Take Me Home

(With apologies to John Denver)
It's almost seven, the server's queued
Deeprun Tram ride and Trade chat's rude,
Wife is nearby, rolling her eyes,
How can something so old bring me such delights?

Classic WoW, take me home
To the pla-a-a-a-a-ce I belong
Elywnn Forest… hunter's mana
Gankin' rogues, take me home….

All the memories, start flooding back
Questing without markers, and an ammo pack
Running from wolves, near kobold mines
Fifteen years washed away, and I'm feelin' fine

Classic WoW, take me home
To the pla-a-a-a-a-ce I belong
Elywnn Forest… hunter's mana
Gankin' rogues, take me home….

Anyway, it turns out you can go home again! The servers are choked with people checking out the novelty of it all and at one point Twitch reported 950k people watching other people playing Classic, so the hype is real.
For my own part, I created Magrom the Dwarven Hunter and set to it. He's named after "Magrom the Red", a bartender in Asheron's Call's town of Cragstone. I spent countless hours with my buddies at "our table" there and I always loved the name.
Over the course of the evening, I ran around like an idiot and finally escaped the dwarf/gnome starter area. Questing was expectedly slow in the beginning due to everything being over-camped. Boss kills and picking up things that respawned had fairly organized lines where everyone waited their turns to kill/loot. For bosses, people formed orderly groups of 5 to speed things along. It was like England Online with the queues. The occasional line-breaker was called out in chat for public humiliation. ("Poncho Linebreaker", your dark reputation grows) and since nothing is cross-server, reputations will stick as the community solidifies.

Honestly, that's the part I'm most excited about: having a server community mean something again and player reputation mattering.
I picked up herbalism and skinning for now, but since everyone is doing the same, plants are nigh-impossible to come by. Leather, however flows freely into my tiny, tiny pack. Inventory is tight. I have just 16 slots and no bags (who can afford them?). Skinning tools, food, and quest items eat up a considerable chunk of that limited real estate.

Money goes out as quickly as it comes in. With each kill netting 1-3 copper and skills costing a silver plus to learn, the fact I've socked away 6 silver towards eventual upgrades seems amazing. Gear remains a constant struggle. Now level 7, I'm wearing grays and white leather and cloth that have dropped off random kills. I'm still using the level 1 starting gun and I don't get a pet until level 10.

The struggle is real, but I'm having a level of fun I haven't experienced in a while.