You are always the hero in your story.

Well not always but for the sake of Warcraft let’s roll with that old cliche. Some quests are obviously more momentous than others but I was just in the Troll baby pool, and I helped Vol’jin kill the Sea Witch that had driven the Darkspear from their home in the past, helped him avenge the death of his father – I was level 5!

Obviously there are quests that ask for ten boar flanks for a pot of stew, and lots that aren’t to do with the world ending, or major lore figures. However, I think most zones try and lead up to some climatic moment in which you can feel like a hero. It could be argued that each expansion asks for more and more of the heroes, that they take on bigger and bigger challenges. But at the same time there is always the smaller quests too, and deep down it’s all story – there is a narrative structure to it. I think it would be reasonable to say that blizz has got better at storytelling over the years. Those random small quests now feel a lot more important, they are framed better, the story is more cohesive and it’s deeper. Although I guess my point is that they still exist. There are big hero moments at every level, and grunt work at every level.

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Back in the day – Cataclysm – I loved running dungeons. Those three Hour of Twilight dungeons, I never got tired of them. I ran them on all my alts and I liked it. I’m on record as saying this before, I could dig in the archives for proof but I can’t be bothered. Anyway, the two reasons I give for why I found this seemingly repetitious content compelling was that I got to play the different class, and get into the class fantasy of it all AND I got to make incremental progress so my playtime felt worthwhile.

I’m talking justice/valor points here which went the way of the dodo right after.

I’m pretty sure I’m also on record as saying that Mists killed alts. I’m pretty sure I wrote complaining posts about it, about how blizz had gutted my playstyle, how everything had become raid or die thanks to the reputation gating etc. I wasn’t happy basically but it was ok because I was raiding on my main, so I just got my alts up to level to use the farm and get mats and then produce stuff re: professions that my main wanted. However once I stopped raiding, that’s when I took my first break, and then Warlords felt like more of the same and that’s when I quit for 2.5 years, which I thought was for good at the time.

INVASIONS

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The title of this post, is the title used on the Blizzard Watch article. I wrote a very long comment and so I thought I’d save it as a post because I think (if I do say so myself) that I made some good points.

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I started playing in Wrath and I don’t know if it was the classic quests or what but I developed this hatred for questing and for levelling – my sole intent was getting that alt to max level. I was very focused on the goal and basically wanted the journey to be as fast as possible.

BUT after I took a 2.5 year break from the game I had an epiphany. All we’re basically doing in combat is hitting buttons to make stuff die. Buttons change order if we’re on different classes, surroundings change, mobs change but the basic game mechanics are the same at level 40 as they are at level 120. Sure, there are missing abilities and I feel that keenly sometimes when I reach for my interrupt button only to realise I don’t gain that skill until a future level.

However my point is I’m kinda playing devils advocate I guess and flipping the script as to what levelling is. The article makes is sound like a necessary evil to get to max level, however like I said we’re still hitting buttons whatever level we’re at so why not just enjoy the journey? I have a max level Alliance and a max level Horde – I’m gaining the rep, doing the world quests, the warfronts, the islands, the raids etc. I’m seeing the endgame. If I play a different class, I could be doing those same activities OR I could be enjoying a varied view by doing quests/dungeons etc. in another place.

What is the goal of playing another class? (again playing devils advocate here) isn’t it just to experience the act of playing another class? and the different playstyle it offers? Why then not just enjoy actually playing that class while levelling? The levels are cool – I seriously love the ding whoosh! But gaining levels is like a nice side-benefit to the real goal of just enjoying playing a new class/spec.

I think the fact that Warcraft is so old, and has so many expansions, is a massive strength because it provides a huge amount of content. We’re not limited to the endgame activities at 120 in Kul Tiras/Zandalar – it’s a big game and we can play in all of it.

To go back to the point, which is asking about a level squish. I guess basically what I’m saying is I don’t think it’s necessary/matters. We can play the game at any level. I think for people that do want to rush to max level they need to squish the experience requirement as they have a few times, so it doesn’t take any longer to get there than it did in the past.

Alternatively maybe it would be cool if they opened up the world more. They have a huge game world and they only actively send us into old parts of it on occasion (I loved doing that in the Legion class quests!) or there’s the Raiding with Leashes. They could do more. I guess what I mean is if they wanted to do a level squish they could still offer the varied view by expanding timewalking or something.

OR something just occurred to me – what if they did away with levelling altogether of ‘old’ content? All new characters start at 110. They could then introduce some new quest hubs which would offer players a chance to “experience the story of the Burning Legion” and that would open by Outland for people that hadn’t done it, or “experience the story of the Cataclysm” or “the story of the Lich King” – so people would be directed to all this content that they’ve made, it wouldn’t be wasted content. Alternatively for those players who have done it all, they could just be instantly at the current expansion and only have 10 levels to go through. That could be a way for everyone to win.

So Tuesday’s post was a load of bollocks right? I was having a shitty day and it gave me something else to think about, also I guess it can be a handy reference for a real post 🙂

I said in the post, in a rather off-hand way, that male/female model, spec and even weapon choice are all factors over and above the race – in fact I would go so far as to say they would be exclusionary details for me, and rule that race out of the class fantasy.

Hunters! They are the new warriors I believe that every race can be one but for class fantasy not every race should … or should they?

Let’s take the Forsaken whom I said shouldn’t be hunters as their prey would smell them coming. Turn that on it’s head, and concentrate on the rage a lot of Forsaken have, ‘hunting’ down their targets suddenly makes more sense.

I also said that I felt female Mag’har Orcs could be rogues BUT this was based entirely on the picture on the allied race website because I can’t unlock them and have never seen them in game, it is based entirely on an image in my head. In my head.

Basically we’re crafting a narrative. That is the word fantasy after all, a fantasy, a story – a headcanon.

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.