From a purely "and what did we achieve today, hmm?" standpoint, the answer is "not bloody much", which is the entire point of Classic. I tromped around Westfall killing some wildlife, bemoaning that maybe one out of four goretusks had livers and stumbled across a beach covered in crabs. These are my beloved loot crabs from days long past. They provide a couple of types of meat, which is useful for people leveling cooking and the occasional pearl, which I think is used in making rings? At any rate, they are safe and easy kills and although their meat doesn't fetch much now (because the demand isn't there yet and supply is high), I made a footnote to come back in a few weeks to clean up.
Between collecting assorted boar parts, shooting dozens of crabs for fun, and completing the westfall stew quest, I was able to reach level 12 and thus gained the ability to heal ScratchFever. He himself has made it to level 11 and level 4 loyalty so his appetite, while still unreasonable, is at least manageable. After collecting nearly half a gold, I blew all but a few silver on training and an underpriced 8-slot bag. I have everything trained except a melee movement debuff, but it was either that or a bag and honestly, I value inventory space so much more.
I also created an alt because YES, I AM THAT TYPE OF PERSON. Thus a new human priest was born. I played through the Northshire Abbey and had an insane amount of fun randomly buffing and healing people as we collectively murdered a billion kobolds and wolves. Upon reaching level 5, I made it down to Goldshire and called it a night. This will be a fun character to piddle around with and the knowledge that at some point people will laughingly tell their friends that they teamed up with "Somerando" to heal their Deadmines run gives me such a wicked grin.
Really enjoying Classic. There's no push for dailies/weeklies, no general sense of "OMG! I'm falling behind!" or FOMO, particularly if you mostly solo. It's a leisurely stroll that costs $15 a month.
From a business model standpoint, it's interesting to see two sides of the same coin from the same product over its lifespan, particularly running side-by-side.
Classic is your "gym membership". If you can get lots of people paying to play, but kind of half-assing it, you're winning! The social and exploration aspects are what keep people engaged moreso than a higher ilevel.
Retail is the casino-- you want to keep people present and pulling the slot machine levers for the dopamine fix. Everything must get done and it must get done quickly!
It relies heavily on "sunken cost fallacy" to keep people engaged.
Here I -almost- started writing a treatise on the contributing factors over the years that led to this shift in perspective, (phasing, cross-server grouping, warforging/titanforging, homogenization of loot, simplification of statistics, etc.) but it's enough for me to recognise it's a different draw and that draw is far beyond mere nostalgia.
Friday, August 30, 2019
Thursday, August 29, 2019
"I take off my robe and Wizard hat…"
I submitted my resignation from the Azeroth Inc. raid team earlier this morning. "It's not you, it's me." has never been more true. Arcane is simply not in a good spot right now and we're up against a tough DPS check. Flawless mechanical execution isn't enough: you also have to be tall enough to ride that ride. Even with really nice gear, I'm falling flat. No one had said anything directly, but we all can see logs. I'd much rather bow out gracefully and do something I enjoy than be a millstone. For the record, I did try out Fire for a few hours, but trying to retrain myself after (literally) thousands of hours as arcane-- that's just not happening. Net result: weekends now free.
Back on Bloodsail, Magrom continues puttering around. After long and careful thought, I dropped my money making professions and replaced them with mining and engineering. (Engineering gives me bullets, bombs, and better guns). I will probably live to regret this decision, but I've made it this far in life making consistently bad calls and I see no reason to stop.
Hunting for copper ore put me on the east side of Elwynn Forest when I hit level 10 and I had to choose between going to learn pet stuff or finish a few quests in the area. Given it was a long ass walk back to Stormwind, I opted to stay in the area, recovering insignias from dead guards, clearing a murloc infestation, and depopulating the woods of prowlers and bears. By the end of it I was about 10.7 and I decided to push eastward into Redridge Mountains for the flight point at Lakeshire. There's no FPs at all in Elwynn Forest proper. There's generally one point per zone and the Elwynn Forest one is in Stormwind itself. If nothing else, it would save me 20 minutes of jogging later running all the way there and then back.
Once in Redridge, I find a copper node and happily set to it. There's a few spider corpses nearby, so a few murder hobos are probably in the area. Then I notice the corpses are level 16 and were vanishing in preparation to respawn. Oh dear. Fortunately, I was able to hi-ho myself out of there in the nick of time and I was able to pick up the flight point unmolested. I was hoping to be able to score huge experience from a couple of easy quests in the area, but I wasn't quite buff enough to be trusted by a little girl to retrieve a necklace from the bottom on the lake. Such is life.
With a fast path back to the east secured, I returned to Stormwind to train my level 10 skills-- and find I need to go back to the Dwarven homelands to learn to tame animals. Ok! One tram ride later and a brisk jog to Kharanos later, I'm tasked with training a variety of pets to see how they feel. This provided an unexpected challenge. The roving packs of murder hobos weren't leaving ice bears, snow leopards, and wolves to some random hunter to stumble across-- just acre after acre of dead animals I could no longer skin. *facepalm*
Eventually I was able to run through the entire series and dinged level 11 in the process, before settling on a snow leopard I named "ScratchFever" in honor of "You Awaken in Razor Hill". The cat gets random cheers and applause wherever I go. It is also, however, clearing out all of the meat I'm able to stuff into my bags. I picked "cat" because it comes with a healthy DPS buff (10%) and doesn't sacrifice too much health as a trade-off, but it eats like nobody's business. There's 6 levels of "loyalty" and pets gain xp, levels, and skill points independently of the hunter. The lower the loyalty level, the faster they get hungry. Freshly tamed pets are at "teenage boy" levels, so I watched my "I'll use these when I learn cooking!" stockpile diminish steadily as I adventured.
I returned to Elwynn, but this time I headed in the opposite direction to Westfall. I poked around and progressed on a couple of random quests. There's some challenges here. ScratchFever is keeping the heat off me initially, but he's dropping like a sick beat in half of one. That means additional recovery time for re-summoning and re-feeding, since pets generally become unhappy at dying to Harvest Golems, vultures, coyotes, and everything else. The fact Scratch is also woefully underleveled (just dinged 9!) isn't helping a bit. Then there's the inventory factor. I have a grand total of 28 inventory slots (not counting the ammo pouch) and westfall is bad about everything being used in quests. Space is already tight between bombs, crafting mats, food for me and the bottomless cat, emergency healing potions, and such. I can realistically get another 6 slots by picking up a cheap(ish) linen bag now that I can afford it and I'll need to prioritize that.
Tonight is my eldest daughter's 18th birthday, but afterwards I shall dine on Westfall stew!
Back on Bloodsail, Magrom continues puttering around. After long and careful thought, I dropped my money making professions and replaced them with mining and engineering. (Engineering gives me bullets, bombs, and better guns). I will probably live to regret this decision, but I've made it this far in life making consistently bad calls and I see no reason to stop.
Hunting for copper ore put me on the east side of Elwynn Forest when I hit level 10 and I had to choose between going to learn pet stuff or finish a few quests in the area. Given it was a long ass walk back to Stormwind, I opted to stay in the area, recovering insignias from dead guards, clearing a murloc infestation, and depopulating the woods of prowlers and bears. By the end of it I was about 10.7 and I decided to push eastward into Redridge Mountains for the flight point at Lakeshire. There's no FPs at all in Elwynn Forest proper. There's generally one point per zone and the Elwynn Forest one is in Stormwind itself. If nothing else, it would save me 20 minutes of jogging later running all the way there and then back.
Once in Redridge, I find a copper node and happily set to it. There's a few spider corpses nearby, so a few murder hobos are probably in the area. Then I notice the corpses are level 16 and were vanishing in preparation to respawn. Oh dear. Fortunately, I was able to hi-ho myself out of there in the nick of time and I was able to pick up the flight point unmolested. I was hoping to be able to score huge experience from a couple of easy quests in the area, but I wasn't quite buff enough to be trusted by a little girl to retrieve a necklace from the bottom on the lake. Such is life.
With a fast path back to the east secured, I returned to Stormwind to train my level 10 skills-- and find I need to go back to the Dwarven homelands to learn to tame animals. Ok! One tram ride later and a brisk jog to Kharanos later, I'm tasked with training a variety of pets to see how they feel. This provided an unexpected challenge. The roving packs of murder hobos weren't leaving ice bears, snow leopards, and wolves to some random hunter to stumble across-- just acre after acre of dead animals I could no longer skin. *facepalm*
Eventually I was able to run through the entire series and dinged level 11 in the process, before settling on a snow leopard I named "ScratchFever" in honor of "You Awaken in Razor Hill". The cat gets random cheers and applause wherever I go. It is also, however, clearing out all of the meat I'm able to stuff into my bags. I picked "cat" because it comes with a healthy DPS buff (10%) and doesn't sacrifice too much health as a trade-off, but it eats like nobody's business. There's 6 levels of "loyalty" and pets gain xp, levels, and skill points independently of the hunter. The lower the loyalty level, the faster they get hungry. Freshly tamed pets are at "teenage boy" levels, so I watched my "I'll use these when I learn cooking!" stockpile diminish steadily as I adventured.
I returned to Elwynn, but this time I headed in the opposite direction to Westfall. I poked around and progressed on a couple of random quests. There's some challenges here. ScratchFever is keeping the heat off me initially, but he's dropping like a sick beat in half of one. That means additional recovery time for re-summoning and re-feeding, since pets generally become unhappy at dying to Harvest Golems, vultures, coyotes, and everything else. The fact Scratch is also woefully underleveled (just dinged 9!) isn't helping a bit. Then there's the inventory factor. I have a grand total of 28 inventory slots (not counting the ammo pouch) and westfall is bad about everything being used in quests. Space is already tight between bombs, crafting mats, food for me and the bottomless cat, emergency healing potions, and such. I can realistically get another 6 slots by picking up a cheap(ish) linen bag now that I can afford it and I'll need to prioritize that.
Tonight is my eldest daughter's 18th birthday, but afterwards I shall dine on Westfall stew!
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Going Whole Hogger
Last night my adventures played out like a Lord of the Rings movie: brief bouts of intense action, but mostly hours of walking. This isn't a bad thing.
Because there are no quest markers of any kind on maps, I rely on my memories of where things might be, the quest text that says where things should be, and, when all else fails, an internet search for where things actually are. I try to save the last for the most dire of circumstances. I'm an Explorer at heart (at least according to Bartle), and if some quest chain wants to send me from Elwynn to Stormwind to Loch Modan, then by Magni's not-yet-diamond beard, I'm going to take a twenty minute detour.
Very little sold in the AH, netting me a single silver. This barely covered the listing fees for everything else. Auctions can only be for 2, 8, and 24 hours, so I was already getting a mailbox load of disappointment. Consequently, I've been vendoring all of my skins and plants and am waffling on trading herbalism for blacksmithing and skinning for mining. I may wear leather now, but I'll get mail at level 20, if I remember correctly… and it certainly wouldn't hurt to be able to craft my own ammo. Spent all of my hard-earned coin on weapon upgrades and I'm now only slightly behind the level curve.
Otherwise, I've been helping keep the peace in Elwynn Forest. The guards keep trying to send me to the border to go somewhere else, but they seem conflicted as to which border. I think the main goal is to keep me away from Goldshire's Inn long enough to turn it into Moon Guard 2.0. So I busied myself with the tasks at hand I was too weak for the previous day.
That's how I found myself standing in a pumpkin patch with several pigs bearing down on me. One on one, I could likely have taken Princess but the two "escorts" that come with her cleaned my clock. After recovering my corpse, I watched the pigs patrol for a couple of minutes. Nearby a couple of people were separately standing around, facing Princess and not attacking anything. I recognize this immediately for what it was. Everyone needs the same thing, but no one wants to shoulder the burden. I chide myself, "Be the group you want to be." I sent out invites and a minute later the three of us are makin' bacon. Another person runs up just as we're finishing and I stick around to help them finish as well. It's a good feeling to help.
A half-hour later, it took four of us to down Hogger. The first attempt was just a mage and myself and it went… poorly. The mage disconnected rather than run back. Fortunately, the area itself had numerous people hunting gnolls for a quest to collect armbands and "LFG Hogger" and "Hogger LF 2 more" was often heard. Still, a death to Hogger is a true Classic experience.
I think tonight I'll try my luck in Westfall.
Because there are no quest markers of any kind on maps, I rely on my memories of where things might be, the quest text that says where things should be, and, when all else fails, an internet search for where things actually are. I try to save the last for the most dire of circumstances. I'm an Explorer at heart (at least according to Bartle), and if some quest chain wants to send me from Elwynn to Stormwind to Loch Modan, then by Magni's not-yet-diamond beard, I'm going to take a twenty minute detour.
Very little sold in the AH, netting me a single silver. This barely covered the listing fees for everything else. Auctions can only be for 2, 8, and 24 hours, so I was already getting a mailbox load of disappointment. Consequently, I've been vendoring all of my skins and plants and am waffling on trading herbalism for blacksmithing and skinning for mining. I may wear leather now, but I'll get mail at level 20, if I remember correctly… and it certainly wouldn't hurt to be able to craft my own ammo. Spent all of my hard-earned coin on weapon upgrades and I'm now only slightly behind the level curve.
Otherwise, I've been helping keep the peace in Elwynn Forest. The guards keep trying to send me to the border to go somewhere else, but they seem conflicted as to which border. I think the main goal is to keep me away from Goldshire's Inn long enough to turn it into Moon Guard 2.0. So I busied myself with the tasks at hand I was too weak for the previous day.
That's how I found myself standing in a pumpkin patch with several pigs bearing down on me. One on one, I could likely have taken Princess but the two "escorts" that come with her cleaned my clock. After recovering my corpse, I watched the pigs patrol for a couple of minutes. Nearby a couple of people were separately standing around, facing Princess and not attacking anything. I recognize this immediately for what it was. Everyone needs the same thing, but no one wants to shoulder the burden. I chide myself, "Be the group you want to be." I sent out invites and a minute later the three of us are makin' bacon. Another person runs up just as we're finishing and I stick around to help them finish as well. It's a good feeling to help.
A half-hour later, it took four of us to down Hogger. The first attempt was just a mage and myself and it went… poorly. The mage disconnected rather than run back. Fortunately, the area itself had numerous people hunting gnolls for a quest to collect armbands and "LFG Hogger" and "Hogger LF 2 more" was often heard. Still, a death to Hogger is a true Classic experience.
I think tonight I'll try my luck in Westfall.
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
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.
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.
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