Saying Goodbye to Vanilla

I took a break from NaNoing on Saturday night to play some WoW. My first goal was to start grinding up Engineering on Jyger. While I was working on it, I saw someone asking in guild for a Molten Core run. He is working on Hydraxis Warlords reputation and wanted to know if anyone wanted to come along. He was looking for a healer and a tank, and when I saw a Discipline Priest offer her services, I offered to go to figuring my Pet could do some tanking.
Having not played Jyger during Vanilla, he wasn’t attuned to Molten Core. We took care of that with a quick run through BRD, although we jumped at the wrong spot and ended up dying once to lava.
Once attuned, we started working on the Core. The first thing I did was tamed a Core Hound. I’m not crazy about the white or green skins, I like the red one. I named him TheBeast. If you ran UBRS much, you know The Beast well. I figured, if wasn’t going to ever give me my Paladin shoulders, I might as well tame him. The first two Bosses dropped Warrior tier and I started kicking myself for not bringing my Warrior. That would have been a mistake.
Hunter tier started raining down from Boss after Boss, and I finished the night with a 6/8 set of Giantstalker armor. The only two pieces I’m missing are the belt and the legs. The Belt is BoE, so I could find it on the Auction house. We finished Molten Core and Ragnaros dropped the Petrified Leaf, which begins a Hunter quest for the epic bow, Rhok’dalar. That bow was the badge of a really good hunter back in Vanilla. The Disc Priest in the group had done the Benediction quests and I decided it might be fun to try the Rhok’dal’ar quests. In doing a quick bit of research I learned that the quests are being removed in 4.03a. I had until Monday night to finish it before it would be gone forever. This was a tight deadline for me because my playtime is very limited on Sunday and Monday nights. I didn’t get on at all on Sunday.
So with haste I made my way out to Felwood to turn in the leaf. A group of special mobs spawn there for the holder of the quest. They look like ghostly Ancients of War. The first one gave me a quest to track down and fight 4 demons disguised as normal people.
This was a classic Vanilla quest. The Demons were all over the world: one in Winterspring, Un’Goro, Tanaris, and Burning Steeps. They each had a wide patrol path, and you had to hunt them down. I wasn’t sure if they would track as Demons or Humaniod so I turned on both kinds of tracking. (I LOVE this feature). Being in Felwood, I decided to go to Winterspring first.
The requirement was that you had to fight these demons alone. Not being the sharpest arrow in the quiver, I assumed alone meant me and my pet. As the first demon would teach me, alone meant alone, as in just me, no pet allowed. I had to wait a half hour for that guy to respawn.
Back at Level 60, I’m sure these guys were very challenging. In fact, each has extensive write ups on various WoW sites detailing how to defeat them. I found it simplest to change into my Survivalist spec and load them up with a Black Arrow, and Explosive Shot. That generally killed them before they ever got near me. Had I not been under such a tight deadline, I would have liked to have fought them in all that Giantstalker gear I got just to get a feel for what it must have been like ‘back in the day’.
After Winterspring, I went down to Un’Goro and Tanaris before heading back over to Burning Steeps. Burning Steeps is really annoying to get to as a Horde player. The closest place to fly from is Grom Gol in Strangethorn Vale and that’s still about half a continent away.
With all four demons defeated, I had to go back to Felwood. This entailed flying from Burning Steeps to Grom’Gol catching the Zepplin to Orgrimmar and then flying from Orgrimmar to Felwood and hoping that the Elemental Invasion wasn’t going on. The Orgrimmar Flight Master runs to the hills when that happens.
Once I got back to Felwood I turned in the quest and the Ancient gave me a the shaft for the bow.
Another Ancient then gave me the quest for the string. I needed a Mature Black Dragon Sinew. My understanding is that this used to be a drop off Onyxia, but the developers changed it to drop off any Black Dragon…in the Burning Steeps. Again, had I not been under a time constraint, I would have tried to get it off Onyxia (the level 80 version apparently also drops it).
So it was back to the Steeps. Fly to Org, Zepplin to Grom’gol, fly  to Burning Steeps. I found a Black Dragon. I asked it about its 401k to ensure it was suitably mature, and I was in luck, it was. I pretty much one shotted her and grabbed the Sinew.
Then it was fly back to Grom’Gol, Zepplin to Orgrimmar, and fly to Felwood. The Ancient took the Sinew, and gave me back Enchanted Sinew. At this point, the quests ended. Had I done something wrong? Were the quests for Rhok’delar already out of the game and I had done all this running around for nothing. I assessed the situation. I had the shaft. I had the string. None of the Ancients would talk to me. I decided to ‘use’ the staff (right click) and voila, Jyger started casting a spell.
When the spell was complete, he stood there with Rhok’delar in nearly full Tier 1 Giantstalker armor.I felt like this was a good and fitting way to say good bye to Vanilla WoW, and I might have been one of the last Hunters to ever finish the Rhok’del’ar quest line.