Goodbye to training wheels

The biggest shake-up on the alt front recently was Blizzard's move to make PVE-PVP transfers possible. I've talked before about how I started on Dani's PVP realm and promptly transferred off because I was not a big fan of getting ganked and started a sprawling network of alts (with no real main) on Mok'Nathal.

Eventually, I stabilized at four characters: a draenei shaman and draenei hunter and a troll priest and troll hunter. I was perfectly content to level them simultaneously in a slow and steady fashion until I created and promptly became obsessed with Sinead.

When I made Sinead, my friend Tamar who also had characters on Mok'Nathal asked me if I was going to stop playing over there and forsake those characters. At the time, I thought this was ridiculous. I mean, I had put a lot of time and effort into those characters! I made my wallpaper of them imitating the cover of Let It Be (shut up, stop laughing)!



But she ended up being right. Part of it was that I was suddenly part of this whole network that wasn't just me and two or three of my friends, and for some reason I felt weirdly obligated to stick around even when I didn't feel like playing my priest. Part of it was that as Sinead got closer and closer to 70, she was better able to support my alt habit.

When it comes down to it, though, I think that on Smolderthorn I felt like I finally got the game, and didn't need to idly fiddle around as much. Mok'Nathal had served as a sort of sandbox for me to safely explore WoW in, in terms of learning the game, discovering the world, and figuring which classes (and specs) I liked and which I didn't.

By the time they opened up PVE --> PVP transfers, I had only played the shaman a handful of times and basically hadn't touched any of the other characters. So I sent the shaman over to Smolderthorn and said a private, silent goodbye to the other characters fairly certain that I wouldn't be playing them again in the forseeable future.

Wholahay and Sveren (who also transferred over) enjoy a quiet moment in Uldaman before the big move

You won't be hearing much about Madgebobbins, Squiddles, or Tammyfae around here - not that you heard much before either - but the stability and easy, comfortable entry into the game they provided was appreciated while it lasted. In the meantime, I'm totally not changing my wallpaper.

Go go endgame!

It may not be a slapfight, but I do have a video for you:



Yep, last Thursday, with just over 15 days played, Sinead hit 70! My very first truly high-level character! As you may be able to tell from the gushing and the fact that I nor only recorded the ding itself but also waited until I had witnesses, this was a thrilling moment for me. I definitely felt like I'd earned a cookie.

I have to admit, though, that I'm playing at 70 so far has been a bit of a mixed bag. I've read some random stuff on the interwebs about how warcraft is essentially two games in one, leveling and endgame, and that the two bear little resemblance to each other. To this end, it does feel a bit like I'm starting back at square one. I am still learning the basic little details, like where to pick up daily quests, and it feels just like the very first time I played and couldn't figure out how to right click without a mouse on a mac. I also have to admit that I feel a little loss without an XP bar to gauge my progress by, but I assume that I'll get used to that soon enough.

I'm also having a love/hate relationship with the endgame instances. On the one hand, a desire to raid was the driving force behind me leveling up so fast, and I really couldn't be more excited to finally see a lot of the content I've just been idly reading about. On the other hand, I am painfully aware of just how green a healer I am. A couple of Karazhan runs at 68 and 69 and a Zul'Aman run just after I hit 70 have left me with some really awesome gear, so I look good on paper (as it were), but I'm learning how to heal as a holy priest. All of the fights are also totally new to me, meaning I tend to make a ton of really embarrassingly noobish mistakes. I'm sure I'll get better in time, and thankfully everyone's very patient, but I really hate sucking at things and wish that they didn't have to be so patient. Nothing like a steep learning curve to keep you humble, I guess.

Nope, still not 70 yet...

...but last night I dinged 65, which puts me much closer! Let me tell you, the last 5 levels have been a doozy. It took me about 11-12 days to go from 60-65, which is twice as long as it took to go from 40-50 and about 1 1/2 times as long as it took to go from 50-60. Brutal, right? Well, nothing felt more brutalized than my poor ego, which had taken some measure of pride in being able to level up so quickly thus far. I mean, Dani (among others) had warned me that the grind from 60-70 was essentially WoW's version of a widowmaker, but in my youth and arrogance, I didn't listen.

But now, there's only 5 levels standing between me and endgame! WOOT, baby! I CAN DO THIS!

Anyway, it's been awhile sine I blogged about anything other than slapfighting, so let me bring you up to speed a little bit about how I've been keeping Sinead busy. First, Outland is on massive amount of crack. Glorious crack, the likes of which Whitney Houston would no doubt love, but crack nonetheless. Exhibit A: the clown clothes of Outland (see below).


Exhibit B: the mushroom forest of Zangarmarsh (also home to mushroom people).

go go levitate

Exhibit C: proof that someone at Blizzard loves the Dark Crystal just as much as I do. I mean, what else am I supposed to think when presented with richly dressed bird creatures huddled around a floating rock?


I credit the actual progress of my leveling more to two other things than to Outland, per se. The first is a sort of ad hoc carrot-and-stick mechanism that's developed recently. The stick is represented in part by that nagging voice in the back of my head that chides me whenever I feel like I'm not leveling fast enough. The actual nagging voices of those who've taken me under their wing (it should be noted that Dani is generally more supportive than nagging) make up the rest of the stick.

The carrot is the lure of playing alts. Not the alts I already have - new fancy shiny ones on Sinead's server. I've gotten this idea in my head that it would be really awesome to level up one of each healing class - just to see how healing is different for them. So, I've been rewarding myself by playing a couple of levels here and there on each whenever Sinead hits her various checkpoints.

brewing an army of healbots

Probably the biggest thing pushing me forward is a more direct focus on the endgame. Something you should know is that I'm not a social person. Really, I'd describe myself more as a hermit than anything else. It's not that I'm unfriendly (I actually have no problem making or keeping friends at all), it's more that I don't really feel compelled to seek out social interaction most of the time. Which means I'm kind of an odd fit for an MMORPG (well, except that such self-imposed seclusion does make ridiculously quick leveling possible).

So that's what I realized - that you raid in groups. I also realized that healing myself and Dani when she came to kill things for me was nowhere close to what I'd (presumably, hopefully) be doing in a raid, and that I'd have to step out of my comfort zone to develop some mad endgame-appropriate skills. The first time this happened, the guild decided to run Molten Core for shits and giggles. And I got pulled into, too, and proceeded to follow people around trying desperately not to die and trying to heal whoever was in range. It was crazy and stressful, but it was also a raid and I was in it, and that was awesome.

noob's first raid!

Perhaps more practical, I started running every pug looking for a healer. Up till now, I've gotten random whispers asking me if I would heal this or that instance and always turned them down (except for one Scarlet Monstery run). Now, need a healer? I'm there with bells on. Which has been an interesting experience, between the shieldless tank, the warlock who refused to soulstone me, and the rogues who ran into battle at half health because they wouldn't eat and thinking that they were dying because the 'healz must be gettin d/c.'

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.