Burning Crusade Classic

Back when WoW Classic released in 2019, I rolled a dwarf Paladin and named her "Isolte." I felt like I was betraying my Draenei Shaman main by giving her name to a totally different character, but even though I had hope for it, I honestly did not believe that Blizzard would expand on Classic with a classic version of The Burning Crusade. So, I ended up leveling a Paladin named Isolte on Atiesh (PvE) up to 36 and then leveled another Paladin on Fairbanks (PvP) to 34. (I switched to Fairbanks because my partner's cousins and my old guildmates stubbornly decided to roll on a PvP server as usual per every expansion they come back to play for the first few months and then quit again. 😒 But of course my partner and I wanted a chance to play with them... Even though this scenario never pans out well for me and my enjoyment of the game, and I despise that I keep letting it happen expansion after expansion just for the sake of pleasing my partner and playing with "people I know". But aaaannywaaay...) I ended up quitting Classic because I basically had no love for my Paladin(s), playing on a PvP server did not appeal to me at all, and playing without my partner on a PvE server while he was on another was just depressing. But I still held onto hope that Blizzard would plan on a TBC Classic so that I could potentially "be myself" someday and was extremely overjoyed when they announced it in February 2021 at BlizzConline.

With the follow-up announcement in May of TBC Classic's release date set for June 1st, I deleted my Paladin on Fairbanks (PvP) and I started playing TBC Classic the very day the 2 week long pre-patch was available (or more accurately -- the wee hours of the morning after the day pre-patch "launched" because the servers weren't even available until 1am PDT. 😅) So, I stuck to Fairbanks because of the potential to play with family and "people I know" again (despite my hatred for open-world PvP,) and I leveled my new properly named Draenei Shaman up to 55 so that I could get my hands on that Tabard of the Protector before it was gone with the June 1st official opening of the Dark Portal. Nuku, my Druid-main partner, helped me out a LOT in leveling because 1) he was already level 60 having continued to play Classic off and on after I had quit and 2) having a 60 around really deterred getting ganked by much higher level Horde than my toon during times it was painfully obvious it was going to happen had he not been there. Though, that's not to say that it never happened because I did solo often while he was at work.

I will admit there were some enjoyable "PvP" interactions like the time a lvl 30 blood elf mage /danced and tried to chat with lvl 32 me in Orcish at The Great Lift. And the time a lvl 40 tauren druid passing by saved lvl 37 me from a way-too-fast respawn in Dustwallow Marsh, /bow'ing after I /thank'd him. And there was my favorite time of all when a lvl 60 troll mage ice-locked lvl 58 me in passing in Timbermaw Hold and I just stood there and /spit on him waiting for him to kill me. He stopped casting to /beg me in what I'm guessing was an attempt to convince me to fight him. So, I /sleep'd and I think he got the picture that I was not going to fight him. He whacked me a couple times with his staff and surprisingly went on his way and let me live. But the truly amusing part about this interaction happened about an hour later when I was heading back to Nafien to turn in some feathers at the Felwood-side entrance to Timbermaw Hold. I was low on health having just run through some angry furbolgs when the same troll mage ice-locked me again. But this time he had a new traveling partner, a troll female (I forget what class she was). She targeted me and /sleep'd! Obviously she was aware of my previous interaction with her mage friend even though she wasn't even there (or maybe she was there and she's a rogue that was in stealth?🤔) The mage then /sleep'd too and I /sleep'd while still ice-locked. He kindly sheeped me which healed me to full health and I /love'd both him and his woman-friend. We did our /bye's and that was that. 😆 I wish I remembered their names. I think the mage was Nyx or something? *shrugs*

While I do enjoy silly but meaningful PvP interactions like these and know they can never happen on a PvE server, the peace of mind of never getting ganked while trying to simply enjoy the game far outweighs the warm wholsome feelings of these rare open-world PvP experiences, and I continued to despise every minute that I was on Fairbanks. And as a "housewife" I have a lot more free time to play by myself during the day, without Nuku and our guildmates, so calling upon mates to help out in a world PvP situation was not always an option. Aaaand I still have a small desire to stream on Twitch once in a while which I wrote off as an impossibility while on a PvP server because of potential stream-snipers. So, needless to say, I very much wanted to transfer off Fairbanks knowing that character transfer was an available option.

I feel like Nuku's cousins and all our old guildmates enjoy the game very differently than I do. They enjoy leveling via dungeons, doing things "the fastest way", and I think it's safe to say that the majority of them couldn't care less about quests and storylines. I however, do enjoy taking my time out in the world, reading the quest text (yes, omg people do read that stuff!), and taking in sights that I may have missed before. So, on June 1st, the day TBC Classic officially launched, I deleted my pally "Isolte" on Atiesh (PvE) and transferred my shaman back to where I started in Classic. And the really nice thing about transferring this time, from PvP to PvE like the countless times Nuku and I have done before in Retail, was that Nuku was fully on board with me seeing that open-world PvP is really just a human(s) on the other end of the internet getting enjoyment out of wasting another human's time. (Something I personally find despicable and admittedly judge people poorly for outside of the game, but I can go off on that another time.)

So, here I am on Atiesh again. I rejoined the (fairly large and very active) progression guild that my Paladin was in <Seismic> (or at least an off-shoot guild with the same members I knew from the previous guild <No Offense>, one of whom being Nuku's irl coworker which is who invited us to the guild to begin with back in Classic) and I am having an absolute blast enjoying every aspect TBC Classic has to offer me.

A funny thing happened with Nuku and his coworker, known as Winky, that I believe helped convince Nuku to want to transfer with me even more. So, Winky streams on Twitch and the day before we transferred, Nuku was tuned in and chatting about how world PvP really sucks. Nuku mentioned our thoughts about transferring back to PvE because "world PvP is just a waste of time," and Winky said, "Nuku, that is the most big-brained thing I've heard you say," or something like that. 😂

And yet another awesome, totally coincidental thing happened after we transferred -- we didn't even get a chance to tell Winky (or anyone from our old Atiesh guild for that matter) that we went ahead and did the transfer because within minutes of logging onto Atiesh we were in Ironforge, and Taxic, another guildmate who mutually knows us, just happened to be right there in IF and sent us guild invites. Meeting Taxic there was not planned or expected at all! Nuku was also coincidentally listening to Taxic's Twitch at that very moment we logged on because we were naturally curious what he was up to as an old guildmate/friend of ours, and Nuku heard Taxic say "...(something something) Ironforge.." and he looked around to see Taxic coming over from the portal room to where we stood in front of the bank. Taxic suddenly saw us and said something like, "Hey, I know this person! I know these people!" 😀 My game crashed, so I wasn't actually there for a few minutes, but Taxic invited us to the guild as soon as I logged back on. lol. I truly feel like our transfer was meant to be because we weren't even on Atiesh for more than 10 minutes and we were already back in with our old guildmates there! Neato. 😊

So, as of this blog post about 2 and a half weeks after launch, I'm still lvl 68, but I am enjoying every minute of questing in the world with Nuku, and farming, and leveling my professions. And being in an active guild chat in-game and an active Discord server is such a pleasant feeling!

TL;DR I like my guild and I've been very much enjoying TBC Classic.

Oh, and here's a small somewhat related update regarding my PC crashing/blue-screening/shutting down if you've seen my posts about it on Twitter (which is another reason why I haven't streamed now that I've gone back to PvE) -- PC crashes are no longer happening after completely reformatting my drive (sadface but I backed up everything so it's OK.) But now only TBC Classic is crashing randomly which appears to be a totally separate issue from the whole PC crashing thing. So, at least my PC isn't crashing anymore, but now I think it may be up to Blizz to fix whatever it is that's causing the random game crashes. Like c'mon man, I reformatted my drive. And Memtest says nothing is wrong with my RAM. I even swapped video cards with Nuku and it's still happening. Gonna try swapping our ram next anyway just to test it even though my memory is supposedly all good. Wish me luck. 😓 And thanks for reading all this if you did. 😁