The Old Fashioned Way

While trying to maintain full attendance at my guilds Karazhan raids, I’m also trying to beat out the last couple of levels with my hunter and as the guild is short of healers, Alsalil is also on the agenda. Consequently, I’m suffering from a little Outlands levelling burn out, at the moment. It’s difficult to clear an Outland zone’s quests with one character and then do them all again with another a character a few days later.

So after a tragic string of unexplainable wipes in Kara last night, I decided to take a break and have some fun levelling my little gnome warrior with a friends Draenei shaman. We set off at high speed for Redridge, with the intent of completing the elite Blackrock Orc quests. I use the term "we" loosely there, for my ghost wolf friend set off at high speed, where as I ran along behind, as fast as my little stumpy legs would go; fighting off an endless stream of crap animals en route.

Now these orcs are level 23-25 elites and as such, the quests are marked as ‘Group’. Our group of two level 24’s may have been a little ambitious to attempt them, but I personally enjoy the challenge. Sadly, it would appear that my way of thinking is a thing of the past. It took us a good hour of repeated attempts to successfully pull the groups of 3-4 elite trash at a time and live to tell the tale, but we developed a good strategy of DPS tanking and some timely shaman heals. Having waded through all the trash leading up to "Tharil’zun", the named quest mob, we found he was strategically stood in between five other mobs, wearing a "Come and have a go, if you think yer hard enough" expression (and possibly strutting around clucking like a chicken). To add insult to injury, he rather unsportingly ‘Banishes’ healer types. Suffice to say, death came on swift wings on our first attempt.

Has anyone else noticed how poorly located the graveyard is in Redridge? The zone is vaguely rectangular, with the graveyard right in the Southwest corner. Want to take a wild stab at where the elite quest area is? Correct, Sir. As far into the Northeast corner as the devs could possibly put it. It took us a good three days by camel, over mountainous terrain, though herds of wild gnome eating spiders and with a spot of murloc dodging thrown in for good measure, but we finally made it back.
A swig of trolls blood potion for Dutch courage and we launched ourselves though the gate with wild abandon to take Tharil’zun by surprise… But the surprise attack was somewhat wasted, for there was Big T lying on his back with his feet in the air as a level 20 priest relieved him of his head. Just as I was about to congratulate the young dwarf for his amazing feat, his level 70 rogue guildie unstealthed with a yell of "kekeke".
We waited with the optimistic hope that he would respawn before his mates, but we were cruelly ambushed by half a dozen orcs at once and another epic corpse run ensued.

It seems that in these Outlandish times, nobody attempts to do the lower level group quests as they were intended anymore. If you pass through Westfall on an average night, you will see at least half a dozen people selling ‘Boosts’ through Deadmines, or "Looking for high level for DM run", etc.
In the ‘good old days’ a Deadmines run was a full night of entertainment and despite the repeated wipes, everyone came away from it with valuable lessons in group play. Maybe even some sense of achievement for success.
If people only ever do these instances and elite quests with somebody 30+ levels higher than the mobs, how do they ever expect to gain essential raiding skills, or acceptable group behaviour? With this in mind, it shouldn’t really be surprising that so many level 70 instance ‘pick up groups’ are so utterly awful. Most of the people have solo’d their way to 70 with a number of boosts through relevant dungeons for phat loot.

Anyway, we found a level 23 priest on the same quest and the three of us nailed that sucker… You’re not so smug now, Tharil’zun (or maybe his heart just wasn’t in it, after being back stabbed for zomg xxxxk).