My First WoW Experience

*Note: This story occured during closed beta*


inally getting to play (yes, I was damn lucky) I decided to make a dwarven paladin. Upon doing so, I am dropped into the world, and looking like a plumber stereo-type, I pick up a quest. This guy wants me to get him some wolf meat, and being my good natured self, I say no. I later find that this was the wrong answer, so I agree to help the poor, starving, portly dwarf out. I couldn't find any wolves within 3 feet of the camp, and not yet knowing that only certain enemies aggro when you get close, I was wary of going further. After using my Wooden mallet to kill a few troggs, I figured out that the aggro was fairly nice to me. So I wandered just a bit further and suddenly was surrounded by more enemies than I had ever seen. I have played Everquest, and compared to that, WoW is just overflowing with mobs. Anyway, I found some wolves, thwacked em good, and took the meat back. I got my first quest item, some boar handling gloves that gave me 10 armor.

The second quest I accepted was some mail delivery service. After dropping off the letters, and thwacking more troggs, I was told that one had to go to Grelin Graybeard, the dwarven equivalent of Gandalf. He was happy to have recieved the letter, and gave me a copper for my trouble. So happy was I with my copper, I spit in his face and stormed off. Around this time, I met up with a gnome rogue who was killing some wolves off. Almost dead, I healed him up, and then we partied up. We then proceeded to wander around aimlessly, stumbling upon an ice troll whelp camp while trying to find the letter drop point again. Lucky for us, we were only 2 to 3 levels below them, and they all aggroed at once whenever we came within 1 mile of them, so the battle went fine. Afterwords, doing my Paladin duty, I healed him, but yet more trolls aggroed that had just spawned. We played this game with the trolls for about 5 minutes before realizing we were in the wrong place. We did get 2 treasure chests of copper and boots out of it, which we sold so we could get real man's armor.

Eventually we figured out where the hell we were, and headed off to do the mail. After finishing that, the Gandalf, er, Grelin, asked us to kill off 12 troll whelps. Kicking ourselves the whole way there, we headed back to the camp and got yet another 2 chests, and killed off about 16 whelps with the way they spawned. Graybeard was happy, and gave us some new weapons, which I found to be almost 1.1 times as effective as my last weapon. My damage flew from 12-16 average, to more like 14-20 average. No idea how much he gained with the new dagger he got. The old man had one more quest for us though. He wanted us to get his journal back from some troll leader, who lived in the cave that I have dubbed "HOLY CRAP WHERE THE HELL ARE ALL THESE TROLLS COMING FROM!?". It took us all of 2 minutes to find the guy. It took us all of 10 seconds to kill him. It took the other enemies, about 5 ice trolls that spawned while we were fighting the leader, about 5 seconds to kill our weakened selves. We didn't even get to loot the guy. After about 5 more deaths, we settled on me tanking the 5 trolls, who managed to deal about 2-3 damage a hit to me, while he killed the leader. It's times like these that you find that those "gay" skills come in handy. Turning invulnerable for 6 seconds, I managed to heal him up since he was nearly dead, and since the creatures still attacked me, even when invulnerable, I saved him from getting mobbed by them too. A truely fun time, since right as the troll boss died, a troll novice spawned and started casting. In the end, we only had the novice and 2 trolls to deal with, and I had managed to stay fairly healthy. Running like crazy with the loot, we headed back to the Gandalf wannabe and gave him the journal. He was so happy, he gave us some food. I spit at him again.

Around this time, we felt it was best to leave this place and go train up our tradeskills. We traveled the road to Kahr-something, and found many more trogg versions. The only real difference is that these aggroed if you walked near them, but ran like cowards if you dealt enough damage, which actually seems to be a popular tactic among humanoids. As a matter of fact, I have only seen humanoids do it. We stopped by the ecentric gnome to pick up a supply shipment that needed to go to the inn on the other side of the cave, and headed out. The cave was just littered with these tiny pests they call Troggs. And they grouped. Plus they dealt more damage to me than anything non-magical had. It was an ok trip though, since one holy strike would cut their hp in half, and then 2 more whacks would take them down. My Gnome buddy stealthed through and back-stabbed a few of em, which really didn't seem to be that effective, but it was fun to watch none the less. When we reached the end of the cave, it was evident that we were not supposed to be here. Being level 5, and him level 4, we barely matched level with the enemies when you put our levels together. This lead to me taking an average of about 5-7 damage per hit until I got to level 6, at which time I only took more like 2-3 from them. We had a fun time gathering up quests, killing enemies, and only one of us being able to complete a quest at a time. Round robin is very nice if you and your allies help each other out, but when it comes to semi-uncommon quest items, one of you will almost always get the items while the other will get stiffed.

Traveling around, we picked up some tools to deliver to a guy who breaks them on a regular basis, probably because he tests their durability by smacking them on his diamond hard head. We met rock-head the tool breaker, gave him his shipment, and got a silver and some copper. Seeing as I had just came from an area where my average intake from missions was about 50 copper total, including loot from monsters, I was truely overjoyed. My joy was crushed when I found out the weapons around here costed upwards of 7 silver though, but even so, silver is silver. We decided to take the quest of killing wendigos for their manes, which was when I learned why people pull. I charged in and fought one wendingo, took it down, and took its mane. In this time, 3 more surrounded me, and mauled me. I would have to say that in total me and my gnome friend died at least 4 times a piece. It was fun though, since the wendigos really weren't hard if you only fought one at a time.

Since we were loaded up on items, we stopped back in town and sold off a lot of flimsy *insert item name* here items. We were so happy with our intake from the sales, that we got up on the table in the inn and started dancing. After realizing we were the only ones there, we stopped, since if someone came in and saw us dancing on the tables, our reps would be destroyed. Then again, when your level 6, reputation is the least of your worries. We got tired of the killing (us being the ones dieing) so we headed to Ironforge to get another trade skill. After learning mining, I decided to change my screen res, and my internet decided to die at the same time. After waiting what seemed like 10 minutes, I alt tabbed out, and tried talking to some buds, at which time all of my internet chat programs shut down and then rebooted. When I looked back, I had been disconnected from the server.

It may seem like I am angry with the game, but i'm not. I enjoyed it immensely. The fact that class skills cost money and not points is probably my favorite part. I can get like 3 skills for 3 silver, and be level 6. When you play this game, you will enjoy it immensely. The desolate landscape of the dwarven starting area isn't the most eye popping and amazing thing, But the actual effects are just amazing. My first trip into Ironforge, and my first viewing of a gryphon in flight totally amazed me. I was dazzled by the whole thing, mostly by the fact that the gryphons moved so fast, and the fact that Ironforge's ceiling was quite possibly higher up than the actual mountain.

Only problem I had is that there was that there was little to no ambience. I enjoy ambient sounds, since it makes the place real, but I settled on the ambient bunnies, which I took every opportunity to thunk over the head.