[BLOG] My WoW experience - Day 5
primesuspect
Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
Alright, I'm done with the prose/fanfic style. Truth be told, for those two days there wasn't much new to report in the way of game mechanics, rules, or things I had to learn. It was a bit of grinding as I leveled Kaitolainen up from 6 to 13 and cleaned up a bunch of quests in the starter area. For days 3 and 4 it was a lot of this: go kill stuff and bring things back to people. If I couldn't kill the things, level up until I could or wait for my friend Grant (Ipmala in the story) to log in so we could do it together.
I've figured out the professions aspect of the game, and in the last two days I've learned what some of this crazy "WoW-speak" is. For example I know now that "resto Druid" means a Druid who has specialized in the Restoration talent tree. I've come to discover that the class I sort of picked on a whim turns out to be one of the more versatile in the game - Druids can be valuable healers, they can be combat magicians, and they can also be straight-up fighters by turning into animals. The WoW talent system allows you to customize your character by focusing on a specific branch of your talents, thereby making them stronger. The branches for a Druid are restoration (healing), balance (damage or effect spells), and feral (animal form combat). I have started putting my talent points into balance, knowing that as a 10 day trial I'm not ever going to get to the point where I'm a dedicated healer for a large group of people.
I learned what the term "tank" means, what "DPS" actually means, and I think I could probably effectively aid a group of similar-level characters doing a raid of some sort.
The professions were confusing at first, and it gave me my first introduction to the lack of help within the game itself. I had stupidly selected "enchanting" as a profession, which is a) useless to a low level druid and b) way too expensive for a low level character. I figured I was screwed until a friend told me I could unlearn it. Neither of us could figure out how, though - so I turned to a third party (wowwiki.com in this case) and learned from there. As a noob, this is unacceptable and they should make the in-game help useful. The in-game help that I found was geared towards complaints about happenings in game (like my character got stuck, or my item disappeared; bug sort of things) That I had to go to a third party to get help on my 10 day trial doesn't reflect well on the most successful video game of all time.
That said, I can't imagine the interface getting much simpler, with all the options you have. Things are relatively well explained by hover-over bubbles.
Another major problem I had was in the chat system - somehow I had turned my language option to "Taurahe", which meant that an orc that grouped with me couldn't understand my chat. The game automatically translated it into gibberish. It took two of us 25 minutes to figure out how to change it back. Now that I know how, it's simple, but the fact that it happened accidentally (with a stray mouseclick) and didn't have an obvious fix means UI problems.
Niggling UI and help problems aside, I am enjoying my time in Azeroth. I'm looking forward to playing tonight, and I'm looking forward to doing a couple of quests with a friend that I met in WoW. I guess that's the real beauty of this game so far - another real life friend.
After a particularly satisfying victory, Kaitolainen enjoys the full moon as seen from the plains of Mulgore
I've figured out the professions aspect of the game, and in the last two days I've learned what some of this crazy "WoW-speak" is. For example I know now that "resto Druid" means a Druid who has specialized in the Restoration talent tree. I've come to discover that the class I sort of picked on a whim turns out to be one of the more versatile in the game - Druids can be valuable healers, they can be combat magicians, and they can also be straight-up fighters by turning into animals. The WoW talent system allows you to customize your character by focusing on a specific branch of your talents, thereby making them stronger. The branches for a Druid are restoration (healing), balance (damage or effect spells), and feral (animal form combat). I have started putting my talent points into balance, knowing that as a 10 day trial I'm not ever going to get to the point where I'm a dedicated healer for a large group of people.
I learned what the term "tank" means, what "DPS" actually means, and I think I could probably effectively aid a group of similar-level characters doing a raid of some sort.
The professions were confusing at first, and it gave me my first introduction to the lack of help within the game itself. I had stupidly selected "enchanting" as a profession, which is a) useless to a low level druid and b) way too expensive for a low level character. I figured I was screwed until a friend told me I could unlearn it. Neither of us could figure out how, though - so I turned to a third party (wowwiki.com in this case) and learned from there. As a noob, this is unacceptable and they should make the in-game help useful. The in-game help that I found was geared towards complaints about happenings in game (like my character got stuck, or my item disappeared; bug sort of things) That I had to go to a third party to get help on my 10 day trial doesn't reflect well on the most successful video game of all time.
That said, I can't imagine the interface getting much simpler, with all the options you have. Things are relatively well explained by hover-over bubbles.
Another major problem I had was in the chat system - somehow I had turned my language option to "Taurahe", which meant that an orc that grouped with me couldn't understand my chat. The game automatically translated it into gibberish. It took two of us 25 minutes to figure out how to change it back. Now that I know how, it's simple, but the fact that it happened accidentally (with a stray mouseclick) and didn't have an obvious fix means UI problems.
Niggling UI and help problems aside, I am enjoying my time in Azeroth. I'm looking forward to playing tonight, and I'm looking forward to doing a couple of quests with a friend that I met in WoW. I guess that's the real beauty of this game so far - another real life friend.
After a particularly satisfying victory, Kaitolainen enjoys the full moon as seen from the plains of Mulgore
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Comments
Black Hawk is your real life friend. If he needed help, you'd be there as you have in the past. You'd fly to Puerto Rico to help him if need be. He'd do the same for you.
Can those relationships develop in an online environment? Sure. Icrontic is proof of it. But I doubt it can happen in a 10-day MMORPG trial.
and if you really like the pvp, id be glad to my warhammer account for a day or 2.
Tell me, will you follow in ArsTechnica's lead and delve into Warhammer Online next?
I've got FFXI, Guild Wars, and soon WoW under my belt, no sense in not completing the pentumvirate.
The 'hold my attention' part was referring to warhammer, no tits in WAR -.-