They finally got me back. All the new things, the ease of getting a character caught up, and the fact that I miss playing MMOs all pushed me back into World of Warcraft. Reactivation was simple enough, and once the client had enough downloaded to jump into the game, I found myself staring at a very familiar character selection screen, albeit with some slightly unfamiliar names displayed. At some point along the way my various characters had lost their names. Logging back in required a rename on first entry. Fortunately, Kaelisse still wasn’t taken.
I guess I never really planned to stop playing WoW, it just sort of happened. A gradual fade out over time. Had I planned my departure, Lissy would have logged out from somewhere meaningful, like the Blood Elf capital city, or Dalaran. Instead, she popped back into the world in the middle of Thunder Bluff, which led to a pair of immediate questions: “Why here?” and “What was she doing in Thunder Bluff, anyway?”
I vaguely recall something about chasing low-level quests to see what had changed with the Cataclysm. Maybe that was it? Why I didn’t use one of the alts I’d created for that I don’t know. It was incredibly heartening, though, to get an immediate greeting from Guild chat. The Mistweavers were still alive! From there, began the process of reassembling a functioning talent tree, and sorting out a combat rotation. Fortunately, Wowhead is also still alive and kicking. One respect later, I had a functional Demonology specced Warlock kitted out in her best gear from six years ago, ready to take on all sorts of new challenges around Azeroth.
What was I doing here? I think I vaguely remember something about fishing…
Step One, get out of Thunder Bluff.
One zeppelin ride to Ogrimarr later, and Lissy had collected a couple of new quests that I hoped would point her in the direction of new content. But wait! What’s this Pet Trainer? All of her collected vanity pets (with a few exceptions) now have levels of their own, and can battle other pets like WoW Pokémon? And there are even more pets and creatures out in the world to capture? A whole quest line, even, to become Azeroth’s greatest pet trainer?
Lis. Lissy. KAELISSE! Sorry readers, it appears we’ve lost Lissy the ‘Lock to squirrel chasing for the time being. We’ll have to check back in with her in a couple of weeks. I’ll try a different approach.
Kaelisse in all her best Cataclysm gear, pre-rename.
The “different approach” was to jump over to the server where my brother and sister-in-law play, and roll up a new character there. This seemed like the perfect time to utilize the Class Trial feature that I’d heard about, and soon I had a Draenei Monk named Landralus ready to jump into the fray. And jump he did! The Class Trial puts newly created characters straight into the action, kicking off the battle of the Broken Shore which sets the stage for all of the action in the Legion expansion.
Truth be told, Landralus didn’t see much action on the Broken Shore. The group of players was sufficiently large that he would maybe get in one or two hits on an enemy before it died. The tutorial did, at least, help get a basic combat rotation set up.
Next up, was a Monk specific trial. For this, Landralus would travel to the home of the Monks in Pandaria, defend the temple against more demons from the Burning Legion, and become the new leader of the order. Then he needed a new weapon. This necessitated a trip to acquire an Artifact weapon, something that was introduced with the Legion expansion.
Landralus prepares to enter the trials.
These later two adventures gave a much better feel for how the character class plays in combat. I don’t play a lot of melee DPS classes (my leveling progression of a DPS-specced Tauren Warrior stalled out around level 40), and it was interesting to get a taste for how in your face damage classes live. The end of the artifact weapon quest line was also the end of the class trial. To continue would require using a Level 110 character boost token. These can be purchased in-game, however the Battle for Azeroth pre-order bundle also comes with one.
Had I wanted to, I could have tried out as many other classes as I felt like. Perhaps I’ll check out Demon Hunters at some point, or see how the Dark Iron Dwarves live, but for now, a Monk seems like a good fit.
We’ll check in with Landralus and Kaelisse again in the next couple of weeks.
