This diary of a low-level orc brings the joy back into WoW's early zones
Forget the endgame, one orc microblogger is stopping to smell the level-one roses.
Even in an expansion as exciting as Legion, it's unavoidable that you'll eventually feel burnt out. Sure, there's a ton of quests and dungeons to complete, gear to find, and artifact weapons to power up, but all of that becomes routine day after day. Some deal with this creeping case of the boredoms by unsubscribing. Others pursue insane challenges. But one player found a way to rediscover Azeroth through a fresh pair of eyes—specifically, Gromogg's eyes. He's a low-level orc who tweets the mundane happenings in his life more obsessively than a 17-year-old lifestyle blogger, and he's my new favorite Twitter account.
Did you know that World of Warcraft has Twitter integration? It was introduced years ago and remains one of its more underutilized features. But as Redditor 'thePABSman' explains, it's the secret to him rekindling some sense of wonder toward the aging Azeroth. "I mainly started this because I was on a WoW burnout and wanted to try something to play the game without any endgame in mind," he writes. "Just to do my own thing, or whatever I believe the character would want to do... Fish, collect all pets, herbs and mining, reading every quest, and exploring."
Instead of blitzing through levels like most players would do with a fresh character, thePABSman is taking his time to appreciate all of the little things in Azeroth. Then he filters those elegant observations through the mind of a big, dumb orc and tweets them in all capital letters.
THIS SMALL FROG REMINDS GROMOGG THAT THERE ARE ALWAYS WEAKER THINGS THAN HIM. #GROMOGGSAFARI pic.twitter.com/xxRdDsl7TQJanuary 28, 2017
Gromogg isn't the first Warcraft character to document his life online, though. The most famous being AngryOrc—who blathered on for years about everything from how bad Warlords of Draenor was to hockey memes. But what I love about Gromogg's diary is that it takes arguably the most boring aspect of World of Warcraft, the early levels, and turns them into something fresh and worthwhile. Anyone who has played a Horde character for a number of years should be painfully familiar with some of these dull starter quests. From Gromogg's simpleton perspective, however, they seem big and dramatic.
GROMOGG NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT. WE'RE SURROUNDED. GROMOGG PART OF SOMETHING BIGGER NOW. pic.twitter.com/K8PEsYfZbpJanuary 30, 2017
Speaking of big and dramatic, thePABSman is using some mods to reimagine World of Warcraft's UI and camera angles to give it a much more engaging look. Immersion scraps the ugly old quest menus for ones that feel more reminiscent of modern RPGs with proper dialogue boxes. Secondly, Auto Action Cam is a simple mod that automatically turns on a hidden feature in Warcraft called the action camera. This drops the camera down to an over-the-shoulder perspective which makes Azeroth feel much larger and more intimate than the distant zoom of the regular one.
For a seemingly effortless idea, the World of Warcraft community loves Gromogg and his mundane adventures. One Redditor put it better than I ever could: "Congrats you just became the only thing I care about on Twitter." If you want a humorous burst of nostalgia, go subscribe to Gromogg or, if you feel like documenting your own travels, you can activate Twitter integration and get snapping.
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With over 7 years of experience with in-depth feature reporting, Steven's mission is to chronicle the fascinating ways that games intersect our lives. Whether it's colossal in-game wars in an MMO, or long-haul truckers who turn to games to protect them from the loneliness of the open road, Steven tries to unearth PC gaming's greatest untold stories. His love of PC gaming started extremely early. Without money to spend, he spent an entire day watching the progress bar on a 25mb download of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo that he then played for at least a hundred hours. It was a good demo.