The War Within releases in World of Warcraft this Thursday (or Friday if you’re reasonable) for us jammy gits with Early Access.¹ I’m getting an appropriate amount of excited and spending these final few days wrapping up all the loose ends I’ve left myself. For those of you who follow me on Mastodon, you’ve likely already seen my little summary of all of this. I realise after sending two decent sized toots it was more of a blog post and you know what? It still can be so here I am fleshing it out!

Pandaria Remix

So I’m done with Remix. Really, I already was for a little while, but yesterday I checked off the last sets on my silly collection spreadsheet and got one more character to 70, my Blood Elf ‘Dark Ranger’ Hunter, with many thanks to the guildy who kindly ran me through Temple of the Jade Serpent over and over again. There were still some transmog sets on the vendors but they lie, I have all the pieces for these and that’s enough for me.

Besides, worst case, I can just farm them in retail. Mog isn’t so bad to farm up. I did almost level up 4 more alts but I just don’t have it in me anymore. Remix lost its appeal when I went back to Leicester to visit family. That coincided with some difficult life things and around the time where people who didn’t farm frogs started becoming ridiculously overpowered.

Yeah, being overpowered to that extent just wrecks the game for me. It’s nice when you’ve geared your character up to a point where you can just annihilate open world mobs but soloing current group content? Eh… not my thing. I did partake for the sake of my collections but I couldn’t bring myself to spend the bronze and the time to join in with the being overpowered so I was mostly being carried. And I found my peace with that!

I got all of the Remix exclusive items, heirlooms, mounts, and toys. Plus the two titles, and all the mog sets I wanted, and then some. And I have 3 more level 70 alts now, too. My Panda Monk, Void Elf Warrior, and the aformentioned Dark Ranger.

The Quest Log Mess

One thing I’m always just existing within is the mess that is my quest log. I tend to work through main story quests, and then side quests and quests that unlock things perhaps or offers collectables, and then just everything else. But over time I end up with a mess of raid skip quests and legacy content quests I need to get done and all sorts that I hold on to so I can just pick them back up, retain my progress. I’ve got ADHD and a fatigue-having brain with awful awful memory, it’s how I cope with the overwhelm. Trouble is, with a new expansion I much prefer a nice clear quest log as I pick up anything and everything first time through. I’m also a completionist. But we’re limited to 35 quests at a time, which sounds like a lot but it gets me into trouble a lot!

I had 4 raid skip quests that only needed one more run to finish up, a lot of Shadowlands quests to work through and a few Dragonflight stragglers – things like the Whelp daycare, the recent mog unlock for the expansion, the Gilneas reclamation, stuff I just keep meaning to get round to. So I decided to get around to as much of it as I can.

In the past few days, I managed to find a partially completed Amirdrassil Normal pug which got that one done. And I also managed to find a Mythic Sepulcher pug last night and completed the skip quest there. Also picked up a couple shiny mog pieces for my efforts. I still have the Heroic Vault of the Incarnates skip quest, though the pugs I’ve seen require you to link an Ahead of the Curve achievement which I don’t have, Razageth was a nightmare for our guild, and Mythic Sanctum from Shadowlands which most people are just doing skip runs to try for the mount.

I’ve gone around Zereth Mortis wrapping up some loose ends and just not picking up the next threads as thankfully those quests are marked on my map so they should be easy enough to pick back up. Korthia too, and some general SL chores, callings and dailies and the like. I suppose those were distractions but I still need the reputation and anima and such.

I’m going to really try and clear up the SL things I’m doing, mostly in the Maw right now, so my quest log is as low as it can be going into the new expansion. I don’t need total completion, so long as I know where to pick back up when I get back to it. The Quest Counter addon is really helping me out here! It simply adds the quest log counter to your sidebar panel so you can see how many quests you have. Why Blizzard removed this when there is a limit to how many quests you can have is beyond me.

Pre-Patch Event

As for the pre-patch event, the Echoes of Azeroth, I’m almost done! I’ve levelled the most important alts to 70, got all of the cloth/leather/mail/plate mog sets, a few of the weapons, oh and of course the mounts, pets, and the heirloom ring.

I definitely want to run my Panda Warrior through and make sure I’ve got all of the weapon appearances. There are a few alts I’d still like to get levelled as well. The main ones being my Horde Paladin and Rogue, who have a lot of history and have been gathering dust for much too long. If I can be arsed after all of this, maybe I’ll finish up a few other alts. I’ve got a spreadsheet, I’ve highlighted the ones I’d most like to level. But I don’t wanna overdo myself and I have enough alts, for sure. It’d mostly be for Heritage reasons, if I do. Or… the sake of having them, I guess. We shall see!

And Classic Too???

Annoyingly the pre-patch event with its memories of Vanilla and Wrath of the Lich King content put me in the mood to play Classic. Awful timing for it, but I’ve been pootling around in Season of Discovery (purely because it has more life than Era, which would be my preferred version) trying to work out what the hell I want to play there. I’ve got a 32 Hunter, a 10 Warlock, 9 Mage, 7 Paladin, and a 14 Priest. I joined a casual guild with the Priest and I might stick with her, I just don’t know. Everything plays so differently with the Runes and I want to be everything. Mage is of course, me. It’s where I default to in most things. But I also love Hunters, Warlocks are fun, I like being able to heal. And then I was a Shadow Priest for so many years. I think a Priest with a Shadow and a healing spec (as we also get dual-spec in SoD) might be just fine. I’m so indecisive and with so much of my energy going into retail, very little time to actually finalise it. But hopefully I’m settling.

Overall, I’m feeling very satisfied with where I’m at going into The War Within. My bags and banks are sorted, I’ve done a few things that have been lingering, even quite a few I haven’t mentioned here. And I’ve been having fun with it. I feel like everything I want to do, I only need a couple days and the rest can be put on ice quite happily. So yeah, I’m ready for the new expansion. Fingers crossed there aren’t too many bugs or other issues, as that has been a pretty major problem in recent years, though expansion launches in general have been pretty smooth, so I’ve got a little bit of hope. Just gonna roll with it, have fun, not stress, and take breaks as I need.

I will also stream a little, particularly after the release on the 26th as there will be Twitch drops for World of Warcraft, as well as the “Support a Streamer” thing they have done before, where you gift 2 subscriptions within a stream broadcasting WoW and get a fun little owl pet in-game. Helps the streamer, you benefit! So if that interests you, chuck me a follow. I do share on Twitter and Mastodon when I go live though best place to follow what I’m upto and when is in my Discord. I’ll do my best as my health allows. See you underground!

1. It’d be a whole other post if I went off on my thoughts about Blizzard now doing Early Access, especially for an expansion launch but I don’t really want to [↩]