So if the starter pistol for an expansion sends the Day One crowd down the street on their two-year marathon, then by the end of the first hour I’m always hopelessly behind the pack. I’m like that well-intentioned but out-of-shape dude who thinks he can run a marathon just because he thinks that this’ll be different than all the other times in the past.
Now imagine how far behind I am after taking an eight-plus month break. I’m still on the first stretch while the pack is, oh, on the other side of the planet. When I logged back in and started pecking away at my quest log, I realized I was doing mere zone quests that I hadn’t finished up before leaving last time. That’s how far away I am from catching up.
But here’s the thing about World of Warcraft: Patches and expansions come at such a slow rate that even the tortoise can get to the finish line with plenty of time to spare. So I don’t worry so much about everyone being in the Patch 8.2 zones. Instead, I just focused on one goal at a time, which initially was about cleaning up my quest log and doing world quests for gear upgrades and rep.
That actually worked surprisingly well. I went from feeling overwhelmed and sort of lost on Day One of my return to getting back into a good shape by Day Four. My ilevel went from an embarrassingly low number to 392. Even better, I formulated a plan of attack to start working on the numerous reps that I needed for allied races and flying.
This tortoise is going places, baby.
I still find myself absurdly delighted over some of the visuals from the Alliance zones in this expansion. Blizzard’s art team is always so good at creating striking sights out of vivid colors and exaggerated designs.
One thing I haven’t done much of in this expansion is transmog. I’m still wearing all of my Legion outfits (I’m not a huge fan of most of the BFA gear visuals I’ve seen so far). I did find a new guild which promised to do some transmog hunting, so I’m down for that.
I need this bumblebee mount. I don’t think I’ll be doing much more in the way of island expeditions, but I do like the thought of engaging in activities that pay out in “fun” rewards like toys, pets, and mounts. I heard that the new zones have tons of these, so I’m excited to see it.
In other news, the Elf Tree is still burning. Lots of ash coming off of that one, so don’t breathe for the next four months if you want to keep your lungs.
Oh! So WoW is always making me laugh, and there was a short chain of quests that highly amused me as of late. It was a few tall-talking sailors each spinning some sort of over-the-top yarn, and I got to play through all of them. No great rewards or anything, but they were pretty amusing, from the giant octopus fight to the great land shark battle.
Bio Break 