What’s in a Main?

Hi. My name is Dinaer. And I’m an elemental shaman.

I’ve been playing my rogue as my main since vanilla. I’ve gone out of my way to do all of my important achievements and accomplishments on that character. No matter what role I was playing for the good of the guild, my rogue was my main. When I tanked on my pally in Wrath, I still played my rogue more. When I healed on a resto druid through Cata and into Pandaria, I still made sure to play my rogue first and foremost.

My guild, having lasted since early vanilla, is now all but inactive. There are 5-10 players that log on sporadically, but there are never more than 2-3 on at a time. We tried to get a raid group going, but couldn’t field more than 8 logged on for a raid night that was advertised weeks in advance.

I leveled a tauren shaman to have the chance to play with some friends. Today, I did LFR Gul’dan for the first time, and I did it on my shaman. As far as I remember, this is the first time I have killed a final raid boss on an “alt” before doing it first on my rogue.

Which begs the question – is the shaman my alt? I spend more playtime on the shaman than the rogue. I have done Karazhan on the shaman, not the rogue. I have cleared Nighthold (LFR) on the shaman, not the rogue.

I guess I’m a shaman now.

View From the Horde side

I have been an alliance player almost exclusively since vanilla. My guild is alliance, and so there was never a compelling reason to play horde. I’ve started a couple of horde characters, but never played them to the level cap.

In the Demon Invasion event preceding Legion, I used the big XP from the invasion events to level a Tauren shaman to 100. I didn’t do anything with him other than the invasions, but he reached the level cap, which was an accomplishment.

I have a few friends that have come back to WoW, but they are playing horde. Since my guild isn’t doing anything these days, I decided to jump onto the Horde side of things. I played quickly through the main storylines in the four main zones and reached 110 in two weeks of sporadic playtime.

I was a little let down when I saw that the storylines were almost exactly the same on the Horde side. There were a couple of divergences – a couple of flight paths that are Horde-only, a couple of specifically Horde quest-givers. But for the most part everything was identical.

That was disappointing to me. In vanilla and earlier expansions, playing Horde gave you a whole different side of the story than playing Alliance. I wonder if this is one of those details that Blizzard has lost along the way in order to streamline game production.

Anyway, now I may actually have some friends online to run with. That will be a welcome change.

Now I just have to figure out how to dps with an elemental shaman. Or I need to level my restoration artifact.

What Does Casual Look Like?

I keep reading posts on Reddit complaining about all the RNG on top of RNG, and how the grind is ruining the game.

The more I read, the more I think that the really involved players – the dedicated raiders and the ones that are most likely to post on Reddit – don’t actually understand or care about how the vast majority of players play. This isn’t new, of course, but I’m really seeing a wide gulf between the expectations of different play groups.

Once upon a time, I was like them. I had structured play times, raid times, farming times. I had lists of gear upgrades and I knew where they dropped. I made sure to run heroics and do dailies to chase whatever carrot was being dangled in front of us at the time.

Let me describe my playtime now. I’ll also add that this is the playstyle of nearly every player I currently know, including many that go all the way back to vanilla and that were former raiders.

Legendaries – I have two legendaries on my main, and one on each of my two most played alts. I have no idea if they are “good” or “bad” legendaries because I have never taken the time to look up what legendaries are available. Since my gear level is in the 860-870 range, ANY legendary at iLVL 910 will be a big upgrade. Even the utility talents can be useful when soloing, which is 99% of my playing. Sephuz’s Secret is great as an extra movement buff when I am stealthing through a bunch of stuff to get to a quest objective.

World Quests – This makes up almost all of my playtime. I keep up on my emissary quests in order to get reputation, with the goal of hitting exalted with each faction so that I can get the flying meta. (I haven’t looked up what I need for the flying meta, but I know that’s one of them). Also, all of my legendaries have dropped from emissary caches, so I keep doing them for that reason.

Mythics – I have run a few. One with a +1 keystone to try it, but mostly without. My only motivation for running the mythics has been to get attuned for Karazhan. I did that with my group of friends, but that took weeks to coordinate our play time.

Karazhan – As a BC raider, I was really looking forward to this. It is, however, really long. We’ve gone in twice. The first time we spent the evening on opera and maiden. We didn’t look up videos or strats. We just played until we figured it out. The second time in we did opera, maiden, and moroes. That’s as far as we’ve been.

Raids – Just LFR. And that only a few times. I don’t get gear upgrades in LFR, so there is little point to doing it over again once I’ve seen it.

Some would say that this makes me “bad” because I’m not doing Mythic +15. I disagree with that term. I haven’t tried and failed out of a lack of skill. Its like saying that a guy who plays basketball in his driveway is “bad” at basketball. When compared to NBA players, sure. But he’s not playing against NBA players, so who cares? As long as he’s having fun shooting in his driveway, then his goal is reached.

I still play more days than not. I’m having fun. I’m not chasing anything super-rare like the fox mount or a specific legendary. I basically feel like this game was made for me, and it’s great. The more dedicated players can have their complaints, but they don’t speak for me.