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!

Glad to be in the fifties

Levelling progress seemed to slow down significantly around level 47 or so and my enthusiasm started to wane. A long clear of Maraudon and the associated quests (after two partial runs) got me over the hump to level 50 and things seemed to improve from there. I think the difference is mainly emotional: levels are still passing slowly, but level 60 is now in sight and some quest rewards and especially dungeon drops are items I'll take into end game dungeons and even into raids (hello Blackstone Ring).

Now at level 53 I've just caught up on some of the Balance spells that I avoided training while saving for my mount, which may have been foolish as I also need to scrape together money for Devilsaur Leather.

Finally mounted

At about 80% of the way through level 44 I finally scraped together enough gold for a Striped Nightsaber. If I'd been more diligent about auctioning my items crafted through leatherworking I could have managed this sooner, but certainly not immediately after hitting level 40.

I now have a serious amount of catching up to do on my skill training!

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.

Diverted in Dustwallow

I really like the melancholy (and slightly threatening, for low level Horde) feel of Ashenvale, with its beauty and its ruins and the waves lapping at Zoram Strand. Blackfathom Deeps nicely carries this through, with a (long) sand-floored cavern introducing the partially ruined temple.

Having recently tanked Blackfathom a couple of times Oswyn had to go to Dustwallow Marsh for Expert First Aid - Under Wraps and (non-violently) crossed paths with a high level Night Elf. It occurred to me that I'd never given the Alliance faction much of a go - although I levelled a druid to (I think) 38 and a hunter to somewhere in the 50s these were always solo characters as alts to my Horde main(s). So, given the comparatively early stage of the game, I thought I should give Alliance a proper go.

My initial plan was for a Night Elf warrior as a straight swap - female, since NE warriors should be female - but that character model is a stand-alone advert for diversity in gaming (seriously, look at the idle animation or sword and shield attack animation) so she only got as far as level 5. I reasoned that if I was going to play a male Night Elf he might as well be a druid, so new Duillnar is now level 31...

Levelling a druid is an odd experience. Up to level 10 it's a question of casting from afar and then when the enemy gets close finishing them off with a stick - familiar as far as I can tell to all casters. At level 10 you get bear form and so can now switch to claws, then at level 20 with cat form the game changes and casting largely goes out of the window (except for healing after fights). The contrast between the durable bear and fragile cat took a while to sink in, and prowl got me into a few situations which then went horribly wrong, but overall I'm really enjoying the class.

To me the class balance in the original game is really quite impressive. Druids have a very broad toolbox but only have access to a fraction of those tools at any one time, and deciding whether to switch forms to access other tools along with the limitations of the associated form takes some getting used to. I'm slowly getting better at those decisions but making many mistakes along the way.

The challenge level of the game is also enjoyable - camps of humanoid mobs are often quite threatening when level appropriate, and often a short-term group or careful planning and use of resources are needed where in the modern game you'd expect to win through alone.

Overall I'm still conflicted about the Alliance - the quests and overall feel are rather more bland, but also have a coherence that the mish-mash Horde lack. It's also much more populated which can be a drawback in some questing spots but holds out hope for more options in the end game.

So far I'm pretty happy with it though. Druids give so many options in any questing group, while for dungeons I've be solidly tanking (Deadmines three times and Blackfathom Deeps once - really enjoying the disarm immunity and snare escapes in the latter!). The limited toolbox but many toolboxes thing is frustrating at times but overall I think I'd now find it hard to give up.

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.

Alliance experiments

I have a level 85 dwarf warrior (formerly Shank) and a now level 86 dwarf shaman ("newly" created with the help of the Mists of Panderia level boost) which I thought would be interesting to try as a somewhat higher level view of the Alliance side than my druid Duillnar could give me. After the usual actionbar pondering and some quick experimentation out in the world I queued them as tank and healer respectively and coincidentally ended up in the Siege of Niuzao Temple both times.

My main observation is that when dungeoneering it's surprisingly non-obvious which faction you're on. Between the pace of the game and the various spell effects and so on you don't really see the other characters like you did in the original dungeons or do at a higher level for example in pauses during a raid.

Otherwise -

• I love Ghost Wolf. I'll use it when there's even half of an excuse, and often it's actually handy!
• Tanking as a warrior is quite enjoyable. Heroic Leap is fun and useful and combined with Intercept gives good mobility. As with my druid, my warrior has good AoE threat abilities and with groups who are still levelling gear imbalance isn't an issue.
• It's become more obviously a computer game than an RPG. While this was always to some degree the case, abilities such as Heroic Leap to me are suspension of disbelief-breaking - while it may be appropriate with the ever-increasing level cap it also highlights the (relative) consistency of the Classic game.

So if dungeoneering isn't an issue, at least as far as my view of my own character impacts me, and given that I find the Alliance side levelling rather mundane compared to my Horde experience, I can mostly see myself sticking to Oswyn and Grulnak. I might visit my dwarf shaman Grumgar occasionally for Alliance tourism, taking advantage of the button familiarity given to me by Grulnak, rather than trying to get my head around any of my former array of characters.