Death comes for the undead, and I dust off Harryi

Well, it finally happened. On December 29, 2024, Knojaw kicked the can.

I rolled Knojaw, an Undead Rogue, on the new Hardcore servers for World of Warcraft. As you can tell from the time that has passed since then, I didn't play him obsessively, but I had a good 20 to 25 hours into him. I spent a fair amount of time fishing and cooking. Knojaw lacked a jaw, but he had a refined palette.

My mistake was typical of most deaths in World of Warcraft. I got overconfident and went someplace I shouldn't have. I picked up the quest Resting in Pieces, which begins when a talking head randomly drops from a Gnoll, and followed the quest chain into the castle on Fenris Isle.

The castle was thick with Gnolls, far too many for me to take on alone. Fortunately, a Warlock was also trying to do the quest. We grouped up and fought our way to the top, where the talking head had a prize waiting for us. Successful, we then began to battle our way down.

Faced with three Gnolls and taking some hits, my random ally said "Bro, this shit is FIRE." Which, of course, is exactly the moment everything went wrong.

It was simple, really. An extra Gnoll wandered in and so happened to be close enough to another that he pulled in a friend. Now faced with five foes, I popped a potion and shanked a couple down, but the Warlock had taken aggro from a couple more. He was going to die.

His finals words: RUN.

I took his advice, but we were too deep in. I popped my Rogue's sprint and evasion cooldowns, but I couldn't clear the castle before they expired, and I was absolutely swarmed with Gnolls. They quickly beat me down.

RIP Knojaw.

This is my first death in Hardcore. I previously played a Dwarf Paladin but only got to level 15 before I was distracted and stopped playing him. I was a bit surprised, then, by my reaction. I smiled! I laughed! It was fun! I immediately rolled a Human Warlock, though I've only played him for a couple hours so far.

A long time ago, when the first Hardcore servers were released, I got halfway into doing a video about why Hardcore is fun. I stopped working on that video when I stopped playing my Paladin. Now, I think I'm going to put it back on the schedule.

Knojaw got most of my World of Warcraft playtime in December of 2024, but I also fired up some Retail and dusted off Harryi, a Worgen Druid, the second-oldest character I have and my main since the Legion expansion.

And you know what? I had a decent time.

I've now leveled him up to the pre-The War Within level cap and I think that, once I get back from my work trip to the Consumer Electronics Show, I'll fire up that expansion and give it a try.

Part of why I enjoyed myself might be the pace of my gameplay. Instead of diving into the Anniversary events and trying to level up quickly, I worked my way through some Dragonflight content. I also partially ignored flying, instead walking to any new areas I had to explore.

I really wish that World of Warcraft could put the flying-mount genie back in the bottle. That's impossible, of course, but they really do ruin the game's sense of scale. Exploring on foot, it's obvious that Dragonflight's zones are huge. But they don't feel that way when it's possible to fly across one in a couple of minutes.

That's going to be a wrap. Since we're chatting about Blizzard, give my video about the Warcraft II remaster a look here. I like Blizzard's games, but it's about time the company take a more serious look at how it preserves its legacy.