It’s happening again. Instead of diving into the latest expansion with arms open and eyes wide, I’m doing everything to avoid even logging in to my only 110 character. This happens every time, and I’m still at a loss to explain why.

Running dungeons with the Alliance guild is one thing, but everything else I’m doing is pure avoidance. So far I’ve rolled up one of each Alliance race, tried them out, deleted them. Settled on a Dwarf Hunter alt, then decided the name would be better for a Panda, but do I really want to play a Panda? Maybe a Human. But wait, I’m an actual human, why would I play one in a game.

Then I thought I should level a Highmountain Tauren - the character model is beautiful, especially those massive antlers, and it would be fun to unlock their epic looking cosmetic armour. 90 levels before I’d have to face BfA - that should be time enough to get used to the idea!?

Realising this was kind of ridiculous, I caught up on a few blogs, thinking that working my way through the great Blaugust list TAGN put together would focus me on the task ahead. But instead, reading through them made me start to ponder rolling up some characters in some completely different MMOs.

Armagon Live’s enthusiasm for SWtOR (and the great transmog in that post), along with the long term commitment to the game from blogs like Going Commando, make me enthused to don a lightsaber and jump back in again.

Likewise the ongoing chronicles of GW2 from Bhagpuss (who even when wary of the direction the game is taking makes it sound interesting) lures me to GW2, and it’s hard to resist the deep appreciation Blaugust creator Belghast has for ESO. Or Syp’s relentless enthusiasm for LotRO and DDO.

Speaking of Dungeons & Dragons, my DnD group are playing Curse of Strahd (aka Ravenloft revisited), which led me to thinking I should maybe play Neverwinter Online in order to flesh out ideas for the tabletop game.

Meanwhile my Horde Hunter stands patiently waiting but gets no closer to being played. Does anyone else have this problem?

Ah well. If nothing else, my BfA avoidance scheme has made me appreciate the gaming blogosphere all the more. Even though we can’t play every game, the enthusiasm of the blogging community means we can get close. Thanks all!

Tonight our troop of Alliance debutantes headed into our first dungeon, the deadly Deadmines.

Deep beneath the mines of Moonbrook in southwestern Westfall lie the Deadmines. Despite the demise of the Defias Brotherhood’s leader Edwin VanCleef at the hands of Alliance militiamen, the Deadmines is still the Brotherhood’s most secure hideout since Cataclysm. Here the survivors of Edwin’s crew toil alongside new recruits, so that the Defias juggernaut ship can be complete and the kingdom of Stormwind can be brought to its knees. All this is happening under the vigilant eyes of “Captain” Cookie… and Vanessa VanCleef.

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Going back to Deadmines raised some old memories. Way back in the day I was escorting a Guildie through Deadmines in search of a Rogue twinking chest (is twinking still a thing?), and as he was busy looting while I one shot everything in sight, my young Rogue friend coined a nice term for what I was doing: PVE ganking. The Defias mobs had zero chance, like an 80 whacking on a freshly minted level 1 in a PVP zone. That quickly joined our other favourites - Bag Rage (need more slots!), Drop Logic (“Maybe you have to kill the tar monsters in the tar for the teeth to drop?"), and Threading (for when you move through a group of mobs without pulling a single one).

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It’s a great dungeon, and a great first dungeon if you’ve never seen one. Plenty of mobs and bosses, fun mechanics, and the lovely moment when you bust through the mines and emerge into a huge cavern with a fully fledged pirate ship ahead.

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It’s also pretty funny for a dungeon - most are pretty standard heroic fare, but this one has ogres wielding kobolds as weapons, goblin bosses riding ogres in turn, and a murloc boss who tosses slowly rotting food whilst sitting in a cooking pot.

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Plus that murloc boss drops a weapon that is so ridiculous that Blizzard had to make a special rule to forbid it from being used for transmog.

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It was a great reunion for our group of players who used to play together regularly, with plenty of laughs and ridiculous situations, especially the revelation that our new player hadn’t realised he could change his characters appearance when he was created, so he has whatever the randomiser came up with - we had wondered about the haircut choice. But he’s a real character now, a budding hero of the Alliance, so he can’t possibly be changed.

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We also had a friend join from Chicago where he’d moved many years ago, which was a great reminder of the power of gaming and MMOs to bring a dispersed group together. As the freshman noted, Warcraft is almost “a weaponised banter and nostalgia machine….really if you were all spread out it would almost be mandatory to play something like this.” We are, and it almost is.

One of the goals I’ve always had in Warcraft was to hunt down every rare - or ‘silver dragon’ - in the game. It’s a fun goal, and a great way to tour some of the more out of the way caves and bogs and mountain tops.

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Plenty of people of done it of course, and I’ve started various blogs in an attempt to screenshot each find before inevitably running out of steam. Cymre at Bubbles of Mischief has the best presented list that I’ve seen - a labour of love with screenshots and many pages of adventuring.

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With the new Alliance Guild, it’s been fun tootling around Dun Morogh searching for the four rares that patrol the zone. I’ve found and, uh, murdered three of them, but the fourth - Great Father Arctikus - seems to have some kind of pathing bug that means he’s inside the mountain stone rather than the caves below. Oh well. His time will come!

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One of the other reasons for this project has been it’s away of paying tribute to the friend who tempted me into WoW way back in the Burning Crusade days. We discovered rares together in the game, and I remember taking a hardcopy of a Prima Guide to photocopying shop to make an A3 print of the list of rares it contained. We took a sheet each, and planned our assault on each rare with great care. My friend is no longer with us, but hunting rares sometimes brings him back.

Day two and I haven’t managed to logon for BfA play yet, missing the launch rush completely. Which doesn’t really worry me, as like many others I plan to level nice and slowly, investigating all the nooks and crannies and getting the most out of all the little details to be found. I like BarelyReadableDiary’s turn of phrase: “taking a ‘loremaster’ style approach to levelling”. Perfect.

Along with that post, there’s been a bunch of nice reflections of highlights from Legion. One of my favourites is from my Warlords Guild leader, Navimie of Frostwolves, who asked her guildies to supply a screenshot of a special moment from Legion. Such a great way to commemorate an expansion from many different angles. Zeriah and Cinder have also published some nice thoughts on Legion and what they’re looking forward to in BfA. I think my lists would be:

Legion moments

1. Highmountain Tauren - competing as my favourite zone ever.
2. Unlocking the Underlight Angler - a fairly predictable highlight!
3. Flying - I fully support keeping us grounded as I think it really opens up the exploration game, but the sense of freedom when you can fly is also special.

BfA anticipation

1. The story - everything about the lead up has been pretty epic, fascinated to see where it all leads.
2. New Allied races - the Dark Iron Dwarves look fantastic. Not quite sure how I’ll manage that given they’re Alliance. Maybe that’s a good use for the 110 boost.
3. Participating all the way through - a bugbear of mine has always been a tendency to only play at the very end of expansions, which leads to missing a lot of content and playing catchup. This time I hope to stay vaguely current throughout.

Looking forward to logging on and getting started - maybe by the weekend, and hopefully before the end of Blaugust!

I normally cycle to work each day, but today had to catch public transport. It was about 10 minutes before BfA launched when the tram pulled up, and I was greeted by an unexpected sight.

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Classic. I was on it when BfA went live (the tweet storms were in full flight), so made sure I was in the right carriage too.

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The tram was pretty full, but not nearly as busy as Brann. https://twitter.com/Shadesogrey/status/1029117435515789312 Have fun everyone!