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.

Level 58, and too much to do

After the doldrums of the late 40s, the 50s are busy...

I'm sure I didn't play this way the first time around (I imagine I hit 60 and then thought "right, what do I do now"), but despite levels taking a long time I'm moving faster than my list of targets.

• I have 294 points in leatherworking (target: Devilsaur Leggings)
• I'm attuned to Molten Core, and at the Jailbreak stage with the Onyxia attunement
• I'm 25% of the way through Unfriendly with the Timbermaw Hold (target: Warbear Harness)
• I'm juggling quest log space for pre-quests for dungeon or world elite quests that award decent gear
• and so on...

Classic is this clever (evil?) sequence of to-do lists which I want to make my way through reasonably efficiently - I don't want to get to level 60 and be too squishy to tank the harder dungeons, and this approach does mean that I'm not too stressed about reaching the level cap as it's kind of looking after itself.

I've completed 3 runs of Blackrock Depths and have mostly re-learnt my way around - the first run was a complete mystery and it's a bit odd having the geography come back to me. At level 58 I feel ready in a sense to progress to Lower Blackrock Spire but wouldn't feel confident keeping aggro from max level damage dealers. Players seem to understand the difference from the modern game and despite a few difficult pulls on a couple of the runs the groups have been a lot more pleasant than the typical dungeon finder companions. But I want to keep things that way.

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.

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.

So it begins (again)

WoW Classic has got me!

The adverts tempted me to have a go and I'm really enjoying it so far. Unfortunately I wasn't sold enough to pre-reserve any character names, so my Forsaken warrior is now called Oswyn.

I'm not really sure what my favourite bits are but -

• I love the ambient music in the Barrens
• Although I've levelled I'm not sure how many characters through Kalimdor I'm enjoying the sense of "going out into the unknown". Though a slight shadow of the first time around, that first cross of the bridge into the Barrens was exciting, and with new-Grulnak I did the run into Ashenvale to pick up the Splintertree flight point at far too low a level, keeping a careful eye out for red-level mobs
• Although some people of course are level 60 already it's still an occasion when you see someone on a mount (i.e. level 40!), and generally people are levelling in a helpful spirit such as grouping for shared credit when Kreenig (briefly) spawns
• Levelling weapon skills are weirdly enjoyable, as you know it's something the modern game has lost

Initially I made a new Grulnak before re-thinking with the help of a re-read of the posts on this blog. Given my alt-itis it seemed daft to have two versions of the same character, especially since shamans weren't especially viable main healers back in the day. Since I used to (mostly) enjoy tanking, and often undead to me feel more "right" dungeoneering than do orcs, I'm planning - at the moment - to replay Shank, with somewhat more foresight of the end game experience this time.

Having levelled through Durotar again I thought I'd do a fly-through of the modern version with level 98 Grulnak. It was interesting to see things like the new developments on the Echo Isles, but I was surprised and bizarrely offended that the harpies and quillboars around Razor Hill are now around level 20!