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

Apparently I’m leveling slower than I had thought, looking at last post’s date. I’m 64.5 now and about to start Nagrand, having wrapped up the first 3 zones pretty much completely, including group quests, but no dungeon runs. I had actually earned enough gold questing in Outland to buy my Epic Riding skill and a mount today, leaving me with 5g. Nice. Can’t wait for 68 and “free” Druid Flight Form.

The dungeon group is scheduled to start on Thursday, with 5 fresh (or not so fresh) 58s, we’ll see how that will work out.

On a whim I dusted off my 35 Rogue on Saturday, got a little Scarlet Monastery and Razorfen Downs boosting (to 37) and then I made 5 levels on Sunday, and I just dinged 46, 2 days later – all while spending quite some time on different things, the 30% XP boost from TBC in old world zones is awesome. Now I just want to hitch a stealth run through Maraudon to get the quest reward sword and that should bring me comfortably to Level 60 – not planning to go to Outland on a third character so soon, and not at 58 most importantly. Also cheap Riding at 30 is amazing.

The last week has basically flown past. It saw the launch of TBC Classic, me wrapping up work for 2.5 weeks of vacation, and some stuff. Also meeting people for the first time in months.

We’ve been leveling a Feral Druid/Beastmaster Hunter duo through Hellfire Peninsula. My druid was boosted, of course, but I didn’t take Deluxe whatever edition with the mount, just the 40 EUR boost. Not strictly needed as I had managed to get the Warrior to 58, but it’s my group char and so I need a solo/duo one as well anyway. I’m very close to 61, which will be my 3rd ding in Outland then, but I haven’t learned a single profession, too busy doing quests, and not really sure what I’d want. Maybe Mining to complement my Warrior’s Blacksmithing, maybe Enchanting, maybe Herbalism.

In retail I haven’t done much, a little bit of raiding (and no Sire Heroic kill to show for it), but I pushed the alts a little and so every Alliance toon (of every class) now has their Covenant campaign finished, and all but two are sitting at 40 Renown, Mage at 33, and Monk at 25. Also the Darkmoon Faire has started last night so that’s 7 down and 15ish to go, if I even bother.

Only 15 minutes until the Dark Portal opens, but it’s also 15 minutes to midnight here and it’s Tuesday. The dungeon group is more like “let’s start on or after the weekend” so it seems our leveling marathon from 45 to 58 was a bit for naught.

So here he is, in all his weird low-level leveling gear glory. Level 58.5, a 42.6 DPS Axe, a Level 27 Mail Helm from Razorfen Kraul, a Level 40 Plate Chest, and a few 4x and 5x quest items, but only one high-level blue item except a stat stick bow. Mining 300, Cooking 300, First Aid 290, Blacksmithing 260 and no chance to grind all the Thorium needed right now.

As I wrote last week, we started pushing the Frost Mage/Arms Warrior duo towards 58 and I think I read that the XP required was lowered by 30% until you hit Outland and it would explain why we managed to hit 57.5 last night, now it should be a breeze to get a few quests in Silithus done tonight.

One of our Hunters hit 58 and logged out on the spot, not continuing until the portal opens, the other Hunter hasn’t boosted yet as far as I know, and unfortunately we completely misunderstood our Shaman player. He hadn’t planned to boost the 46 Shaman that he had so many problems to level, and was a bit surprised and dismayed that we ran off with the duo. So now he’ll probably boost a Druid and if he hates it we will help his Shaman level somehow. So I’m having fun with the Warrior again so maybe I’m not boosting something at all, we’ll see – still a bit of time to decide and I guess the boost and the Deluxe version won’t go away. We’ll see if I can manage to tank the leveling dungeons with my weird 31/8/13 Mortal Strike build or if I have to respec Prot after all. We kinda plan to also level together, not just do dungeons, so my personal DPS shouldn’t be too important.

On a personal level, I’m at 291 Mining, which should be easy to finish, and 285 Cooking, which also should be no problem with Sandworm Meat from Silithus. Blacksmithing is at 231, which sucks a bit. I need more Iron to craft some Steel pieces, then will probably need a ton of Mithril and then Thorium, whereas all I found in the world while leveling was Gold and Truesilver. Those BS weapons in TBC are really, really nice – but as long as I can gather all the Fel Iron I see with a high enough skill, it shouldn’t be too bad to postpone the crafting, I guess they’re Level 70 weapons anyway. Oh, and I still need to do the First Aid quest to progress past 225, but again going to 300 and beyond is not a priority as I’ll funnel all my TBC cloth drops to the Mage’s Tailoring anyway.

Overall it’s funny how Classic is such a weird experience to me. Inside a 1h play session I can be happily grinding mobs for a “kill 3x 20 mobs” quest and have fun, and on the other hand get furious to the point of wanting to quit if there are 5 other people farming on the exact only spawn point of the mobs I need. Yes, maybe it was just as bad as release on our server, with so many people pushing for 58/60 in these last days of the pre-patch (which was simply too short, dammit Blizzard. I know we were late, but we were straight up in the “not interested” camp until the dungeon group came back together, so yeah, they should’ve decided a week or two earlier, but still – they probably would have if the pre-patch hads been longer).

Coming back to alts… I’m unenthusiastic. Yesterday I had the urge to actually activate my 35 Rogue on the TBC server but I let it pass. She was supposed to be my remaining Vanilla Classic alt, but we’re all full on TBC now, and cloning is only 15 €, but it’s so easy to lose track of your goals and with Retail and EVE, maybe I actually shouldn’t start playing any low-level Classic alt right now, be it Vanilla or TBC…

When the dungeon group met again on Saturday we first chatted for a bit and it actually looks like we can meet again in real life for the first time soon, with 3 out of 4 being vaccinated and 3 of 4 being stuck at home anyway (which should limit the infection risk quite a lot). Then we pushed on through Kun-Lai and actually managed to get to Level 48 and had enough time left to go through the Maw. Surprisingly quick, I might add, if you have the mount and just destroy everything with 4 people. We decided to do the campaign story and not Threads of Fate and then parted ways to catch up on a few percent of XP, pick some flowers, and meet up again in Bastion next week.
But we also kinda agreed to try out TBC Classic, where 3 of us had given up already in 2019 and the spring 2020 revival also didn’t really last long, but our fifth member had spoken up and I guess we’re in now. We have one planned boost on a new character, one “sick of leveling Resto Shaman, will boost 46 to 58”, one “I will level this Mage from 46 to 58” and me originally planning to boost a new Druid, but now maybe keeping the Warrior. The Mage/Warrior duo with the new talents and the supposed? XP changes blasted through the levels on the long weekend to just over 50 and last night we managed a whole level despite not being well-rested anymore and also not playing the whole evening. Hopefully we can make it. If we don’t, I can still boost a Druid as my main, if we do then I have a week to decide which class to play.