Classic Thoughts

I’ve been very quiet over the last couple of days. This is because I’ve been busy playing Classic, primarily. Well, you know, and working, celebrating my nephew’s fifth birthday, etc.

But I’ve been playing a lot of Classic. Naturally, I have Thoughts and Feelings!

Honestly, props to Blizzard for keeping the servers up. My group and I landed on Westfall, after originally planning to go to Pagle. By and large, most of us got the names we wanted, which was nice. Anyway, on Monday evening, a bunch of us logged in and were amazed by all the people in the starting zones.

I have never seen so many people in Northshire in my life.

Of course, with this concentration of people came the lag. As, I presume, more layers were created, I saw things fade in and out of existence. Eventually, my brother and I, plus one of our friends, Kam, all managed to group together and did all of Northshire together. Eventually, Kam got her imp, we finished our Northshire quests (after I got Judgment — so useful for tagging mobs instantly!) and we went off into the wilds of Elwynn Forest.

While primary professions only cost 10 copper apiece to train at the Apprentice level, FUN FACT, secondaries are a whole silver each! (Part of me is still amazed that I have five million gold on retail and I’m struggling to scrape up silver to train, etc.)

The hardest part of the evening wasn’t the lag, but rather tagging mobs. Props to Kam’s imp for being on aggressive and tagging some kobolds in Fargodeep Mine and some Murlocs at Crystal Lake!

It took us dozens of tries to get Garrick Proudfoot back in Northshire. At least half a dozen to get Princess in the pumpkin patch (once we found it). Let’s not even talk about Hogger.

But props to my group for mostly living through everything!

I eventually had 10 silver and made my way up to Stormwind to get a guild charter. Coming into Stormwind… well, it was an experience. I turned on the music to get the full effect and got chills down my spine as I entered the original Stormwind for the first time in years.

I managed to get a bunch of random folks, as well as a few of my friends, to sign the guild charter and our guild, Faded Heroes, was born. I thanked the randoms and booted them and we went about inviting all our friends as they logged in.

The goal had been, for me, to spend a couple of hours running around and earning silver to make the guild charter in Stormwind, which is quicker to get to from Northshire than Darnassus is from Aldrassil. Then, I was going to swap to Kurn. But it took me FOUR AND A HALF HOURS of playtime to get ten silver to use on a charter, so I was already nearly ten and I stuck it out to get to level 10 on the paladin.

After day 2, my hunter was also level 10. I died a LOT. The Barrow Den is The Worst, and Ursal Mauler, well, get yourself a group. At level 9, I joined up with a random level 9 rogue and we wiped four (?) times before we got him down. But we got it done! And what lies next for Kurn is getting a pet! Very excited.

Hilariously, I had to turn in a couple of quests to Fandral Staghelm. Now, I remembered him from Vanilla when I was fighting him in Firelands, but it was really very weird to meet him again for the first time, with that context! I remembered him being a jerk, but he is REALLY a jerk. And so, as I read the quest text and such, I remarked, aloud, how happy I was to have killed him a number of times in Firelands.

So what do I think about Classic? Loving it. There are a lot of things I’m having to untrain myself about — sparkling quest objectives, quest stuff on the map, the hunter dead zone, aspects and tracking vanishing once you die and needing to be re-enabled. The retail game has made me soft!

I’m also having to re-learn how to hunter. Paladin, less so, but wow, the dead zone is bigger than I remembered, Concussive Shot isn’t as effective as I remembered… Without a pet, against higher-level mobs, I had to kite them! I was never the BEST kiter, but I could certainly kite Drakkisath. I used to kite some blue dragon up to Everlook, over in Winterspring. (Can’t, for the life of me, remember its name.) Still, there I am, in Teldrassil, kiting furbolgs all over the damn place. And mostly living! It was the harpies in the Oracle Glade that wrecked me.

Looking forward to having a pet so I can stay at range!

Overall, I’m loving what I’m doing in Classic.

Tell me about your Classic experiences!