The best and worst of Classic

At the weekend I did a couple of dungeon runs which showcased the best and worst of the game.

First I got together a pickup group for the Jailbreak stage of the Onyxia attunement. The resulting group were at various stages - two had completed Abandoned Hope and so were needing the Crumpled Up Note to drop, two others needed the information from General Angerforge and Golem Lord Argelmach, while I already had the information and was ready for the Jailbreak stage.

We cleared the route for the jailbreak and, as we had hoped, both of those who needed it got their Crumpled Up Note and went back to the Burning Steppes to progress their quests. We then killed Angerforge and Argelmach before completing the jailbreak itself.

The whole thing was done in a cooperative and friendly spirit. We had a silly wipe in the jail area while one member was back in the Burning Steppes and another AFK which would have been the end of many groups but this passed with barely a mention. The practicalities of putting a group together in Classic mean that members are treated as people and this really shone through here. The Looking For Group tool in the modern game has upsides, so it's important to remember as well that Classic negates some of its downsides.

Less enjoyable was my first run (in many years) of Lower Blackrock Spire. It was mostly a guild group otherwise I'm sure it would have been abandoned part way through. I'd switched to a healing spec as an experiment and I must admit that about two thirds of the problems were down to me - mostly not my healing as such but my lack of a "normal" resurrection. If a single character dies on a difficult pull then there's the decision of whether to use your combat ress, if more than one then they have to do a corpse run - which is especially a pain in the larger and less navigable instances like LBRS.

There were other problems as well, both mine and on the part of others, and and all-in-all the run was not enjoyable. I think I will swear off dungeon healing - the great things about Classic's class design include that the druid is master of no trades, but the shortcomings here were too much and impacted on the experience for everyone.

Old instances are loonngg

I knew this - I even blogged about how places like the Blackrock instances are "proper" dungeons. But I didn't remember it starting quite this early, or think about how I might square these with my current life.

Since running Maraudon, which I touched on in my last post, I've done two mostly full runs of Sunken Temple - one as a cat which ended after a wipe before Jammal'an the Prophet, and a complete run as a bear. When I started them I didn't think it would be the start of a late night gaming session, but both ended up that way.

Once I get to level 56 I'm planning to spend much of the rest of the game in dungeons, so I'm going to need more scheduled periods of longer play, and more time when I'm not playing!

No-meregan and subsequent adventures

World of Warcraft is odd, because it has so many different parts.

As a solo game I'm currently enjoying it a lot because it has a decent level of difficulty, as I mentioned in my last post. For example, questing for Skullsplitter tusks in the Ruins of Zul'Mamwe (which I've just finished doing) is decently challenging due to the patrols and groups which can punish mistakes or carelessness. It doesn't have the story focus of the modern game (which is much helped by phasing but which also has weird effects when you step back a bit) but the difficulty is its own strength.

The open world multiplayer game is also nice - as a buffing, healing, DPS-ish class you can help out other players in distress either by healing or peeling mobs off them, which gives a shallow social element.

Instances have a deeper social element - you want the right players not just the right roles - but also there's an interaction between the instance design and the player's classes and personalities. I've done a fair few instance runs over the last week or so and they varied a lot:

• Gnomeregan wasn't much fun. Partly this was the instance theme and design - that much Warcraft steampunk is too much for me, and from a tanking point of view there are lots of large, non-elite packs which are a pain as a druid tank. In part it was down to the group personalities - it was far the least social of the groups I've been in recently, seeming almost like a modern, shallow LFG party.
• Having tanked Scarlet Monastery Library plus Armoury for one group I then tried healing for an odd group of four warriors, all with two-handers. As a healing experience it was thirsty and challenging (but not in a good way) and didn't have much going for it socially. At some point I need to do some druid healing in case I end up doing that in the end game, but as an introduction it wasn't what I needed.
• Shortly after hitting 40 I then tanked Cathedral for a competent and pleasant group, by far my best recent instance experience. It's at this point that the grouping aspect of the game really shines, at least for me.
• Finally last night I tanked Razorfen Downs for a slightly odd group - there was loot drama from the quillboars that you meet before starting the instance, and during the instance there were odd moments of the players pulling sometimes in different directions and sometimes in unison. RFD is another instance with groups of non-elites which are fiddly at times, but I was more on my game than with the Gnomeregan run and with the group being more pleasant it overall scored an "OK".

Classic is an interesting experience - some of the "hard mode" design choices, like instance keys and quest design, are enjoyable, but other aspects such as loot drama remind you why Blizzard have changed some of those choices in the modern game.

Finally to note that new Duillnar is now level 41, higher than I got a druid in the original game and nearly as high as old Duillnar after the XP squishes and some experimentation. But even having ignored a chunk of skill training (especially in balance spells) he barely has more than 20g to his name and certainly isn't in a position to buy a mount.

I'd rather be tanking (at least in Classic)

In the last week or so I've had the chance to run some dungeons in Classic - Wailing Caverns (twice), Shadowfang Keep and Blackfathom Depths (twice). On all but one of the BFD runs I was tanking, and overall these experiences have convinced me that that's the way I prefer it.

I consider myself a reasonable tank though I still have plenty I could do better - I have a tendency to forget about some of my longer, emergency cooldowns but also should improve with things like marking secondary kill targets and reorganising after messy pulls. But generally things go OK and my healers are happy.

Things are also helped by players generally understanding that this isn't the modern game, going at a sensible pace and remembering to use crowd control where necessary.

I spent the second half of my DPS run of Blackfathom trying to work out how to suggest to the tank that we swap roles. He wasn't the worst sort of tank (those ones who have taken the role to get into the group but thinks it's just DPSing with a shield - or even on one occasion I remember with a two-hander!) but didn't seem to know how the theory translates into practice. If you're a healer or squishy DPS in that situation you just try to make the best of it, but instead I found myself in a sort of halfway house - going to fetch untanked casters who were attacking the healer, or swapping to my shield to interrupt (no Pummel yet!). We exchanged a few whispers and he was clearly trying, but not really succeeding.

One thing I didn't ask, but will do next time in the same situation, is ask "would you rather be DPSing?".

In Battle for Azeroth I've also now run the three dungeons initially available to the Horde and I was struck by how raid boss design has bled over into dungeons, with things like the Tainted Blood debuff being needed to beat Transfusion on Priestess Alun'za. On one hand this is unsurprising as the great majority of players must have raid experience now, but it also means that really before entering a dungeon you should read up on it. At this stage in the expansion it's reasonable to expect this awareness, but I wonder how Looking For Group went in the early stages.

As an aside Grulnak is currently two bubbles off level 112, and while I'm enjoying the single player story of BfA it's Classic that has me gripped.