Savage Silk: WoW Classic

People who don't get it sometimes ask why, since some of us claim to be so very keen on leveling as slowly as humanly possible, we still pounce on double xp weekends and don't hesitate to use whatever in-game xp buffs we receive as rewards. It's a question that deserves a detailed, serious and considered answer.

It's not going to get one here. Not today anyway.

I will, however, offer up for consideration one specific occasion when this apparent paradox might be seen as nothing less than sound, logical sense. That would be when you've made a character with the intention of having them become a craftsperson, only to find that the game demands they reach specific levels in their adventuring class before anyone will train them.

It's a design choice that I've never liked. As a habitual player of multiple characters I don't strongly object to limiting the tradeskills each character can learn to two or three, although I'd prefer a system where any character can learn all the skills, perhaps with a penalty in terms of efficiency or rate of progress as the number taken increases.

I'm also fairly sanguine about whether the developers decide to make crafting into its own mini-game or just go for a click-and-watch progress bar. I do like a good mini-game, if it really is good. Vanguard had the best I've ever seen. It could have held its own as a standalone game. EverQuest II's is decent. Anything that involves me trying to hit a moving point on a pendulum can bite my axe.

I sense a sea voyage in your future, young gnome.

World of Warcraft, either flavor, favors the progress bar and rather well, too. I like the way the bar gets slower and slower, the higher level or rarer or more complex the recipe. I abhorr the way some games do the exact opposite, speeding the process up as your skill increases, so that making a Level 80 widget takes a fraction of the time it did at Level 5.

Even worse is accelerated batch processing. Rift was the first MMORPG I played that did this and I hated it on sight. Guild Wars 2 also does it. Blehhhhhhhhhh! It should take ten times longer to make ten widgets, not a tenth of the time.

Obviously I don't want making a hat in a game to take as long as it takes to make a hat in real life, which is several hours. I can tell you that because Mrs. Bhagpuss has been making felt hats recently, along with a plethora of other felt products. She came in to show me her latest cloche about five minutes ago.

That doesn't mean I want it to take no time at all. I want it to take just long enough that I feel I've "done something". Classic does a very good job of that. What it doesn't do a very good job of at all is tell you where to go to learn your craft or how you'regoing to have to kill a few thousand monsters before anyone's willing to show you how to stitch a prettier shirt.

Only another 18 bandits to go. At least I'm going to max out dagger.

It's all very well when you're just starting out. The guards in Stormwind and Ironforge will cheerfully tell you who to speak to to learn the basics. They'll even add a flag to your map to show you where they live. After that you're on your own.

Your second trainer, the "Expert", is usually in the same building as your first, the "Journeyman", but after that you need to find the "Artisan" and he or she could be anywhere. As far as I can tell there is nothing in game to tell you where that might be.

Weaponmasters are good enough to give you directions to people they know of who can train you in skills they themselves don't have but crafting trainers have no conversation whatsoever. (Incorrect! See Footnote 1). Guards don't help and there's no hint in your own crafting "book".

At this point most people would tab out and google the information or go to their favorite bookmarked WoW site. For good or ill I have chosen not to use any out-of-game resources while leveling up in Classic so that's not an option for me.

Which is how I came to be running my Level 13 Warlock from Stormwind to Darnassus last night. She's been 150/150 Journeyman tailor for a while now, able to make Silk Bags but not able to get any skill increases for doing it. My Hunter had acquired another couple of stacks of Silk Cloth and I thought it was about time the Warlock visited the Artisan Tailor and learned the skill.

The Hunter mailed the Silk, along with 50 silver pieces to pay the fee and the Warlock hopped a griffin to Loch Modan and began the run through Wetlands to Menethil Harbor. The trip passed without incident. Well, the voidwalker died, holding back a crocolisk that wandered to close to the path and aggroed, but that doesn't count. It's what he's there for.

Seated at a table in the bar area, table chosen so I can look out the door and see when we reach port. I am on a roleplaying server, after all.

The trip to Darnassus was straightforward. I got on the right boat and remembered to get off before it turned around and came back. I also remembered to go and get the griffin point before I took the boat to Teldrassil and to get the point in Teldrassil so I never have to use that ship again.

It all went wrong when I got to the combined Leatherworker and Tailoring emporium. I had assumed that, since the Leatherworker Artisan was there, the Tailoring equivalent would be too. You know what they say about assumptions.

The Artisan Tailor is not in Darnassus. I was pretty sure I could guess where he was. I didn't think there'd be much chance of him being in Ironforge. Sod's law dictated he'd be in Stormwind, the very place my Warlock had woken up about half an hour earlier.

Rather than assume, wrongly, yet again I did what I've taken to doing in lieu of googling; I asked in General Chat "Anyone know where the Artisan Tailor is? He's not in the Tailor shop here". In seconds someone replied "Stormwind".

What's the catch?

This, I recall, is how we used to do it. For years in EverQuest most questions were asked and aswered in /ooc or /shout. I used to answer dozens some days because I'm one of those annoying people who like to share their knowledge. It's a bonus if someone actually asked for it.

There used to be a lot of that sort of thing but after a while the practice seemed to fall out of fashion. Time came when, if you dared to offer up a practical query to the wisdom of crowds, instead of helpful replies you'd get a chorus of "Google it!".

I found that condescending and fatuous and still do. It's not as though Google is a secret known only to a few. If someone's asking in game they probably have a good reason for not googling it.

I used to challenge the google enthusiasts with the concept that part of the point of MMORPGs is the multi-player bit and that talking to other players should be encouraged not stamped on. Never went down well. Eventually I gave up.

Classic, I'm very happy to say, is not like that. I have yet to see anyone reply to a query with "Google" or "WoWHead". People answer promptly and helpfully. Often a discussion follows. I've learned a good deal by listening to player conversations in open channels after a question's been asked.

I journeyed back to Stormwind. Didn't take long. I Hearthstoned to Ironforge and got on the griff. Didn't take me more than a few minutes to find the Artisan Tailor. I offered him my fifty silver and he told me where to go. Out into the world to kill and kill until I could come back and show him my Level 20 badge.

All my own work. Well, mostly.

I was not best pleased. I did have it in my head that there was a level requirement but for some reason
I thought it was Level 16. I was ready for that. Another seven levels, though? That seemed like a mountain to climb.

So, yes, at this point, had some means of accelerating my experience been available, I would have taken it. The journey and those smelly roses are all well and good but I have stitching to do. And, as it happens, I did have one source of double xp to hand.

My Warlock has been slacking in Stormwind for the best part of a week. She's been on and off making this and that but mostly she's been chilling in the Inn. As a result she'd built up the maximum rested xp, a level and a half's worth.

I took her to Westfall, where she had quests to kill thirty Defias and collect eight gnoll paws. By the time she had that lot she'd not only finished Level 13 (she was about 80% in to begin with) but the next level too, almost all of the xp coming from double xp kills.

She went around hoovering up quests and by the time I logged out for lunch she was Level 16. I plan on playing her for the rest of today and most likely tomorrow as well. I will make that Artisan Tailor eat his words and give me the respect I'm due! Even if I have to appear before him caked head to foot in the dried blood of a thousand enemies!

Ahem. Well, she is a Warlock. Part-time.

If they'd just let her sit quietly and sew there's be no need for any of this malarkey!

1. In fact, as Shintar points out in her comment below, Profession Trainers do tell you where to go next. It's not a clickable dialog option but they have static text at the top of their dialog window that explains where the next trainer you need is located. Of course, I just blanked that, thinking it was whatever had been there before!

It's All Good: GW2

This morning was... surprising. I logged in after breakfast with no particular plan in mind. My mouse pointer dithered over the EverQuest II icon for a moment as I thought about doing the new panda quest, then moved on.

What I wanted to do was play WoW Classic but if I knew if I started before nine in the morning I might end up playing for twelve hours straight and I wouldn't want Tobold to worry. I considered getting a blog post out before playing anything but the ones I have in mind are likely to be epics and I wasn't quite ready for that level of effort.

As I often do at this point, I decided to run my Guild Wars 2 dailies while I let my thoughts settle. GW2 dailies are predictable and generally quick, plus I hate to miss out on that two gold per account per day.

I logged my primary account in and found the dailies were exceptionally easy. I'd finished all three in not much more than five minutes. Since I was on the account that had opened the new map I was raving about the other day, I thought I might as well go and have a wander around.

Four and a half hours later I logged out for a belated lunch, having completed the entirety of the Bound by Blood Prologue. It's too early for any kind of detailed review because spoilers but my capsule review is this:

Best "Living World" episode for as long as I can remember.

I really have almost nothing negative to say about it at all. Let's have some bullet points about why that is, without spoiling the extremely good plot.

• It's paced very well


• There are absolutely no horrible, tedious extended fights.


• At no time do you have to learn a set of fatuous new skills that replace your real ones.


• Nothing requires you to do a thing, then do it again, then do it a third time to be absolutely sure.


• The story is genuinely interesting, especially if you like the Charr race and their politics.


• Not only is it interesting but it's coherent and it makes sense!


• A couple of regular cast members make a long overdue reappearance.


• At no point (that I noticed) does anyone say anything wildly out of character.


• The voice acting is good to very good.


• The dialog is significantly better than it used to be (although it has generally been improving since the big shake up last year).


• There are a bunch of new characters, all of whom appear to have actual personalities.


• Every location is visually sumptuous. I know GW2's Art Dept. always knock it out of the park but this time that tired re-used assets feel is wholly absent.


• The new map doesn't just look good - it plays well. It doesn't have the stale "Only here for the Meta" feel of so many recent LS maps.


• There are two dozen Events and they vary widely in style and kind. You can easily complete the number necessary for the story by doing only the ones you like.

Other than the sudden leap in quality, perhaps the most surprising thing about Bound By Blood is that, despite being promoted as a "prologue" to the real first instalment of the "Icebrood Saga", it seems to have more content and take longer to play through than many recent Living World full episodes. I did take a lot of screenshots (over 60 this morning, most of which I can't use because of spoilers) and did a fair bit of exploring, but even so I'm absolutely certain Bound By Blood is at the very least no shorter than the average LS4 entry.

I'm aware that my enthusiasm is in part driven by the change of location and focus. I find Ascalon and The Shiverpeaks a clear order of magnitude more appealing than anywhere we've been sent since before Heart of Thorns four years ago. I also find the Charr the most interesting of all the races. Only the Asura come close and they are definitely in second place.

Bound By Blood (a very clever title, as it turns out) goes all in on Charr politics with a hefty side-order of Charr culture. I loved it. Rytlock, my favorite GW2 character, has a starring role and, as always, makes the most of it, but all the other Charr with speaking parts are memorable characters too.

For non-Charr fans, there's quite a lot of Braham, mostly in his comedy sidekick persona rather than his spoiled brat mode. He's arguably a little over-used but I enjoyed his routines. Gorrik has a smaller but also quite funny supporting role, with a key scene that had me genuinely worried for his safety - not to say survival. Fortunately the "kill a much-loved character" trope, over-use of which by previous writers has drawn a good deal of criticism in the past, stays in the locker this time. I guess that's a spoiler. Sorry!

By the time the prologue came to its unexpected conclusion I found myself very much on board with the new direction. For the first time since... well I can't remember exactly when, but it could conceivably be as far back as the death of Scarlet... I find myself actively looking forward to finding out what happens next.

My only worry is that Bound By Blood is so good compared to most LW episodes precisely because it's a "prologue". That the writers have deliberately slowed the pacing and concentrated on the lore and the characters rather than the set-piece boss fights (which I loathe) only as a beat before a return to relentless, mindless "action".

I'm going to choose to believe that's not the case. That lessons have finally been learned. That we at last have a writing team that knows how to write and developers who know how to fit the necessary action to the limited skills of what is probably the most casual playerbase in major MMORPGS.

How long we have to wait to find out very much remains to be seen. ANet are keeping their cards very close to their breastplates this time. No talk of bi-weekly updates like Season One or three month cadences like Season 4. This time we get a "saga", not chapters or episodes. That could be any format - or none.

I just hope when the next content drop arrives I can come back here and be as positive about it as have been today.

I Got Skills: WoW Classic

I wanted to say something about weapon skills in Classic, following Kaylriene's post on the subject. I was going to write a long, theoretical post about the concept and mechanics but when it comes down to it there's not much wrong with the way Classic does it already. A quick run-through of what my Hunter was doing yesterday should cover most of the salient points.

I replied to Kaylriene, saying it was the norm (back in the day) to buy all the weapon skills as you could afford them, then swap between weapons as you levelled so as to hit the cap with everything at or near max. This is true but I'd forgotten it was something I was never very good at doing. Or, more accurately, remembering to do.

Having reminded myself, I spent yesterday afternoon taking my Hunter around Ironforge, Stormwind and that Night Elf hovel, finding weapon trainers and paying them ten silver to teach me all they knew. You'd think it would cost more and take longer, right?

Acquiring the skill is trivial but how about training it up? Fortunately for the forgetful (and slackers), weapon skills in Classic improve incredibly quickly, at least until they get to about ten or fifteen points short of your level cap. Then they slow to a crawl, but by then you're already good to go with that weapon in any normal leveling situation.

Like shelling peas. And yes, since you ask, I have shelled peas.

As far as training weapons go, it seems to make remarkably little difference what quality or level you use. Anything remotely close to my level on the Auction House was way out of my price range (I had about sixty silver to my name at that point) so I bought a Level 11 white quality bow from a vendor and filled half eight slot bag with the second-cheapest throwing axes, 50 copper for a stack of 200, meaning I was carrying 800 throwing axes. Best not think about it. Then I went to Wetlands, where I spent a couple of hours killing gnolls, crocs, raptors and slimes.

As a skinner and a leatherworker, with a tailor relying on a steady supply of cloth, this sort of thing is always time well spent. I killed a couple of grey cons to see if they gave skill-ups (they did) and then I moved to where everything was green and gave xp.

I tore through them as fast as if I was using my regular gun and two-handed axe. It was confusing. In order to get the most skill increases I sent the pet in and stood back, chucking axes. Everything stayed on the bear and died fast.

My throwing skill increased by nearly a point per throw at first, slowing down a little after I hit three figures. It took me half an hour and exactly 200 axes to go from zero to 145. Getting the last ten points to my level cap took almost as long. Still very quick.

I was also training one-hand axe. I had let it slide so I had about 50 points to do. I had nothing in my off hand because alhough I'd trained Dagger and Fist I hadn't got weapons for either. I did think I might get some increases for "Unarmed", which isn't a weapon skill as such, but nothing doing. I have eleven points in it so I've obviously punched something, somewhere, sometime but I have no idea what I did then that I wasn't doing this go round.

That's the Skinning Knife. Sure looks like a dagger to me.

Going through my bags in the vain hope of finding an off-hand weapon I'd forgotten about (not at all impossible, given the state of my inventory) I noticed that my Skinning Knife had damage stats and was flagged "One Hand". I equipped it, which at least freed up an inventory slot.

It didn't do anything else. I got no skill-ups and the combat log recorded no damage. The Skinning Knife, although it has a damage rating and can be equipped, doesn't show a weapon type. It looks like a dagger but clearly isn't one. Not sure why it didn't do any damage, Might need further research.

Once Thrown was maxed I went to swap to Bow, only to find I didn't have one. Which was odd because I was one hundred per cent certain I'd bought one an hour ago. After a bit of head-scratching I decided I must have sold it so I ran back to Menethil and bought another. I later found the original safely tucked away in the bank, so that was twenty silver wasted.

Bow went much the same as Thrown except that by the time my skill was over a hundred I seemed to be doing as much damage as I'm used to doing with my gun, which has double the DPS. I kept pulling aggro from the bear, which was fine because it let me carry on raising Axe and Defence.

Things seemed so easy and safe I started to press into higher level areas and pick off mobs nearer my own level. By the time I decided Bow was high enough at 150/155, I was on Level 29 Elder raptors, just a couple of levels below me.

WoW might be the only MMORPG I've played that uses more than one death animation for the same mob. Here are two identical Giant Wetlands Crocolisks. One just collapsed on his belly, the other did a dramatic back flip and ended up with all six legs in the air.

I'm sure if I parsed my DPS I'd see the difference but experientially I really couldn't tell. I did spend a lot of time just using auto-attack, which I never really do, and I wonder if that's actually more efficient than cycling through skills and abilities. Or maybe having the bear tank for longer helps.

Also, I didn't die at all (well, that one time I pulled five gnolls and then got two adds running away...). I may have to rethink my usual "Horatio on the bridge" approach. It doesn't seem to be quite as efficient asI thought it was...

After all that was over I went back to regular questing. Still using the Level 11 Bow and the Axe. And I bought a White Level 11 dagger from a vendor and stuck it in my off hand. I spent the rest of the evening killing mobs my level and up to three levels above me in Shimmering Flats. It went as fast as I'd expect it to go.

Leaving me puzzled. I know it makes a huge difference when I get a much better weapon. I have seen the major increase in DPS. So, if I can see that leap when I upgrade, why can't I see the drop when I change down?

I do think it has a lot to do with how it made me change my approach. Because I was being more careful and cautious at first, letting my pet do more of the work, meleeing less and using fewer skills, my downtime was significntly reduced. Not only did I not die as much (or, really, at all) I spent far less time sitting and drinking to recover mana and far less time running and re-setting after bad pulls.

They don't call it "Wetlands" for nothing. Heaviest rain I have seen in any game, ever. Then again, I've never played "Heavy Rain".

All of that may have made things feel faster even though each kill might have taken longer. Although I can't say they ever felt longer. Also I think I have majorly underestimated the value of just auto-attacking with my hands off the keyboard. What that says about Classic gameplay I hesitate to consider too closely. 

Also, I think it's worth noting that just killing green con mobs in Wetlands for two hours got me a third of the way through Level 32. If I can replicate that with mobs above my level, which I believe I can, that would be more like half the level, which is a lot faster than I'm leveling by doing quests.

Today I plan on getting Dagger to 150 or so. The I have to work through One-Hand Sword (already in three figures), Two-Hand Sword, Staff, and Fist. Not to mention Crossbow and Polearm, neither of which I have ever seen in game.

I find this sort of thing immensely enjoyable. I look forward to doing it on all my characters from now on. And it's going to be a lot more efficient if I start early. The only hard part is going to be working out what weapons each of them can use without looking it up outside the game.

Those weapon masters could at least tell me who uses what. I mean to say, I'm paying ten silver!

Hope Is A Dangerous Thing: GW2

It's been a while since I had anything very nice to say about Guild Wars 2. The direction the game took with the second expansion, Path of Fire, steered it so far away from just about everything that I loved about Core and Heart of Thorns that, had it been a new MMORPG I was trying for the first time, I'd probably have given it a week or two then moved on to something more suited to my tastes.

There's a certain inertia that builds up over seven years, though, especially when your other half is still playing, albeit sporadically. I'm still plugging away, logging in most days, doing my dailies, hanging around for an hour or so if anything's happening in World vs World, which, despite all evidence to the contrary, is still reasonably lively most days, even in Tier 4.

I also try to at least look at anything new ArenaNet manage to get out. It's not like there's much of it. The last season of Living Story was moderately awful but blessedly short. The story wasn't terrible but it would be more satisfying to watch as a YouTube compilation than to play through. The maps that were added, while beautiful, had zero replayability for me. Most of them weren't even interesting enough to explore.

In August, when ANet rented a theater to promote the next stage of their Secret Master Plan to haul their fading flagship around and set it on a course for relevance and recovery, then hyped the reveal with a countdown timer, I was expecting to be disappointed. I wasn't disappointed.

The pathetic travesty of a re-launch sputtered out on the stage at PaxWest. Reddit and the official forums exploded. ANet became the butt of in-genre snark for a few days until the status quo ante was restored and everyone forgot about GW2 again.

After all that, it would be a gross understatement to say I wasn't expecting much from yesterday's Icebrood Saga Prequel, Bound by Blood. The screamingly inappropriate trailer, confusingly released simultaneously with the update, certainly wouldn't have changed my mind, had I watched it before I'd seen the new map for myself.

Ah, the new map. Grothmar Valley. Forget the story and the gameplay - this is what it's all about! And it's only right that I should give credit where credit's due. For the first time in what feels like years, I'm able to say something unequivocally positive about new content in GW2: I love the new map!

I have barely begun to explore it but already I feel about it much as Jeromai felt about the last one, the one that came with the final episode of LS4, a map that interested me so much I can't even remember what it was called. All of the LS4 maps blur into one for me. I visited most of them only once or twice, in the few days following the release, then never thought of them again.

Grothmar Valley is not that map. Last night I heaved myself reluctantly away from WoW Classic to check out the new content. Even given the appallingly botched build-up I was still keener to see it than anything from LS4 simply beacuase I knew it centered on Rytlock, my favorite character, and took place somewhere in the Charr homelands, my favorite setting.

The opening sequence offered more entetainment than I've been used to getting from these things. The dialog was solid. Rytlock sounded wonderfully world-weary and put-upon. He has history with several of the new Charr characters (well, they were new to me but I'm hardly a lorekeeper), history that was alluded to and hinted at rather than outright infodumped.

So far, so not too bad. The first new area was nicely done. It looked as though it could be some festival ground adjacent to The Black Citadel although a glance at the world map showed it to be deeper into the Charr homelands than we'd been before.

There were some speeches, one fight - an easy and enjoyable one - and that was the end of part one. Then that loading screen appeared. Loading between maps in GW2 is excruciatingly slow. Slower than EverQuest was at the turn of the millennium - on dial-up. I had plenty of time to look, slack-jawed, at the psychedelic finger-painting someone's talented, precocious child had apparently uploaded when no-one was looking.

Then I zoned in and found it was all true! Grothmar Valley uses the color palette I loved so much in the core game that I wrote an elegaic post about it way back in October 2012. That post was tellingly titled "This Land Is Our Land" and in it I laid my claim to a homeland I'd long longed for:  "Every step is filled with wonder. The high summer idyll of the pre-Searing has ripened into an eternal Autumn, the fall after The Fall. The colors burnish with copper and gold, red poppies flag against the sunburned grasslands, white clouds mass the bluing sky.".

I was still in love with Ascalon three and a half years later, when I posted the even more emotionally charged picture-post "Why We Fight". In these two posts it's all too easy to see why I can't give this game up and why I feel so betrayed by what's been lost.

Well, with Grothmar Valley I have hope that some of the wonder may just have bene lying dormant. With a return to Ascalon and it's hinterlands, a whole "saga" set there and in the Far Shiverpeaks, my second-favorite region, it's possible... just possible... I might find myself falling in love with GW2 all over again.

If nothing else, in Grothmar Valley I at least have a map I'm certain to explore to the full and to revisit many times. I don't care whehter it's productive or profitable or any of the things both developers and players have been laser-focused on in new maps for the last two or three years. I just care what it looks like and how it feels.

Discovering Grothmar Valley is like finding another room in your house that you didn't know was there. For the first time in a very, very long while I'll be opening access to this map on all three of my acounts. (To my great surprise and joy you only need core game purchase to flag Bound By Blood for the account).

Not, that is, that I'm going to play through the whole thing right away. Classic is still using most of my available gaming synapses. No, I just want Grothmar Valley safe and secure in my pocket, so I can take it out any time I like, look at it, polish it, lose myself in its golden glow.

Grothmar Valley represents hope. And I have it.

We Got You Covered

I have a whole bunch more WoW Classic posts in mind - the thing's like a post idea generator right now - but I get the feeling it might be time for a palette cleanser. So why not let's have some more cover versions! That's not a question, by the way.

Last time I led with an outstanding cover of an Eno song. Here's a version of another tune written by Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, to give him his full name. (Although if you google "Eno's Full Name" you'll find it's just Brian Peter George Eno, apparently). Ask him, next time you meet him.

Performed by "Courtney and me", the me in question being William Trevaskis, it would almost be the definition of bedroom pop if they weren't playing in their living room so as not to wake the baby. It's not that great a cover, technically, but it's so charming that doesn't figure.

They also have a cover of "Equestrian Statue" by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, for which all the music is produced on Commodore 64 and Gameboy. That one sounds disturbingly professional. The keyboard Courtney's playing in the video is a Commodore 64 one, too, I think.

For a full-on professional cover of yet another of Eno's seemingly bottomless barrel of superb songs, who better than St Vincent? I'm yet to be entirely won over by Annie Clark but I won't argue that everything she does is steeped in quality and this is no exception.

(That's enough Eno. Ed.)

Changing gears, next up we have Kira Piru with a pretty straight cover (possibly not the best choice of adjective...) of Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night". There are better covers of this seminal banger around, not least this one by The Vaccines and Kira's band kinda flatten everything a bit. Also her vocal is a little linear but but I just love her attitude and the way she's so obviously enjoying herself, even if the band aren't entirely on board with the vibe.

The performance comes from Australia's Triple J radio station. They have a show called "Like A Version", where they "invite a musician or band into our studios, tell them to bring their instruments along, stick microphones in front of them and ask them to play one of their own compositions as well as a song they love by someone else." The results are mixed but there are some real gems in there. They have a YouTube channel or you can go straight to the source.
 

There are a few radio stations, broadccast and web-based, that have strands or programs that do something very similar. BBC Radio 1's "Live Lounge" is one of the best known, not least because the station's profile means they get some really major players in, keen to show off their chops. It seems to get quite competitive at times.

Just a week ago, Lana del Rey did Ariana Grande's "Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored" while apparently reading the lyrics from a smart phone. It's weird but good weird. Supposedly it's a fairly faithful version but since I haven't heard the original I can't really comment. I've been trying to get up to speed with Ariana Grande but so far I haven't made much progress.

I'm all over Charli XCX though! Here's her girl-power dismantling of Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off". Tay's classic is bombproof. I've heard so many covers and the brilliant clarity of the original, one of the best pop songs of the decade, always shines through.

Charli, a force of nature in her own right and a true force for good in the world, gives it everything and then some. Her kick-ass band, sublimely cool in black-and-white stripes, hit an almost motorik groove as they give out with some of the best call-and-response backing vocals since The Shangri-Las.

The third cover-specialist channel I mine for nuggets is A.V. Undercover, which sadly ended in 2017 after eight seasons. They had an unusual take on the covers concept in that they sent a list of twenty-five songs to the bands who were booked for each season and as each band chose one it was removed from contention, leaving the slower respondents with an ever-diminsihing choice.

That's probably why the overall quality isn't all that. A few bands are playing songs they'd never even heard of, let alone heard. When the right band gets the right song, though, you get Charlie Bliss joyously re-decorating one-hit wonder Len's "Don't Steal My Sunshine".

Or, even better, The Regrettes incinerating The Sweet's glam stomper "Fox On The Run".

So much for big, commercial organizations showcasing major acts and celebrated indie comers. Let's finish with a couple of "press record and hope" bids for internet fame. Actually, the first one's a bit higher than that on the indie food chain. "My Toys Like Me" have a detailed wikipedia entry, two albums and a live history that includes supporting CSS and playing (way down the bill) at several major festivals. They also make some striking videos.

Even so, their eerie, disconnected cover of Van Morrison's "The Way Young Lovers Do" has only managed to rack up around 7,000 views in nine years It rather makes the case for one of the six comments it's received in that time: "...the best band no-one has heard of".

And finally... a ukulele cover of The Ramones political, polemical classic "Bonzo Goes To Bitburg". To be frank, I have mixed views on the ukulele. At the one extreme you have the superb Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and at the other a million hamfisted covers recorded in bedrooms across the known world on webcams set slightly askew... as, all too often, are the vocals.

The YouTube search I just did to find this particular number turned up no fewer than five uke covers of Bonzo plus a bunch more on acoustic guitar. What it is about The Ramones that make people think they're perfect for four or six nylon strings? It beats me... oh, wait, no it doesn't... three chords!

Maybe one of the other uke covers is better than its.a.peach's. I haven't watched them all to check. I always really liked this country-inflected version, though, so that's what we're going with. I guess I'm not alone because after five years it's up to 45k views.

That's it for now. I could go on but there's only so many links I can expect anyone to click. I have some ideas percolating for the next few music posts, including songs about superheroes and songs by bands with the word "Pony" in their name or the title of the song. I have a couple of dozen of those downloaded and I'm always looking for more.

Such fun!

Looking For Grom'Gol In All The Wrong Places: WoW Classic

On Saturday morning I did a bit of this and a little of that, then after lunch I logged into Classic. The thing with Classic at the moment is, once I get started I don't want to stop, so I try not to start too early.

Before I went to bed on Friday I'd picked up several quests at the Raceway. The demented goblins there wanted various body parts from the local wildlife to further their course record ambitions. Or something. I was very tired and Goblins don't make a lot of sense at the best of the times.

Even though I hadn't had the energy to get started on the quests, I'd managed to scope out the options before I called it a night. I'd found there were several pockets of level 30-32 mobs in among the 34s and 35s. I generally back my hunter to win most fights with anything up to and including four levels above him so that looked good.

Since he got out of the starting area it's been his practice to take mostly orange quests. The enhanced experience and rewards far outweigh any deaths he encounters by overreaching but constantly punching above his weight  does mean he tends to need a rest after a couple of hours. Or, I should say, I do.

Hunting that way also relies on not getting adds. Well, not too many adds. I can usually handle two mobs a couple of levels above me at once, especially if they're animals. Scare Beast is great for that. It also helps enormously to have a wide open, flat space with excellent visibility. Shimmering Flats is perfect.

Or it would be, if it didn't have some of the most annoying pathing I've seen. The mobs aren't packed tight but they wander in hard-to-predict ways, zigging and zagging, stopping, going back in the direction they came, turning, carrying on. I'm sure there's a predictable pattern in there somewhere but you'd be a long time defining it and committing it to memory.

Bear down! Run away!

Everything also has a big aggro range, or it does when it's a few levels above you. It took me a good while, half an hour or so, to establish a fairly safe routine. Before that there was a lot of running away and small amount of dying. I also ran out of food and drink and they didn't seem to sell any at Raceway, so I had to take a trip to Gadgetzan to restock.

I love Gadgetzan. Not surprising. Goblin is my favorite Azerothian race. It's a full service town too, which is handy. They have a bank there and an Auction House with almost nothing for sale. Less than one screen for all the weapons! I thought it was linked to the Booty Bay AH , both of them being Goblin-operated, but maybe not.

Eventually I settled down to slaughter the desert fauna. The quest to rip some body part I forget from the twitching corpses of Scorpids went easily enough. Probably only had to kill three times the number of drops to get that done.

There was one that didn't need me to kill anything, just pick up thirty parts from old, broken race cars. That sounded like a lot but there were plenty of ground spawns. I had them to myself because Shimmering Flats was mostly empty of players. The odd person passed by on their way to somewhere else but in the couple of hours I was hunting I saw maybe just two or three others doing the quests. It was so peaceful. Apart from all the killing, but that was mostly me.

Eventually I had two of the four quests completed but it was plain that I wasn't going to finish the other two. I had twenty of the required thirty basilisk kills but the third type of basil I needed only came in flavors 34 or 35. As for the hardened shells from tortoises... after maybe two dozen kills I was 2/9. What gives? Doesn't every tortoise have a hard shell?

Night-time shot from Friday auto-leveled to look like daytime on Saturday. Convincing, isn't it?

I gave up on those two for the time being, handed in the ones I'd completed and took a break. When I came back I decided it was time to move on.

The guy I'd delivered the box from Ironforge to had given me a box of ammo to take to Hemet Nesingwary. As a pair of fetch and carry quests, that has to break some kind of distance record - a round trip from Ironforge to Stranglethorne by way of Shimmering Flats!

At this point, had I had the brains I was born with, I would have Hearthstoned to Ironforge and griffined to Duskwood but oh, no. I was on an exploring binge and nothing would do but to run the whole thing on foot.

I decided to retrace my steps as far as The Barrens, then find my way to the other Goblin outpost I remembered, the one on the coast where you can get a ship to Booty Bay. That did seem to make sense. Barrens had been a safe run  and Booty Bay is right in the zone I needed. If only I had remembered exactly where that Goblin town was...

I got back to the cliff lift with no problems. Had to kill a bunch of centaurs and cats. Got on the lift, set the pet to passive, legged it off the platform with Tauren guards in hot pursuit, switched the pet to aggro, pointed him at them and carried on running. Got a good lead, swapped him back to passive and kept going 'til they leashed. No-one died.

So far so good. And that was the end of my luck. Or, I should say, my judgment.

Oh, come on! I thought bears liked swimming...

Seeing Theramore to the East as I ran through The Barrens I decided that would be the quickest way to go. I thought I remembered the Goblin port was just North of there, along the coast.

It is, in fact, although not that close. What I'd completely forgotten is that Theramore isn't in the low level Barrens but the significantly higher-level  Dustwallow Marsh. I found that out when I veered off the road to take a shortcut through the undergrowtth and got sideswiped by some mob with a deathshead for a level.

Even then things would most likely have been fine if I'd rezzed at Theramore graveyard and carried along the road. Too easy. Too sensible.

I died again getting my body. Third time I got on the road and down to Theramore, where I came up with the stellar plan of swimming north, running along the shoreline when it seemed safe to get out of the water. That worked for as long as the only mobs in range were non-aggressive turtles. When I came to a tribe of high-30s Murlocs, not so much. I avoided them by heading inland, whereupon several spiders decided to have me for lunch.

I think I died three more times getting my body and slowly edging it over to the paved road. Could have been four. Then I died once more on the road itself, when I ran across a flooded bridge with hostiles in pursuit, only to find the water was deep enough to force me to start swimming. Swimming is slow.

Eventually I made it out of Duskwood and back into The Barrens with my armor hanging off me in tatters. Looking at the map I saw I was about two minutes North of where I'd turned off to go to Theramore. Not my finest hour as an intrepid explorer...

Leaving Ratchet. An hour late and half a dozen deaths down.

The rest of the trip to the Goblin port, Ratchet, as I discovered it's called, passed without incident. I repaired and took the boat to Booty Bay, another great town. I pottered around there for a while, bought a parrot pet for forty silver from a goblin selling "Pirate Supplies", checked the Auction House, which seemed better-stocked although not by much.

After a while I thought I'd better get on with my delivery. I checked the instructions. Nesingwary's last known location was North of somewhere called Grom'Gol. Sounded straightforward enough.

I had it in my mind that Nesingwary hung out somewhere in the North of the zone, so I headed that way. Coming out of Booty Bay into the Stranglethorne jungle, every mob was either a skull or eight or nine levels above me. Learning my lesson I stuck to the road. I got chased a few times but I got away.

As I went North the levels declined until I was seeing things I could kill. That made sense. I'd been given the quest at 28 so it would seem logical it would be in some area I could reasonably expect to handle.

I got all the way to the end of the zone, hung a left just before the exit to Duskwood, jogged up the path to where I thought I remembered seeing Nesingway the last time I played, a decade ago. Surprise, surprise he wasn't there. It's a different bunch of questgivers entirely.

I picked up a quest to kill crocolisks while I was there. If I'd set about doing it right away this post would be a lot shorter. Instead I headed off into the jungle in search of Grom'Gol. 

Everywhere was busy. Lots of mobs were being killed by lots of groups, making travel seem safer than it really was. I roamed around the Northern end of the zone, trying to open the map. I even killed a few things. It was fine until I hit the Venture Company's mining operation. Those hostile goblins were six or seven levels above me and aggroed from a long way off. They were also mostly casters. I was fireballed to death before I could work out which way to run.

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

Another couple of deaths recovering my corpse and attempting to get clear gave me a great idea. I'd noticed that even though discoveries made in ghost form don't clear the fog of war from your map, those discoveries do still flag up on screen. I figured it would be a lot safer to go looking for Grom'Gol as a ghost.

And it was. I covered the entire map, or I thought so, anyway. Hard to tell when there's no record of where you've been. As a ghost I couldn't see any mobs or NPCs so I might have run right over Nesingwary without knowing it but I wasn't looking for him. I was looking for the ever-elusive Grom'Gol.

Never found it. Still haven't. After more than an hour of staring at a greyed-out vision of the afterlife I gave up. I found my corpse, got back on the road and left Stranglethorne to go spend the rest of Saturday finishing some Duskwood stuff I had left in my book.

On Sunday morning I had a hospital appointment. That went quickly and smoothly. I was back in Azeroth and hunting by eleven a.m. I joined another player to finish the "Legend of Stalvan" questline, something few people seem to bother with, probably because 90% of it is running around. I also grouped for the last of the "kill a metric tonne of werewolves" sequence. I could have soloed both but it's more fun in a group, especially on a Sunday morning.

That done I couldn't put it off any longer. I gritted my teeth and headed back into Stranglethorne. To give myself an easy start I thought I'd knock out the croc quest. Crocs, naturally, live along the river bank. I dropped down to the river, killed an annoying fish that snapped at my heels as I swam across, then headed East along the waterline, looking for crocs.

About twenty seconds later I was handing my crate of ammo over to Hemet Nesingwary. His camp is right by the river in the North East corner of Stranglethorn Vale.

Where Grom'Gol is I still have no idea.

Jog On! : WoW Classic

The sheer amount of footslogging required by Classic WoW has made for a theme of sorts on a quite a few blogs I follow. Some people approve of it, some, like me, even profess to enjoy it. Others find it's getting on their nerves.

I spent a good deal of Friday night running. Saturday afternoon I ran some more. On Friday, most of my roadwork was voluntary. Saturday, it didn't always feel that way.

Midway through Friday evening I popped into Ironforge to train. Some dwarf (or was it a gnome?) asked me if I'd deliver a package for him. So far so typical. Only he wanted me to drop it off at the Raceway in Shimmering Flats in Thousand Needles.

Let's get real here - that's hardly a trip to the corner store. Thousand Needles is on another continent!
But he was paying thirty pieces of silver (where I have heard that before?) and even at Level 28 that's a purse. Anyway, I fancied a run. I said I'd do it.

The quickest way to Shimmering Flats would probably be to get the ship from Menethil Harbor to Theramore. At least that's the right end of Kalimdor. I would have done it that way too, only circumstances conspired. I ended up taking the scenic route.

I got on the griffin to Menethil. Didn't take long, over the mountains.  As I jumped off I saw a ship just pulling in to the dock. Even though I'd already taken both ships for previous quests I couldn't remember which dock  went where.

I sprinted for the ship and just managed to leap aboard as it pulled away. No time to stop and ask the harbormaster where it was headed. Naturally, it was bound for Auberdine. (Curiously, not one of the half-dozen Classic websites, wikis and info pages I've just checked has been updated to show that this route exists).

There was some quest in my book I'd never bothered to finish. It wanted me to go speak to an Elf in Ashenvale or some such name. (Astranaar, in fact). When I'd got it a few levels back I didn't know where that was and I'd decided it was too much trouble. Now it was on my way so I thought I'd knock it out. Why not?

Looking at the map, it seemed all I needed to do to get to Thousand Needles was start heading south and stop before I fell into the sea. I set off through the dismal, dark forests. Why Night Elves are in The Alliance and Taurens in The Horde mystifies me. Surely no nature-loving race could live in that eternal gloom? I think Night Elves might be no more than vampires with good P.R.

The "quick sidetrip" to finish the green quest did not go well. It was in some chapel I couldn't find, even though I took every track and side-road I saw. I even cut across country a few times. After about twenty minutes I said "Sod it!" and headed due south again

Due south lies The Barrens, the zone with both the worst reputation and the most misleading name in Azeroth. The infamous Barrens Chat isn't much of a thing when you can't even hear anyone from The Horde speak. I think I heard about three Alliance players pipe up in the whole time I was there.

As for the name, I can only imagine it was thought up by some fool Night Elf. Probably lurched out of  that miserable forest, got blinded by the glare of the sun, couldn't see a thing and assumed that meant there was nothing worth seeing. Couldn't have been more wrong.

The Barrens is a gorgeous zone. Wide, lush plains under a baking sun, spreading banyan trees for shade, wildlife worthy of a Safari. Why Hemet Nessingwary (of whom more later) is holed up in Stranglethorne when he could be here is yet another mystery.

It's also i n c r e d i b l y vast! I timed my run from north to south. I didn't stop once. I stayed on the road, heading in a straight line down the middle of the map, except for a couple of minor detours around Crossroads and a guard post or two. I had Aspect of The Cheetah up, giving me a 30% run speed bonus.

It took me almost twenty minutes. That's five minutes longer than crossing Norrath's West Karana at base run speed! It might be the biggest single, named zone I've ever run through. I loved every second!

Didn't love the abrupt halt at the sheer drop at the end so much. The Horde have a nice cliffside lift to take them down to Thousand Needles but they don't sell tickets to Alliance scrubs. They kill them.

They didn't kill me because I went for the Butch and Sundance option. I ran staight to the edge. The lift was at the bottom and two angry Taurens were at my back. I jumped.

I landed on a ledge halfway down and exploded on impact. Kidding! I'm a dwarf. I just made a dent in the rock. Still died, though.

Thankfully, my ghost arose in a graveyard in Thousand Needles. I ran back, got the lift, rezzed on it as we passed my broken body, rode to the top and then back down. Job done!

From there it was simple jog south, through canyons filled with centaurs and nasty mountain cats that pounce unexpectedly out of stealth. Everything was a handy two or three levels below me so I dealt summarily with anything that had the temerity to try interrupt a messenger in the course of his duties.

Finally, I emerged onto the blinding sandscape of Shimmering Flats. Well, it would have been blinding if it had been daylight like it had been when I started. By then it was night. Everything, including the sand was a luscious, moonlight blue. The mobs wandering the sand were a tad higher than me - some of them more than a tad  - so I picked my way carefully between them until I made it to the Raceway.

I used to love this area back when I played Retail (as, of course, no-one called it back 2009. What would they have thought?). I spent many happy afternoons and evenings hunting there and further south in dunes around Gadgetzan.

The Raceway is one of WoW's absolute highlights in my opinion. It has races, anouncements, demented gnome engineers, a friendly ogre and Daisy, The Race Girl. There's a wealth of amusing detail everywhere, should you care to take the time and trouble to look.

By then, though, it was time for bed. I settled down in a well-appointed, empty hut and logged off. If I hadn't been so tired I might have carried on to Gadgetzan, probably my favorite town in all of Azeroth. They have an Inn there and I don't like to miss my rested xp.

As it was, I felt almost as exhausted as if I'd done the actual running myself. All told, the trip must have taken more than ninety minutes. An hour and a half in which I killed nothing except a few mobs that got in my way and completed precisely one quest. One of the best sessions I've had so far!

This tale has grown a little longer in the telling than I expected so I'm going to split it in two. Read on next time for the journey to Stranglethorn in search of the great hunter Hemet Nessingwary. Another package to deliver...

SPOILER!   It took even longer but didn't go nearly as well. And I still have the package.