Another day, another Pick-up Group. That's not exactly the way it was. I finally got the time together and logged into the Looking For Group Channel. I ticked that I could offer healing because, well, I did last time.

Not long later I was invited to a run heading into the Hellfire Ramparts. Ramps. I even had a quest for it. Rock on.

Now in a perfect world I should be playing to my Boomkin spec strengths and observing a proper healer at work. At least for my first time into the instance, right?

But no. Seems like there's never a healer around when you need one. So rather than sit around I offered to do it.

And I went ok. The tank learnt pretty quick not to run in too hastily and we made it to through to the last boss. In fact I got the achievement for the instance but I still needed the bloke riding the dragon for my quest.

Unfortunately, by this time the group was falling apart. My server tends to the Australian so they're a good few hours ahead. Second time the boss wiped us it was just me and the Group Leader.

DK - I can tank it but we need at least a DPS
Me - I can DPS but then we need healz

In the end we reformed a whole team. Enough, in fact, to reset the instance and run it again. This time we had a good high level tank who was clearly very experienced and helpful. Bugger it if he didn't disconnect and then log on long enough to apologize for his computer.

So we ended up four-manning the same last boss. We wiped. I couldn't stay alive. And I couldn't keep the tank alive.

From a personal development point of view, I suppose, it was good: I had actually learnt enough about what I was doing to completely understand that... well... I just didn't have the healz to pull us through.

I could tell the GL (now tanking) was getting frustrated. Everybody kind of wandered away after the second wipe. They didn't say anything direct but I know that blaming the healer is common phenomenon.

And if it happens when it's unjustified, you can bet your last murlock it happens when the healer really is at fault. Oh and I accidentally rolled on a piece of plate and won it. I really was *that* guy.

I will be addressing this two ways: I'm leveling a proper healer. A Dranei priest. As soon as he hits 20 I'll be running every instance I can get my paws on.

And for my Druid, it seems if I want to run instances I need to be ready to heal. I'm not ready to give up my spec. So I'll need another. That's 1000g for dual spec that I need. AH here I come.

Read Users' Comments ( 5 )

Okay, so I totally noobed it.

I had been fiddling around trying to tidy up some quest chains before I headed off into Outland. Having bought Burning Crusade a fortnight ago that's a little sad but I do now have the Boomerang of Nintendo and I've done some obligatory smiting of the Plaguelands.

I also started a Dranei Priest (called GawdBovver) so I felt like I was getting my money's worth and Katyana and will still only be in Vanilla for a little while yet.

My guild leader was gently needling me to get out there though. So I wrapped up some Plaguery, deleted some quests from Sithilis and hopped in the Portal from the Undercity.

Then I proudly announced in Guild Chat that I had 'made it!'

The attentive will spot my deliberate error. I was in Silvermoon City. Which was awesome and I hadn't been there before and you couldn't use the Portal until you bought BC so this *must* be Outland, right?

/doh!

Alekto (the GM) kindly zipped in and showed me the *other* portal and escorted me through the other-other portal.

Alekto: Can you see the Portal now now?
Me: Is it behind the enormous glowing green thing?

And holy mother of jehosephat, it's AWESOME.
I had, like, half a level to go before I was 60 but by the time I'd done all the meet'n'greet quests I only needed to sideswipe a Bloodletter Orc and I was golden.

All the talk of better gear was true as well. No more prevaricating over whether to wear that hat that's good for spells or the helmet that's good for keeping your head it one piece. Go with the awesome spellcasting helmet of doom. Obviously.

And as advertised, I can fly. I honestly couldn't have imagined what a game changer this is. I finally understand why people complain about leveling. Being mounted is one thing but once you've swooped into a quest and swooped out again there's no going back.

Read Users' Comments ( 4 )

My Ravasaur is all grown up. Big enough to carry a Tauren and not look daft. I never really bonded with my Epic Kodo. It's the eyes. They look like evil robots. Not that I have anything against evil robots, your Governatorship, they just lack personality.

Katyana was a bit the same way about the swift mounts. They're all a bit warlike. Maybe we need to get her that monster cat the alliance side can grind out. Mumphred's got his charger.

Only poor Grexel's left behind. She's got the Zhevra in her bank but she hasn't quite managed to squeeze out Lvl40.

I keep meaning to take her out but Paronymous is too happy swooping around the insect hives on his new beastie.

And the spice! We must control the spice!

Sithilis, if you don't know, has little geysers of magic dust. Both factions are in a race of some kind to gather 200 units of it. The current score on Saurfang is Horde 38 Alliance 37. I dropped in two this morning.

My first shot at it was rife with every possible nooishness you can imagine.

The aim is to carry the dust back to a special collection point, glowing as you go and slowed down to make you vulnerable. So the first thing I did when I found some was hop on my sweet new ride. Uh-uhn. Mounting up drops the spice.

Then I hurried back to Cenarion Hold to find the depot; Cenarian Hold is not the depot. The depot is actually marked on the map big enough to be seen from space but being new to the region I hadn't explored down that far.

All the while I'm jumping out of my skin because I assume the full force of the Alliance is about to fall on me for gathering another 200th of their doom. They didn't. A Tauren Death Knight (first one of those I've seen) whispered me to help and grouped up with me so I'd know where to go.

He rescued me a bit too because I picked up a whole bunch of sandworms on the way. Fortunately he got there while I was still putting up a good fight so I didn't feel too much like a dweeb. Then just when it looked like I was going to get away with it I totally failed to find the machine to hand it in. I just ran around trying stuff and getting increasingly mortified until he took pity on me again.

The only way I can think of to atone for this noobishness is to collect as much spice as I can.
For the Horde.

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )

There's that Monastery again. Doesn't it just look like it should have lightning behind it? By a remarkable coincidence that is exactly how our second attempt went south.

We went in pretty fast but we got a bit messy and picked up too many Scarlet Chaplains. Razzinfrazzin healer frazzers. So we did the corpse run a Lo! Every monk in the place had been replaced by a replica of itself only alive again.

Then we tried a new strategy. Basically less area effect from Katyana and more focused extermination one at a time. This may well be a blazingly obvious truism to non-Noobs but it made a massive difference to us. Kind of like pacing for a long haul up a hill rather than sprinting at it and hoping to make the top before having a heart attack.

Anyway it worked well and we were happy to have figured it out for ourselves. Our houseguest told us that the average UK couple says around 800 words per day to each other, so we were feeling pretty smug about that too. Even if around 4000 of ours were variations on 'Fireblasting now!' and 'I get him'.

But all the while a storm was brewing.

Hong Kong has some mad electrical storms. The humidity gets so high that you can see it hanging in the air. The moment the temperature drops, say, by night falling, it all comes tumbling down.

For a while it was awesome. Dark red skies. Background thunder. Brilliant flashes of light. The dogs going mental.

But then I pull a couple of Monks and a Diviner and start my routine but Katyana doesn't help. Instead she says 'Are you ready?'

On her screen nothing's happening.
On mine the fight is kind of moot because everybody is doing the half cast spell dance.

Bugger.

Fortunately all the technology is okay but we couldn't face going in again. We had a little look in the Graveyard and it was a doddle so we just romped through it. The other fortunate thing was that we had already picked up the book for Katyana's mage quest so we were able to trundle back to Tabetha and hand that in.

We'll close this damn Monastery. Just not quite yet.

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )

My main concern when Katyana and Mumphred formed their increasingly profitable alliance was that my alts would suffer. I still think of Paronymous as my main and he's closing on Lvl52. I'm thinking of picking up Burning Crusade for him some time soon.

Poor Grexel, on the other hand, was rapidly becoming my bank alt. She hadn't left Thunder Bluff since the Midsummer Festival. I couldn't even remember where her hearthstone was set.

In fact Katyana is now the same level as her. Apparently I can't be “Mr Know-It-All about Mages” anymore because I haven't got any higher. (I am still allowed to be “Mr Knows-Which-Way-We're-Going”)

So what do you do to make it up to an alt that's been neglected? I bought her a pony.
She'd been piling up the cash (to my noobish standards) and I've come to understand that the announcement of patch 3.2 doesn't mean it's going to actually arrive any time soon.

Turns out last thing Grexel had been doing was trekking around Thousand Needles and that, let me tell you, is so much more fun on horseback. I was a bit rusty on the Mage skills but I realised that I had learnt a thing or two in my other play.

This might make proper grown-up players roll their eyes but I had finally got into keyboards spell-casting. 1,2,3 then another 1 or a 4 if they're nearly dead. Lovely. This was making Druid play much easier but, boy, does it pay off for Mages.

Grexel was back, and better than ever.

Better and better she found some new content; The obvious thing to do with a new Blue Skeletal Horse is take her out on the Shimmering Flats and let her rip, right? Turns out I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Somehow when Paronymous came this way he just found the Sithilids and, to coin a phraze, bugged out. Missed the whole Mirage Raceway thing completely. A great bunch of quests for Grexel to flex her atrophying muscles on.

And a couple of extra levels so I can be Mr Know-It-All about Mages for a while longer.

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )

I originally started this blog so that I could observe myself changing and my play style developing. Playing with Katyana gives me twice as much to watch. As Mr Spock once said “Fascinating”.

One of the obvious things is her commitment to play. From me begging and pleading and doing the dishes to her deciding that it is too early to sleep and that we should play until 3am. Then more the next day. Twice. I told her it would be easier if we got 'downstairs mouses' and another keyboard so we could leave everything set up. She said she was thinking of that already. She's totally a keeper.

In RL my wife is closely involved in animal welfare and she has a general aversion to 'killing things over and over again'. She was like this with Civilisation, too. It only takes a couple of unprovoked attacks and then the gloves come off. Now if we spend too much time crafting in a city she wants to go out and slay some stuff.

She's also getting into the idea of spell rotation. As opposed to trying to figure out the 'best' spell and spamming that. In fact she's quite stingy with her mana. A great big firebolt at the beginning and then it's all about the wand. Unless we get swamped in which case the blizzard comes down.

There's also a level of increasing confidence. I noted for myself the satisfaction of Stranglethorn Vale; going from scuttlig prey to striding predator. When Katyana first saw a raptor she freaked out. Jurrassic park has a lot to answer for. However, by end of play on Sunday she announced that she was sick of killing raptors and hoped that we would never have to go back to the Excavation Site in the Wetlands ever again.

Then, of course, we had to kill Sarltooth to get the recipe for all the eggs we had collected.

Read Users' Comments ( 4 )

There are so many things that people take for granted. Really obvious things. The stuff that just doesn't need to be written down or talked about or, you know, told to noobs. Things like shift-right-clicking to autoloot have absolutely saved the game for me.

I am now officially completely in love with the banks. Not a popular thing to say in RL but I'm pretty sure the WoW banks are adding more value than they are deriving.

But sweet merciful running jumping jehosephat I wish I'd known about them sooner.

“Greed is good,
Greed works”
—Gordlon Gevko
Case in point being my Druid's leather-working skill. He's a skinner as well so the leather has been coming in thick and fast. Or, in fact, thick and rugged. Which would be great if I could do anything with it.

The problem began when I was working of medium leather stuff. I kept getting heavy leather and it was clogging up my bags. Obviously the correct response should have been to squirrel it away until I could use it. Instead I put my pants on my head, dribbled on myself and then sold them to vendors (to VENDORS!)(Look forward to my Auction House post coming soon. /faceslap)

This inevitably has left me with my profession out of sync with my questing. Currently I can just about get experience for the beasts that give me the right leather but they aren't the things I should be doing for Quest progress.

Any minute now though, I'm going to break LW 200 and all the Thick Leather in my bank will explode into a leather orgy of advancement. Or something.

Actually I just wanted to write “Warcraft Leather Orgy” in the hope that it would improve my traffic. I am such a whore.

Read Users' Comments ( 5 )

One of the things I keep meaning to get around to is making some predictions. I stumbled across The Barrens Chat which was about to start on a project tracking some Noob friends of his through their development. It made me wonder what the Lvl 80 me would think of the Noob me.
Only time will tell with that one.
I can, however, record the converse: What does Noob me think of Endgame me?
So I present for the sake of future mortification...

10 Things I Expect To Happen In My Warcraft Future

1 Glyphs - I've looked them up. I assume I just have to go to the Auction House. Maybe I can get them from the Inscriber trainer or Reagent seller. Or something. I'll almost certainly get an Inscriber sometime as well. L80 Me wont know what took me so long.

2 Raiding - I could do that! What a good idea It would be a little bit like actually playing the game. I'm thinking of going through Wailing Caverns with Paronymous (Druid 46) just to clear out the Quests. I'm hoping I can pass it off as Healer Training and just invite whoever's nearby. How badly could I screw up at that level? Come the Engame I don't see myself in a hardcore raiding guild. I expect to play a lot of PUGs.

3 Cash Cache - I'll get a Bank Account. I'm already passing everything to Grexel for Auction or Disenchanting. I don't really want to relegate her to mule/banker. Definitely need more room to store materials and stuff. I assume I can afford it now.

4 Old scores - I will go into the Plaguelands and nuke it to the ground. Grudge bearing is the finest form of roleplay. This will probably happen before I get to 80 but I might make it a monthly catharsis. Truth be told L80 Me will probably have better things to do.

5 Warfare - I will get my head around Battle Grounds. So far it's just been a series of mad panics. I'm sure I am everything that makes people LOL or gag about it. Certainly someone felt so comfortable exterminating me in the Arathi Basin that the took the time to laugh at me. I expect these to still be hard but I imagine I will have a plan/strategy/overview that will work better than running in small circles with my hair on fire.

6 Macros - I am this special kind nerd; a wannabe programmer. I suck and never really put the time in but I really like the idea of it. Sorting out macros is about right for my effort:result ratio.

7 Add ons - So far I have only put in one. I haven't felt the need. I fully understand that this means I don't know what I'm doing. Just like the macro issue I don't really think it makes sense to force the issue. I just don't feel like I know what I'm doing well enough to make modifications usefully. In the future everybody has a million addons optimising themselves. Then again Blizzard keeps including things like Quest Helper.

8 Community Involvement - Love to get out there in the Blogosphere more. I'd like to get Sargeras to guest post some time. It'd be nice to get on the Twisted Nether some time too. Voice of a Noob Generation, that's me.

9 Expansions - Some day I'll make 60 and pick up the Burning Crusade. First order of business: Alt up a Blood Elf. Then I understand there's some sort of Anger of the Lichen after that. So I guess I'll roll a Moss Knight, or whatever. I hear that can make you Noobish all over again.

10 PVP - I already created a Warlock on a PVP server. I can't even remember why. I guess I always knew that was something I needed to do. Maybe my usual server was down or something. Certainly didn't get very far. I imagine the UbërMe that reads this will be thinking “You chose a class you hadn't played before? What are you? Stupid?” But I kinda like the Warlock idea and I kinda want the PVP thing so somehow that's what I did. My Endgame self will, of course, stride the bloody plains pwner of all he surveys.

11 Theorycrafting - This would, of course, require learning to count. It could happen.

So, that's on the record. Let's see how it all turns out.

Read Users' Comments ( 2 )

"Hey Druid..."

It was my first proper interaction with a Level 80.

It was actually kind of weird being addressed directly. Partly because I was just outside the Inn at Kargath and there are quite a few NPCs chatting amongst themselves around there. So that was my first thought: quest encounter.

The other thing is that Endgamers are, to be blunt, kinda funny looking. They've got all this mad gear and this one was on a tricked-out cat mount of some sort. So I found it difficult to figure out where to look to make “eye-contact”.

So when I realised that it was a player talking. I did a classic double-take; checking to see if there was somebody else he could be talking too. If had a macro to point at myself and say “Who? Me?” it would have gone off automatically.

He wanted to know if I could cure poison. Which, of course, I could. I don't think there was any real threat involved but he'd picked up something called Mother's Milk which lasts a while and was probably just annoying.

I tried cure poison. Didn't work. I assumed it was just my level and the Level 80 was pretty sanguine about it, too. But I knew I had another poison thingy that I hadn't put on a taskbar so I had a little look in my spellbook.

Abolish poison, that was it.

He was chatting away that he'd tried some sort of rune and that hadn't worked either. I tried abolish. It seemed to work. My patient was too busy assuring me that it was no problem to notice that it worked.

Then the penny dropped. He managed to shout “Yay! You got it! Thanks!” and hug me in the time it took me to type “Abolish” because I thought he'd want to know for future reference.

And then he was gone in a cloud of dust.

It wasn't technically RP. It was something better than that. I was there, with my skill set, helping out as a Druid.

And, damn, it felt good to have been useful.

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )

You just wouldn't read about it. While I was writing this post I was listening to The Instance. Turns out the whole mount system is being re-arranged. Here's the original entry:

“Nobody with a good Kodo
needs to be justified.”
—Flannery WisebloodGot me a sweet ride.
Elsewhere in Azeroth people talk about getting their Epic Flying Mount for umpty-gazillion gold; well, mine cost 8g50s. The hard part was getting trained to ride. It cost me most of everything all my toons had got.

As I approached the critical amount of cash I had been thinking I would do it differently. Because Paronymous is a Druid, he already has a travel form. So it seemed like a good idea to leave him off it and spend the money speeding up Grexel. However, with the adventures in spousecraft I thought I was going to be playing my Horde toons less so poor Grexel was in danger of getting very little play at all.

Two other factors played into this. Firstly I realised that Paronymous' income was increasing rapidly. Lots of greens dropping and more cash for the quests. Perhaps it would be more efficient to speed him up and pass the money down to the others later.

Secondly, the next step in rescuing the Princess Mazael was one of those go find someone in a new location affairs. I like these and I understand their value but at this level its not even go to the next region; it's cross two regions to get to the region where the mad geezer is hiding somewhere.

Sounds like an argument for mounted travel if ever there was one.

So it turns out that patch 3.2 is making mounts available at Lvl 20 and their going to cost a total of 5 gold including training. I don't know if it's going to 'ruin the game for all time' or whatever but on the face of it I ought to be the player with the biggest complaint. If I'd waited a week or so all that fretting and farming and planning would have been redundant. With the same money. I could have had mounts for everybody and probably would have spent the time leveling Undabridge (my hunter) because I could have got one for him too.

On the other hand maybe I'm lucky. If I'd just levelled and picked up a mount in the same way that I get my spells and things it would have been far less of an adventure. At the end of the day Blizzard could technically give us all unlimited teleportation, invulnerability and DPS but that wouldn't really be a game.
(Actually I think that might be Second Life, which would explain a few things)

So maybe I paid my 38g50s for the experience of being the last player to experience that bit of content. A conflict like that won't be available to players starting after 3.2 until they get much further into the game.

I suppose they'll get there quicker but they wont know what they're missing.
Hah! Noobs!

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )

Following my strident defense of the word Noob earlier in the week I was excited to find that it is now locked in a battle royale to become the 1,000,000th word to officially join the English language.

“Who is more Noobish?
The Noob?
Or the Noob who follows him?”
—Noobi Wan KenoobiApparently a word becomes official if it gets used 250,000 times in the public domain. So I can't tell you what the other words competing for the coveted spot are because it would help their chances of getting recognized sooner. What I can tell you is: noob, noob, nooby mcNoob noob.

Actually, right now we are 544 words away from the top slot so it's more or less a lottery. If this was any more nailbiting I would explode.

(No pic today, sorry. Left my thumb-drive at home: What a noob!)

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )

Okay, listen up.
This is not being a noob.
Neither is this.

I don't care how stupid or embarrassed you felt on your 25 man raid; if you're at endgame and you can oneshot my main you aren't a noob.
Sorry, we don't have much but we do have standards.

Some of us are still wondering at what point we should upgrade from Vanilla WoW to Burning Crusade. I still don't have the foggiest idea how to leathercraft a Glyph.

And you know what? I love it!
“A gnome can be beheaded
but not defeated.”
—Hemmet Nessingwary
Everything's brand new.
I spent the weekend in Stranglethorn Vale and it went from being a scary jungle crawling with dangerous monsters to a juicy cornucopia of wandering XP. Nothing like it to make you feel like a Badass.

And then wallop!
I get cocky, wander down the wrong path and get my spleen handed too me by a frakkin murlock.

Which just goes to show there's plenty of game still to come.

I just need a Glyph of Spleen Replacement.

Read Users' Comments ( 3 )

I may have invented a new term. Or at least an new way to screw up.

Probably not: It seems like everything that can be done, especially noob errors, has been done countless times before.

Nonetheless ladies and gentlemen, I submit for your entertainment: OverTwinking!

Basically as my (now Lvl30) Druid has started to get green magic items pretty regularly he has been merrily posting anything that's cloth and mage friendly back to Grexel.
Big dumb ox that he is Paronymous wasn't too fussy about the level requirements so Grexel's now got her bag spaces filled up with tantalizing bits and pieces that she won't be able to use for another five levels or whatever.

She could have sold them, or disenchanted them for parts but they're all just so... so... nearly available.

I now realize that what She should have done is left them in the mailbox. I suppose she could post them out again in some sort of Gear Mail Tag effort but that seems just too annoying and fiddly to me.

She just needs to keep grinding forwards.
That is, after all, what makes the World go around.

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )

It's probably just the same effect that causes everyone to assume that everyone else is having more sex than them. On the other hand it is possible that I am the actual worst World of Warcraft player in the world.
Somebody has to be.


I don't think it's really that bad. I just get the impression that other people run faster, level more efficiently and generally understand what it is that they're supposed to be doing on a fundamentally different level to me.
Which makes me wander around in areas I'm not supposed to be going to yet just to look at the pretty pictures. Like I say, bloody tourist.

There seem to be a fair few more players lurking around Thousand Needles so maybe I'll settle here for a bit and try to work my way through some stuff systematically.
Meh.
It's a game.
I'll see what I feel like.

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )

And another thing I think that the game designers have done masterfully: Pacing.
I get the feeling that this may be lost or forgotten on the long time players. Maybe they get it on the new content but they don't talk about it on The Instance.

I'm in the position of a new creature in an enormous world.
Every time I start to get comfortable there's a whole new layer. Just when I think I'm a badass I get sent on a mission to somewhere new.
And off the road everything is big. Everything is dangerous.
It was a clever trick. I wasn't in any danger. I just had to stay on the path and go from A to B.
But there were demons and monsters and Elder Gods for chrissakes.

Oh and would I stay on the path?
Would I buggery.

I ended up in this cemetary a few times.

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )

I met my first member of the Alliance.
She was really little.

It was kind of weird.
I was on a quest in The Barrens which is completely Horde territory and she was just kind of standing up to her neck in water.
I wasn't sure if I was supposed to attack, or alert the local defense, or what. So I asked if I could take her picture. (Forgetting that the enemy doesn't speak our language so there would only have been gibberish getting through)

No response.
I got the impression that the player was away from the keyboard.
Or was it some sort of concealed sneak attack strategy?
Maybe this would be an easy kill. Or maybe it was a trap (her level marker was ?? which roughly translates to 'you don't wanna know'

So in the end I just took the photo.
I found a great repository of WoW noob stuff... WoW Insider
Maybe I'll ask them.

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )

It's a subtle thing but after a life time of solo gaming it feels really good to know that everyone out there is sharing the same time of day and night.

I've been looking around to see if I can find a guild to learn with. It seems like I've gone and signed myself up to an Alliance heavy server (Saurfang) and the few Horde guilds seem to be focused on the mythical EndGame stuff. I guess I could just yell out in Thunder Bluff and see if anybody has any suggestions but I still feel a bit too noobie to do that.

Publish Post

Here's a pretty shot of the lanterns in the druid safezone: Moonglade

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )

In order to make better screenshots I've been working out how to remap my keyboard. I may even have to figure out a macro.
Unfortunately in the resulting confusion I ended up standing around like a tool while a group of Venture Corp workers kicked a Hunter to death that I was trying to assist. It also took me so long to figure out that I can resurrect people now that the player had logged out.
Sorry about that.

Took this one of an NPC in Brill. I wonder if I can get players to pose for portraits.

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )

The Tauren's capital city is Thunder Bluff.

This was, too me, one of the most authentic experiences of World of Warcraft that I have had so far. A truly immersive and reality blurring experience.

As far as the game is concerned I'm a kid from the sticks, right?

I've wandered around a bit. Grouped up with some people and immediately felt out of my depth but generally getting the hang of the basic mechanics.

I know there's a lot to learn and a lot to come by but I'm getting pretty comfortable in my own skin.

So I head off for Thunder Bluff, looking out for Flatland Prowlers on the way because I need to collect their claws and I kind of find it. But kind of not.

First thing I notice is that all my chat channel change. I'm suddenly online with the Regional Defense channel. Hope they don't need me because I don't know what good I'll be in an invasion.

Next thing that becomes clear is that this isn't just another collection of Wig-wams around a campfire. It seems to be a collection of mountains. I assume that Thunder Bluff is hidden amongst them and press on.

I travel all around the cliff face until a path heads upwards.

A structure! It must be the front gate.

But no; turns out to be a little platform. I check out the tent underneath but it's just scenery from what I can tell. I scratch my head and climb back up.

(disclaimer: If there is a 'scratching your head' gesture I do not yet know it.)

Then somebody else arrives. I wonder how uncool it will make me if I have to ask how to get in. Fuck it... I'd rather be uncool in the city than stand around here being hip all day.

But as I go to click on him an elevator drops down from above.

Ahhh...

I hurry to get on board. And stand awkwardly next to this other more worldly Tauren.

I tried no to fidget as muzak played in my head.

And then BAM!

I'm in the Big Smoke. There are high level characters. I realized that I'd never even seen another player race before. People on mounts. People selling stuff. Lights, taxis, the works.

And I really felt it. Small town boy out of his depth in the big city. Delighted and excited but at the same time just overwhelmed enough to want to go about my business and head on back to the farm to re-group.

Awesome.

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )

I've created an Alt.

That's a second character to the uninitiated. She's an undead Mage with purple hair and bondage studs on her face.

Not that I was bored with my Tauren but I felt like I had a little bit of a handle on how the game works and I wanted to see what I could do with a fresh start. New class, new race, new location.

It's pretty awesome and it's helping me figure out things that will help me when I go back to the Druid. Like the little number on my spells goes red when I'm out of range. Handy!

Structurally the opening seems pretty similar but the environment is utterly different. Where Mulgore is plains and mountains here is a haunted forest full of zombies and bats.
In fact I was starting to think the Undead quests were a little more linear than the Tauren... not so many choices... just one thing after another.

Then I met Gordo.

He's a festering ghost ogre thing shambling through the forest. Suddenly I've got things to do running in all directions and I can see Zeppelins silhouetted in the distance. Massive.

Read Users' Comments ( 0 )