Soon, the gates will open to a wonderful world filled with players who have no idea what a wasteland of twisted mechanics and underhanded tactics Vanilla WoW represented: Classic is just around the corner (launching August 27, 2019), and we can promise you sight unseen that it's going to be a very wild ride for ninety percent of players. The beauty of the old WoW wasn't just the sheer amount of time you had to spend leveling, or the pure misery newbies experienced on a PvP server - the crowning amusement was the many ways in which you could drive your fellow players' nerves into the nearest tree with force. No security mechanisms, no game mechanics perfected in more than a decade. Just the ingenuity of bad, bad people and the feeling of having finally arrived in the wild west. We're talking, of course, about trolls and their tactics for collecting as many player tears as possible and sipping them afterwards with relish from a fine wine glass, enhanced by delicious crackers and noble cheese. We therefore present our favorite methods to spread sheer terror in the player community and make a name for yourself on the entire server. After all, among the many WoW heroes, everyone likes a fellow player who's a little resourceful with their nastiness, right?
And just to be clear: This is not a nice article. Of course, we don't want to encourage anyone to try out the following extremely entertaining and surprisingly easy to implement tips for trolls in Classic WoW. Of course not! Shame! We created this collection for one reason only: To protect blameless newbies from the nasty trolls and let them know what to expect in a few months. The PvP options that await us are either separate PvP and PvE servers or the now beloved War Mode or PvP Flag, which may even bring the current XP bonus. Both of these are good news for trolls and those who want to become one (yikes!)! Because either you can take damage from a bunch of players who can't turn off their PvP Flag (you bad people!), or your target has activated their Flag of their own free will and is running around Azeroth extremely tense - making the following nasties even more effective. Sit back, grab a bag of popcorn, and enjoy the idea of annoying your teammates terribly. Or take note of what to look for in Classic WoW if you don't want to fire your keyboard through the nearest window in frustration after ten minutes. Have fun! And watch your back ...
The wrong quest NPC
On a Classic server you can never be sure if the juicy big quest scorpion "Sarkoth" might not be a trap after all. Source: buffed Good troll methods are like good wine: they only get better with time and lose none of their effect. The following teasing little joke combines everything that makes a good troll: It hardly gives the opponent a chance, provides increased paranoia and works especially with inattentive players. Their angry messages are all the sweeter afterwards, because you can simply reply that in the motley PvP world you should probably keep your eyes open if you don't want to suddenly fall down. We're talking, of course, about the False Quest NPC, which helps you harvest blood from the newcomers of the opposing faction. Having qualms about taking down level one to level five characters? Don't fret, you're in the right. After all, why not kill them while they're still no threat to you? Kill them while they're still small. Put on your hunter's cap and load your shotgun, because it's newbie season!
For the classic, you'll definitely need a hunter. Night elves are preferable, as they can make themselves invisible via "Shadow Mimic". The actual troll tactics are quickly explained: You tame one of the animal NPCs that the newcomers of the opposing faction have to kill in Durotar or the Forest of Elwynn. Then rename your companion so that it has the exact same name as the quest mobs and have it wait in a convenient location. Now hide out of sight, wait for the newbie to attack your companion, and kill him - if your companion hasn't already done so in the meantime. The tricky part is that even target macros aren't immune to the trick, and there are very few high-level players in the areas you're using as hunting grounds. Oh, and did we mention that all you have to do is set your PvP flag - et voilà, you have the perfect way to kill newbies on a PvE server as well.
The best NPCs for this are the questing wolves in Elwynn Forest and Northern Grove, the latter being more productive, but may not have as many good hiding places. Alliance players have it much easier, as we recommend simply travelling to Durotar, taming the scorpion "Sarkoth" from the quest of the same name and replacing it with your doppelganger. Baby Horde players will have to get past the scorpion in any case, so you can harvest here without worry. Of course, if a high-level adversary appears, you'll immediately warp away. Fair fights are for heroes, after all. Are you a hero? No, you're not - you're a winner. Have fun hunting!
The nice alternative: For all those who don't have the heart to gank newbies, we also have a "light version" of the whole thing. As a hunter, you unpack your Firebrand Trap and drape it in front of a quest giver or important NPC. Shortly thereafter, you can watch as a clueless newbie bursts into flames "out of nowhere," frantically running back and forth and trying to heal in a panic. Terrible, these cases of spontaneous combustion. Night Elves just stay in Shadow Mimic throughout the whole thing, eating invisible popcorn while watching the fidgeting. Afterwards, let the newbie flee and remove yourself from the area after a short while.
Flight Master Murder
Table of Contents1. The wrong quest NPC2. Flight Master Murder3. The Blackrock Ballet4. Let the puppets dance5. Of murder, trickery and other jokes
Many of you will now wave off and smile wearily. You are to kill some flight master? What is a flight master? You can reach any point in the game with one of the umpteen resting stones or the new portal rooms anyway, right? Our answer to that is: nope. Not in WoW Classic. We hope you're good on your feet, because mounts are also very expensive here. If you can't afford a noble steed, you'll be thunderstruck by a suddenly stalling flight master and quickly realize that Azeroth is bigger than it seems on the live servers. And if you can unintentionally turn your fellow players' "World of Warcraft (buy now 14,99 € )" into "World of Angry Joggers", you'll quickly feel a comforting warmth in the pit of your stomach at the characters standing helplessly in a heap.
Priests were the monsters in vanilla WoW. Watching your own character slowly drown, completely helpless, was horrible. Source: buffed Where the fake quest NPC is our favorite method for trolling single, low-level players, the flight master kill takes it in a completely different direction: Here, if done well, you can cause significant discomfort to a gigantic bunch of hardcore players at max level. Because back in the day, the respawn timer fuse for key NPCs wasn't just five minutes long - it took a full fifteen minutes for the NPC to climb back out of the grave and trot back to its place of origin. Perfect! To elicit a solid reaction and many tears here, set your sights on the flight masters in Stormwind and Orgrimmar, respectively. The capitals are an excellent choice, as you'll bring the beating heart of the opposing faction to a halt for a brief moment (remember: no fixed portals) and get maximum effect for little effort. Oh, and a sudden increase in the price of mage portals.
The best for killing off important NPCs in the enemy capital are, of course, rogues. The troll's best friends can cloak, bang out a lot of damage, and are freely available in both factions. Again, the Alliance has a bit of an advantage here, as the guys in royal blue have a very special class on their side: a Holy Paladin with a slight tanking impact in the talents, or a fully equipped Protective Paladin, stood out back in the day for its almost total lack of damage and near complete invulnerability. Since you can't launch attacks during your god shield in WoW Classic anyway, use the time to stroll to the flight master. Your damage, while low, is easily enough to assassinate the NPC before the enemy players can react. If the Reckoning Bomb makes it to the Classic servers, you'll have no problem anyway: get critically hit more than forty times by any NPC before your troll action, then detonate your "Reckoning" in front of the flight master. If you got through the assassination without a god shield, use the time to write "kek" in chat and dance. Bonus: You put one of your characters in front of the Flight Master beforehand, so you can log on and understand your teammates' angry comments afterwards. Super Bonus: Your character is a mage and offers portals at a special price.
The Blackrock Ballet
Once again, we bring you classic WoW trolling - with our special touch of pure cruelty. Those of you who lived through the glory days of vanilla WoW will remember with horror the priests who did terrible things with the Mind Control spell. Even today, Mind Control is one of the most fun tools in a priest's arsenal - but that's nothing compared to the pure chaos that reigned among the gaming community back then when a clever priest entered the battlefield.
If you want to Endgame in WoW Classic, you have to go to Blackrock - an absolute nightmare on every PvP server and for every flagged player. Source: buffed One of our favorite tactics is something called the "Blackrock Ballet" in vanilla WoW lingo. To explain, Blackrock in the Burning Steppes was home to practically all of the major dungeons at the time: Blackrock Spire, Blackrock Depths, Molten Core, and Pitchwing Lair were THE places to find the fat loot. Accordingly, the volcano was also busy - and the battlefield couldn't be better suited for playing tricks with it. For any readers who have never seen the inside of Blackrock: The whole thing is full of lava and dominated by a massive rock that hangs on chains swinging freely above the glowing doom. Now, if you unpack your priest and indulge in PvP, you can easily take on enemy players at a distance and make them dance helplessly for almost a full minute before jumping into the lava. Read that right: Mind Control lasted a full minute back then. Rogues could practically act as "mini-priests" and wreak havoc using the Distract skill. That's because this skill makes the enemy look in the pre-determined direction - abruptly and even in mid-jump! There's nothing quite like an enemy suddenly running into a lava-filled abyss because you gave them a nudge in the right direction - from stealth, of course. Again, Night Elf Priests of the Alliance make the best trolls, as your victims won't see doom coming if you strike from Shadow Mimic.
Let the puppets dance
Table of Contents1. The wrong quest NPC2. Flight Master Murder3. The Blackrock Ballet4. Let the puppets dance5. Of murder, trickery and other fun
But the Blackrock Ballet is far from the end of the line. The frisky troll excursion into Blackrock is really just part of the tactics of a clever PvP player who seizes every opportunity to win. But you don't want to be known as a clever tactician, you want to be known as an absolute monster who runs his engine on tears - otherwise you wouldn't be reading this article. We recommend ambushing opposing players near a nice deep body of water and then taking them over via mind control. You guys remember how mind control lasts for a whole minute in WoW Classic? You know what else lasts for a minute? Hero Lungs. Before they collapse from lack of oxygen. Just take over your opponent, jump into the water with his character, and swim down as deep as you can. Then just wait for him to drown. For a full minute - during which your victim can only yell at the screen and bang on his keyboard. Even if the mind control breaks, he has to reach the surface first - and by then it's already too late. And if anyone now remarks that characters can hold their breath for five minutes, we're afraid we'll have to wave it off with a grin. That's not likely to be the case on the Classic servers.
Also a friendly way to drive your fellow players up the wall: The Sudden Deserter. You're on one of the great battlegrounds of vanilla WoW, and the action is really picking up: battles in Alterac Valley often lasted more than seventeen hours. WoW Classic will be running its battlegrounds based on patch 1.1.2, which will still result in epic battles, but no more days-long sieges. What all battlegrounds have in common, however, is that you had to physically get to the entry portals and often wait a long time for an open match. So what do we do as a friendly priest? We offer all players the opportunity to participate in one of the battles for a short time! Simply lure your enemy to one of the battlefield portals during an ongoing match, apply mind control, and simply run out of the battlefield. End. This will give your opponent a much-needed break and another player a chance to join the ongoing battle. The "deserter debuff" your victim gets will disappear in an hour, so he can try again. Get ready for some colorful private messages and have the popcorn ready.
The final way to creatively show your fellow players that you're a complete monster is something we call the Slow Cooker: First, grab a small newbie on the Alliance or Horde side. Beggars are best for this, as the scarce gold economy in WoW Classic will make their grand return. If you don't have a beggar handy at the moment, you can make one for yourself: simply promise a newbie to give him enough gold for his mount if he duels you once. In all likelihood, your opponent will think he's getting a good deal. You'll have a good romp on a newcomer, and he'll get some much-needed cash in return. Unfortunately, your teammates don't know that you're a sadistic monster. Find a duel location that has one of the many fire bowls found in WoW Classic - if you want to really humiliate your opponent, choose the Marketplace. Then start the duel, using low-level spells as much as possible, because the different skill levels are one of the many troll advantages of the old WoW. Don't defeat your duel partner, just lower their health as much as possible. Then use mind control, stand in the fire bowl and let your teammate burn. He loses the duel and is burned down to one life point, which is then lost in the fire. Enjoy his burnt corpse with a glass of Chianti and his Whine with a little cheese. Hannibal Lecter would be proud of you!
Of murder, trickery and other fun
We hope we've made two things clear to you with this article. First, we are practically WoW Dementors; absolute monsters who eat the happiness and joy of our fellow man. Second, when WoW Classic hits the servers, a lot of players will head to Azeroth assuming that WoW Classic is much like the live version, except you level longer and there's no dungeon browser. Nothing could be further from the truth. If all goes as it seems, players will experience a true piece of WoW history with the Classic servers - complete with the uncertainty, wild action, and rampaging trolls we fought back in the day. That's not a bad thing, of course, because a little danger adds to the enjoyment and we're all a little smarter than we were fifteen years ago. Despite all that, it's going to be a bumpy ride and you decide whether to use your newfound knowledge for the good or destruction of your fellow players. And if you're eager to try the above tactics, remember: nothing tastes sweeter than troll tears. Have a good hunt.
