WoW Classic

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.

Last night the guild gathered together to tackle the Armory and Cathedral wing of Scarlet Monastery, and maybe Razorfen Downs.

We’re still short one Rogue who has to catch up over 10 levels by now – so we might just move him to the alt group, because even those have surpassed him already, but he said his internet connection is finally fixed and he will come back.

Gladly we have another warm body, a feral druid, who has no caught up with us well. The original plan last week was to go at 38, but for scheduling reasons we had postponed to this Friday and surprisingly we had 5 people in the right specs, all at the same level (a first).

• Warrior tank with 31 points in Arms
• Shaman who uses shocks more than heals
• Mage with water vendor spec
• Troll Hunter with a very beautiful hairdo
• Feral Druid

I’ll never be able to tell an interesting story about an overall uneventful dungeon run like Wilhelm can, so I won’t even try. Armory was quick and easy but people used to retail were a little confused that there was only one boss at the end. Also my explanation of what could go wrong with the whirling and the adds was unneeded as Herod went down without a problem. He dropped a Ravager – nice, but only a sidegrade for my Whirlwind Axe I guess.

Next up was the Cathedral. Being cautious I mostly pulled stuff around a corner both at the start of the courtyard and at the cathedral entrance and thus we didn’t have a single runner, add, or tricky situation. I even remembered to find Fairbanks and he dropped a cloth shoulder upgrade.

Again calling out the tactics for Mograine and Whitemane proved to be useless, they went down very very quickly. Sadly we didn’t get a Chapeau or the shield, but the Scarlet Leggings were a huge upgrade for me, despite being Mail and not Plate and our Shaman was happy with a Hand of Righteousness.

Level 40 and a Mage means portals, so luckily we could get to Undercity quickly, hand in our quest (new Main Hand Sword for me), take a portal to Orgrimmar and fly to Camp Taurajo. Just that Camp Mojache in Feralas also starts with “Camp” so our Hunter and Druid flew there instead. Only that our Druid noticed it right away and could fix the error in the Crossroads while the Hunter was making fun of him… until noticing too late he had made the same error.

Once all were there we did the Ambassador quest and the kill quest outside the instance, then made our way to the iconic entrance which of course forgot to take a screenshot of. But I had forgotten it but the moment I saw the big board head I remembered. Well done, WoW zone designers.

Razorfen Downs isn’t as 100% straightforward as the earlier dungeons, with the escort quest having you backtrack, the gong we had forgotten and nearly ignored, the detour to the hill with the skeletons. Would love to see a stream of a group who had never done this and not read up on anything. The bosses and groups didn’t really put up a real fight until we came to the final spiraling hill. Most of the mobs being undead and the instance counting as inside we had no sheep and no roots, only a 10s ice trap. So it was mostly charging in and burning down 1 or 2 as fast as possible and maybe not taunt off every single mob but let the group offtank one. Some of those groups really hurt, the only close calls were the last group before the last boss – it looked big, it was big, it hurt. And while doing it I remembered it being that way, but we made it without deaths. Finally the last boss – burning him down seems to be better than trying to handle all the adds.

Overall I’m equal part surprised and amazed that we made it this far. WoW Classic launched on August 27th, 2019 and six and a half weeks later we managed to do every dungeon we were supposed to do (skipped Deadmines and Stockade, but did a few of the early ones twice) – with largely the same group of four people, with the fifth slot sometimes filled by 2 more people.

This is also the first time I’m in a true Friends & Family guild made up 100% of people who are couples, have known each other for 10+ years online or offline, or work together. Sometimes multiple of those apply. We’re only 9 people – but we originally had only planned to be exactly 5. Apparently I’ve had to wait 13 years for this to happen that the majority of people plays on my server and I don’t have to chase them down somewhere, visit for a week, and let that toon wither. Too bad I couldn’t grab a few more, but this is a German server and having played on EU for so long, all my ex-guildies have of course chosen an EU one. Also it’s been so long that I wouldn’t say I’m close to more than one or two, so it’s only a minor letdown to not have them here.

4 days and 2 h until Level 40 (that’s nearly 99 hours of /played).

The dungeon group couldn’t continue last weekend due to illness and internet problems, so we went to 40 instead of 37-38.

SM and RFD coming up next weekend, hopefully.

Not sure why I’m even worse at posting about these than I am usual to comment in a timely manner.

The dungeon group met up again on Sunday the 22nd to do Razorfen Kraul at Level 30. Our Rogue sadly wasn’t caught up again, had major internet problems, and didn’t have time anyway, so we 4manned again.

There’s actually not much to say – it worked fine and was a little boring, not even a wipe. It doesn’t make sense to go in before 30 if you want to do all the available quests and if you go in at 30 then 4manning it is no problem. Weird.

Because we were done so quickly we looked up what’s next and made a little error in our judgement here. Gnomeregan didn’t sound interesting enough so we went to Scarlet Monastery and did the Graveyard and the 20 Hearts quest in front of it – also no problems, and asking in /1 and LFG again yielded no DPS to join us.

As I’m only writing this only now, I’ll save the hassle to do a 2nd post and just continue – the magic of procrastination.

Last Friday we met again at Level 34+ to do the Library wing of Scarlet Monastery, again it was 4 of us (we do have a 6th guild member at Level by now, a Feral Druid, but he was unavailable as well) and nobody wanted to join. (What’s wrong with this server, no single DPS to be found for dungeon runs). The pulls seem to get a little harder, I messed up one or two, but thanks to a boar pet and a Mage with sheep we survived pretty easily, despite our Shaman Healer being in DPS gear. Unfortunately our Mage forgot to do the Level 38 labeled Mage pre-quest for the Mage quest to the Library, so we might be back.

Again this wasn’t really enough content for a scheduled evening so we decided to check out Gnomeregan and noticed we were indeed a bit too high level, with 2 of us being 36 already (and finally a pickup Feral Druid DPS, also 36) – but at least it was easy. OK, too easy – we need to find some challenge…

Having never really played much Alliance pre-Cata, I fortunately at least had done it for rep on my Level 100 Gnome recently and had run it a few time as a random on my Allied Races, so at least one person mostly knew the way. It was pretty uneventful.

If overall this sounds pretty unexcited, that’s probably because it is. Sure, it’s fun to play with friends and Classic is fine, but there are quite a few things that annoy me a bit

• Classic isn’t hard, it’s just slow and tedious
• Classic is slow and tedious
• When it launched I had a ton of time and brought both my “solo alt” and my “group main” to 20, then 29 at the same time, with the solo alt being higher. Since then I didn’t have as much time (mostly not at the same time as my duo partner) and am now on the slow end of the group. Personal problem, but annoying nevertheless.
• We planned a 5 person group and had 5 people – then one bailed out completely but got replaced by a reliable new member, but our 5th didn’t ever manage to catch up. Next run isn’t scheduled yet but even we only do 2-3 levels per week it becomes harder and harder to catch up
• Alting wasn’t really fun in Vanilla and it’s not really in Classic – imho. I have my alt Rogue (because it’s clearly the best class, no matter the expansion :P) but I’m hesitant to even level a third one to 10. I really love the QoL improvements for altoholics in later expansions.
• Finally, tanking isn’t really fun to me. Maybe I was hoping for it to be not so bad as I had feared, and I’m the last person to need easy gogogo rush and just charge into a group, thunderclap and keep it forever like in the last expansions. I learned to Warrior tank in TBC and worked my way up from 5mans to 25man alt raids (mostly OT, not MT, but still) – I know how to work for my aggro. But in classic I’m just 100% rage starved all the time. Maybe my group is too trigger happy, maybe I’m doing it wrong – but it’s simply not a lot of fun to wait for enough rage for a single skill most of the time. Also everything resists taunts. Leveling as Arms isn’t much better, but at least Rage is not a problem.

It’s been 12 days since I wrote about our adventures in Classic, but it’s not that we didn’t play. We successfully did Wailing Caverns last week (this time the Rogue had caught up a bit), then did it again the next day to finish all the quests (Serpentbloom, Deviate Hides, 99-year old Port).
Some days later we did Shadowfang Keep, even wiping on Arugal. Unfortunately he didn’t drop the nice robe for our Mage, but the Girdle was cool as well. And my Warrior likes the shield, even though it’s an Alliance one. Also I’ve been using the Wailing Caverns quest reward Sword since then.

So far it’s been mostly working out to decide on a target level and day and then everyone catches up. Unfortunately our Rogue (again) didn’t have time this week and so Blackfathom Depths will be 4man or with a pick up DPS. Our target level for BFD was 27, maybe we’re a little cautious here. But maybe we can do Razorfen Kraul directly after it.

Oh, hello draft I had forgotten. BFD went fine but we (again) did a second run because of the Lorgus Jett followup and we noticed that RFK doesn’t make much sense before 30 because of missing quests. So we did all of the instances twice now, and next Sunday RFK is planned as most of us are 30 already.

Last night we finally had everyone online and in the correct level range to venture into our first dungeon – Ragefire Chasm.

The group consists of:

• Level 14 Tauren Tank Warrior in Arms spec (the author)
• Level 14 Troll Shaman
• Level 14 Troll Mage
• Level 14 Troll Hunter
• Level 10 Undead Rogue (Slacker)

Actually it went pretty uneventful except for one wipe when underestimating the lowbie Rogue’s aggro range and then some Hearthstone use by two people to get out of a chasm. The Rogue was too low to get the book quest so we ran it again and then only one book dropped. Anyway, all got to level 16 (13) and now we’ll meet up again at 20 for Wailing Caverns. That’s probably why I forgot the victory shot, because it was totally not epic. Also technically it wasn’t a guild run yet because we only made the guild after the run. Ah well.

So my Warrior is still at level 14 and waiting for the full group to catch up, but I did play my Undead Rogue. I might have a Rogue problem, but who cares?

Level 24.95 now, just finished Shadowfang Keep with an all-23/24 group with zero problems. Before that (also today) I had to run Wailing Caverns a second time because:

• The group didn’t do the 99 year old port (ok)
• I only got 10 of 20 Deviate Hides (meh)
• I got ZERO Serpentbloom (WTF?)
• I forgot to loot one gem (this one was my fault, bags full I guess)

But now I got all quests done, had to camp Mad Magglish for “only” 15mins in a group of 3, had to solo 3 mobs for my 20th hide – but it worked. Except for the tank with zero orientation, guess we could’ve shaved off 5mins easily if he had listened to our directions. Ah well. Also marking mobs seems to be not a thing. Also CC is unheard of. But I can make Poisons now.