Swimming trough the Thousand Needles

Ore fest

My brave young Paladin Daytonaa was in desperate need for some ores, as one of her professions is jewelcrafting. A traveling merchant had told her that the bottom of the submerges Thousand Needles, before the Great Sundering a beautiful river canyon, holds a wealth of mithril and iron ores, and also some truesilver and gold ores. Although The Thousand Needles were not exactly on Daytonaa’s  route – far from it – explorer as she is, she decided to go check out the region and see for herself what treasures it holds. It turned out to be a long - as much dusty as wet - journey. And yet very rewarding. 

From Stormwind she took a flightpath to Menethil Harbor in the Wetlands and from there a boat to Theramore Isle, in Daytonaa’s days still a proud city, ruled by the lady Jaina Proudmoore. On the back of her ever loyal and strong horse Paloma, Daytonaa rode through Dustwallow Marsh, via Witch Hill, all the way up to an Alliance / Horde crossroad. From there she went to the right and traveled into the Barrens. She followed the long winding road into the Southern Barrens up to the Razorfen Downs, the ancestral burial grounds of the quilboar. 

As she entered the site, she had to fight off some fearsome Razorfen battleguards en cultists. No match for our sturdy and yet ever charming paladin, but still. Enemies to reckon with. Battling her way through she almost missed the left turn, which led her to a gloomy hidden spot inhabited by Razorfen cultists and battleguards.  

Keeping to the right, Daytonaa discovered the quarters of a Death’s Head Cultist, whom started hurling bolts of dark magic at her the moment he spotted the brave paladin. After slaying him, she climbed the rocks to the right of his dwelling, to discover the Darkcloud Pinnacle, and a bridge over the submerged canyon. To the right of the bridge, she stumbled across a little camp, home to Arnak Grimtotem, proudly announced as the ‘Chief of all Darkcloud Grimtotem chiefs’. Smiling upon this, Daytonaa left him in piece and crossed the bridge. Fighting her way along some Grimtotem Stompers, she reached  Arikara’s Needle, a place where the Grimtotem tribe at Darkcloud Pinnacle honor their dead. 

As she found nothing but hostile creatures on the hanging bridges and the pinnacles, Daytonaa decided to take the dazzling jump into the waters of the Thousand Needles basin. Swimming around, on an easy course to the east, she found ore after ore, diving to the bottom of what once had been a land of golden red sandstone spires. Making her way to a seemingly floating village in the distance, Daytonaa discovered all kinds of interesting and weird stuff, like a huge floating statue, that made her float in the air a bit as she climbed it. 

Finally she reached the Shimmering Deep (a lake that was once the Shimmering Flats), and Fizzle & Pozzik's Speedbarge. Tired of the long swim, awfully hungry and loaded with ores, the paladin decided to heartstone back to Stormwind, for a nice meal of Mightfish stew and a long ore smelting session.

Note: the described area can be entered at level 40. Hostile mobs range in level from 40 to 42, but upon the shores south of the basin, evil creatures of level 45+ reside. The Shimmering Deep no longer offers quests to Alliance players, but it's mining heaven. Truesilver ores are mainly found in the nothwestern part of the basin, near Feralas.

Troll wizardry

Poor bear

Just recovering from her voyage into the Maw, Daytonaa stumbled across this poor Thisle Bear cub. It’s incased in the rocks, desperately trying to get out. It seems the Shatterspear Troll witch doctors are performing some really dark and uncanny wizardry around there.

Voyage into the Maw

The Ghosts in the Dark achievement

Today my Human paladin Daytonaa reached the jagged coastline of Darkshore, the eerie northwestern zone of Kalimdor. How I hate what Deathwing and the Night Elfs have done to the once friendly village Auberdine. Near the ruins of the unfortunate settlement the Elfs built an encampment they call Lor’danel. Daytonaa set out to collect some bear meat and copper ores, when she stumbled across  a huge whirlpool: The Maw of the Void. Others before her had swam across it and were able to get back to the bank again, or so she had been told, so Daytonaa left her horse on the cliffs and jumped right into the maelstrom, in an effort to mine the copper node just outside the water. As soon as she hit the water, she found out that swimming back to the shore was not going to happen. The whirling water mass got hold of her, as if it were alive. Daytonaa desperately struggled and splashed, but the whirling water mass swept her around the Maw once, twice… and then the brave paladin submerged into the deep and all went black.

When she opened her eyes, surprised she even did, Daytonaa found herself in an underground cavern. Just outside the shallow water, she noticed a lonely figure sitting next to the remnants of what looked like a very old stone structure. The figure turned out to be a Night Elf named Bielara Ivyshroud. She told Daytonaa that she had fallen into the Bashal'Aran Collapse, at the bottom of the Maw. Behind Bielara Daytonaa heard some creepy sounds. As she walked up the slope, she had to fight some ghosts until she reached a spooky guy whom turned out to be the ghost of Telarius Voidstrider, once a powerful demon hunter, but slain during an encounter with Warden Maiev Shadowsong. 

The undead remnants of Telarius attacked Daytonaa. As she killed him (yes, even dead people can be killed again), he dropped  a scroll: Writings of the Dark Herald. Before returning Daytonaa to the edge of the Maw, Bielara asked her to return the scroll to ranger Glynda Nal'shea back in Lor'Danel. Upon doing so, she got the achievement Ghosts in the Dark.

Note: when Daytonaa hit the bottom of the Bashal'Aran Collapse, she also got the achievement Going Down? Swimming into the Maw clearly does not drag one into the deep. For the whirlpool to awaken, you have to jump into the Maw from height.

My Azerothian days

Grizzly Hills soundtrack

My first post!

Some precious years ago, in 2008, I was a journalist and editor for a Dutch girly magazine called Yes. The magazine flourished for 25 years but has recently perished. May she rest in well-deserved piece. One day when Yes was still around, I was to edit an article which was written by my lovely colleague Petra. It was about ‘gaming girls’; two topics: girls and gaming, much in fashion at the start of this decade. As I had always been a gaming nerd, at the time still X-Boxing away on games like Oblivion and Gears of War, and playing PC-games like Myst and Riven, I was highly interested in the topic. Hell yeah, I already messed with my father’s ZX-Spectrum (Sinclair, remember Basic-commands like BEEP, BORDER and GO SUB?! ) at the age of 14, so I guess you can call me a true grl nerd.

One of the girls interviewed in the aforementioned Yes-article talked about a game called World of Warcraft. She talked about an online game in which, for the first time in gaming history (maybe not so accurate, but at least the first big MMORPG – massive multiplayer online roleplaying game – at the time) you could walk around freely, to discover the endless epic worlds, ride mounts, fly on the back of drakes and be part of a beautiful fantasy world. This world was called Azeroth, and in it she was a priest, healing her allies in combatting players of the other faction or fighting gruesome beasts in exciting dungeons. 

That sounded just like heaven to me. I contacted the girl and she introduced me into the World of Warcraft. I created my first character, a female Dwarven paladin named Dmalaa. Yeah sure, I got my share of laughs along the way, because female Dwarven chars weren’t thought of as very sexy these days. But what the hell did I know. And what the hell did I care. I was a total noob and having the time of my life.

How I long for these days…

As I started playing, I discovered one beautiful area after another. I met people from all over Europe, wandering the colorful plains of Azeroth as mages, warriors, druids and more. I remember clearly leaving the icy planes of Coldridge Valley, the Alliance starting point for Dwarves and Gnomes, as I leveled up. My jaw dropping in awe at the sight of Loch Modan. Ingame I whispered my tutor the priest (that took me a while though, understanding all the gibberish in the chat screen!), how beautiful I thought these lands were and this game was. She replied me a smiley, and invited me in her group . Was I ready for something cool? Minutes later she landed before my character on the back of a giant drake. I was exhilarated. And determent to get me that flying mount.  

Many years passed as I played this beautiful, diverse and challenging game. I got my drakes. I learned not to enter dungeons with grey gear, and the importance of STATS. I learned professions, hooked up with new Alliance friends in a guild on the Dunemaul server and spent many many waking hours in this world I just couldn’t get enough from. I remember nights of exploring new area’s with new friends, having fun and talking about our real lives in the meantime on Skype, and later on Ventrilo and Teamspeak. I remember the epic moments of defeating epic bosses together for the first time. Going on achievement runs and exploring the lovely story of the game. I started buying the books and got sucked into the lore. I fell in love with NPC’s (non playing characters) like Arthas Menethil, Jaina Proudmoore, Uther the Lightbringer, the Stormrage brothers, Tyrande Whisperwind, warchief Thrall and his racy wife Aggra, the young mage Khadgar and his troubled master Medivh, the Windrunner sisters and many more. It was like I had discovered a brand new series on HBO, and I was playing a part in it.

O yes. The epic nights with several dozen of my Alliance brothers and sisters, rampaging the Horde cities to get the achievement For The Alliance! I smoked and drank my way through endless nights of fun, talking to and kidding around with my fresh friends from Belgium. I still talk to them sometimes. They remember me as the Dwarf whom needed GPS, as I could never find my way back into the Blackrock Mountains, after I had died in the Blackrock Depths. Those were the days.

At the pinnacle of my WoW experience, when the expansion Wrath of the Lich King had just kicked in, I joined a guild on the Dunemaul server called Ryfari. By then I had replaced my paladin for a new main character, a Gnome mage called Gnomez, and I was really getting to know the game and understanding all its mechanics. I started raiding. Not easily can I describe the exhilaration of earning the title Champion of the Frozen Wastes. And later on: The Kingslayer. After all the effort. The fun. The tries. The whipes. We did it! I did it! These were – and yup I’m serious – epic moments in my life; game-wise, friends-wise, fun-wise. I went to Belgium to meet with my game mates, went to real life guild meetings and organized LAN (local area network) parties at my home with my WoW friends. Sure. Real life was good. But WoW-life was at times even better. And yes, both lives merged pretty well.

Then the Cataclysm expansion kicked in. Somehow in that period many of my female gaming friends got kids, or their personal lives evolved to an extend that they had to quit WoW. Many of my male WoW friends did not like what Blizzard had done to the game, to our much loved lands, and they also quit playing the game. The hardcore players took weeks off from work and real life, to be on schedule and level their chars as quick as possible to level 85. I had a pretty busy work schedule so I could not keep up with my hardcore guildies. Also, game mechanics and talent changes were so severe, that it almost seemed that we were playing a different game. Still a nice game, in my opinion. The new areas were cool and again beautiful and they fit in nicely with the lore. However. Much of us just couldn’t keep up with the fast leveling, the huge changes of gear, talents, abilities and professions. By that time I was getting bored with my mage and was ready for something new: healing. I quick-leveled my holy Elven priest. The Dunemaul server fell apart, players leaving like it was a haunted place, and nearly all of my WoW friends stopped playing WoW. They started focusing on playing League of Legends, picked up on Rift or Guild Wars 2 or Diablo or stopped playing altogether. My own life was evolving also, to a point that I couldn’t find the time for raiding anymore. And before I even could get track of Cataclysm, the Mists of Pandaria expansion changed the surface of Azeroth, and with it the lore, the game mechanics and everything, forever.

We tried to pick up where we got left. The few of us that were left. In our opinion, we had not even begun to grasp all of Cataclysm. But okay. Mists of Pandaria had some nice new elements, so we gave it a chance. Although we didn’t quite like the Pandaren shizzle. It just didn’t seem right; Panda’s in our world of dragons, elves, dwarves and epic Titans. The endless dailies grind killed off the few remaining fellow players I knew. On a dark day, I found myself without friends in Azeroth. Rinse and repeat? I found a new guild and worked as hard as I could to get by the awfully boring and seemingly endless reputation dailies grind. I even started raiding again. Got myself a little piece of Farmville in Pandaria. But things never were the same again. To meet with the new raid stat expectations, I had to consult sites like Ask MR. Robot. Gear stats and game mechanics had become math wizardry. Patch after patch was released and I just couldn’t keep up. For sure, my life had also changed to the point that playing WoW every night was not an option anymore. I longed for a slower pace, longed for the WOTLK days, where endgame was achievable for all whom would work up to it and there was enough fun stuff to do after killing the End Boss.

Long story short: I quit playing WoW. I picked up on Guild Wars 2 with an old WoW friend. Yes, it looks great and it has some awesome game mechanics. But there’s something amiss. And I suddenly had some time left. So I started going to the gym. Good for me and mine, you got me there. But I missed Azeroth. I missed the soothing music in the Grilly Hills and Howling Fjord areas. I even started dreaming about it. My Azeroth wandering years.

I realized that saying goodbye to Azeroth is saying goodbye to an old friend. It’s saying goodbye to a place that can be a place of refuge and solitude in our harsh facebookian times. A place that you can forever wander because of its memories an beauty.

So. I logged back in. Got my chars out of the wastelands of Dunemaul and transferred them to Aerie Peak. I decided to level some new chars to rediscover the Azerothian lands. Without the stress of having to level fast, meet guild or raiding requirements, keep pace with friends and guildies… I’m alone with my chars and while I level at utmost ease, I discover beauties, places, achievements and curiosities I've not had the change to discover before. I walk the lands of Azeroth without any needs or goals. And I’m loving it.

Please excuse my bad grammar. English is not my native language. I enjoy comments and tales of all fellow travelers.  
May the light always shine upon you. 

Howling Fjord soundtrack