Month: September 2019

First off I have to say… I am shocked and amused at just how many people ended up reading my “non-post post” from yesterday. I am also thankful for the people who checked up on me throughout the day to make sure I was okay. I have no clue why I suddenly needed copious amounts of sleep Wednesday night, but I most certainly did. Last night however was apparently the opposite and it enabled me to do some shenanigans that I will probably pay for later.

For the better part of this week I have been living in Arathi Highlands working on the warrior quest. The drop rate of the items needed from the elemental “exiles” is sufficiently low enough that when combined with how tough they are to take down it feels like I am mired to almost a halt. At this point I have 8 of one type, 6 of another and 2 of the last. The other side event that has been going on this week is that Eliyon and I have been trying to make some dungeon runs happen. Thalen and Vernie both needed another trip into the Library to finish a quest. We all needed a run through the Armory to get credit for the overarching quest and I think Eli probably wants the axe. Lastly we have all been sitting on a stack of Razorfen Downs quests.

While I failed completely at taking any screenshots of our Scarlet Monastery run, we started there and did the two wings. It was around this point that it was nearing 10 pm and in theory should have been the moment I begged off for the night. However given that last night was effectively my Friday and that I was off work today… I kept going. We all agreed to make our way to Razorfen Downs and start working our way through that instance. I was a bit surprised that Vernie agreed to this given that I think he probably still had work today.

There is an aspect of the dungeon design of Vanilla instances that on some level we knew at the time but never really marveled at. So many of these instances are designed in a way that they clearly expected you to go in and do one side of the dungeon, and then return a bit later to finish out the dungeon and do the other side. So in Razorfen for example you have two sides that are accessible from the entrance. You have the side with Undead Boars that ultimately gave themselves over to the Scourge, and then a side populated with more traditional Undead skeletons and ghouls.

The Boar side starts around 34 and tops out at 39, and honestly was a pretty easy jaunt giving us a bunch of false confidence. So much so that we damned near wiped when we got the first pull of Undead side without being completely ready for it. The level increases to 37-39 for the trash mobs and the final boss is 41 ramping up the difficulty significantly. The wide level ranges I believe are designed to have you split your run up over several nights, like we have done with Scarlet Monastery. We talked a bit last night about how they could have messaged this better, with making having a quest that sends you into the instance and there being an obstacle that you then have to leave the instance to figure out how to get past.

In a style that Grace would have been proud of, we managed to take down the final boss by the slimmest of possible margins. All it took was sacrificing the tank, because seemingly I was the only one who died regardless of everyone getting super low. Effectively we struggled because we were “ignoring the mechanics”. The final boss summons 3 ghost adds when you have pushed the health past certain thresholds. What we should have done is stopped dpsing the boss and cleaned up the adds before returning to fight the boss again. Around the time the summon happens the boss roots the tank making it super hard for the adds to be picked up.

Instead in truth nub fashion we burned harder escalating the problem and making it a race to one of two conclusions… we win or we wipe. The problem is that once you start a death race like that, you really cannot back out and try the actual strategy. The only reason why we won at that point after failing the mechanical components was by sheer determination to push through. As a result however I have a really nonsense sword that will hold me until I can get a Thrash Blade, and something to fill my neck slot, along with the lopsided tanky shoulders from Scarlet Monastery. The only negative of this whole situation is that we didn’t wrap and I didn’t make it to bed until roughly 12:30. A really long time but a really fulfilling one as we knocked out three instances.

I am struggling a bit when it comes what to call this post because I don’t want it to seem overly alarmist. That said I have noticed something over the last seven days that gives me concern. I mentioned these thoughts to my friend Eliyon yesterday and at 7:00 pm CST last night he agreed that there might be something to it. Last week there would have likely been 8-10 people on at that time of the evening, but last night there were three… and of those 3 one of which was Stargrace’s auctioneer that she leaves logged in most of the time while doing other things. There has been a noticeable drop off in activity.

Granted at this point we are twenty four days after the official launch of WoW Classic, and also at this point folks are exiting what I would call as the “easy levels”. At 37 the going is so much slower than it was even in the 20s and I have been chewing on this level for a couple of nights now. Granted I am not focused on being optimal and more focused on trying to get as much ore as I can to push up blacksmithing and mining, along with keeping up with the constant maintenance of needing to craft food. As a warrior I eat an excessive amount of food, and in order to lower downtime I am eating every 2 or 3 encounters.

I am not sure if I can really call this a trend yet since it more or less just started happening over the last week. I know of several cases where folks have stuff going on, like Grace for example is going to be out of pocket for another two and a half weeks or so. The west coasters don’t tend to start showing up until 9 ish my time, which means that in many cases we are ships passing in the night. They are coming on as I am logging off and I think players are starting to move away from playing the game at any cost and trying to find a more healthy balance. All of these things are probably adding up to the absence that I have noticed, but it does still give me pause.

For me at least I have not felt the sirens call of something else. I didn’t even pick up Borderlands 3 for example because I knew I would be otherwise engaged. Similarly there is a bunch of stuff coming out this week that I am likely going to just let sit there unpurchased until I hit a lull. The desire to hit 60 and gear up is way too great to allow myself to be distracted by something else. The only thing looming on the Horizon that is likely going to pull me away at least part of the time is the impending release of Destiny 2 Shadowkeep on October 1st. Even my beloved Monster Hunter World and its Iceborne expansion has not been enough of a draw away from Classic.

The positive is that there seems to be a group of us all in the same level range that seems to be similarly committed to this nonsense. So long as I can keep easily building guild groups I am likely going to stay engaged. However I wanted to throw this discussion out there. Have you been noticing a drop off in your own guilds? What things have been pulling players away from the game that you have noticed? I am curious if I am alone in this observation. Ultimately I am hoping this ends up being just a “bad week” and not a lasting trend. The servers are still actively populated and the chat channels lively, but I have noticed a thinning out of players in the level range I happen to be in.

I think ultimately I am finding myself between waves. I am too slow to be part of the “first” crowd, and too fast to be among the folks that are still in their early to mid twenties. I think maybe I need a change of scenery. I have been focused on grinding out the items needed for the Warrior level 40 weapon quest, and doing runs along the walls of Arathi for ore. This means I am moving every so slowly, but it does give me constant access to raptors which serve as two sources of cooking materials. I still have no clue where I am going to get the money in a few levels for a mount, and I figure that is going to be another phase that stalls me out as I go find something grey to grind. The various “gold farms” that I have heard of are all heavily camped, so I may just go without a mount for awhile.