When It All Comes Back Around

When It All Comes Back Around

The tide is turning. The world of Draenor is past its peak. The great warriors are triumphant as dungeons and raids fall. There is little left to conquer. The hunt for ever greater gear to kill ever greater beasts and monsters is waning.

At the Wild family garrisons life goes on at a slower pace. Many of the myriad chores of running the garrisons remain undone. The goods and materials being churned out find fewer and fewer buyers. Happyface stands at the Undercity Auction House ready for business, but prices rise as goods diminish and profits disappear.

Today Wild turned Philly into a Skinner to gather raw beast hide and sumptuous fur on the shorelines of Arak. The AH used to be brimming with both mats at under a gold apiece. Not any more, as prices teeter up to double that amount. Family stocks of both are being used up.

Meanwhile, Wild has stopped making embersilk and frostweave cloth as the AH gets flooded with the bags. A month ago embersilk bags could bring 400 gold. Today they sell for 220g. Frostweave sold for 290g and this morning the price dropped under 100g.

Happy continues to shore up the bleeding. A mammoth effort to buy up felblight is helping to put Savage level gear upgrades into the Auction House. Both Philly and Fist now spend evenings fishing in the dangerous waters around Hellfire Citadel to catch the wary felblight. One felblight can bring between 100-150g each. But the catch rate is barely a half dozen out of every  hundred. These gathering efforts take time. In some ways that has become a good thing. The pace slows, the numbing repetition of casting a line or skinning a beast somehow soothing.

Wild recalls a time when he stood on the shores of Tanaris and fished for hours, gathering the prized fish cooked into food used for staying alive, all the while talking in vent to whoever else was out there. When Wild began raiding, he did most of fishing and cooking for the raid, a necessary chore Wild was proud to provide to the guild.

There is an ebb and flow that has existed since Warcraft came into being. It may be entering an ebb phase, and there may be some that are packing up and leaving, but the Wild family is still here, and will still be here to welcome Legion.

The mournful turn is mostly because my better half has been visiting friends for almost a week and I'm almost out of chocolate milk and canned soup (my staples when the wife is away). Judi will be home tomorrow afternoon and I will be in much better spirits! I'm going to start taking a harder look at Legion and what we can look forward to. I know Philly will be happy to turn over her new skinning chore as soon as the new demon hunter arrives. Till then, the gathering will continue.