Meeting old friends

Although I'm still having a lot of fun with Cawti and her odd spec*, I was looking for something 'different' to do last night and I logged on to Dorni. Dorni, my dwarven warrior was my very first (and only) toon to make it to 60 before BC, who was abandoned when I stopped playing WoW.

Having stopped playing him (and WoW) a little after BC came out, he was sitting with 2 bubbles into level 60 in Honor Hold, waiting for me to take him out for a ride. So I logged on, and started trying to arrange things so I could actually play. Let's just say it was a bit of a shock to see how noobish I was back then.

First step was, of course, respeccing. There have been several talent point refunds since Dorni was left by the wayside, so I had to figure out how to spec into trees that by now I don't know at all. Dorni always was a Protection warrior**, so that's what I went with this time around as well. However, unlike before where I actually put all 51 talent points in Protection***, I have 5 points in Arms and 8 in Fury this time around.

So, with that done I went to the trainer to make sure there weren't any spells I'd have to learn, and started to mess around with my action bars. One button that was suspiciously missing from them was the First Aid button. A quick look at my skills pane showed the reason - I never trained it***. So, it was off to the AH to get cloth for bandages.

Next, I went to check up on my bank and while there were no surprises there, I had to open my character screen to equip a gun (don't ask me what it was doing in the bank instead of on me. I did have ammo in my bags, at least) and got a chance to look at what I was wearing. While most of the gear is OK (and I use that term very very loosely), there were some things that stood out***:

• I still have the Seal of Wrynn equipped at level 60.
• I'm wearing the PALADIN dungeon set 0.5 belt (+spi and +int included).
• My Lifeblood Amulet gives stamina, which is very nice for a warrior, but spell power? Really?
  
• Gilded Crimson Chestplate - mp5, anyone? /facepalm

Well, at least if I'd considered a career change to be a pally, I already had some nice gear... /sigh

At that point I sort of called it a night, and I still haven't actually set my action bars properly. Good thing there's a weekend coming up.



* There may or may not be a post about it at some point. If it's that interesting you can go look at her armory page.

** Yes, I leveled a Protection warrior all the way to 60 back when they did slightly less DPS than non-combat pets. Guess I'm a glutton for punishment.

*** Noob, did I mention that?

Origins, Part II

Welcome back, class. I hope everyone did their homework, and reviewed the previous lesson. Today we're going to cover my happenings exploring the new world that is WoW, up until... Hmm, I guess we'll just have to see how long this gets. We'll also see if we can't explain my Altitis while we're at it.

(Old) New World
So, a couple of months after uninstalling WoW, and its box getting lost in the mess that was my desk, summer vacation started and I was looking for something to do in all that free time (well, there was work, but a guy needs to have fun too, doesn't he?). And what better way to waste time, than going hunting for stuff on my desk? That'll burn at least a week... *grin* So after all the "chores" are taken care of (installation, updates, reactivating my account) I decide to delete all my old characters and make a fresh start, and I think to myself "let's give PvP a shot". So I take my pick from the handful of available RP-PvP realms, and introduce Lorna the Paladin to the world. Lorna has a lot of fun running around between Westfall and Redridge, as well as healing in the Deadmines, and even joins a very nice RP guild. She makes it all the way to level 30, before getting abandoned at the Darkshire inn, mostly because I didn't like the ganking. The obvious solution was moving to an RP-PvE realm, and so I did...

Moonglade

Into the realm selection screen I ventured and, after selecting English RP-PvE, was promptly assigned to my new home - Moonglade. I travelled around on 3 or 4 characters there, occasionally deleting one character and replacing it with another, mostly minding my own business. That all changed with Dorni. One day, while he was running around Loch Modan helping the locals with the Trogg and Gnoll infestations, he was approached by a little gnome messenger who was handing out leaflets and application forms to King Magni's elite defenders - The Mithril Guard. I can honestly say that my best times in WoW were had roleplaying with the Guard, and it seemed like I was over my Altitis too - except for some alts that were rolled to play specific roles in RP stories, Dorni made it all the way to 60 as a Protection specced Warrior. If only it could stay that way...

Real-life getting in the way again

Things were going very well, for me and for the Guard. I'd just turned 60, was second-in-command in the guild, and we'd even made a trip or 2 into Zul'Gurub (with the help of other guilds we had good relationships with). Until that one fateful day when my boss called me into his office and said "we want you to go to Japan for a while. It shouldn't take more than 3 weeks, a month at the max". That was almost 2 years ago, and I'm still waiting for the 3 weeks to end... I tried to keep on playing, but the time difference made it almost impossible to attend most guild events or even just sit down for a drink at Bruuk's. By the time I went back home for a visit 3 months later, the guild had changed too much that it just didn't feel "right"*. After that, I'd just let my subscription lapse, and hung up my WoW indefinitely.

Damn you, Penny Arcade

That might have been the end of my story. Heck, I wouldn't even be telling it if it were. But the powers that be conspired to get me back in the game - PA ran two strips about getting back into WoW followed by a small mention about the leveling changes in 2.3, and that was enough to get me hooked again. It's a good thing (or is it?) Blizzard finally let people download the game clients, so I was able to get the game and start playing WoW for the 3rd time... However, I didn't really feel like dealing with all the "history" I had on Moonglade (and the fact that I already had 9 characters there that I didn't want to delete), I rolled on a new server. That's when my Altitis really kicked into hyperdrive - due to the time difference I was mostly playing solo and me starting to get into reading many of the great WoW blogs/forums, every time I'd read (or think) about something that seemed cool I just rerolled. "You mean there's an easier way to level a priest than going Holy? Sign me up!" "Are Warlocks really that easy to play? I don't know, let's find out!" "Do I want to tank, heal, or be sneaky? Why choose? Roll a Druid!"

That there is a very slippery slope... Once you start down that road, it's very hard to turn back. I mean, at least for me, picking up a long forgotten character isn't all that "natural" - it's a lot easier to roll a new one of the same class, and with the 2.3 changes getting a new alt to the same level the old one was is pretty easy. So here I am - changed from someone who didn't even like the game and deleted his first character, to having over 30 alts of various classes/races/factions/professions sitting in wait all around Azeroth.

That concludes our brief foray into pre-historic times, but by now I've almost forgotten why I started it in the first place - to make a post about "Why I WoW". Now I wonder if I'll actually get around to writing it. *grin*


* Not that the changes were "bad", or that the guild wasn't doing well. It's just that some of the friends from before had left, new people joined the guild whom I've never met, and the general "feeling" wasn't the same.

Origins, Part I

There was a shared topic on the Blog Azeroth forums recently about "Why we WoW". It seemed like a nice idea for a post, but after starting to write it I realized it doesn't work for me without some history about my life in WoW, as well as some of the happenings outside of it.

Getting Started

Now I have to decide where to start... Having almost 30 years behind me, most of which were spent gaming, there's a lot of history there. But let's stick to what's relevant (well, more or less) - I used to play D&D with friends in high-school (yes, the kind where you actually had to meet people face to face), while playing pretty much any game I could get my hands on including lots of RPGs. While the pen-and-paper gaming ended after graduation, PC RPGs have continued to take up big chunks of time out of my life. Pretty much all of it, however, was playing "solo" - with the exception of the excellent Starcraft, I didn't play any multiplayer games at all. I guess it was just a matter of time, though.

Playing on the Internet? And it works?

Like any person even slightly in touch with the world of gaming, hearing about WoW was inevitable, but like most MMOs back then there was a catch - monthly subscription. I mean, are you kidding me? Not only do I have to buy the game, I have to keep paying for it every month? And what's the big deal about playing online anyway? And then you hear all the horror stories about people lagging, when they live 2 blocks down from the servers and think "what's going to happen to me, living all the way across Europe from where the game servers usually are". So I just waited, and let the WoW tide wash over me... But then, along came Guild Wars, and it didn't have a monthly fee, so there was no reason not to give it a shot. And I loved it. I was lucky enough to run into some nice people who had just made a guild, and spent hours each day running around killing things with them. Lots of good times were had there, but other than PvPing, the PvE content there was pretty limited. I was already talking to most of my guildies on MSN throughout most of the day, so what was the game bringing to the table? Not that much. So on I went looking for the next game that could hold my attention.

WOW? More like "meh"

So I bit the bullet, and got a copy of WoW. I figured, you get a "free" month when you buy it, so worst case I could just stop after that. So I rolled my first nelf huntard (and boy, was I a huntard - after doing the pet taming quest I decided I really don't like pets, and just kept on going without one), and it was nice most of the time but there were tons of lag, and too many things that were different from Guild Wars - so different that they were out of my "comfort zone". So after that 1 month (even though I don't like the game, I'll be damned if I'm going to throw away whatever time I have left) I went back to Guild Wars, but the magic was gone. Most of my guildies were also shopping for other games to play (as long as they weren't WoW), and the guild sort of fell apart. We tried a little D&D Online, but it was just horrible, and some other games, but it just didn't work. That's when I actually seriously started playing WoW.

*sigh* This was supposed to be a post about my early days of WoW - didn't quite work, did it? This is getting too long for 1 post, so my options are either to start from scratch, or just pick it back up from here tomorrow. You all have my sincerest apologies for that... But at least, the groundwork for my "WoW age" is all set, so it should be smooth sailing from now on.


Update:
After reading Cynra's comment, I figured it might be helpful to include a couple of words about Guild Wars, or at least the main differences between it and WoW. So, the big differences (for me, at least) were:

1. There's no casting from the spell book, and you only get 8 spells in your "action bar". This, along with specializations ("talent trees") and dual-classing allows for quite a bit of "tweaking" to your character. The actual fighting, however, is a lot simpler than it is in WoW.
2. Except for cities, everything in GW is instanced (I think that may have changed by now, but that's the way it was back in the days). That makes a lot of difference in how you interact with other people - you can't just run into someone out in the middle of nowhere, and team up (or have a bit of RP).
3. All your characters belong to the same guild (and the "guild screen" shows you the main's name).
   

The 2nd and 3rd points, at least in my opinion, make GW a lot less hospitable to RP than WoW is, while giving more importance to "bonding" with your guild/friends. Whether that's good or bad, I don't know - I guess it's very personal, and even depends on the current mood.