I was looking for great story and in comes Tyrande, flying in and seeking vengeance for her people. Only to.. fail? Ysera appears alongside her friend to help her through this moment of failure. It was a decent story. I gasped as Ysera appeared again, even though I knew she was reborn in the Shadowlands. The story wasn’t disappointing. It was decent. I did want more. I hope I do get more. But then the questing started and I was hoping to get much more excitement back into retail than I did.

One of the things that I love about retail over Classic is the fact that I don’t have to nearly kill myself using Shadow Word: Death to tag mobs since the patch that occurred in late Burning Crusade hasn’t happened yet. The one where I can tag mobs just by putting my dot up instead of having to wait for that first tick. The one where people can’t ninja my mobs because I didn’t realize anyone was around and didn’t open with a Shadow Word: Death. I also love that mobs can be tagged by anyone, as long as it isn’t tagged by a group or the opposite faction first. I can just dot everything people are killing, get credit for the kills/get to look the bodies for quest items, and call it a day. I don’t like in retail that they make these quests where only one person can grab and item and the rest of the realm is trying to do the same quest only they can’t because only one person can grab it and the respawn timer is apparently 20 minutes. (Needless to say, as soon as I see these types of Maw/Korthia quests, I just don’t. I don’t need the rep that badly.) If I wanted to get annoyed by questing, I’d play Classic.

And I do play Classic a lot more now that I’m not struggling as a holy priest in Vanilla. Turns out, being a healer is more fun with friends you make along the way. Shadow has practically no downtime when questing, which I like. I’m only 63/64ish, which isn’t bad considering the limited play I’ve been able to get.

I just want flying. I’m sure if I had flying, I’d play retail more. Mostly because Revendreth is the worst zone and I refuse to do dailies there until I get flying. Also, it’d make leveling up my alts a lot easier. I have a lot of those. I know. I’m spoiled by the ease of retail, but that doesn’t mean I’m not thriving in Classic either. The fact that I have leveled so many alts means that I’ve done the quests enough that I know how to cheese things a little to make life easier. Like farming up glowcaps and fertile spores before you get to the Sporeggar rep in Zangarmarsh. Free XP tip, courtesy of BluishOblivion.

This patch is a bit lackluster from the patch that they hyped it to be. The zone is okayish looking. But it’s nothing spectacular. So far my favorite thing about it is that I don’t have to stop doing Maw stuff because of the Jailer debuffs. I think I like that even more than being able to mount there finally. I’ll still play because I find the game to be mindless fun that allows me to just play games without taking things too seriously. But, the next expansion better be a stellar one because eventually people are going to stop throwing money at this game. Looking at you, Activision.