Kill Ten Rats

I noticed that my cooking and fishing had fallen behind during my leveling binge in Outland (to say nothing of my lowly Blacksmithing). Catching fish in an area that would feed my cooking score was giving me more trash catches than I would like, even with the Nightcrawlers the nice ghouls had given me. I decided that a good way to raise skill would be to catch Old Ironjaw. If I was going to want the achievement sometime anyway, I might as well get points for working on it. I had made a few tentative casts into the pond before, but I had never really set out to catch him. I announced in guild chat that I was staying there until I had Old Ironjaw or 375 skill.

Just 772 fish and 3 lesser healing potions later, I had 375 skill. I guess I’ll try again sometime.

: Zubon

Having reached 60, with alts at various points, I became able to give my refer-a-friend an instant level 60. Well, instant would be pointless: might as well create another alt myself and run through the newbie town, because that gets you to level 9 (with triple-xp) in less than an hour. Might as well save those granted levels for when they’re worth more.

So we made alts and quested our way to Goldshire. The next time we got together, he thought it would be fun to play those characters again, so we did most of the Goldshire quests. That, plus running to Westfall for the gryphon (plus some minor violence along the way), left us at level 14. Turning in any quest yielded multiple bars of xp.

That almost caught up to the first alt from whom I was going to start granting levels. That is the Mage, painfully leveled solo with the pitiful mana regen. His Mage reached about the same point in a coupe nights of easy grouping. He hasn’t even twinked this one, because it has not mattered: it goes too quickly, and who needs to farm more heirloom gear when level 60 is right around the corner?

I like my shiny new level 14 Rogue. Woo! But it makes playing solo kind of pointless. I would be better off dual-boxing, putting a character of his on /follow, and getting more rewards for everything I do. Which I have done, when there was a level-relevant character available. If nothing else, summoning a friend to a quest hub for an effectively free level at quest turn-in is nice. But it does make playing without him seem like a waste of (2/3 of my) time.

: Zubon

The expansion packs have non-linear increases in power. This goes beyond the tyranny of levels: the numbers become so large that it is only the same game because of overlapping mechanics. It is not so much an expansion pack as a sequel that imports your achievements and some trophies.

I tagged along as 3 level 80 guildmates took out the 1.1 million hit point Ragnaros. A difficult raid for 40 level 60s becomes somewhat difficult content for 3 level 80s. I don’t think the Priest had any heals smaller than my hit point total. Current endgame characters are literally orders of magnitude above the original endgame. It makes everything that came before superfluous, like having an artillery squad plus one guy throwing rocks as hard as he can.

Mixing the two is silly in the other direction as well. If it were possible to hit an “aggro everything in the dungeon” button, level 80s could hit it and solo most of the original dungeons all at once. If a level skull attacks you, there is no point in even resisting someone who does 10 times your damage with 10 times your hit points. I am on a PvP server, so anyone capped and bored can cut off a [patrol * sight distance] chunk of a contested zone at will. (Relatedly, although in WoW you also get a giant hammer while the kids get sticks.)

As I ponder being done and having won, the feeling that it is no longer the same game is very relevant. If it is some whole other game, there are lots of new games that are new, rather than the same thing with bigger numbers.

: Zubon

There seem to be two stories:

1. Nature is being corrupted/despoiled. Go fix a bit of it.
2. Show your respect for nature by killing animals.

: Zubon