild. Not all toons of course, but I would’ve led my old three main chars through all the content.

So yeah, there are no cross-faction guilds, but I maybe would’ve raided on my Troll Warrior in Castle Nathria and Sanctum.

So I guess, personal history with wishing for this feature aside, it’s a good change, but I’m not sure it’s as tremendous as it sounds, if there are no cross-realm guilds. There are some players who are mostly on their main, would they even notice when someone is asking for a group in guild chat where they are not? The people who always seem to be on alts.. those could probably be in the guild. It gets complicated quickly, if you don’t have a dedicated chat channel – or if your guild is not advertising guild dungeon runs on Discord, and honestly why would they? Only if a sizable percentage of people might be on their other-faction chars. I dunno, it seems half-baked.

I’m not mad, just disappointed. (And I am 100% not mad for “grr Horde, grr Alliance” reasons – that ship has sailed. We have worked together cross-faction since WotLK with the Argent Crusade.

Personal PS: If they would manage to get this live for the 9.2 raid, I might actually do this on my Blood Elf Warlock and raid with my Alliance guild. But she’s still cross-server, so maybe it doesn’t work out again anyway, so probably nothing changes at all… And I simply don’t believe that this will be live for the 9.2 raid.

Shintar had an interesting post about a hypothetical (but eagerly? awaited) further installment of the WoW Classic cycle. I’ve not thought a lot about it, whether and for how long “Classic” would continue to evolve. But from most people I talked to and what I read, the consensus seems to be that Cataclysm can’t be part of anything “Classic”, because that’s where everything changed and this third expansion was sort of the beginning of a new era. I can’t really say “the” new era, because between expansions some things have gradually shifted and some have changed the game a lot. Also as I stopped playing in MoP, the fourth expansion, that’s my personal big breaking point, as I basically skipped the next one and only then came back. I simply know I am not objective enough to see the end of MoP as anything but the greatest change for me personally, as it coincided with my first years-long break.

Anyway, about Wrath. I’d rate my involvement in the game only at medium in Vanilla, despite spending a lot of time in PvP battlegrounds at the tail end, but I had missed out on most of the start and was just casually levelling up. Having fun, but not really invested. TBC was very different. I was eagerly awaiting the launch, I instantly started leveling, then raiding Karazhan, then hating it, then there was guild drama, then a new guild, then a little drama, and finally getting together with the people I’d spend half of TBC and then Wrath and Cata and even MoP together. But TBC was a very long time ago, Wrath was a little less long ago. At the start of TBC I pretty much still felt like a noob, having played for ~1.5 years. When Wrath launched I’d been playing for for over 3 years, and I had raided Black Temple, the pinnacle of difficulty. Also I think in Wrath I played even more than I did in TBC. Leveling alts, doing Heroics, raiding. Raiding on alts, everything. As I continued into Cata like this there was no burnout or anything, but still after all these years…

When my interest in Vanilla Classic was kinda big, my interest in TBC Classic was already a lot lower. I had seen SSC and TK, I had raided Black Temple, I tanked and healed some raids in addition to playing on my Rogue Main. And then Wrath. I leveled so many alts, we went to ICC so much, we killed the Lich King on Heroic. I have the feeling I’ve been there and while it’s been over 11 years by the time I’m writing this, even more than in TBC I have so many memories where I can honestly say: I had fun at the time, but I don’t need or even want to repeat that. It was fun because of the time, because of the people, and because it was new. I think to a degree I stopped leveling first in Classic and then in TBC Classic because I did not have those rose-colored glasses. My estimates of how slow everything would feel were 90% correct. I knew it was slow, I just had overestimated my own perseverance, as these two times it felt like a chore so often.

So yeah, and then the fact that my dungeon group mostly stopped playing in the middle of something, twice. Or even three times. Guess next time I’ll just not fall for it.

And interestingly none of this is really Blizzard’s fault (unlike in Retail). People wanted to have the original experience, and that is fine. I don’t need to relive everything. I had fun in Classic and TBC, but looking back even now it feels like a bit of wasted time – because one of my goals is usually reaching max level, and I failed to do that both times.

Back at the start of December when I stopped playing WoW I was kind of sure I’d come back for 9.2 and go raid with my guild. Meanwhile I’ve been having a blast in FFXIV and while Blizzard didn’t have anything newsworthy to report that was equally horrible as all the stuff in the summer… I noticed that I don’t miss WoW. Then I tried to read up on some bits and bobs about what’s coming and I’m also not excited, but I didn’t have a clear picture yet of the new patch.

Catching up on RSS I noticed this post by Kaylriene (yeah, 10 days ago) and it indeed sounds bleak. The Korthia grind in 9.1 is already the thing I hated most, in addition to having to run Torghast again.

I was low-key planning to reroll Warlock because as far as I know we lost ours (switched to Hunter), but when this idea still sounded good to me I had completely forgotten about Legendaries and Torghast. My Warrior main is iLvl 240, and from a quick glance my active M+ running guildies are not higher than 248 for the most part, so I’d still have no problem just joining in when we start normal, I hope. But I don’t even know what gear I could quickly acquire on a yet-to-be-boosted character, and if I really want to do that. I think I want to subscribe and do Normal raids, maybe that even works in a single month – but I’m already leaning towards not participating in Heroic this time, just because then I’m feeling the need to keep up with gear and Legendaries and rep and everything. That simply sucks, I’m not sure you can really be a casual Heroic Raider.

I still can’t tell how the Extreme Trials and Savage Raids in FFXIV compare to Normal and Heroic Raiding in WoW, but let me tell you how easy it was to get iLvl 570/580 gear (in times of hours invested) for several jobs in FFXIV versus just getting gear on ONE CLASS in WoW, not even entertaining the thought of doing it on an alt. I had started Korthia on my Shaman, but my interest fizzled out in like week 3 and that was nowhere near the end, despite dutifully doing my dailies every day (not searching around for rares, just the dailies and weeklies).

Meh.

We did it!

After 86 wipes on Sylvanas and after nearly 2 months we finally finished Sanctum of Domination, Shadowlands’ second raid tier.

Today we had 17 people and not the usual 13-15 – maybe that made the difference, or the practice of the last two weeks, or everyone actually giving their best. It might have been slow but I am so glad that we did it. More relieved than happy, actually.

This is also my first AOTC (Ahead of the Curve) achievement for killing a Heroic end boss before the next tier arrives, something that eluded me in Castle Nathria, the first raid tier of this expansion, and that didn’t even exist when I last raided in MoP.++

So this was one day after our raid week #21 concluded. We’ll see if we can redo the kill on Sunday, or a bit later.

But… my sub is running out in 8-9 days, so I maybe have 2 raids left. I had acquired a WoW token as a backup plan if it would run out before we’d killed here, but now I’m looking forward to a little WoW vacation. I think I’ve been subbed since early BfA, that’s quite a while, one month more and it had been 3 years. I don’t know when 9.2 will hit, but I plan to come back and raid again with my current guild that I joined in early July, 5 months ago. But of course we’ll see how I’m feeling about WoW and ActiBlizz then, if we will have managed to raid in FFXIV and everything.

++ footnote: Because I don’t like writing wrong things I looked this up. This page on Wowpedia says there were some AOTC achievements in MoP (for Normal), but I have 4 out of 6, jus this one is weird: Sha of Fear before patch 5.2.0 – that patch came on March 5, 2013 – my “Defeat the bosses in Terrace of Endless Spring.” achievement says 2012-11-25, clearly before 5.2.0 but I don’t have it.

When changing WoW servers recently (actually I dug out this draft and July 3rd id not so recently) and reserving my old names, creating bank characters and so on, I ran into the 50 character limit per WoW account. I think that’s happened for the first time, ever. 50 sounds a lot, but I’ve started playing this game in 2005, that’s 16 years. So only 3 new characters per year, right?
But how did we end up here?

Well, there’s the server where I started playing in 2005, which also was my main server until 2014, when I stopped playing for a few years. Mostly Horde, and that one Alliance Rogue I brought into the guild I’d been raiding Castle Nathria with recently, back in 2009. When I came back for Legion I started more Alliance characters on the server connected to this one – so basically one realm, but 2 connected realms. 19 on the original one, (now) 12 on the other one.

Then there’s the server I transferred to, 7 characters. And the Horde one where I went to visit those friends, but playing Horde, that’s another 5 characters. So we’re at 43 already.

But now to the outliers. There’s this one Level 11 (ex 24?) Warrior on a German PvP server, where I started to play with some people from another MMO, probably 12 years ago. I guess I can delete that one. Then I have a 30 Hunter (used to be 61 or so?) on Argent Dawn, where some bloggers started the guild named “Single Abstract Noun” – I would’ve saved that one via transfer if leveling was still a thing, but Level 30 can be done in like 5h, so hard pass on 17-25 EUR for a transfer 🙁

And then there’s the server where I had transferred my main over to raid, just before I stopped playing. I had started a DK and a Priest while playing there. The DK reached max level, the Priest only 5x (now 28). I think I transferred my main back for a normal price and the DK when the transfer was marked down, years later. Again, Level 30ish is easy to reach, so I guess the priest will be deleted at some point.

But… if I remember correctly, we had free transfers to that realm, so I brought my Level 19 Twink Hunter. The only Battlegrounds Twink I ever made. Now she’s Level 9 and I surely didn’t play her since 2014 or earlier, and I don’t know if twinking like this still works.

I didn’t go over the top with all the expensive BoEs, but she still had some nice gear.

So how did this post start out as an idea about twinks in WoW and ended up talking more about the 50 character limit? I don’t know.

One noteworthy thing is that before the level squish I didn’t want to delete old characters on random servers because of the time invested. Now it’s so quick that if I don’t have a nostalgic connection… that 10 year old toon can absolutely be deleted without a second thought, but there are just so many exceptions. Maybe the best way is to do it like people who clean up their apartments do it. Take a screenshot, write a few paragraphs in the blog about the story, delete, and go on with your life.

I just logged in and in a spam of login and addon messages I didn’t see why a guildie jokingly? congratulated me. After scrolling up I saw the […] has earned the achievement [WoW’s 17th Anniversary!] and of course I had to dig into the achievements pane now.

17 15 12 10 9 16 14 8 7 6 5 4

Wait, why aren’t they sorted?

17, 16, 15, 14, _, 12, _, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, _, _, _

So the first missing one is the 13th, that would be 2017. The second one is the 11th, that would be 2015 and then 2007, 2006, and finally 2005.

This surprises me a little because I’ve taken a lot of WoW breaks over the years and mostly hadn’t payed a sub uselessly, but on the other hand I’ve been playing for a long time, so especially the first 3 missing made me curious.

So let’s look at post history in the WoW category first:

In September 2018 I wrote “So either I’ll buy BfA and play WoW in early October,…” but I only came back in January of 2019 and I think I’ve been subscribed since then. But I had completely forgotten about the “free up to Level 20” thing, so that probably explains why I have the 14th anniversary.

Next up (in reverse chronological order) I wrote a post titled WoW Legion: 10 weeks in in November 2016 where the 12th anniversary would have to have happened.

Intermission: The WoW token went live in April 2015.

Now it gets a little mysterious. I subscribed in December 2014 for WoD and did not continue after a month. Either I still got the 10th anniversary achievement (unlikely) or the “log in sub 20” thing went live before November 2014.

And then I seem to have mixed up dates, I stopped raiding during SoO, that was in spring 2014 (not 2013) and then I had a half-year break until WoD.

Good old warcraftrealms.com shows me as Level 25 in October 2005 and Level 40 in December, so I was most certainly subscribed and actively leveling, but no clue why I didn’t get that one. But searching on wowhead seems to point to the 4th anniversary being the first one with an achievement.

The Burning Crusade launched on Devember 5th, 2006 and I was subscribed for that, but I don’t know for sure if I was on a break the month before. Unlikely though, with the hype for the first expansion.
Again, warcraftrealms has me guildless in October 2007 and guilded in November, as I remember that time (my original guild had imploded in the summer) it’s also unlikely.

So, what did we learn except that I played too much WoW in my life? Keep a blog and a few links to a few fansites it’s not problem to trace back your steps for the last 16 years.

Week 14 was unexciting, a few more tries on Sylvanas, a little progress, but no kill.

Week 15 Sunday saw us a few people and a raid leader short, so we started a fresh instance and cleared 7 bosses. Tuesday wasn’t good, we spent 2h wiping on Fatescribe (would’ve been our 2nd kill), with the best try being <1%.

On top of that, and not because of recent events our raid lead stepped down, didn’t sound pissed or burned out, simply being in a rut about the game in general and not wanting to raid. I think he had cleared Heroic in a non-guild group and in general is one of our best players and one of the few? ex-Mythic raiders. Bit unfortunate timing, in that we didn’t kill Sylvanas yet, but we actually had enough time. Oh well, I think we will manage to get over that. I personally would be a bit disappointed if this was the second tier of this expansion where I’d be just shy of clearing Heroic.