I have unlocked Legion flying.

The process was not nearly as painful as I was anticipating, primarily because the reputation requirement was only Revered, instead of Exalted. Well, that, and the fact that I had already unlocked Pathfinder Part 1 before I stopped playing last time, in addition to doing some of the beginning quests at the Broken Shore. In any case, flying is as majestic and freeing and worthwhile as it has ever been. Although it annoys me greatly that Blizzard will continue dangling it in front of us, that simply confirms the notion that it is a carrot worth pursuing every time.

Unlocking the Alliance Allied Races was a secondary goal that I may well abandon entirely. The requirement is Exalted with two factions introduced in Argus, and completing all the quests sticks you at the beginning of Honored. While the reputation is a bit easier to grind out nowadays – most World Quests give you both factions’ rep, and at 75 a pop – that is still… an inordinate amount of grinding. Blizzard is apparently sticking to their guns in terms of still requiring Exalted into BFA, which is just further mind-boggling, considering you then still have to level up new characters from level 20. I suppose Blizzard considers this a sort of cosmetic Thing To Do, but it’s bizarre to me that they’d go through the trouble of creating entirely new skins and racial abilities and heritage armor, and then leave it in soon-to-be-dead content with an expansion around the corner.

I mean, it’s one thing to leave in the WoD grind to unlock flying, as that just impacts WoD. But imagine if new players had to grind Cataclysm reputation to unlock flying in the vanilla zones. Six expansions from now, there will likely still be Void Elves running around, provided that anyone gets bored enough to spend 6+ weeks grinding rep.

Instead of that, I have been turning my gaze towards some of my alts. As mentioned before, I only have the one max-level character: the druid. For my other alts, I made sure to do the beginning artifact quests, so they are generally level 102. Thus far, I have only touched two since patch 8.0.

The first was the Demon Hunter. I… just don’t know about this class. The whole double-jumping and free-gliding aspect of it make the class extremely fun from a mobility perspective. From a fun perspective though, the button-pushing aspect leaves something to be desired. I guess technically it’s extremely similar to Rogue mechanics – press A to build up resources to press B – but I think the key difference is that all the attacks feels like the same on the Demon Hunter. Stab-Thrust-Spin feels a lot more varied than Spin-Spin-Spin, even if you’re doing comparable damage.

Alternatively, I could just be annoyed how little self-healing Demon Hunters have (at this level?). I was in Stormheim and there was one of those quests where you have to weaken a mob before using an item on them to make them stop fighting. Which is normally fine, whatever. However, the regen mechanic with Demon Hunters is based on the mobs dying and dropping health orbs, which… doesn’t happen when you don’t kill the mobs. Can’t just bandage anymore either, unless you have a Tailor or buy bandages off the AH. And who carries food around these days?

The other class I played for a bit was Rogue, and it’s as fun as it’s ever been. Stealth, blowing mobs up in a few GCDs, re-stealth and go on to the next one. I’ve stuck with Outlaw thus far because I like Grappling Hook and Pistol Shot, but I do miss being able to Shadowstep to the next mob and basically ninja my way around the world.

In the coming days, I want to give the Paladin, Death Knight, and Warlock another go now that War Mode is a thing I can keep turned off. Also, I have never had a Monk past level 20, so that would seem to be a good target for one of my free level 100 boosts. Don’t know what I would use the other one on – perhaps an Allied Race, if I ever unlock one? – but I’m tempted to boost a Horde character either on my current server or another one, just to get access to the Horde storyline.

Provided, of course, that my attention span for WoW holds out.