I especially noticed this while questing along the shores of Westfall. Between the gently rolling tide, the cries of seagulls, and the impressive new water effects, I felt some of that same wonder I experienced when first exploring Azeroth twenty years ago.

As we wait for launch, I figured I’d share a few screenshots I snapped during my journey through the beta.

A few things are settled. The rest? I’ve still got a few more days to overthink some of those decisions.

Class: Hunter

That’s a given.

Spec: Beast Mastery

Pretty on brand for me. I’m interested in exploring Survival at some point, but for the journey to 60, I’m going to want my big red pet.

Faction: Alliance

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time playing Horde over the past six or seven years. I enjoy leveling through the Barrens, and I think Thunder Bluff is an amazing capital city, but nostalgia is pulling me back to Alliance.

It’s how I started 20+ years ago, and it’s how this next chapter will begin.

Race: Probably Night Elf. Or Human. Maybe Dwarf.

I was pretty certain I wanted to relive the Night Elf starting experience. I love the Teldrassil ambiance, the racials are hard to beat, and it’s the race through which I first experienced the game, but then I played a Human Hunter in the beta and thoroughly enjoyed it. That combination made a familiar class feel fresh, and the Human racials are also quite strong, especially for PvP.

Then there’s Dwarf. I love playing Dwarves, and their buffed Find Treasure plus 1% hit makes the decision even harder.

So, yes. Alliance Hunter. That’s about as far as I’ve narrowed it down.

Starter pet: Bear

I leveled with a few different pets during the beta, but Bjarn was my favorite sidekick. Good tankiness, AoE threat with Swipe, and Claw to dump focus. I used to go with Owl or Carrion Bird for most solo content, but I think that currently bear is the move.

For single target, and especially dungeons, I really like using a wolf. Furious Howl felt excellent in places like the Stockade or anytime I felt like jumping into the fray instead of staying at range. No doubt I’ll need some more practice, but melee Hunter felt very good in this version of WoW. I like the hunter slice and dice with Aspect of the Beast plus Deadly Aspects, and being able to lay multiple traps while in combat is fantastic.

I’d like to keep a wolf for dungeon runs, but a spider is also making a strong case for a stable slot. Web’s four-second root on a 40-second cooldown is going to be incredibly strong for BGs. Spiders have never been a favorite of mine flavor-wise, but I may have to make an exception in WoWF.

Here’s hoping we eventually get more stable slots, whether through a patch or something we can unlock through leveling or achievements. I’m already making difficult decisions, and the game hasn’t even launched yet.

Professions: Skinning & Mining to start

Eventually, I’ll pick up Leatherworking or Engineering. For now, I’m going with two gathering professions while I figure that out.

I enjoyed Leatherworking in the beta, but by the end, every piece of gear I had equipped except my helm came from dungeons. My first priority is getting some 14-slot bags. Then I’ll worry about committing to a crafting prof.

Planning a new character is part of the fun, but I’m trying not to get too caught up in finding the perfect combo. I want to enjoy the journey and ensure that whatever I commit to will be something I’ll enjoy.

Besides, the hardest decision may end up being my character’s name. I missed the early reservation window, so whatever plans I make could unravel at the character creation screen next week.

Who else has a concept of a plan?

Are you starting with a Hunter, or trying another class? And who’s excited to give Survival a go?

I was happily married, a stay-at-home dad with an 18-month-old toddler, and I’d recently started a freelance web development business. Work was unpredictable, and there were stretches when I had considerably more time than money.

I decided to put some of that downtime to debatably good use.

I wanted to learn more about content marketing and SEO, and I figured the best way to do that was to build a website around something I knew well and genuinely enjoyed.

WoW seemed like a pretty obvious choice.

More specifically, huntering in the World of Warcraft.

I’d been playing a hunter since the early days of vanilla, and I figured there was no shortage of things I could write about. Pets, talents, gear, macros, addons & UI, PvP, raiding, and all the little nuances of a class that I had come to know and love.

So, the Huntsman’s Lodge was born.

It became my little corner of the internet during a time when the WoW blogosphere was really starting to blow up. A place to experiment, write, share what I’d learned, and connect with other players who were every bit as enthusiastic about the hunter class as I was.

It also gave me something productive to do when freelance work was slow. I was learning, creating, and, as the saying goes, sharpening the saw.

And I was having a blast.

Life Happens

Of course, life has a way of rearranging your priorities.

Over the years, my professional responsibilities grew, my free time diminished, and maintaining the Lodge became increasingly difficult.

My enthusiasm for WoW also began to wane.

Retail gradually lost its grip on me, particularly around Battle for Azeroth. The game was still there, but something about the experience no longer scratched the same itch.

When Classic arrived in 2019, I was excited to return to the version of the game I’d been so enchanted by before.

By then, however, I was working 50–55 hours a week, which was a far cry from the circumstances under which I’d initially started this website.

I embraced Classic enthusiastically, leveled to 60, and had a wonderful time along the way. But as some of my in-game friends began falling off, my interest eventually waned.

There were simply too many other things competing for my attention.

A Few More Adventures

That isn’t to say I stopped playing altogether.

Hardcore Classic, in particular, managed to get my blood pumping again.

After two unsuccessful attempts that ended at levels 37 and 28, I finally managed to get a hunter all the way to 60.

What a ride that was.

There’s something uniquely exhilarating about Hardcore. Any unfamiliar or forgotten quest can be anxiety-inducing, especially when you don’t know whether you’re about to trigger some potentially unsurvivable gauntlet of hostile mobs. Caves are always a potential deathtrap. And every time you survive something you probably shouldn’t have, you feel like you’ve just cheated death.

And boy, does it feel good.

As the Nature Boy would say, Woooo!

I also spent some time in Season of Discovery. Phase one was great fun, phase two held my attention for a bit, but by phase three, I’d pretty much had enough.

When the Classic Anniversary servers arrived, I was ready for more adventure.

I rolled Garwulf as a self-found Hardcore hunter and made the journey to 60 one more time. Having done it before, I found the second trip a bit easier, but certainly no less exciting.

No matter how carefully you play, there’s always the possibility that one bad pull, one unexpected respawn, a reckless or nefarious party member, or one moment of stupidity will bring the whole journey to an abrupt and rather humiliating end. But I love it, and I’m definitely going to experience WoW Forever Hardcore when it drops.

I also rolled a level 19 twink hunter, which I always enjoy building, and romped around in Warsong Gulch for a few months. That was good fun, but between the sweatiness of it all and the frustrating terrain exploits, it eventually became tiresome.

At this point in my life, I prefer a more relaxed dad-mode gaming experience.

Then there was TBC Classic, where I leveled a Blood Elf hunter and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, right up until it came time to get attuned for Kara. That’s when I started questioning my time investment. I’d enjoyed this content years ago, and while I thought it’d be fun to do again, it’s a commitment. I knew it wouldn’t provide even close to the same thrill it did back in 2007.

And so, once again… I wandered off.

Something Old, Something New

I took an extended break from WoW this year.

Then, about a week before BlizzCon, I started getting that familiar itch.

I decided to jump back into TBC Classic Anniversary and try leveling another hunter with the Soul of Iron buff active.

Things were going pretty well.

Then came the BlizzCon announcement for Warcraft Forever.

Suddenly, everything changed.

The beta was opening in just a few days, and I knew immediately that I wanted to be there.

My initial thought was that I’d better hurry up and get Garwulf to 70 before November 4th.

Unfortunately, somewhere around level 26, while making my way through Redridge, I began playing with an increasingly reckless disregard for my own survival.

I think, subconsciously, I’d already made up my mind.

While questing in northwest Redridge at level 27, I encountered this guy and decided to pull and kite him with a few other mobs in tow. Things were going reasonably well until I pulled a few more orcs on the way back to the road. Kazon’s stun wrecked my pet, I went OOM, and while trying to escape, I stumbled into a few unexpected respawns.

Once I got backhanded, it was lights out.

When encountering rares in Hardcore, it’s always a good idea to look them up on Wowhead unless you know you can kite them safely. I’d thrown all caution to the wind, and so my most recent Hardcore adventure came to an unceremonious conclusion.

It was a fitting end.

I had somewhere else to be.

The Old Feeling Is Back

I jumped into the Warcraft Forever beta, and wow.

Just… wow.

I haven’t enjoyed World of Warcraft this much since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King.

And that’s saying something.

WotLK arrived shortly after I started Huntsman’s Lodge, back when I was consumed with enthusiasm for the game and the hunter class.

Now, 18 years later, I’m feeling something remarkably similar.

I’m older, possibly a little wiser, I go to bed earlier these days, and free time is increasingly scarce. But that familiar excitement is back.

I’m thinking about hunter builds again, hunting down rare pets, experimenting with abilities, rotations, PvP, and rediscovering all the little things that make playing a hunter so much fun.

And, perhaps most importantly, I’m feeling the urge to share the experience with anyone else who’s here for it.

That’s something I haven’t felt this strongly in a very long time.

I don’t know exactly what Huntsman’s Lodge will become in this new chapter. I can’t promise the same posting frequency I managed back in the early days, and I certainly can’t pretend I have the same amount of free time.

But I do know that I’m excited to be here again.

Eighteen years later, a Huntsman has returned to the Lodge.

And it feels pretty darn good to be home.

When I announced my return, I had every intention of diving right back into posting. Unfortunately, the website gremlins had other plans.

One of my first orders of business, after getting the site back online, was to perform a thorough audit. After assessing the plugins and poking around under the hood, I decided it was probably time to retire the old forum software.

It had served us well for many years, but the underlying architecture was showing its age. I wanted something a little more modern and better equipped for the future, should people ever begin gathering here once again.

Will the forums ever spring back to life? I have no idea. But if there’s even a chance of rekindling some of that old community spirit, I want to give it the best possible opportunity.

So, I updated the plugins, upgraded PHP, debugged the site, sleuthed out a database error that was causing intermittent crashes, and migrated the forums to a new platform.

Mission accomplished, right?

Not quite.

During all of this, I discovered the site was repeatedly hitting its hosting resource limits. Apparently, the old Lodge was putting a little too much strain on its foundations.

So, this prompted me to pack up the entire operation and move it to a new host.

After all that, things finally seemed to be running smoothly, and I figured I could get back to the business of actually writing something.

Except…

We’re heading into the busiest time of year at my day job, and I’m currently buried in holiday season last-minute preparation and planning for our annual company offsite. I’ve also had some additional freelance work land in my lap, which I’ve been steadily plowing through.

There are days when I’d love nothing more than to disengage IRL, but unfortunately, that doesn’t work particularly well when deadlines are looming.

The good news is that the technical heavy lifting is largely behind me. The Lodge has a new home, the site is stable, the forums have been upgraded, and things are looking considerably better than they did a month ago.

Now I just need to find some time to actually enjoy the place.

But as my grandma used to say, “Sometimes you have to work before you can get to work.”

I think she understood the importance of preparation.

I’ll be back. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

It’s been a while. A long while. And at least a decade since I updated this site with even a modicum of regularity or enthusiasm.

But I’m feeling the urge to resurface, return to posting, and attempt to resuscitate the community and see if there are signs of life.

Like many of you, I’m incredibly excited for WarCraft Forever.

And as with many of you, my life is very different now than it was 20+ years ago when I first explored Azeroth. I’m thrilled to start my journey all over again with a slightly different mindset and perspective, but with a similar sense of wonder and zest for adventure that I first experienced over two decades ago.

And of course I am going to main a hunter.

I’ll most certainly spec Beast Mastery.

And I’m feeling the urge to do it as a mustachioed, silver-haired Night Elf, because it’s just what needs to happen. I’ve truly enjoyed leveling a human hunter in the beta, but between the rush of nostalgia that comes with leveling in Teldrassil and Darkshore, combined with those updated racials, I’ve decided this next journey begins in Shadowglen.

I can’t wait.

As for the Huntsman’s Lodge, I’ve resurrected it from the grave. Almost literally, as I just became aware this past week that the site had been offline since September 2025. It was shocking for me to realize I hadn’t even visited it in over a year.

But I’m here now. I’ve re-entered the building and I’ve turned the lights back on.

Priorities have shifted significantly over the years, but I’m about to reshuffle them a bit.

Warcraft Forever feels like a pretty good reason to light the hearth, reopen the doors, and see who wanders back into the ol’ Lodge.

I don’t anticipate going too hard on any guides, but as I get myself ready for adventure, I’ll post what I’m doing and what’s working for me. And I’m certain I’ll have some stories, so I look forward to future conversation around our shared experiences.

If anyone is still out there, what are your thoughts on WarCraft Forever? Who else will be joining me?

Horde or Alliance?

SD or HD models?

What do you think of the reworked survival tree?

Excited for the new pet abilities?

And are you as confused and troubled as I am over Blizz’s decision to give dwarves a racial bonus for maces vs guns? Dwarf hunter is literally the face of this new game, yet they’re arguably the least viable race for a hunter now.

Not sure if Blizzard is trolling, but I certainly hope there’s an update incoming. It’s off-brand and just plain wrong to not give dwarves a gun racial.