A Day in the Past: Hinterlands

The Hinterlands is a sort of random, out of the way little zone that actually contains a good chunk of pleasant memories.

it was hard to find an old map without words or farming paths on it

The Hinterlands has a lot of trolls, but it's also pretty dwarvish. Aerie Peak is right at the entrance, and the two guardian named gryphons at the entrance to the zone are only hostile to horde players.

they wouldn't stand a chance, now

Simply going into Hinterlands required that you could sneak past or kill these two tough level 40 guardians, and the path led you directly into the alliance town, where a patrolling dwarf guard may have very well found you if you didn't immediately step off the paved path, directly into the mobs and monsters of the zone.

what did I ever do to you dwarves anyways

As a horde player, it was an accomplishment to be able to get in to The Hinterlands, and when you did, you were rewarded with a very quest-dense area.

A Day in the Past: Winterspring

Welcome to a day of the past, the days of Winterspring before the Cataclysm.

It was one of my favorite zones in hang out in during Vanilla. Apparently, this was kinda weird, because people always asked me "what's going on in Winterspring?" I'd get whispered unusually regularly by guildies and friends who noticed I was in Winterspring who didn't understand why anyone would even be there.

is this even a zone?

I went there on both my hunter and my druid. It was a really great place, especially Darkwhisper Gorge.

yay dark and dreary deadly demons!

A Day in the Past: Vanilla Feral

Back in the day, when Androgyn might have looked sorta like this...

rough estimate. this was awhile ago man.

 Or more accurately, usually like this...

(mouth breathing sounds)

Most of our enemies were dragons and undead, we didn't have flying mounts, and only 1% of the playerbase even saw our most difficult raids. It was a simpler time, when the world was new and
"of the Boar" was for some reason a stat combination that appeared on gear on purpose.

yeah we're doing this

I reminisce a lot. I can't help it. Nostalgia is one of my most frequent post tags. Well, I'm doing it again, and this time I'm going to do it with purpose. I've written about parts of the following personal history before - it was actually my ninth post on this blog. This time it has a little more of a narrowed focus and specific purpose. I'm going to do two things that I really like - I'm going to reminisce, and I'm going to tell stories about my reminiscences.

Welcome to A Day in the Past, my new series about Warcraft back in the day. Specifically, my Warcraft life. If you're a stick in the mud about that dreaded nostalgia, feel free to read my post about what it is and why it's totally normal and okay!

Now, on with the show!

Nostalgia Explained

In my post about timewalking, I touched on how revamping old dungeons and 'updating' them for current content was one of the ways Blizzard has tried to accommodate people who want to revisit some of their favorite old dungeons. I also mentioned that I'm really not a fan of this method.

pictured: not me

Now, I understand the arguments in favor of revamping dungeons. One big one is the stories in them are outdated and they seem irrelevant. Why wouldn't the Gilnean traitors see Shadowfang Keep and say "that would make a good base of operations"? It makes sense that Scholomance would have changed over the last so many years since we first visited it, the school must be getting funding from somewhere. It makes sense that Warlord Zaela would commandeer UBRS and use it as a stakeout point for her planned invasion of alliance cities. Wouldn't it make sense that the old threats within them have been successfully neutralized? Why wouldn't big baddies see these strategically placed structures as a cool place to go start a new cult of evildoers?

But my gut says "Now why would you go and do something like that? Didn't you see the sign that said 'DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON!'?"

How will we finish testing with the self-destruct mechanism active?

The Flying Purple People Eater

Yesterday, I wrote about flying. Well, no, I wrote about Warlords of Draenor's lack of interesting and engaging content. I am a person with various opinions that require many words to reveal their true nature, and in my previous post I precariously left unspoken the matter of my actual opinion on the flying debate. It sparked some feedback, where it seemed to me that I may have implied I think the flying debate is unimportant.

not working as intended

While there may have been parts that alluded to my beliefs, the reality was shrouded. Here is the thing, though: my opinion doesn't matter.

What am I trying to say? That, as one singular individual within the vast Warcraft playerbase, my opinion isn't important? Am I implying, in this statement, that all of your opinions don't matter?

No, no. Here's the situation at hand: the voices of those so opposed to the flying restriction that they have continued to voice their concerns for more than a year are more important than my opinion.

Nostalgia and Addiction - a Warcraft Story

I bought a filing cabinet today because I am an adult. After setting up the hanging folders and putting all my important papers into a heap, I went through and ended up finding things from many years ago.

I'll figure this out

One thing in particular I found was a creative writing assignment I had in high school. I threw it away hastily in embarrassment, but not before looking through it.

In it, I had to write 6 separate pieces in an assortment of types of poetry and/or prose. Two of the six had been directly influenced by World of Warcraft and one of them was loosely influenced, with an additional drawing I had included for the final several page story.

I had this creative writing class in 2006-07 and graduated in 07. TBC came out about six months before I graduated from school (and on said release date, I lied and said school was cancelled so I could play, which was accepted without question for some reason), though I was in high school throughout all of Vanilla, and it almost caused me to be in high school longer than necessary.