Pings went out earlier today for Imperium forces to log on as the invaders were piling up a large number of ships in the T5ZI-S system in Delve, which is just one gate away from the Imperium’s main staging and capital system, 1DQ1-A.
Over the course of the week PAPI had been pushing hard to retake and hold the SPNZ-Z constellation which includes T5ZI-S.
T5ZI-S and 1DQ1-A on the map
On the Imperium side the expectation seemed to be that PAPI was going to take its first run at reinforcing the 1DQ1-A ihub, a necessary step before any serious attack on structures in the system can begin. The Imperium put battleships and assault frigates on the T5ZI-S gate in 1DQ1-A and bubbled up the gate to slow any attackers. Capital ships were jumped on to the nearby Keepstar and supercarriers put their fighters on the gate.
Keepstars and Fortizars in 1DQ near the gate
Then word came over coms that PAPI had brought in a Providence jump freighter and deployed a Keepstar in the system, on grid with the 1DQ1-A in T5ZI-S. PAPI had the gate bubbled on their side and had brought in more than 800 heavy assault cruisers with capital ship support to cover the initial deployment of the Keepstar.
Neither side opted to jump forces into the other and once the initial deployment sequence finished and the 24 hour clock start for the primary deployment, both sides stood down.
The Keepstar now deploying in T5ZI
Now things are lined up for another big fight tomorrow, with the Keepstar coming out to anchor at a little after 17:00 UTC. Both sides will be planning and gearing up for that. It will be a weekend fight, so there will be lots of pilots available to get into and fight that develops. We will have to see if PAPI decides to try and cheese another Keepstar even by using the bubble wrap tactic they went with in YZ9-F6 last month, or if they have something new to try.
And then there is the Imperium. Do they have a counter if it turns out to be another bubble wrap drop and what other fresh tactics do they have up their sleeve. We will find out tomorrow.
CCP got the Monthly Economic Report for October out yesterday, which I was looking forward to because October saw a lot of action I figured might impact the numbers.
EVE Online nerds harder
I am going to start with the big numbers, leading with destruction.
September saw 33.6 trillion in destruction. That number got bumped to 45 trillion ISK, with Delve coming out way in front of the pack.
Delve – 10.89 trillion (Imperium)
Lonetrek – 2.24 trillion (High Sec)
The Citadel – 2.06 trillion (High Sec)
The Forge – 2.05 trillion (High Sec)
Sinq Laison – 1.51 trillion (High Sec)
Querious – 1.34 trillion (Imperium)
Pochven – 1.18 trillion (Triglavian)
Oasa – 1.12 trillion (PandaFam)
Metropolis – 1.12 trillion (High Sec)
Domain – 920 billion (High Sec)
Last months number one, Querious saw 2.71 trillion in destruction as World War Bee played out in the region. While there were some big clashes, they were nothing compared to the battles in NPC Delve in early October.
That series of titanic clashes ended when the invaders bubble wrapped their fifth Keepstar drop, but by then many trillions of ISK had been blown up. There was a bit of relief on both sides with that as those fights took a toll in both ISK and personal fortitude.
Besides the spike in Delve, much of the chart looks about on par for normal. High sec around trade hubs tends to see lots of destruction. Of interest is the new region of Pochven, which came in with the October update. I guess the Triglavians were busy cleaning house.
And then there is Oasa, the crab capital of New Eden now, where some players rat and mine 23.5 hours a day. I admire their almost robotic stamina, but somebody has been hunting them it seems. There isn’t anything else going on in that space.
The other big number comes on the mining front where the indices chart shows that mineral prices have hit an all time high.
Oct 2020 – Economic Indices – Long Term
Mineral prices are now higher than even the post dronelands fix when minerals were removed from drone NPCs. So miners must be raking in the loot, right? Well… September saw a total of 27.3 trillion ISK worth of ore mined in New Eden. October saw that rise slightly, to 28.68 trillion ISK. The top ten regions were:
The Forge – 1.6 trillion (High Sec)
Domain – 1.58 trillion (High Sec)
Metropolis – 1.5 trillion (High Sec)
Sinq Laison – 1.45 trillion (High Sec)
Oasa – 1.16 trillion (PandaFam)
Lonetrek – 1.14 trillion (High Sec)
The Citadel – 1.01 trillion (High Sec)
Tash-Murkon – 978 billion (High Sec)
Everyshore – 831 billion (High Sec)
Derelik – 793 billion (High Sec)
Why no overall boost or spike in region totals? Because the same October update that brought the Pochven region also landed a severe blow with the nerf bat on mineral yields for ore, stripping minerals from different sectors of space. If the prices went up and the totals stayed about the same, that means the yield must have been way off. The mineral starvation diet continues in New Eden.
Trade values were also up a bit, moving from 600 trillion ISK in September to 658 trillion ISK in October with the top regions being:
The Forge – 456 trillion (Jita)
Domain – 57.46 trillion (Amarr)
Delve – 24.29 trillion (Imperium)
Sinq Laison – 21.67 trillion (Dodixie)
Lonetrek – 15.48 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
Metropolis – 10.21 trillion (Hek)
Heimatar – 9.64 trillion (Rens)
Essence – 4.91 trillion (Gallente High Sec)
The Citadel – 4.53 trillion (Caldari High Sec)
Oasa – 4.3 trillion (PandaFam)
The Forge, home to Jita and the Tranquility Trading Tower in Perimeter, remain far and away the top spot for trade. Jita, Amarr, and Delve all saw increases in trade, while other regions… and it is the same set of regions in the top ten for both months… were stable or saw slight declines.
Delve, of course, represents the Imperium supplying the war effort. And Amarr, its short route to Jita now cut by Triglavian space, is rising rather than falling now standing on its own. We shall see if that trend continues.
Production also reflects the war effort when it comes to the war, with 122.78 trillion ISK in production taking place in October, up from 114.5 trillion ISK the month before.
The Forge – 21.55 trillion (High Sec)
Delve – 17.31 trillion (Imperium)
Lonetrek – 6.86 trillion (High Sec)
The Citadel – 6.58 trillion (High Sec)
Oasa – 5 trillion (PandaFam)
Domain – 4.95 trillion (High Sec)
Sinq Laison – 4.88 trillion (High Sec)
Esoteria – 3.84 trillion (Legacy)
The Kalevala Expanse – 3.60 trillion (PandaFam)
Malpais – 3.34 trillion (PandaFam)
The trio of The Forge, The Citadel, and Lonetrek remain the industrial core of the game, feeding the Jita markets, but out in Delve the Imperium was busy building replacements for the many ships expended in NPC Delve. PandaFam is also making their way in producing out in their space. Legacy also made the cut in Esoteria, though there is a minor invasion going on in their industrial heartland, with The Initiative joining The Bastion and Ferrata Victrix there.
And, finally, there is the big ISK faucet, NPC bounties. October will be a benchmark month as CCP set about nerfing this with the November update.
October saw 55.9 trillion ISK in NPC bounties collected, up a bit from the 52.1 trillion ISK taken in the month before.
Oct 2020 – Top Sinks and Faucets Over Time
The top regions were:
Oasa – 6.23 trillion (PandaFam)
Branch – 4.24 trillion (PandaFam)
Cobalt Edge – 3.6 trillion (PandaFam)
Perrigen Falls – 2.88 trillion (PandaFam)
Vale of the Silent – 2.52 trillion (mixed small groups)
The Kalevala Expanse – 2.25 trillion (PandaFam)
Insmother – 2.07 trillion (Legacy)
Detorid – 1.97 trillion (Legacy)
Malpais – 1.83 trillion (PandaFam)
Tenal – 1.76 trillion (PandaFam)
Delve – 1.73 trillion (Imperium)
As you can see, the attackers in World War Bee are enjoying a good deal of freedom to rat and mine at home. I tacked Delve on there in 11th place to show that it was still active even with the war having come to the region at last. Esoteria, which was in the top ten last month, dropped down to 18th place. I am going to guess that the minor invasion which I mentioned above might be suppressing a bit of ratting.
So it goes.
We will see in the November MER if the nerfs CCP brought have an impact on the NPC bounty numbers. When we were out in Oasa Fraternity seemed a bit testy about people stealing from their ESS banks.
If you are interested in the charts and the raw data, CCP makes all of that available as a download with the MER dev blog.
As I mentioned in the Stormwind Stockade post, we were skipping straight ahead to Gnomeregan, bypassing Razorfen Kraul. This was, in part, due to Ula demanding that we face something challenging lest her video recaps of our adventures get dull. We cannot depend on Skronk falling off of things every time to liven up a run.
So it was to be Gnomeregan, with the group capped at level 29 according to the MOTD in guild chat and the pinned notice in our Discord.
Not that we were in danger of getting too far ahead. When the designated time came on Sunday afternoon, our lineup was still mostly at level 28. We were:
Ula – level 29 gnome mage
Viniki – level 29 gnome warrior
Skronk – level 28 dwarf priest
Obama – level 28 human warlock
Moronae – level 28 night elf druid
We met up outside the bank in Ironforge to get ourselves together. With an eye towards getting things rolling as quickly as possible I brought my warlock, Winki, to the bank to use the summoning skill to bring Obama and Moronae to us, since I could see from the guild roster that they were strewn about the map of Azeroth and there was no need to waste our limited time on travel.
Summoning before the bank
Still, it took us a while to get sorted and to get all of the quests shared out. Like the Stormwind Stockade, Gnomer has its share of quests.
Most of the quests
We had to trot down the hill into Kharnos in order to pick up an additional one, and I am not sure we got them all. There is quite a list. But once set there, it was off for the instance.
Through the snow to Gnomer
Which is a bit of a trot. And Gnomer is also one of those instances where the elite mobs start before you get to the portal. But that is fine. Troggs are for killing.
And more so once inside. Clearing troggs is a bit like clearing Defias in the Stockade. They hang around in groups and you get the occasional walker… well, runner… passing through, though the runners are at least non-elite. As tends to be the case, the mobs on entering the instance were lower level than us, but that changed as we moved further in.
Moving further in though… nobody brought a map and it had been ages since we had been in Gnomer, so we moved through the instance in what was probably not the most efficient method. But we didn’t fall off of anything, which is a hazard.
We found our way to Emi Shortfuse pretty quickly and ran through her event.
Emi starts us off
The end of that event had no drop. I was kind of hoping for the gauntlets that are a possibility, but we were denied.
Afterwards there was some question as to where to go. I had some recollection of jumping off the ledge to get to the Viscous Fallout boss, but I wasn’t sure that was the best idea. So we decided to just clear our way through to where ever, including that platform in the middle.
Fighting on the high platform
The fact that you can fall off of high places in Gnomer was a bit of a reminder about how things have changed. I recall being in instances in later expansions and finding all sorts of invisible walls that would keep you from falling off into anything.
Given that we all needed a ton of drops and a bunch of the “Coke machines” that are scattered throughout the instance for quests, taking the long way around and killing as we went seemed like a reasonable approach.
At one point we came out into a room that we had to clear and things started getting out of hand. We don’t have anybody who can quickly stop troggs when they start to run… the wind up for druid root is a bit long… so there were a couple of adds from that. We were also fighting on a sloped section of wall with some open doors to other rooms, which ended up in a proximity pull or two. I hope Ula got Skronk falling into one of those open areas on video. The fight seemed to be getting out of hand but we somehow managed to come through it without losing anybody.
Taking a breather after the fight
From there we found our way into the safe zone, where we used the vendor and played with the machines.
3 silver for a piece of lead? At least it gives exp on the first try
After that we carried on to the floor area where the Viscous Fallout lives. We were careful pulling mobs, clearing out a large area around the doorway before venturing in.
Pulling ooze back from the main floor
And then, as we were taking on one of the slimes the Viscous Fallout wandered up behind Moronae and the fight was on. I honestly thought it was just another elemental, and the fight went pretty fast. But, it turned out we had another boss down. He didn’t drop the shoes, which all the casters were looking for. Instead he had the staff. It is a nice staff, but not what people really wanted.
After that we cleared our way back around to the out door and into an area I have heard referred to as “the gauntlet” in the past. It is a long corridor with a walkway up on the left side, both of which had mobs wandering around. You have to pick one or another to travel down to get to the next area. The comedy comes when you’re in one and get close to the end of the other and pull proximity aggro and get a few surprise adds.
Here is where we ran into trouble. At the start we went into the wide section, eschewing the walkway, mostly because there was a “Coke machine” sitting there waiting for us. The pair of mobs next to it didn’t seem like much of an issue.
And then we got a walker as an add. Then an alarm bot showed up and called for help before we could kill it. And then somebody strayed too far left and we got a proximity pull from the walkway. And then another as a walker on the walkway joined in as well. Things were becoming a bit chaotic.
Fight in the gauntlet
At one point, with my taunt on cool down yet again… that is a long 8 seconds to wait… Skronk went down. That was fine, he had a soul stone, we could still pull this out. But then we had to have a discussion about whether or not we wanted to “blow” the soul stone on a fight with trash mobs. I was very much on the “yes, revive yourself and heal me now please!” side or the discussion, and he did use the soul stone. I suppose Moronae could have used his combat ress as an alternative, but we didn’t really have the time to bring that into the debate.
Also, all of our buffs took the opportunity to drop during that fight, just to add to things.
And yet we lived. I figured, after that previous fiasco in the room with the sloped wall, that there was a good chance of us pulling through. Despite being older and rusty and not very well coordinated (I’m pretty sure the voidwalker ran off and pulled another add on its own) we are still not as bad as we were back when we were doing this as a group for the first time in 2006.
Once we recovered and got buffs back up, we decided to take the walkway forward. Its narrow confines had more mobs and would keep us marginally less likely to get proximity adds from the big open trough. We still managed it, but we never ran into a situation quite that bad again.
Through the gauntlet, we ended up in the big room that had the next boss, Electrocutioner 6000, in the middle. We just had to make our way around the room to the ramp up to his platform.
Around the platform, working on gnomish aircraft, are groups of five or so gnomes linked together. They are all non-elite, so the idea was to pull them, group them up, then do “fire & ice” so the casters would burn them down. And that sort of worked. There were a few hiccups. Amongs the groups there is the occasional elite mob. The pathing for the gnome groups is still as broken as it was back in the day, which makes getting them all together awkward if you try to pull them through one of the areas they refuse to enter. And, frankly, mage AOE wasn’t as OP effective as I recalled, so we had to get in and chop down individuals.
Still, we managed, nobody died, and we made it to the ramp and laid eyes on the boss in not too long.
There he is
Despite the Electrocutioner 6000 being a few levels above us, level 32 to our mostly level 29 group, with only Ula having hit 30 so far, the fight with him was short. There are no special mechanics, it is just a “there he is, get him!” sort of fight that went very quickly. Maybe our DPS isn’t all that bad. The main complaint was that I pulled him into a dark area on his platform, so the fight wasn’t going to look good on video.
Over the corpse on the dark corner of the platform
The Electrocutioner 6000 dropped the Lagnut ring, which went to Skronk, it being spirit and stamina focused.
At that point we had been running for about 2.5 hours and there was some spouse aggro developing for a couple of us. We started a bit late in the afternoon and dinner was ready for some of us… I had to pause the group at one point to call in a Thai food order for my wife to pick up on the way home from a listing where she was holding an open house… and pointed reminders that there was food on the table were coming. So it was time to call it for the day.
Fortunately, the Electrocutioner 6000 dropped the workshop key, which lets people come in the other entrance, bypassing the initial bosses.
They key
So we were set for our next run. We recalled back from that platform.
…after playing on the planes
So Gnomeregan will be a two-parter for us. Maybe a three-parter if we decide to finish off all of the quests. I don’t think we knocked out a single one. As for next time, the level cap for the group was raised to 30, since Ula was already there. We will pick up where we left off next time.
Ula has posted two short videos from our run. The first covers entering the instance through the Emi Shortfuse event.
The second takes us through the Electrocutioner 6000 fight.
Among other things in this video, you can see the Viscous Fallout wandering up on us, the fight in the sloped room, the chaos of mobs showing up in the Gauntlet, the pathing issues I mentioned, and how quick the Electrocutioner 6000 fight and why we took the fight in that dark corner. (Hint, proximity pull again!)
As I said in last week’s post about the late arriving September Monthly Economic Report, I was uncertain if I ought to bother with the October version. The October report seemed rushed as it was missing a couple of the regular charts, had some out of date charts (August numbers), and was missing two whole regions, Cache and Fade.
But on the Meta Show this past weekend Aryth suggested that the process that generates the charts monthly might have omitted those two regions because they failed to meet the minimum threshold of activity to be included. I do not know if that is a fact, but he seemed to understand that was how things worked, and it makes some sense. CCP wouldn’t want Jove space showing up on the charts.
That persuaded me to carry on with the post as normal. If the threshold value theory is true, then it is a statement as to what has happened in the wake of the Keepstar War. And, if it is not, well, it leaves open some room for a couple of conspiracy theories. Did CCP remove two regions from the game and not tell anybody? Or did that brief period last month when SpaceMonkeys Alliance suddenly shambled back into life and tried to return to Fade, like a ghost trying to haunt its final location in life, cause some sort of positive feedback loop that became a singularity of suck which devoured both the alliance and the region? And did that take Cache with it as well?
Anyway, I always feel that the history of New Eden is worth recording, so here we go.
As usual, I will start with the mining chart.
October 2018 – Mining Value by Region
As expected, Delve remains at the top of the list, up about 2.5 trillion ISK over September, proving that people are home from the war. The bar chart makes clear just how far ahead the region remains.
October 2018 – Mining Value by Region – Bar Graph
Not that the second highest region, dwarfed though it might be by Delve, is Querious, which is also mined by the Imperium, which passes through monthly in what is called “locust fleet” to harvest all of the moon mining operations in the region. That is followed by Esoteria, where TEST mines, Detroid, which is home to Triumvirate and Fraternity, two high sec regions, and the Fountain, the third region mined by the Imperium. It isn’t until after the high sec region of Metropolis that the first region in the north shows up, Deklein. Deklein ought to have seen a sharp uptick since it is covered by the September peace agreement between GotG and the Imperium. However Pandemic Horde has been attacking GotG because they paid off the Imperium with faction Fortizars or something. The north is busy suppressing its own economic output.
This is the point where I would normally try to give some context as to the value of those mining numbers, as they depend on the price of minerals on the market. However, the chat that would help illustrated this is from August, when minerals prices were at their war time high. We saw that pricing collapse in the September report and have no reason to believe it rebounded in any way. If it did drop even further, as one might expect give the influx of minerals on the market, that 19 trillion ISK number for Delve might understate exactly how much mining was going on in the region.
On the NPC bounties front Delve remains well ahead of other regions.
October 2018 – NPC Bounties by Region
Again, the peace dividend is in full force here, with Delve up from 8.4 trillion ISK in September to just over 13.4 trillion ISK in October. The bar graph shows best how regions stack up.
October 2018 – NPC Bounties by Region – Bar Graph
After Delve the next five regions are Esoteria, Detroid, Querious, Fountain, and Branch, which owned by TEST, Tri/Fraternity, Imperium, Imperium, and GotG. So you know who is getting rich. Unlike mining, which adds no ISK to the game and which depends on the market price for valuation, bounties are a straight injection of ISK in to the game.
October 2018 – NPC Bounties by Sec Status
And the peacetime boom means that null sec is pulling in an even greater share of the bounty pie, grabbing 93.8% of the bounties, up from 93.2% in September.
On both the mining and NPC bounty fronts, the regions of Branch, Vale of the Silent, and The Kalevala Expanse are places to watch for the November report. Pandemic Horde has been attacking GotG in Branch, while the Imperium’s economic suppression SIG, the NGSC, has been deployed to the other two regions. This could suppress mining and ratting in these regions.
The faucets chart shows that, while ratting remains near its peak, it was down a bit over the course of the month.
October 2018 – Top Sinks and Faucets
But the fact that it was close to an all time high for the whole month meant a lot more ISK being injected into the economy.
October 2018 – Sinks and Faucets and the ISK supply
I don’t usually include that chart, mostly because I don’t want to pull every single chart from the report into these posts, but this one shows the net input of ISK from NPC bounties. For October the number was 72.5 trillion ISK, up from 55.6 trillion in September. Lots of krabbing going on, with bounties making up 65% of the overall faucets category.
On the trade value front, the main chart was one of those that went missing for October, though the bar graphs were still posted.
October 2018 – Trade Value by Region – Bar Graph
The Forge region, home to Jita, continues to be the dominate trade hub of New Eden.
October 2018 – Trade Value by Region – Bar Graph, Forge Excluded
Without The Forge, Domain, home to the Amarr trade hub, and Delve continue to hold significant leads ahead of the rest of space. The lesser high sec trade hubs follow behind, then there is Esoteria, home of TEST.
October 2018 – Contracts Trade Value by Region – Bar Graph
For contracts, The Forge still holds its top spot, though it isn’t do far ahead of Delve and the Imperium as in overall sales. The Esoteria, Geminate, and Detroid follow on to round out the top five, homes respectively of TEST, Pandemic Horde, and Tri/Fraternity.
And then there is production, where we see where things are getting built.
October 2018 – Production Values by Region
Delve saw a post-war production boom. Output stood at 35 trillion ISK last month, but jumped to nearly 46 trillion ISK for October. The Forge, in second place, saw a slight reduction in production for October.
October 2018 – Production Values by Region – Bar Graph
While Delve dominates as a single region, what I refer to as the “Jita production cluster,” The Forge, Lonetrek, and The Citadel, still tally up to more than Delve. However, that number is only a little more than 51 trillion ISK, putting Delve close to passing the industries supporting the main trade hub of New Eden.
Following up Delve and the three sisters of Jita are Esoteria, which shows TEST is ramping up production, and Domain, supporting the Amarr trade hub.
Finally, there is the summary char with which I usually end these posts.
October 2018 – Regional Stats
So that was October. The report was flawed, but still had sufficient data to be of interest. You can find the whole October Monthly Economic Report here. It includes more charts and all of the raw data from which the charts were derived.
We will see in November how the trends continue, which areas are being suppressed, and whether or not Fade and Cache return to the report.
Over at Massively OP Syp published a Perfect Ten column about the perils of getting what you ask for in the form of WoW Classic.
WoW Client from Days Gone By
The list he came up with is almost charming in its scope, featuring things some people have been literally clamoring for in a vanilla server, like no Dungeon Finder and old school talent trees and new skills that don’t magically appear in you skill book. And believe me, inventory space is still at a premium in WoW Legion today. We have three damn hearthstones to start with.
So I started trying to come up with other aspects of vanilla WoW that people might have forgotten or actively suppressed from their memory. So, to steal Syp’s idea and add to the list, here are a few that stick out for me:
Just Being Poor
Gold was scarce and you would collect every bit of gray trash to vendor just for the few silver coins it might bring. One of my earliest memories of World of Warcraft is going to my class trainer and realizing that I did not have enough coins to train all of my skills. This got a little better as time went on but, like so many things, it seemed to be especially burdensome for new players.
Expensive Epic Mounts
Even when you think you’re no longer poor you end up running into this. I don’t even remember the price of the level 60 fast mount, but you had to buy the skill, which was expensive, and then you had to buy a mount, which wasn’t cheap either. And then there were the paladin and warlock mounts, both of which had long quests, needed the skill, and cost even more to finally acquire. Our little group did both of those.
The instance group all mounted up
Mounts in Inventory
And if you are worried about inventory slots, then you might have blotted the fact that your mount took up a spot in your bag. You kept your favorite mount with you and, if you had others, you left them stashed in your bank… which was probably also full.
You Are Mounted
It seemed like any mob that tagged you would dismount you. But if you went to a flight point and tried to get on the bird while still mounted, you would just get an error message flash on your screen informing you that you were still mounted. At one point Blizz tried to go through and automatically make you dismount when a task required it, but there are still a few corner cases in the game where you can get that message. But back in the day you had to manually dismount for damn near everything.
Point to Point Flight Paths
While we’re on the topic of travel, flight points were different back then. While being able to fly past flight points you hadn’t visited is a more recent change, back in the day you couldn’t even automatically fly through multiple flight points. Sitting up in Darnassus and want to fly to Tanaris? It didn’t matter if you have the whole route on your map, you could only fly to a flight point directly connected to your current location, at which point your trip would stop until you talked to that flight master and picked the next connecting flight point. Non-stop flights eventually came, but for a long stretch you had to get off the bird to catch your connecting flight.
Still, it probably wasn’t as bad as taking the tram from Stormwind to Ironforge, getting distracted, and then finding yourself heading back to where you started again.
Hunters with Ammo and Quivers
I still have a few old hunters I rolled up back in the day on various servers that still have quivers or ammo pouches with ammo in them. Hunters were really this strangely different class back in the day, which I think explains some of the love/hate relationship people have with the class even today.
So yes, you had to have ammo for your ranged weapon. And you had access to better ammo as you leveled up, and getting that was pretty much critical to remaining effective. And then there was player made ammo, which was a bit better… and also came in various levels.
And all this ammo had to go into your inventory, taking up precious space. And if you wanted to draw ammo from inventory you had to keep it in a quiver or an ammo pouch, something that took up a whole bag slot. Basically, hunters had four bags of general inventory while every other class had five. Whoever thought that was a good idea had never done The Green Hills of Stranglethorn.
Hunter Pet Skills
This was one of those neat ideas that became awkward as you progressed. Like every other class, Hunters had to go back to their trainer to get and upgrade their skills. But not all of them were available to the trainer. Some pet skills you had to learn in the wild. What that meant was putting your pet in the stable (three slots only, no epic collections of pets back then), running out into the wild without your essential combat buddy, finding a mob with the skill you wanted to learn, taming that mob, then fighting along side it for a while before you would finally learn the skill, at which point you would abandon that pet and head home to teach your pet the skill and then carry on with your adventures.
Hunter Pet Levels
Hunter pets had their own independent level back in the day. If you liked the model of a level 10 lion… like The Rake in the Barrens, with its special fast attack speed… but were level 30 already, you would have to go level up your pet to catch it up to your level. And the only way to do that was to grind mobs. You had to be really dedicated to a particular model to level up a pet more than a few levels.
Hunter/Pet Relationship
Again with the hunters… I know, but they were special and popular and helped make Azeroth what it is today. But first they had to suffer.
So hunters also had a relationship with their pet based on being fed and letting them die and just fighting together. A happy pet did more damage, so you wanted to keep them happy, which primarily meant keeping them well fed. So in addition to having a while bag slot roped off and dedicated for ammo, you also had to keep a stack or two of pet food in your bags. And not just any food, but the RIGHT food. Some only ate meat, some only dairy, others a variety. There was nothing like being out in the field and finding you were short of food and the only vendor around only sold something your pet wouldn’t eat.
And it was possible that, if neglected, you pet might run away. I never had that happen, but the thought of it was enough for me to pack an extra stack or two of food… because stacks were only 20 units back in the day.
The Elf Run to Ironforge
If you made a Night Elf back in the day, you were probably found yourself pretty much alone over in Darnassus while your friends we all over having fun in Stormwind and Ironforge. The reason you were alone was that Westfall was one of the best early zones and led to the Deadmines instance, so nearly every night elf before you had already gone there. Getting there meant taking the ship to Menethil Harbor and then making the perilous run across the Wetlands to Dun Algaz and the tunnel that would bring you to the zone with Ironforge.
The Elf Run
Of course, the Wetlands were a level 20+ zone and you were likely level 10 tops… so everything could kill you and your aggro radius was huge. And then, if you did make it and were a druid… well… you class trainer was back in Darnassus, which could be awkward. But at least you had a travel form. You did train the travel form, right?
Strange Dungeons
The current design philosophy for dungeons in Azeroth is like the old slogan for Dominos, “30 minutes or less.” New ones are designed in that scope while older ones have been mostly trimmed back to that goal.
But back in vanilla WoW the design philosophy seemed to be… hrmm… more like, “We’re just doing something that seems cool!”
So instead of being configured for one run, some instances seemed to be designed for multiple visits. Everybody’s favorite early instance, The Deadmines, had a level split from the start to the end that was wide enough that if you were set for Van Cleef the start of the run was all gray to you. The Wailing Caverns were a long and confusing crawl. Uldaman was another with a wide level gap designed for multiple runs… and the worst death respawn location ever. There were three wings to Scarlet Monastery, but just getting there as alliance was a chore. Then there was the epic puzzling majesty that was the original Sunken Temple.
And many of these had quest lines that tied them to the zone they were located, so you would have to do at least some of the zone in order to get the quests. (Otherwise, for example, Gryan Stoutmantle wouldn’t shout your name to the whole zone after you defeat Van Cleef.) I look back at our instance runs through vanilla back in the 2006 to 2008 range and times were a lot different. (Also, if you want to wallow in nostalgia I have a video from our first year and another one devoted just to Sunken Temple.)
It was, when it came to five person dungeons, a very different time.
The Great Stranglethorn Quest Gap
One of the things Syp mentioned was quests not filling in the experience gap to keep you advancing. But that one is a lot deeper. The thing is, quests were fine, you just had to make sure you did them all across a couple of zones. For example, I would move back and forth between Stormwind and Ironforge, each of which had their own early zones, and do all the quests in both areas. Doing that would keep you moving into appropriate level content and was easy enough to find.
Eventually though you were funneled into Stranglethorn Vale, with quests both odd and annoying, crowded with the flow of players, and unable to provide the experience boost needed to get you past it via questing alone. There was a reason I had a number of characters sitting levels between 35 and 40 unplayed for ages.
If you went and did some research you could find Desolace as a possible alternative, though getting there from Menethil Harbor would take you an hour or so, if you didn’t get lost. And there, in the pre-Maraudon days the quest chains were… odd? You could end up running around trying to quest there, Arathi, or in the Swamp of Sorrows and still find yourself coming up short. Or that was how it felt. But once you got past that hurdle to about level 45 or so, more options started to open up, and from 50 to 60 there was almost an embarrassment of choices. This was one of the reasons that Blizzard went back and filled in the Dustwallow Swamp with a bunch of additional quests.
Others
There are many others. Useless trade skills, no quest locations on the map, dancing for tips, restricted class roles in raids, five minute pally buffs, Addons yet to be imagined, and more swim in and out of view in my brain. But these are the ones I wanted to put on the growing list of what to possibly expect from WoW Classic.
