My Hearth's in the Highlands

My hearth's in the Highlands, my hearth is not here
Seven minutes of flight time, and chasing o-gier.
A-chasing the raptors, iron ore I fol-low
My hearth's in the Highlands, cause gryphons are slow.

Continued my conquest of the Arathi Highlands, farming the ogres and iron found along the southern border with some juicy raptors and spiders nearly for both variety and animal bits to feed the never-ending meat pit that is Fluffers' gullet. Thus my ascent to level 37 was relatively uneventful.

One thing I neglected to mention in a previous update was that I took the time to (finally) do something I should've done a couple of weeks ago-- locate and install a version of the Auctioneer app that is classic-friendly. I have a fairly inefficient method to my farming which, contrary to the opening bit, involves porting back to Stormwind twice a level to resupply, load up the AH, and generally do dick-all for a bit before getting on the 7m10s flight back to my hunting grounds. Yes, I COULD be doing a lot of that better. I could move to Ironforge, which is significantly closer. I could just fly over to Southshore and mail everything to Hiddenpocket and let her deal with all of the AH shuffling. Honestly, the long flights give me a chance to stretch my legs and/or play Peggle.

As an amusing aside, the Peggle for WoW has a dozen different WoW-themed levels with its own talent trees. Earn talent points by beating or fully clearing levels and… well, it's more fun than it sounds and you can set it to auto-close when your flight lands.

Looking to mix things up a bit, I took a detour down to the Bog of Eternal Stench-- err, I mean the Swamp of Sorrows. The Swamp of Sorrows was originally one half of the area formally known as "The Black Morass" before some orc terraformed half of it into the Blasted Lands by opening a portal to Outland. The Swamp contains the village of Stonard, one of the few Horde outposts in the Eastern Kingdoms, and has no Alliance flight paths at all. I nipped down to Nethergarde Keep to pick up the FP there, before heading back into the swamp proper.

I don't have very much positive to say about the place. The zone has an unappealing green filter over it and it's a swamp. You can't really put much of a spin on a couple of square miles of downright fugly terrain densely populated with crocs, spiders, and jaguars. There were only a handful of quests I could find and none were particularly "fun". Kill a few dozen rats, fetch a bag, and escort an idiot through an entire village of things that will swarm and kill you. In a way it was a bit like a crappy version of Dustwallow Marsh, but without the charm.

After nearly a half-level, I decided I was done with the place (for now) and returned back to Stormwind and-- great googly moogly! Wealth had poured in from many auction sales and I was now sitting above 80g. Level 40 mount! Here! I! Oh, crap.

Magrom's a dwarf. Specifically a dwarf who's been adventuring almost exclusively in human territory. While the humans honor Magrom's achievements, the dwarves are barely "friendly". What this translates to directly is I'm not getting a large-enough break on the dwarf mount and you can't buy cross-race mounts unless you are exalted with that faction.

So now I get to choose: go back and waste a day or two cleaning up level 6-20 quests trying to raise the rep a bit or suck it up and pay significantly more for my mount at 40? Either way I'll NEED to fix the reputation by 60. That's literally hundreds of gold difference.

Take Me Home

(With apologies to John Denver)
It's almost seven, the server's queued
Deeprun Tram ride and Trade chat's rude,
Wife is nearby, rolling her eyes,
How can something so old bring me such delights?

Classic WoW, take me home
To the pla-a-a-a-a-ce I belong
Elywnn Forest… hunter's mana
Gankin' rogues, take me home….

All the memories, start flooding back
Questing without markers, and an ammo pack
Running from wolves, near kobold mines
Fifteen years washed away, and I'm feelin' fine

Classic WoW, take me home
To the pla-a-a-a-a-ce I belong
Elywnn Forest… hunter's mana
Gankin' rogues, take me home….

Anyway, it turns out you can go home again! The servers are choked with people checking out the novelty of it all and at one point Twitch reported 950k people watching other people playing Classic, so the hype is real.
For my own part, I created Magrom the Dwarven Hunter and set to it. He's named after "Magrom the Red", a bartender in Asheron's Call's town of Cragstone. I spent countless hours with my buddies at "our table" there and I always loved the name.
Over the course of the evening, I ran around like an idiot and finally escaped the dwarf/gnome starter area. Questing was expectedly slow in the beginning due to everything being over-camped. Boss kills and picking up things that respawned had fairly organized lines where everyone waited their turns to kill/loot. For bosses, people formed orderly groups of 5 to speed things along. It was like England Online with the queues. The occasional line-breaker was called out in chat for public humiliation. ("Poncho Linebreaker", your dark reputation grows) and since nothing is cross-server, reputations will stick as the community solidifies.

Honestly, that's the part I'm most excited about: having a server community mean something again and player reputation mattering.
I picked up herbalism and skinning for now, but since everyone is doing the same, plants are nigh-impossible to come by. Leather, however flows freely into my tiny, tiny pack. Inventory is tight. I have just 16 slots and no bags (who can afford them?). Skinning tools, food, and quest items eat up a considerable chunk of that limited real estate.

Money goes out as quickly as it comes in. With each kill netting 1-3 copper and skills costing a silver plus to learn, the fact I've socked away 6 silver towards eventual upgrades seems amazing. Gear remains a constant struggle. Now level 7, I'm wearing grays and white leather and cloth that have dropped off random kills. I'm still using the level 1 starting gun and I don't get a pet until level 10.

The struggle is real, but I'm having a level of fun I haven't experienced in a while.