One of my many secrets to surviving the time of pandemic has been spending time in World of Warcraft. No matter how long I am away from the game, coming back to it always feels like coming home. We shall not look at the /played time for all of my characters because it would probably frighten me, but needless to say I have spent many an hour poking around in this game since it launched in November of 2004. I go through these periods where I attempt to be super serious about content, but my happiest times are always when I am just poking around and doing casual stuff on my army of characters. I find leveling to be exceptionally calming and before the pandemic I had two characters at 120, and now I have 1 Alliance side and 10 Horde side. Leveling is just something that gives me an opportunity to turn my brain off and relax, and stop worrying about everything that is going on and every possible interaction that I might encounter.
Most recently I had been working on my Mag’har Orc Shaman and I had a really fun time leveling it. Always in the past I have focused entirely on melee characters and as a result I have always leveled Shaman as Enhancement. This time around I decided to mix things up and leveled from the very beginning all the way to 120 as Elemental. I have to say Elemental is exceptionally fun with the way the play style factors around various procs. I think what I enjoyed the most is the fact that I didn’t feel squishy in the same way that I attribute to casters in general. I usually had time to heal myself back up when I was taking damage, or hit one of my “oh shit” buttons like Earth Elemental to take the heat off of me for awhile. The only negative is it felt a little weak in the AOE department, and shocks were really the only viable means of tagging mobs especially when it came to world quests. I finished the Shaman on Friday and then turned around and immediately started working on the next character in sequence.
That would be my Vulpera Rogue, because it just seemed to fit given they are a small and tricksy race to start with. I am leveling Outlaw because I still don’t like daggers at all, and am having a great time of it. Tam would be proud as I use the various rogue tricks to whittle my way through camps of mobs. I’ve also learned the joys of Sap and Pick Pocket used in sequence. I am not sure if I have ever leveled all the way through Stranglethorn Vale since it was changed drastically in cataclysm, so I am absolutely enjoying that as well. I should ding 60 before I finish the area and at that point I will likely jump over to Outlands. I’ve recently developed a taste for the Burning Crusade content and it seems more efficient than running through Wrath of the Lich King for that level block.
Now I realize that all of this is going to be meaningless shortly when the pre-patch lands. I don’t expect to make it all of the way to 120 on the Rogue before that happens, which means I will likely be leveling my last character under the level squish. The only remaining character I have horde side is my Nightborne Shadow Priest, and it is currently wearing heirlooms in Ashenvale. I was not entirely certain how well I would do at leveling a pure caster, but at this point I have leveled the Elemental Shaman and the Warlock, so maybe just maybe shadow will feel natural after those. At least in the case of Shadow Priest I still have a bunch of ways to bring my health back up… which is not a thing you have on a Mage which is why I ultimately used my boost on that character.
Other than that I have been running Coren Direbrew each day on my army of alts, mostly just to farm a few trinkets and that I guess it feels like the thing to be doing. I really enjoy World of Warcraft when we are in these in between times and there is zero pressure to be leveling or gearing. My hope as is always the case is to go into this expansion without feeling the need to chase other players in level or in gearing. However I also know that once I get in the thick of things that the old instincts will kick in and I will apply pressure to myself to rapidly move through the levels and be “ready” for things I am not likely going to do. Right now my plans are to do some Mythic+ key pushing, but for that I need to figure out a viable group. Right now we have my Paladin and Grace’s Monk, so I need to sort out who else we might have access to. I am targeting a EST/CST friendly time frame so apologies to my West Coast friends, but yall need to operate way the fuck too late for my old ass. Hopefully I can make something happen, but for now I am happy leveling my alts.