To resubscribe?

Or not to resubscribe?

I set up a Trial account for the boy so he could play WoW, and as he's a little Hunter (Orion bless his heart) I created a Priest to run around with him. Unfortunately both of us being on Trial accounts meant that neither of us could invite the other to group, even after I tracked him down in the Troll cave in Coldridge Valley. Fortunately a passing duo invited me to Group up with them, but I had to ask before my son was sent an invite. Their hesitation may have been because he'd named his Hunter 'Infernape', I don't know.

With us in the same group it made questing together a hell of a lot easier, and talking to the boy over Skype (I'm in the family room, he's in his bedroom) meant I could give him battle orders without needing to type or yell. This wasn't that necessary with four of us in the party, but when the other two dropped out to go their separate ways and we moved on from Coldridge Valley and started killing Wendigos, rapid communication became essential.

The Wendigo cave can be a hairy place to enter, and not just because you're after Wendigo Manes. Rapid respawns, a seemingly larger than usual aggro radius, and a willingness to help out their buddies means adventurers questing around and inside the Wendigo need to stay on their toes, lest they be trodden on by a pack of Wendigos. The boy and I went all the way inside the cave while acquiring our quota of manes and on the way out we ran into respawns and trouble when we picked up 4 Wendigos in rapid succession.

To his credit the boy listened when I told him to stop attacking the Wendigo that was hitting him and shoot the Wendigo on me. Self-preservation on my part? Of course not; the boy's Hunter just did better Ranged DPS than Melee. I don't know how but we survived the onslaught and made it out of the cave where we picked up three more Wendigos. Again I reminded the boy to ignore the Wendigo beating on him and shoot the ones on me and again he rose to the occasion, followed orders, and once more we survived.

By this time the real world was exerting its influence and we were drawing wife/mom aggro. We high tailed it back to Kharanos, hit the Inn and logged for the night.

It was great fun grouping with the boy, but if we want to do that again we need to find a friendly player willing to invite us both to a group then leave us to our own devices. And I'm reminded of the problem I had doing just that a month or two back. I was on a Horde character and two other players had wanted to group up to do quests but incredibly we were all on Trial accounts. I know, what are the odds, right? We hit Brill and tried to muster a group but nobody wanted in. For some reason an 80 Orc Hunter was messing around in Brill, and we sought his help. He was more than willing to duel us which I thought would get us a group invite afterward, but no such luck. After crushing us in duels he laughed, danced, spammed various emotes, but steadfastly refused to invite us into a group. In the end I ran off and quested on my own.

So I'm contemplating re-subscribing if for no reason other than it would make grouping with the boy a darn sight easier than constantly having to rely on good Samaritans. Also with Daylight Saving drawing to a close here (& conversely starting up in Australia) the time difference between here and Down Under will decrease to 5 hours (& 1 day), so I'd be more likely to see my sister and her husband online than I would with the current 7-hour difference.

To resubscribe, or not to resubscribe: that is the question.