My nostalgic tour through my World of Warcraft class roster the other day had one unexpected result: I found myself increasingly drawn to dusting off Ghostfire, my hunter, and riding with her once again.
I actually logged onto her about four times, looked at her, went “what am I *doing*” and logged out. Then logged back on. Then off. Then I shrugged and started the process of reactivating a long-dormant character.
The last time I played Ghostfire was in 2008 — around the same time that I first got into blogging. Of course, it was all Warhammer Online talk back then, WoW was just a brief diversion from those adventures, so Ghostfire, Syp, and company never got talked about on a blog. When I logged onto her this week, Ghostfire was sitting in Dalaran with bags full of now-useless ammunition. Seriously, that’s how long it’s been.
She had no specialization, no talent points, just bags full of random crap and a handful of quests for Wrath of the Lich King content. And apparently hunters can no longer equip both a ranged and melee weapon, because her polearm was now stuffed in her backpack. At least she still had that wicked-looking WotLK armor and gun that I adored. Going to have to save all of that for transmog (and there’s something else I haven’t done yet).
After rebuilding her and getting an attack rotation set up, I turned to the problem of what to do. That’s where another one of WoW’s new(ish) features came riding to the rescue: the adventure journal. I love this thing, let me tell you. You’re lost for where to go and what to do at your level, you just click on that icon and it points you right toward suitable zones and even gives you the option to start a quest in the region. Perfect. I elected for Grizzly Hills, having fond memories of that place, and away I went!
It’s most decidedly strange that I still look at Northrend as the “new” World of Warcraft content. I never did advance beyond it, so relatively it still is the frontier of the game for me. I always loved Northrend, with its frontier/Nordic/Viking aesthetics and environments. Grizzly Hills is like going to a summer camp where you can shoot bears and eagles. I did kind of snort when a quest made me shoot bald eagles (I’m sorry, “imperial eagles”) dead for whatever flimsy reason. Not a lot of MMOs have you kill eagles. I’m not saying they’re off-limits, but they are kind of in the same category of kittens and giraffes as animals that we’re not used to farming.
So I’ve been reacclimatizing myself with Ghostfire in Grizzly Hills, doing the quests and being generally entertained. One small and welcome change that I noted was that her gun sounds are a lot less harsh and more audibly intriguing than they used to be. I definitely prefer a hunter with a rifle in this game (crossbow second, bow only as a last resort).
The quest that had me either pooping or puking up seeds that I accidentally ate was among the most notable so far. Can’t say that I’ve visited a lot of MMO outhouses in the course of my adventures, but as you see above, I gave this particular one a workout.
I also ran a dungeon last night (forget the name, but it was the Troll temple in Northrend) just to see how rusty I was with the hunter. It went well, all things considered. Totally forgot to take growl off of my spirit wolf, Oz, so d’oh on me. I am very much liking the beast mastery skills and some of the new talents, such as summoning extra beasts for a short duration or commanding a murder of crows to swarm a bad guy.
The biggest thing on my to do list is to find a guild. I don’t even remember who I used to be with on Rexxar, but chances are they don’t exist any longer. I’ve been perusing the guild finder and sent out notes to a few prospects, so we’ll see about that. The next step will be doing some web research, and if that doesn’t go well, perhaps consider a transfer to a more populated server. At least I’ve seen players romping around me in my adventures, so I don’t feel completely alone.
Bio Break 
The npc commentary for the seeds is truly disgusting if you stick around. Step 1: you eat seeds from bucket. Step 2: You purge seeds from your body in the outhouse. Step 3: you return seeds to the NPC. At that point, the NPC asks another what to do with the newly reclaimed seeds and the response from the other is “put them back in the bucket.” For the next player to accidentally eat. Were they even rinsed off? Yech.