Khadgar. Dear, sweet old Khadgar (who’s really not even that old, btw!). The man who has been at the helm of our operations for years now after randomly reappearing in Stormwind telling you to meet him in the Blasted Lands back at the start of WoD.
You were excited when you saw him, weren’t you? If you knew who he was in lore, previous games, events, etc., then you knew you were about to spend time chilling with one of Azeroth’s most iconic figures. You were even more excited to know that he was going to create for you a ring of immeasurable power that you could use to defend your world against the Time/Space Horde.
If you didn’t know who Khadgar was yet because you were still a MoP baby, like me, you wondered who dis old guy in the badass robes was. And, you wondered why everyone seemed to be so excited to see him. But, much like your in-the-know fellow players, his words moved you to action, and you were excited to get that ring.
You followed Khadgar blindly through the portal because he clearly had the means and ideas to save Azeroth. Khadgar was a genius. And you knew that whatever work he asked you to do would be important work. So you played on, and you’ve played on for many years, with perhaps a bit of growing consternation. Which brings us to the present. After so many years spent fighting the Iron Horde and now the return of the
Legion, you can assume that your character and Khadgar have become close. I mean, he’s nearly killed you at least three times now, and you’ve saved his life at least once (so like, that makes sense, right?). You’ve gone to numerous worlds together, and you’ve saved countless lives. But when was the turning point exactly that made it OK for Khadgar to be cracking puns at you while he pats you on the head and sends you back out onto the Broken Shore to face down a hurricane of demons on your own? Why… why does he gotta be like that?
Don’t get me wrong, I give a chuckle-groan each time I hear his Dad jokes for the first time. But then, as I’m out there at the same WQ point for the 700th time, and he’s still making the same stupid joke (of course this is obviously just a matter of game writing/mechanics), I sometimes wonder, as I think a lot of us do, just why the hell any of us are putting up with him anymore, and why we don’t suggest he just joins us on our next weekend fishing trip instead.
Titans love you, Khadgar, but you are a menace: an adorable, well-meaning, and seemingly accidentally genius menace. The fact he somehow manages to show up at every major plot point and give his two cents all the while demanding an increasing amount of resources for whatever miraculously viable new scheme he’s recently hatched is actually somewhat unnerving. It’s common enough now, since the first time that he nearly smote Den as he created her ring… that Dadgar treads a very fine line of genius/lucky goofball. If he had agreed to take up the role of Guardian, I believe we actually might have been able to free ourselves from the threat of the Legion a lot earlier. I can imagine Sargeras coming to Azeroth and and Khaddydaddy just punning him endlessy until the fallen Titan simply gives up and leaves, grumbling to himself about “what is this wicked sorcery” as he returns to the Twisthing Nether (What’s wrong, Sargeras? Something really seems to have you burning up…. If you want to destroy this world, you’ll have to have a much better demon-stration of power…).
But, isn’t this why we all love Khadgar so much? And presumably this is why our heroes keep him around. Surely everyone in our circle has headaches from the eye-rolling he initiates. But I guess there’s that one guy in every party that somehow makes gold from dirt, most of the time without even knowing it. And let’s be real folks, while Medivh was powerful and serious, even if he had not been possessed by Sargeras, I would still be glad to have lived in the age of Khadgar as Guardian rather than he. It’s probably safe to assume that a lovable nut like Bhadgar probably only wants half the baubles and shinies that Medivh would have asked for. I’m willing to trade puns for another 2,000 nethershards any day.
All of that changed when as Legion dropped and people saw the power of Surrender to Madness (a talent I chose not to build toward because of the fact it was doing so well and would inevitably be nerfed, and because, NO, I don’t really want to die every pull. Screw that). But here came the flood of people attempting Spriest. When I’d go to the order hall, I’d imagine Denaise trying to elbow her way up to the mission table as all the other shadow priests crowded around it. Suddenly, everyone knew, or thought they knew, how to play my class. I had to listen to people talk about it as if they’d been playing it for years when in reality they’d simply read Icy-Veins. It was sometimes a point of irritation for me that it took so long to get my hidden appearance (the only one I really like for Xal if I’m honest). But I’d see so many people with it, and feel grumpy wondering how many of them were only playing because it was powerful and fashionable to.
As a result, I’ve noticed it again: people firing up the Shadow form on priests. As I’ve been leveling, there has been a priest in every dungeon group. I’m not sure where holy/disc lie in terms of fashionable healers, but I’m sort of convinced that a lot of them are incoming Spriests who have gone heals for faster queues. RIP them when they get to current content and are torn apart by everything they try to fight and realize that Spriest is very difficult to level through.
I am honestly holding my breath to see what this new expansion brings, as a dedicated Shadow Priest, I am just thrilled with the idea that my class could be seeing some massive lore exploration. It’s also disheartening knowing that everyone and their cat will be playing Spriest because of it. I mean… I can’t describe why it’s sad? It just sort of is. I think it comes from a place of knowing that I play my class because I 100% am in love with it and want to excel at it. I will play it until they shut the servers down. And when you suddenly feel as if your class is nothing more than a passing fad, it can just downright make you grumpy and protective. But, I suppose I can’t blame people for wanting to feel closer to the heart of the story we all know and love.
So really, what is the truth behind the denials that are so swift in coming to us as we try to pug in LFG? I’ll tell it to you flat out: it’s not really about wanting to push through a quick run for AP, it’s about the power and thrill that comes with deeming yourself better than another even while, in all likelihood this is not the case. The power of being able to deny some one something they deserve and have worked for so hard and maybe just haven’t had the resources or time to get into their clutches yet…. that must be some sick kind of cocaine for people. It’s frustrating. And, the thing of it is that I’m not all that bad off myself. I have the strings to get through the content I want to see, but it’s my own choice to not pull them. If I have, it’s only because I’ve felt I’m at a point where I need to see something in order to help others.
Denial is a potent factor in WoW. It can sometimes fuck up your whole day in game. If it’s happened to you (and it probably has), I’m truly sorry. But there are those of us out there who just want to have fun, get some loot and push ourselves in a disciplined way without having to resort to cussing some one out. You can always find me at Denaise-Cenarius. I’m about as chill as it gets, and I’ll never deny you time of day depending on the energy you put out.
However, it still seems like not too long ago, we were hopping through the front door of Sargeras’s tomb and killing Goroth (with surprising ease for most of us, I’m sure). And then maybe Mistress gave you a flat slap in the face. And then Avatar chuckled while you tried to DPS him and he just gobbled up the Maiden and consumed all her health and you found yourself falling through the floor and suddenly back up to 50% health. And then you maybe got to KJ and your healers yelped helplessly as the black shrouded you in Intermission 2 and you just flat out died in the dark on your own. Blizzard literally made you die alone in the dark. Thanks for that, guys.
Sometimes, while waiting for raid time, I’ll find myself flying away from tomb to land on Krosus’s bridge. And I’ll oscillate between looking back at Nighthold and forward at Tomb and I already have nostalgia over the Suramar instance… even while I was so ready to get out of it by the time June came around. The old feeling of longing and the fresh awe of a return trip to the zone when you’ve not been down in awhile is refreshing after you spend time on Argus or the Broken Shore.
And I won’t spoil anything for people who aren’t peeking but that Eonar wing… hoooooooly moooooooooly. If for nothing else, I can’t wait to get in there and run through those hallways and across that lush greenery. Even if she turns out to be the scariest boss in there… it will be a glorious place to eat dirt until rez for sure.
By now, if you’ve read this blog or know me, you know that playing Shadow Priest is 100% my style and it’s something I’ve stuck by even when I found it painful (see the dark days of 
I imagine Denaise running around like a crazy person, trying to dot all those little fiendlings in the Mage Tower, sweating, panting and near tears trying to even just dot them or slow them. One.by.one. And all Afflic has gotta do is Seed of Corruption. Haha. It’s all I could think about while leveling my lock. And as such, my sort of disinterested boredom at playing an empty Spriest turned into a spark of rage. I will admit it. The more mobs I blew apart while taking no damage because of my pet tanking, or my channeled spell (I swear I will look up the name), the more angry I became. And it wasn’t anger that I was having fun on a class that is so like my own but not. I was angry that it is literally a joke. That Warlocks do probably a third of the work I do and can gobble up every dps in its way on the climb to the top of the meter makes me a living angry gif.
I’ve had lots of people complain to me that Spriest is too hard, it’s too complicated, and it’s weak. And I think almost every Lock I’ve talked to says that they hate Spriest (a lot of us came to the conclusion that you’ll always like one and hate the other depending on which you picked up first). These are all fair points. And I won’t ever claim that I’m some god at Shadow Priest, or that I ever will be. But boy, even when I pull halfway decent numbers and sit among the hunters’ dps, it feels so good. Because you just know that you’ve mastered something in that fight… and it’s something not a lot of people are willing/capable of doing.
That’s to say nothing of the fact that I find the more intricate classes a blast to play. I also enjoy Elemental Shaman at a time when people seem to be flocking to enhance (if they’re playing a Shaman at all). But that’s just it, I guess… give me a class that has me tap, tap, tapping away and I’ll be happy, and maybe just a tad bit green at the ease of other classes’ play styles.
In amongst opening those Unsullied tokens, there was the time walking though. And, as always, being back in Pandaria dungeons brought about a wave of nostalgia. It is probably because MoP was my first expansion, and the Pandaren my favorite race that I feel so excited to be back at the Brewery and the Temple (and even on the Wall when the mechanics are horribly bugged and one-shot your entire group. :^) ).
First, let me get out of the way the fact that we were probably on the Isle for what started to feel like and interminable time. I remember that long after I could hilariously solo an eroded Cliffdweller, I started to feel the impatient itch for new content. We were all ready for WoD… we thought. Somehow, via the passage of time, we started to find Golganarr, the Dread Ship, Leafmender and the Champions of the Flame (Can you say ow?) sort of boring. Most of us had collected a majority (if not all of the toys). And pets were tamed, dropped or caught (except I never got that damn Ruby Elemental… but Chazz did this week when we went out to turn in our quests and take a spin around the block!!!). We, at the time, not knowing what was about to happen to us, thought the Timeless Isle was a prison.
Mac’Aree, is, arguably, one of the prettier zones we’ve seen since at least Dreanor’s Shadowmoon Valley. Even in its destruction, the autumn color palette mixed with the lavendars and blues we’ve all come to associate with the architecture of the Naaru create an atmosphere that is pleasing to the eye even while you gallop past gaggles of restless dead souls roaming the area on your way to kill the next technicolor kitty.
I have barely spent any time on Argus farming rares because quite simply, even with Mac’aree opened, I can’t stand to spend my time running around more fel-barren land. This past week, I actually probably spent more time on the Timeless Isle after I turned in my timewalking quest and went out for a memorial run around with Chazz. We ended up using the crystal and the sprite tree and I Holy Nova-d for the duration, making the hill become something of a sparkling bed of loot. I went to the Isle with just 300 tokens to my name. When he and I had each had our turn at the crystal, I left with close to 8,000. We ran up and hopped over to the Sanctuary (as cloak bearers, we have the great honor of being allowed inside), we killed Ordos in three hits. Chazz, as I mentioned earlier, bought a goblin kit and killed Garnia, finally receiving his ruby droplet pet. After awhile, we simply stopped and sat on the hills, watching the crag stalkers pounce and the cliffdwellers amble… and looking around like that, you suddenly realize how beautiful and peaceful of a place the Timeless Isle was. It was beautiful EVEN when you were running for your life. It made the scramble to stay alive OK.
If Blizzard wants to make us another Timeless Isle, they have a long way to go to get back. Give us trees and grass and clear water. Give us actual elite rares that are on actual rare spawn timers, and give us our mounts and toys and mogs off of these, and give us a reason to actually work together to defeat the Legion. Take away the fear of getting dazed off our mounts by the equivalent of gnats, and have that Fel Reaver pop up in places randomly. Or maybe at the spawn points of rares ,while people are in the process of killing it, have the Reaver fly over and drop in and murder us. Will people like it? Hell no. Will people with Outland PTSD cry? Hell yes. But like… we’d be there for them because Argus has brought us all together as a community again.
I’ll admit that even when Hallow’s End came, and Feast of Winter Veil, nothing had quite the same effect on me as Brewfest with its mini-games and self-contained events. Years later, it’s still a hallmark of Autumn for me, and this week has been no different than past years (except for the fact most of my characters were mogged to the Brewfest dress days in advance). And I still had just as much fun racing my friends on rams last Wednesday, putting them all to shame with my mad whippin’ skills. This year, we even went on an RP server and made the usual types of friends that are much easier to make in the infinitely kinder roleplay populations. Everything old was new again, just as it is every year (even if there are no new items to pick up). Honestly, if you ever get bored with some of the in-game events, simply try a different type of server and it changes things dramatically!
Of course, as I drift over the story of my main in my head, I relive some of my own past memories of life at the time that I created her. After awhile, you realize that no matter how hard you push yourself, sometimes our creations are simply an extension of ourselves, or what we hope of ourselves. And even while Denaise whisks through shadows and calls upon the void, her intentions are true, and her heart is strong. Good stuff to pull you through a migraine; good stuff to believe of yourself even when you think you’re mostly gone.
I guess my overall point here is that I had planned on talking about Pirate Day in game in my post today and how much fun I had, but instead my mind is playing tricks on me. And I just want anyone who reads this to know that sometimes things don’t go as you planned, and sometimes your efforts feel futile, and sometimes you just plain suck the fun out of your own life in one way or another. But that doesn’t make you any less important. And it doesn’t make you any of the horrible things you might try to convince yourself you are. So, don’t feel bad that you maybe didn’t make it to your own Pirate Day, because wether or not you believe it in that space of time, you ended up making a difference somewhere else.
It’s safe to assume many of us came to World of Warcraft only after we discovered a deep love of video games. I suppose there might be some out there who picked up WoW one day not really knowing what they were doing and then became appreciative of the gameplay, the graphics, the community, etc. But in the end, no matter what your point of contact was, there is one undeniable truth: Azeroth is a teeming world of real life people who have found that same appreciation you have while roaming the face of our digital planet. And from that shared recognition, bonds are formed. Actual friendships take shape in Azeroth every day.
In my experience, there are several ways you can create them, but the first and foremost is through dungeons and queues. Even if you’re in a guild, you’re only truly going to get to know anyone by playing with them. And the meat and potatoes of the game is how you suddenly discover people who are like minded as you, who play the same way you do and who want to proceed and excel at the same rate as you. Since you’re probably so involved in playing, you don’t quite realize the time you end up spending with some one before suddenly they pop up in your real life as well.
Because, though we hate to admit it, real life does continue on, whether we are within Azeroth or without. And it is always just a matter of time until life takes a swing at you or your buddy. And, maybe you just log in to say that you won’t be around that night, or that you’re not able to raid, but a switch gets flipped and you realize suddenly that the connection that you thought was just laughs and memes is something solid. Because some one 500 miles away asks simply “What is going on?”
But one thing that has always struck me about pouring my heart out in a DM on a bad day is that the people on the other side of that chat client don’t leave me on “Read”. Maybe it’s because we are out there in the game together, in a place where we take mutual shelter, and so they are capable of putting in the effort to try to fix it. Maybe it’s our own innate knowledge that time and distance keep us from doing much more to help each other through something, that keeps us glued to our keyboards or voice channels trying to come up with solutions. We view our friends we’ve met in-game as a part of our leisure experience. That doesn’t mean they’re expendable, or that they don’t matter. It simply means that they exist soley in a place where we’ve come to relax, and as such, we strive to ensure that they know their presence is valued, we want them to know they’ve made a difference in our lives. And the best way to show that, is to show up when you’re needed.
Not sure what inspired my friends-based ramblings. Maybe it’s because it’s Friday and I’m not feeling so hot with a stuffy head and scratchy throat. This means I’ll spend all time time wrapped in my bed comforter, propped against my desk with just my two hands poking out as Denaise does her dailies, and my alts unlock the Crucible. Yes, I have many hours of game time ahead of me in the next couple days, while I’m under the weather, and honestly? Couldn’t feel much better about it when I think about the friends who will ask “What’s going on?” as they pop into my voice channel.
Denaise SunChaser 