Category: warcraft

Compared to Tirisfal Glades which was teeming with Undead, the Red Cloud Mesa in Mulgore was a relaxed and mellow gathering of Tauren, as befits their nature. It may also have to do with being on a PVE server instead of PVP… but I like the other theory better.

The two zones are quite different to begin with. Tirisfal funnels players down a road and hems you in quite tight, where Mulgore is wide open spaces with freedom to roam. It’s more clever design from Blizzard, establishing the dispositions of the races through the environment in which they’re introduced.

The sound design of each zone also reflects the personality of their occupants. The Tauren are greeted with wonderful birdlife, the crackling of warming bonfires, and the creak of windmills providing sustenance to the villages. The Undead on the other hard are haunted by swirling wind and distant cries, and the incessant heartbeat of a life they can never live. I’ve really noticed the sound in Classic, with music down and ambience all the way up it’s spectacularly good. I wonder if in Live I’m too busy doing jobs – and too efficient at doing them – to just stop and listen.

I also thing it’s vastly better how it doesn’t take long for Classic to introduce mobs that will agro. The starter zones on Live are all sanctuaries of passive mobs, and I think it’s an improvement to have a bit of danger even while you’re learning the ropes – it adds excitement and risk to the experience.

Levelling a Warrior is pretty simple stuff, with only a few abilities. I made sure to get to level four so I could train Charge, which establishes the core Warrior characteristic early on – furiously running into battle and not stopping until either you or the enemy has fallen. In Classic even a Warrior has to be a little cautious though – chain killing cougars was enough to get my health whittled down to the point where I had to pause and recover.

I was amused to see a fellow Warrior charging toward a Plainstalker without a weapon equipped and punching it until it dropped. That reminded me that there is an Unarmed skill in Classic, so I took my weapon off too and ran around punching things. Very silly but very entertaining too.

Classic continues to enchant, I really love the feeling of starting from nothing, not being able to lean on alts and cash reserves and banks full of help. Over the years I’ve sometimes decided I’ll start a whole new stable of characters on a fresh server, but it’s never had quite the same feel – I think because I’ve always been able to switch back to my established roster of equipped and enriched regulars. On Classic that’s not possible, and planning out a set of characters to support and compliment each other with professions and experience is a fun project in itself.

A next step is looking around for a guild. I wish there were more Australian bloggers around so there could be a guild with a strong community of people who also write about their experience – something like Belghast’s terrific House Kraken. Once I’m through the level 10 specialisation choice (and once I’ve chosen which character to concentrate on first) I’ll start testing the waters of some of the broadcast guild invites. Another approach might be to run some Dungeons and observe which guilds seem to have good attitudes – and a good name! – and trial a few that way.

#Blaugust30

It’s as good as I hoped – and may even be better.

The Oceanic servers filled up pretty quick, or at least the PVP ones did. By the time I was home from work the main server (Arugal) was full with a 10,000 person queue and 260 minute wait. Blizzard had opened up a second PVP server called Yojamba (which sounds more like a FFXIV server than WoW, but apparently it’s an abandoned Troll isle in Northern Stranglethorn) in the middle of the day, but that too was full and queued.

As I pondered taking it easy on the medium-busy PVE server Remulos, another new PVP server appeared, and with an awesome name too: Felstriker. That’s a much better PVP name.

So I hopped on, recreated Stroeb the Undead Rogue, and logged into a world of wonder.

During the voice over intro there were streams of Undead emerging from the starting crypt, most with single-barrel names (thanks to the server only just popping), and all moving with purpose toward the first quest hub.

The intro movie is very different to the current one, much more sinister and full of forboding, telling us that the Undead don’t give a damn about “the primitive races of the Horde” (let alone the Alliance), and will slaughter those that would hunt them as monsters:

They will go to any lengths to ensure their dark plans come to fruition. As one of the Forsaken, you must massacre any who pose a threat to the new order: Human, Undead, or otherwise…

One thing I noticed far more was the sound design. Along with the fantastically spooky music and muffled screams of the the intro, the entire zone pulses with a super low heartbeat which you don’t notice until you stop and listen for a few moments. The subtle tension that adds is terrific.

Instead of taking the first quest, I just wandered through the starter area, poking around the edges of the map and seeing what was out there. I soon found Caretaker Caice, who wandered about restlessly with a lantern in front of a crypt, occasionally philosophising about the Undead state. Purely flavour, and purely great.

I started attacking the many Duskbats that roam the zone, and was quickly equipped with top quality Grey gear – I even got Grey upgrades to my existing Grey gear. And, somewhat amazingly, a 6 slot Small Brown Pouch. Who said bag space would be a problem?!

The bat hunting was so fun I ended up levelling all the way to 3 without moving beyond the graveyards and surrounding hills. During this I was entertained by all manner of memory jolts, from weapon and defence skill upgrades to the beginnings of the skill tree adventure.

Before logging off I tried one of the rites of passage of Vanilla by successfully kiting a Dusk Bat down into the spawning crypt.

It all sounds so simple, but there’s something undefinably magic about it. I’m sure a lot of words will be written trying to capture exactly what that is, but for now I’m just thrilled we’re playing.

#Blaugust27

I’ve been trying to work out exactly why Classic has become so appealing.

There’s the obvious things like revisiting the very first outing for a game I’ve devoted long hours to. I wasn’t there at the beginning, so while many of the features are familiar from Burning Crusade, this will allow us to experience where it all started.

Then there’s the somewhat masochistic appeal of having to struggle instead of cruise. As has been well documented, unless you’re raiding ‘ahead of the curve’ the retail version of Warcraft has become a walk in the park when compared to ye olde days. I can’t remember the last time I felt any sense of danger or need to be careful in game, and purple loot is no longer a thrill, it’s an expectation.

Which is not to say the live game isn’t entertaining. There is entertainment aplenty, great storylines, beautiful design, and it still has the capacity to surprise even 15 years later. It’s just that it is now a different game to what it was – again, if you’re not raiding. Raiding has become the sole place where you still have to work hard and have a team.

I started thinking that concept of needing to work with other players gets to the core of why Classic might work, and Belghast’s terrific post musing on MMO communication drove that thought home:

The first MMOs worked and created the lasting relationships that they did in part because we had a serious need for other people. What I mean by that is that in order for us to have a fun night, we needed a bunch of other people to be similarly interested in doing the same thing. This meant that without really meaning it… you yourself were open to doing things that were maybe less than optimal for your evening because it would mean that in turn the other player would be willing to assisting you at a later date.

My fondest memories of Warcraft are raiding Karazhan with one or two close friends and a whole bunch of people I’d never met. We spent hours and hours working together through that epic Raid, slowly improving and progressing, helping each other gear up and talking tactics offline while we waited for the next scheduled run. It was epic, exciting, and the thrill of defeating each boss to allow us to move on was unbeatable.

Taking a team of friends into WoTLK raiding was similarly exciting, and although we only made it into the first wing of Naxxramas before real life struck, that first wing was incredible. We were doing something together through hard work and perseverance, marvelling when our strategy and preparation came together into a well oiled machine. Which didn’t happen often, but when it did it too was an unbeatable thrill.

Of course the same thing could be said to apply to raiding now, but the temptation to just do it in LFR or press a button, as Belghast put it, is often too great. Plus we’re all ten years older, so attention and time is far more thinly spread.

Classic feels like a chance to travel back to a time when teamwork and strong server-based bonds were requirements for success. It’s almost certainly a pipe dream to imagine being able to raid – those ten years aren’t nothing – but even running dungeons and epic quests like Rhok’delar will mean community and communication become paramount, and that might be something special.

#Blaugust21

The reserve-your-name event for Classic seemed to start about as well as the original launch by the sounds, which is appropriate.

I dutifully logged in at 0800 with a bunch of names ready to go, was briefly queued, then connected only to find that all the servers were showing as ‘Locked’. Mysterious.

Clicking on Arugal loaded up a ‘Logging in to game server’ message that sat there doing nothing until I clicked Cancel and tried again. Unfortunately the same thing happened. At that point I decided this could go on for a long time, so I bailed and went to work for the day.

Tonight I logged on again, and immediately got through and onto the Arugal server. A few moments configuring a Tauren Hunter later, I tried my original name – ‘Stroeb’ – and was successful! It pays not to want a real word or popular fake name. I also managed to get ‘Banehammer’ (a favourite WotLK character of mine and my original tank) on the Remulos server, and ‘Angler’ on Pagle – perhaps my favourite of the lot. Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza here we come (if/when Blizzard upgrade Classic to v1.7 that is!).

The idea of Classic has continued to curtail my time on Live, other than the Alliance dungeon progression crew. I’m occasionally dipping in and doing a few Nazjatar dailies, but it’s nothing like the dedication and enjoyment I got working toward Pathfinder I. While I will eventually unlock Pathfinder II I suspect it will be some time coming. Doing things very late in an expansion often works in your favour as buffs and rewards tend to be increased toward the end of days when Blizzard gets everyone ready for the New Thing.

Classic may turn out to be too much hard work once the reality sets in, but for now the idea of a true fresh start – no imported gold, no heirlooms, no muscle memory – is still tremendously appealing.

#Blaugust13

The Classic server names have been released, and it’s an interesting mix. Some are names of famous lore characters – Mankrik(!), Faerlina – and some are well known factions like the infamous Hydraxian Waterlords or the Bloodsail Buccaneers.

There are twelve EU servers, eleven US, and only two for the Oceanic zone. That must reflect the active player base numbers, so we Oceanic players should be thankful there are any local servers – it would have been easy to leave them off, though given the infrastructure is already here for Live the incremental cost would be low. Still – thanks Blizzard.

Another interesting aspect of the Classic servers is the breakdown of types. I wouldn’t have guessed that PVP would be the most popular, but the US realms are broken down PVP (five), PVE (four), RP (one), and RPPVP (one). So overall one extra PVP server. In the EU zone it’s a similar story though the numbers are evenly split six each.

I assumed PVP was the minority these days, especially with the outcry over the factional warfare focus in BfA, but it turns out there’s an even demand for both – at least according to Blizzard’s analysis which we should probably trust given they’re putting hard money behind this.

So while the US and EU have a lot of chioce, for Oceanic there are only two: Arugal (PVP) and Remulos (PVE).

Now obviously the server name doesn’t really matter, but it’s always fun to choose a good name. If we look at the lore, Keeper Remulos is a famous Druid of the Grove – his father was Cenarius and grandparents Elune and Malorne. That’s some serious heritage. But he’s Alliance affiliated and not really part of the Horde story, so not a good match for a Horde player.

Archmage Arugal on the other hand is infamous for two things: unleashing the Worgen and being the final boss of Shadowfang Keep. In WotLK he is raised as an Undead and ends up leading worg packs throughout Grizzly Hills. All in all an entertaining and creepy figure, and much better suited to the Horde – you could even argue, as Rohan at Blessing of Kings does, that the Worgen should have been a Horde race.

So Arugal it is – though because it’s a PVP server I think an insurance character on Remulos is a good idea. And for my third reserved name there’s no question. There’s a US realm called Pagle after the legendary and heroic fisherman Nat Pagle.

#Blaugust10