Vichyssoise continues her leveling adventures in World of Warcraft Classic Season of Discovery. After completing the quests available in Tirisfal Glades and putting a significant dent in the available quests in Silverpine Forest, Vichy set off for Kalimdor, specifically The Barrens.
Stormcaller, I don't know you, friend, but you can be your own version of Rose from Titanic. You have the hair. Remember to force me off of the piece of flotsam we share later in the freezing waters.
The Barrens is such an iconic zone in World of Warcraft. I would wager I've spent more hours in this zone than any other in my 19+ years playing this awesome game. The Gold Road is likely the most tread path in the game. The dangers across this savanna biome range from lions to raptors to hyenas that seem to have an aggro radius only dwarfed by Son of Arugal in Silverpine Forest.
I know better than to get too close to this guy, but he's also sneaky. And so I've been killed by him at least twice already in this play through. Really, as a priest, he just has to look at Vichy and she withers.
Questing in The Barrens has Vichy nearing level 20, which is quite exciting. I did give in and install Carbonite to expedite the questing process for The Barrens given that it is a larger zone and that I want to maximize my time spent in a given area of it.
It's amazing how vividly some of these quests stand out in my memory all of these years later. I was ready to find Mankrik's wife's lifeless body, bloodied and beaten. And of course then I also knew I would be slaughtering quillboars for the better part of an hour to collect 60 tusks. I was lucky to join a group, which made the killing faster if not the overall process of collecting tusks. It's nice to experience that social aspect of the game again.
Getting to The Barrens required taking the zeppelin from outside of Brill and The Undercity to Orgrimmar. In Classic, the zeppelin lands outside of Orgrimmar, which I had forgotten. I also had forgotten the simplicity of the layout of old Orgrimmar, too. It's actually beautiful in its own way - seems lighter than current Orgrimmar.
Travel in Classic is its own experience. There will be no mounts in this first phase of Season of Discovery as mounts are not available until level 40. I suppose we'll be getting them in the second phase, then.
But travel, whether on foot, by bat, or by zeppelin, takes time. I imagine for many folks this element of SoD is the least enjoyable, but I find it to be calming in its own way. There's not really a way to rush. It's the antithesis to dragonriding in retail.
And there's really nothing to be rushing to - no community event type rares or events. Classic WoW is the Motel 6 to retail's Hilton. And yes they'll leave the light on for you.
I wonder if all of this time running from place to place, particularly in The Barrens, is one of the needed conditions for the lunacy in chat. It might be that or the insanely low drop rates for everything from zhevra hooves to raptor horns. I killed well over 10 zhevras to get 4 hooves (which wasn't a terrible drop rate all things considered), but I needed to kill over 30 raptors to get 5 horns. I'm sure I made some skinners out there quite happy.
There are also the quests that take you to the capital, back to the questing area, and back to the capital. These quests drive me nuts. They require way too much back and forth for travel this slow.
While thinking of a negative aspect here, it's also necessary to mention that some folks in the Classic community are still acting like it's 2004, being homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, and racist. There is no place for this behavior in the WoW community. And no, it's not "a joke" just because you're laughing. Get a life. Grow up. Or just get out.
The best part of WoW is its diverse player community. It's not OK to make anyone (other than bigots) feel uncomfortable in game.
I had better get back to the grind. I have a death run ahead of me to pick up a rune in a tower on Fenris Isle.
With that, I'm OOM.
Thanks for reading. For Azeroth!