Yet another topic I referenced the other day that I feel like going into in more depth 🙂

I said about finding joy in the game, and that there were more reasons to be invested than just chasing better gear. Anyway one of the reasons I gave was about story and lore and that animations and just getting into the feeling of playing different classes, meant it was more than just pushing a different combination of buttons. I said that I tried to pick my race/class combos based on what made sense to me lore-wise.

Right so that’s what I’m saying with this post! It’s not anything clever, it’s just me running down the different races/classes and saying what I think works, and what doesn’t, and why. It’s all opinion-based and probably quite rambling 🙂 I thought about doing this per-class but I opted for race in the end. So starting from the top:

I added this almost as an addendum to my post yesterday about gear but I’m going to highlight it just because 🙂

Since I resubbed I’ve been struck several times about how beautiful the environment is. Now some of that is because it’s now rendered in gorgeous ultrawide, and because I can actually see what I’m looking at as it’s not all so dark *rolls eyes* but I think it’s also because I’m prepared to see it. I felt this way when I resubbed for Legion and that was on the old dark screen.

Prior to that I would say the last time I felt a sense of wonder re: environment was when I saw the Valley of the Four Winds for the first time (a very light zone). My breath caught in my throat as my character crested the hill and I just went WOW because WOW.

I remember playing Swtor once, on the Imperial Agent, and my jaw was on the floor at the animations and how I could snipe across platforms (warcraft would give line of sight errors for that) and it was anyway just an incredible moment.

In the post yesterday I said that my main point was if the game is broken down into simple terms it’s “hit buttons and stuff dies” and so while the buttons might change sequence a little (alts) or the mobs might change (encounters), it’s still just hit buttons and stuff dies. There has to be some kind of immersing factor to transcend what the hands are doing, so that it feels fresh and different and fun otherwise there’s no playability.

These days I sometimes narrate what I’m doing, like if I’m on my pally I’ll respond to dialogue on the screen with stuff like “I’m Tirion Fordrings heir, I’m the light I will save you!” etc. or on my Demon Hunter I’m the biggest spacebar clown in the world and I’ll often say wheee when I glide off stuff and cackle because in some respects Demon Hunters got flight early :p

I also try and be thematically appropriate in my choice of race/class combo, and sometimes even spec. Like my Void Elf had to be a Priest because of shadows so duh has to be shadow spec. I used to be Disc mostly on my old priest so shadow is actually entirely new to me. If I ever play my Nightborne, that’s a mage and I’ll spec arcane because duh magic hehe.

My Demon Hunter can wield other weapons but I always instantly transmog back into Warglaives because nothing else is appropriate imo. Since being granted Ashbringer my pally refuses to wield anything else. You know stuff like that.

The game is just a game where you hit buttons and stuff dies unless you make it more than that. You can make it more in whatever fashion feels right for you but I guess I’m just saying a sense of wonder helps, you enjoying the sights of the world and the animations and of course very fundamentally (for me at least) the story.

I’m sorry I gotta. I just read today’s The Queue on Blizzard Watch and there was a question basically saying “haven’t played in a bit, what should I do?” and the suggestion said “quickest way to gear up” and then “fill any gear holes” and then “group content aka mythic+” and I just looked at it and went really?

Blogging about stuff is actually super cool because I have an archive which goes back to early 2012 and I’d already been playing Warcraft for about three years at that point. So I don’t have my perspective from day one but I do have my transition from solo player —> pick-up raid healer —> raid healer —> raid tank —> raid leader/main tank —> solo player.

It’s funny considering how much raid tanking I wound up doing, and how much I preferred it to healing, that I have an article from 2012 explaining how much I hated raid tanking. You see actually I never hated it, it’s just that it scared the heebie-jeebies out of me. Once I got to the point that I felt I could do better than the PUGs my guild was forced to call in, I realized that I wanted to tank and then I really grew to enjoy it.