Things I Have Never Done in WoW

I have been playing World of Warcraft off and on (more on than off) for over seven years now. That’s a Hell of a long time to play a video game, and in that time, I’ve seen and done almost everything the game has to offer.

Almost.

There are still a few things that, for one reason or another, I’ve never done. I thought it might be interesting to look at those things that I still have never experienced within the world of Azeroth.

Played a Gnome:

Over the years, I have tried every class and every race at least once, and in many cases more than once.

Every class and race, that is, except for Gnomes.

I just don’t like Gnomes. They’re a comedy relief race that isn’t funny. They’d work fine as some background element like the Grummles in Pandaria, but Blizzard’s halfhearted attempts to make them a race worthy of sharing center stage have just created an unhappy medium where they’re still not terribly compelling as heroes but have also lost whatever quirky charm they once had.

Plus, they’re about as deep into the uncanny valley as you can get. Gnomes are so horrifically disproportionate they make Orcs look like beauty queens.

I might have played one if they had their own unique starting zone — completionism and all that — but since they share Dun Morogh with the Dwarves, there’s just no point.

Quested through Bloodmyst Isle or Loch Modan:

As mentioned above, I’m a serious completionist when it comes to story, and as a result, I have played through virtually every zone’s quest content at least once — though a few I haven’t been through since the Cataclysm revamp.

Two zones have slipped through the cracks entirely, though.

The first is Bloodmyst Isle. Despite my disdain for the Draenei, I have played through most of their first zone, but my interest always drops off by the time I get to Bloodmyst Isle. I’ve managed to do the first few quests, but I don’t think I’ve ever even gotten to the halfway point of the zone, let alone finished.

I tend to think of Bloodmyst as the only zone I’ve never done, but in writing this post, it occurs to me I can’t recall having spent much time in Loch Modan, either. I remember riding through there a lot of times, and I’ve probably done a quest or two, but I don’t think I’ve ever sat down and properly played through it.

I don’t really have anything against Loch Modan. It’s a pretty zone, and Dwarves are okay. I guess it got neglected because I like the human and Night Elf leveling zones so much. Shame you can’t do Loch Modan as Horde — it surely must be nicer than the Barrens.

Roleplay:

This entry almost doesn’t qualify for the list, because I have flirted with the periphery of roleplay for a long time. I have fairly strong backstories/personalities for all my characters — the potential to build new stories is a strong contributor to my altoholism — and half my characters are on a roleplay server.

I enjoy watching other people roleplay as I walk by — gives the world some real texture — and I used to attend the regular Thunder Bluff story-circle. Arguably I was RPing then, as I was in-character for the event, but mostly that just entailed walking to my seat, sitting down, and occasionally applauding or offering a brief comment.

I am eternally tempted to give RP a try, but I have no faith left in the WoW community, my experience as an outside observer has been that RP tends to entail a lot of drama, and I don’t think my characters would be accepted by the greater RP community. I’m not interested in playing ordinary people, and I would likely be labelled a Mary Sue and summarily rejected.

Also, most people type much, much more slowly than me, and I am not a patient man. That’s pretty much why I stopped going to story circle.

Pet battles:

Thanks to some bad experiences in childhood, anything resembling Pokemon is anathema to me.

And even if that wasn’t the case, pet battles still wouldn’t much appeal to me. They have no story-relevance, no rewards that I care about, and just nothing at all about them appeals to me. I didn’t even like pets when you couldn’t battle them.

That said, I have a lot of respect for pet battles from a conceptual perspective. They’re a very deep mini-game that offers many, many hours of play for those who enjoy them, but those who don’t care (like me) can ignore them without consequence. All the game’s systems should follow this model.

Rated battlegrounds:

Despite the fact my opinion of WoW PvP runs the spectrum from disinterest to disdain, I have participated in most every kind of PvP the game has to offer at some point.

I even had a brief, disastrous arena career back in early Cataclysm when a guildie roped me into it. You’d think, being a rogue, I’d be good at this sort of thing, but no.

Rated battlegrounds, however, elude me. It’s not the sort of thing you join up with on a whim. It takes a fair bit of planning and organization. And I only pop into PvP once in a blue moon when I’m bored and can’t think of anything better to do.

Faced Jaraxxus:

I had pretty poor luck with Trial of the Crusader back in the day. Every PUG I ever joined for it back in Wrath failed.

Later — I think sometime in Cataclysm — I finally joined a group who managed to finish it, but by the time I joined, they were already on the faction champions, meaning I have never killed the first few bosses. That includes Jaraxxus, Eredar lord of the Burning Legion.

He’s such a famous meme of a boss that I almost feel guilty — like I’m not a true WoW fan — that I’ve never actually encountered him.

At this point I’m sure I could go back and solo him, but it’s just not that interesting of a raid, so I haven’t been strongly motivated to do so.