Fog of War

Growing up playing World of Warcraft (WoW)¹, I became familiar with the concept of “Fog of War” — that is, areas of the world that your character hadn’t visited. Once you moved close enough to a certain area on the map, the fog would “lift”, and that area on your map would be filled in moving forward. Also, you’d gain experience points for clearing Fog of War — at lower levels of the game, you could level-up fairly quickly just by exploring new areas.

I’ll give my brother credit — he was the first to see this as an opportunity for exploration. He piloted his Troll Rogue, Zuljitan, on a journey across the continent of Kalimdor after reaching level 10, the level at which Rogues in those days learned their “Sprint” ability. (We figured we’d need this to escape the various mobs that would attack your character from long distance, being tens of levels above our characters. Rogues also could “stealth”, i.e. become invisible at the cost of movement speed, but mobs at such a large level differential could see through stealth.)

Setting off south from the Crossroads in the Barrens, Zuljitan traipsed through the Thousand Needles down to Tanaris to visit Gadgetzan, I believe he then made his way through Un’Goro Crater to Silithus, then over the mountains to Feralas before ultimately dying for the umpteenth time in Desolace and hearthstone-ing back $HOME.

Although I originally played Horde (a Tauren Warrior), I eventually became drawn to the Gnomes of Ironforge, and ended up on my own journey as the Gnome Rogue, Phread. I liked that Gnomes had an advantage in the Engineering profession, and thought it was neat that I could build goggles for my character at a low level, when most headgear in the game was at that time for levels 40+ (of the original level-cap at 60).

The plan was hatched: this time, on Azeroth, I’d need to make my way across the sea to Gadgetzan to get the schematics I was looking for. Phread’s journey was a little easier: taking the Deeprun Tram from Ironforge to Stormwind, he headed south through Elwynn Forest, Westfall and Duskwood down to the far south of Stranglethorn Vale’s Booty Bay, where he could catch the ship to Steamwheedle Port and continue onwards to Gadgetzan. I bought my schematic (I think?), and hearthstone’d $HOME.

I’m now about 20 years removed from my WoW-playing days (wow!), but I’ve managed to find a new way to clear Fog of War: CityStrides. CityStrides is an app that lets you keep track of the streets that you’ve run (or walked, or biked) in a city. Once you’ve run an entire street (by completing all the “nodes” along it), it’s added to your completed list. Each city has a leaderboard of users ranked based on the percentage of streets they’ve completed.

I managed to make my way through 25% of Boston’s ~4,400 streets before we moved to Ipswich in late January. Ipswich has only 356 streets at the time of writing. (The smallest “city” I’ve run, Sunfield, MI, has 18 streets — running 5 of them during a 5k over 10 years ago has resulted in me being the #1 (of 1) runner there on CityStrides.) Before the move, I had nearly run 20% of Ipswich, mostly by running the various roads out on Great Neck and Little Neck. I made it my goal during paternity leave to finish as many streets in Ipswich as possible (thanks to a loving, supportive wife and a relatively reasonably well-behaved baby), hoping to possibly make it to 100% before my leave ended.

I’ve been meaning to write this for a couple months since paternity leave ended, but hadn’t quite had the gumption to get this finished. I haven’t finished the 100% I was hoping to get to: instead, I’ve been stuck at 80% for most of the summer. The remaining streets are all 5+ miles away from my typical starting point of our home, and are largely in areas that I’d classify as unfriendly to running. I’m now slowly restarting my quest for 100% (VanBurens are box checkers, after all), with an eye towards finishing by the end of the year. I remain, for now, 2nd out of 506 on the Ipswich CityStrides leaderboard.

Still, it’s not about reaching 100%: it’s about understanding the area in which you’re living at a deeper level, and looking closely at things (although, maybe not when cars are screaming past you as you try to traipse down some of the unfriendly roads). Clearing the Fog of War, if you will.

🌄