Draenored

2016 eh. I decided early December to jump back into Warcraft for a while - the itch had been growing and December, summer, and holidays always seems to make me pine for Azeroth¹

My main, Knive the Tauren Hunter, had reached 100 during mid 2015 but done little more before I unsubbed. She was of course stationed in her Garrison, the great dwaal of Draenor. And for the first few weeks back I basically didn’t leave the place. The compulsion was just too great: send followers out, place work orders, collect ore and herbs, check missions, send the followers out again. But it is so boring - you’re basically not doing anything on your character, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of just wash, rinse, repeat. Poor Knive was just a button pusher for her followers and the garrison as a whole. This wasn’t gaming. Enough!

A project is always the best way to get me going, so I turned to Wowhead’s amazing character planner tool. It’s a great motivator and brilliant way to get your head back into the game after a break - giving a list of nearly complete achievements, collections, quests chains of interest, etc. The standout suggestion was of course the flying in Draenor achievement. Flight! Netherwing Drakes! Let’s do this.

I had completed the treasure finding (fun!), 90% of the exploration tasks, needed to wrap up the Arak and Nagrand quest chains, and then there was the new Tanaan rep grinds. And I finally realised I needed to pay attention to that annoying guy in the Garrison who kept pestering me about quests. And so it begun.