Day One: You Do Not Yet Have That Ability

I started. After the longest download and patch sequence ever, I actually suceeded in opening and starting WoW. Glorious day. Now, after all of the technical problems I was having, it was 3am before I actually made it into ShadowGlen or whatever the hell that place was... Okay. Game starting.

I picked a night elf. I like elves, but I always play humans. Considering I don't actually need to speak elf, make my elf have personality or involve any backstory, I thought this was an okay decision. She's hot. I made her a rogue because I like hiding in the shadows and throwing knives. Way fun. Annnnnyway, so, I get into the game, and my friend(we'll call him Darren) is on his way and I decide I'm going to kill some baby boar things.

First thing you need to know about me? I'm a button smasher. I hit buttons hard and fast and hope things die. In fact, I even bounce up and down in my seat and go "Oh! Oh! Oh!" as i do this. If I start to die? I start to panic. And then it's more "OhmyGod, ohmyGod, ohmyGod..." as I'm slamming on buttons. This was no different.

I walk on up to one of these boar things and kinda look at it for a second. Shrug. I guess I can kill it. And so I click on it. There, targeted! Now, there's a little bar at the bottom of the screen there, and I'm all peering at it. There's little pictures down there, and one of them is a knife. Now, if I were going to kill a boar? I'd knife the fucker(that's a lie, I'd actually use a crossbow, but anyway..). So I start slamming on the number one. Now, I know from the half hour I played FF8 that when numbers are popping up on the screen, shit's happening. And that started again. Only... no matter how many times I hit the 1, I couldn't just stab the thing to death. Glancing at the rest of the buttons, I decided to try button two. That worked! Boar dead! Okay!

They want you to look the corpses. OKay, gross, but believable... but tell me this? What do I need tattered pelts and broken teeth for? Nothing, I'd imagine. But, I take it all because what the heck do I know? Also.. why are these boards holding pants and belts and cloaks? Who is capturing boar hiding their crap in them?

My first death: There are these weird ass long armed goblin things. I decided I was goigng to fight one of them while I was waiting for Darren to get all the way over to where I was from humanland. He thought I was going to be a human or something. Whatever. Anyway, so I'm doing my stabby stabby jump up and down thing with this gobblin thing, and it kills me! Its long arms are no match for my level one. Also, all I can do is hit the stab button over and over. No strategy there.

When you die, you end up in a graveyard. And in that graveyard you need to take your spirit back to your body. Okay, not so hard... cept I'm clearly an idiot. All of these games have this little maps up at the top of the screen. There's a little arrow there and you want to make the arrow point to the dot that is your dead body and walk that way. Only, I can't use those things. So, I'm walking in this circle and the little arrow is spinning and the dot is all dissapearing and I'm getting more and more frustrated. Finally, FINALLY, I manage to figure out that if I just line the arrow up to the dot and walk, I'll be okay. As long as there's no trees.

Okay, one more thing... there are giant fucking scary spiders that chase your sorry butt around the forest. I'll have more to say on that later, I think. Cause they were gross. And one of the things you could loot from them? THEIR EYES! What could I EVER need that for? Just some food for thought.

Update on my soul: It really could have used more sleep. And all it wants is to play more WoW. Though, I'm not yet at the point where I'll play it in class.

"It will Eat your Soul!!!"

My sister is only person I know that is perhaps dorkier than I am. Now, you may think this is an exageration, but while I read comic books, play text based online role playing games and watch a sickening amount of the HIstory Channel, my sister Cosplays.

When I went to college, my sister had moved from Zelda games on to Final Fantasy. By the time I had all my bedding packed up in my dad's suburban, she was hooked on the new MMORPG Final Fantasy XI. It was her one true love. At first it was cute, then it was scary, and then it was downright annoying. When I would come home from breaks I would be woken up at all hours of the night to the noise of her summoner kicking some strange monster's ass. She was fulfilled, I was irritated.

Fast forward 5 years, and her new thing is this World of Warcraft nonsense. Now, I've played Counterstrike when I was in highschool... I even had fun, even though it was mostly to get my boyfriend to have more sex with me. It worked. I was a pretty hot chick. Anyway, so I had never even thought of playing one of these MMORPGs, mainly because I am the most addicted person ever. EVER. And it was very very clear to me that I would not graduate from college. And now gradschool...

My life went on like this until one day I downloaded WoW. I opened it up, realized I had no idea what on Earth I was going to do, and promptly uninstalled the whole disaster. Fast forward about a year and add in my new FFRPG addiction... I used to role play on AOL back in the late ninties. It was something I found when I got my brand new shiny happy AOL account. After a few years of going ::walkz into room. sings.::, I realized how to do the whole game thing. Then I discovered boys.

After a few years of dating, most of which was more complicated than RPing, I gave up on any online gaming at all, and moved on to bigger and better things, such as Direct Connect. Until that fateful day in September of 2006. That's when I found Dragon's Mark. Now for those of you that thing RPers suck, I tell you this, they do. But they also a moody, friendly, crazy bunch of awesome writers. And remember, I have an addictive personality. You can imagine what happened next, right?

Right.

So, one of these new fun awesome friends was all WoW obsessed. And I was done with my gateway drug and looking for a move to the hard stuff... that's what led to the download of WoW. And then the purchasing of WoW. And now the playing of WoW. This said individual(he knows who he is) should probably be the ones to appologize to my parents.

So, this blog? This is going to be my very insightful and enduring account of leaning a MMORPG. It probably will also include rants about FFRPG, my family, my life and the fact that I like cheese. But bear with me.

When I bought the CD key for WoW I texted my friend Brandon. It was an accident, of course, I meant to text the person above him in my phone... but that's besides the point. It went like this.

Me: "I bought WoW!"
Brandon: "NO! It will eat your soul!"

So, ladies and gentlemen-- you are here to witness the eating of my soul. Grab some popcorn.