Category: World of Warcraft

A taste of Worgen

Posted on by Nimgimli

So it turns out if you marinate Worgen flank steak over night, then slow cook it over moist heat, it can be very tasty!

OK so this is why I’m not a stand-up comic.

I got a late start last night and it was closing in on 10 pm before I tore the shrink wrap off my Collector’s Edition of WOW: Cataclysm. I’m a little annoyed with myself for springing for the CE. I mean, it’s a great CE: it has a very nice art-book, some Friend Passes, a soundtrack CD, “Making of” DVD, some CCG cards (I guess) and of course the game itself. Oh and a mouse pad. But what generally interests me in Collector’s Editions is the in-game goodies, and it looks like the only in-game goodie with this one is a mini-Deathwing vanity pet. Or maybe I’m missing something. I still prefer the Panda Cub that came with the original WoW CE.

Anyway, installation took no time at all (a wee bit of data loaded off the DVD to supplement what I’d already d/led in the patch, then a quick online patch) and I was ready to play. I’ve found that a few people I know on Twitter play on Argent Dawn so I was going to roll my Worgen there, but there was a 15 minute queue. That’s not *too* bad except that about 5 minutes later the queue was still 15 minutes. Given how late it was I didn’t want to spend too much time waiting. I decided maybe I’d work on my Druid on Silver Hand, but that realm was listed as Full. Eric at Channel Massive has been bugging me to roll on Tanaris, but I had trouble logging in there. By the time I got into it and created a shaman goblin I’d come to realize that I really wanted to be a Worgen.

So I headed to my old haunt, Kirin Tor. No queue and before too long, Bartowski the Worgen Hunter was born.

Even without a queue there were plenty of fresh-made Worgen-to-be scurrying about (you start out as human, y’see), but not so many that it made completing those early quests difficult. In fact the “bad” Worgen were spawning so fast that we players relied on each other to keep ourselves alive. It was madness and totally fun. I kept waiting for someone to scream at me for kill stealing but it never happened.

Things got glitchy a few times with the ‘phasing’ technology but it was more amusing than annoying. Overall, given the press of players, I thought things went swimmingly.

I love the Victorian vibe of the Worgen starting area. The quests were more story-driven than interesting-game-play driven, but that was OK (keep in mind I only played for a half-hour or so…maybe level 5? 6?). I still think the new Human starting area is my favorite. The homage to Mario Sunshine tickles the heck out of me.

Tales of werewolves are so ubiquitous that I don’t know how Blizzard could’ve added real tension to the process of being turned, so instead they went for camp. When you get bit (or is it scratched?) by a Worgen your character says something like “Ow! That beast bit me. I’m sure it will be all right but it does sting a bit!” and I couldn’t help but LOL. And there are a few clever quests that, if nothing else, offer a spectacle to other players.

I didn’t get to play for long as a Worgen. Shortly after I transformed I also turned into a pumpkin and had to head to bed.

Now of course I have to decide if I want to keep playing on Kirin Tor, start a new character on Argent Dawn, or go back to Silver Hand. Maybe I’ll just give the crowds a few days to thin out while I decide.

In praise of WoW!

Posted on by Nimgimli

OK so as threatened in the comments of my last post, I figured it was time to dedicate a post to what I like about the new WoW experience. Some readers seem unable to get past the concept that I can like a product while still criticizing some aspects of it.

The thing is, I’m uncomfortable talking too much about the stuff I’m liking because I don’t want to spoil anything. There’s spectacle in the new starter experience and it’s fun to come upon it. And if I talk about the new player experience for one race, someone is bound to tell me about the new player experience for another race, and ruin things for me.

I’m the guy that laughs out loud (sometimes) at quest text. Yeah, I read every word of it (the first time through). I expect the developers to have put thought into the quest text and so far in WoW (both old and new) they have. I appreciate that a lot. So I come upon a pun or a funny comment in a quest’s text, and I have to tell Angela all about it, including back story and stuff. I love quests lines and the new player experience is one quest line after another. In the Night Elf area, at least, there are very few “1 off” quests with no context.

So I give a huge thumbs up to the folk writing the quests (and this is part of why I wave dismissively at suggestions that I just leave this area and go find a better challenge…I *want* to experience all the new lore at least once).

And, there’ve been a good number of what I guess we’re calling vehicle quests? I call ’em gadget quests. Basically quests that somehow change up game play in some way. They haven’t been hard, but they’ve been silly fun and I was glad to have experienced them. Again, no spoilers.

There’ve been some little interface changes that are new to me. Like these little side-loaded portraits and descriptions of named mobs you need to take down. Love those.

I have mixed feelings about the names of mobs only showing up if you need them for a quest. They sure make things easy to find and I’m sure that’s the intent, and it does add to the immersion that not everything is clearly labeled. But it takes something away from the thrill of the hunt. Here’s a shot I took to illustrate my griping about quests being so tightly clustered. You see here Steeltalon (??) (the bird with the yellow name) and some corrupted bears (red names). I need to kill all these guys but for two completely different quests. In the name of no extraneous traveling (I guess) they all helpfully travel together:

Further good news is that I hit level 20 tonight and saw things are starting to change. Quests were getting a bit more challenging, sending me after mobs that were level 19 and clustered tightly together so adds were common. There was a quest that forced me out of my Druid’s Cat form, reminding me of how wimpy I am as a Night Elf. 🙂 For the first time I had to keep an eye on my health, and had to think about mana management. I drank for the first time after a series of quick fights that left my mana depleted. In short, I started having to *think* about what I was doing. The dreary routine of every battle being exactly the same began to fall away. The actual game play started getting fun, and the quests continue to be interesting.

Hopefully this isn’t a bump in the road but the start of a nice ramp up in difficulty. The bad news? My skinning has fallen behind so I’m going to have to back up and kill mobs to catch it up. I *really* wish I could turn off combat experience while doing this (hmm, maybe I can level up skinning on the corpses of gray mobs?) because I don’t want to get out-leveled on the quests again.

Anyway, so there’s a brief post on the things I like about WoW. One last time… I can criticize some aspects of a game (or a book, or a movie) and still enjoy the game as a whole. I’m sure you can too.

In defense of new players

Posted on by Nimgimli

I was going to let this WoW discussion go but then Spinks described my humor post as “whining” and got me all riled up again. 🙂 Apparently the first commandment of MMO blogging is “Thou Shalt Not Question Anything Blizzard Does.”

I do admit that one of my problems is mixing twitter and blogs, though. I’ll be having a conversation on Twitter and it’ll inspire a blog post and without the context of twitter the blog post can seem a little unbalanced. For instance on Twitter I’ve been urging people to try out the new WoW starter areas for the lore and storylines. I don’t think I’ve said here on the blog that you should do that: so now I have. The actual gameplay is very bland and unchallenging but in between the gameplay there’s a lot of narrative and spectacle that can be very enjoyable. You can easily burn through this on a 10-Day Free pass or a Scroll of Resurrection and I do believe it is worth seeing.

But let me roll up my sleeves and get back to pissing off the WoW Devoted out there.

A lot of the pushback on my concerns about the new low-level experience is that it wasn’t made for me, it was made for new players coming into the game.

Well I have a lot to say about that.

First of all, I just mentioned the lore and the narrative. Well guess what? Those will mean *nothing* to someone brand new to WoW. The reason I enjoy them is that I have a vague sense of what has been going on in the world of Warcraft. So when I hear about the return of Malfurion Stormblade or whoever, even though I can’t remember the name enough to spell it right, he’s at least familiar to me. When the story goes on about the Night Elves losing their immortality…that means something to me from playing the ‘old’ WoW. A brand new player is going to be totally lost. A hardcore WoW player (which I am not) who is very familiar with the lore will revel in this content.

So my conclusion is that this new low-level experience is intended, at least in one aspect, to give the veterans something new.

Second issue is that Blizzard needed to make things easier for new players because the old system was too hard. The astonishing arrogance of this statement boggles me. Essentially the WoW vets are saying “Well of course WE were smart and clever enough to learn it, but those people out there who don’t yet play WoW are much too moronic to figure out such a complex game without extensive hand-holding.”

This is bullshit. Someone mentioned that 70% of people who try WoW never get to level 10, the implication being that this new, easier newbie experience will reduce that statistic. Well guess what? 70% of the people who try Farmville never get to level 10 either (I made that stat up but I feel confident the percentage is pretty high). If Zynga made Farmville easier (somehow?) would that stat go down? I doubt it. It isn’t that Farmville is too hard, that’s for sure. And y’know what? Low level WoW isn’t that hard either. It never has been.

Maybe 70% of the people who try the game just get bored? Or don’t see the appeal? Or maybe it isn’t exciting enough.

I’m thinking of the much maligned ‘casual’ player coming to WoW from Diner Dash where she (I dunno why the casual gamer is always assumed to be a woman but I’m going with it for now) has had a constant progression of challenge as she advanced through levels. Her brain is in overdrive as she constantly scans the game board and the mouse dances under her fingers as she guides Flo back and forth at breakneck pace to keep the customers happy.

Now someone convinces her to log into $15/month WoW where she finds she is mostly a passive observer. It’s pretty and kind of interesting but she doesn’t really DO very much. Combat is slow paced and no matter how nimble her mind and fingers are, she can’t speed it up.

Now, you and I know that things will get very very different later on in her WoW career, but she doesn’t know that. As far as she is concerned, after playing for 4-5 hours, WoW is kind of an interactive storybook. That she has to pay $15/month to play. So she goes back to her more exciting casual games.

In a recent post Spinks said “Maybe you have even forgotten what it was like to panic every time a mob attacked you, freak out any time you thought you might be lost, and not really understand how the genre works yet.”

She may as well have said “Maybe you have even forgotten what it was like to have fun playing an MMO.” Panic from being attacked, freaking out at getting lost? Not understanding every number and nuance of the world? Hell yes, sign me the heck up, PLEASE! That sounds wonderfully fun to me. Robbing new players of that fun seems downright criminal.

Anyway… I think I’ve vented my spleen on this now. I’m not quitting my return to WoW over the new player experience or anything and I still have Cataclysm pre-ordered (Collector’s Edition, even). But, as with so many other games, when I see what I perceive as a design flaw, I’m going to talk about it. WoW doesn’t get a Free Pass just because Blizzard made it.

I love the spectacle of the new player experience. I just think that, if anything, Blizzard will lose MORE new players with this new system since they hold the player’s hand too firmly and for too long. Most players (I think anyway) want some excitement in their games. They want to feel a sense of risk/reward. Take away the risk and it just feels boring. Remember as far as these new players know, this is the entire WoW experience.

Currently my new Druid is level 18 or 19 and still spamming 2-3 skills over and over again. Even when I deliberately ‘broke’ a quest (I left an instanced area prematurely) and got jumped by 4 mobs I wasn’t in any real danger, though I did have to self-heal. By doing just the quests you’re hand fed, you’re constantly 4 levels above the trash mobs and 2 above the named mobs. I don’t think at this point a new player would be learning very much. I *am* very interested to see how the game transitions from this hand-holding phase to “OK now you can go and make your own choices.” I hope they do it well.

Sure, give new players 2-3 hours of hand holding to get them started, but by the time the player has put in 5 hours (for normal people this is 2-3 evenings of play) they should start getting a sense of what the real gameplay is all about. At least, I think so.

When WoW subs shoot up to 22 million you can all say you told me so. 🙂

Next Gen WoW

Posted on by Nimgimli

Good news! Last night I made the final tweaks to my time machine and traveled 5 years into the future where I got a chance to watch you play the next WoW Expansion: WoW: Epic Thrills! I wanted to report back on how Blizzard will do a great job of streamlining the experience and getting rid of all the parts of gaming that we all hate.

So you start the game and pick a race, then a class. This would feel pretty familiar to today’s gamers except there isn’t a lot of description. You’re just prompted to pick something that looks cool. Then you log into the game for the first time.

You’ll see your character standing in rags with a splintered 2×4 as a weapon. There’s an NPC to one side with a huge ! over his head and behind him is a wall on which a movie is playing. In the movie you can see a village with all its people going about their business. The graphics are amazing.

If you don’t do anything the NPC starts waving his hands saying “CLICK ME! CLICK ME!” Once you click on him he tells you a story about this village and how it is being attacked by bandits. You have to kill 5 bandits! The movie changes, showing bandits descending on the village, and suddenly 5 bandits pop into existence in front of you. “CLICK ON THEM!” the NPC yells so you click on one and your character swings his 2×4. The bandit screams and crumbles to the ground. You click on the next bandit, your character swings, he crumbles. You quickly click on the remaining 3 and all die. “BOSS INCOMING!” the NPC yells and suddenly a slightly larger Bandit appears before you. You click on him, your character swings and the boss dies.

Fireworks go off. “QUEST COMPLETE!” appears on the screen and the NPC says “You leveled up! You’ve learned Thorns. Thorns is a defensive spell that protects you from harm. Oh, and here is your reward.” The NPC taps his staff on the ground and your character changes. Now he is wearing better clothes and carrying a dagger. The NPC has a new ! over his head, so you click on him.

The NPC goes into a spiel about how the villagers will freeze to death because the bandits stole all their clothes. Their only hope is bear hides. The movie changes to show a woodland scene. The NPC tells you that you have to kill 10 bears.

Suddenly 10 bears appear before you. You click on it and your character thrusts with his knife and the bear dies. Yay! But Bear #2 bites at you! You notice a Green Health Bar drop a bit and the NPC yells “You lost some health, but your Thorns damage the bear!” and Bear #2 dies.

At that point, in the real world the phone rings. You pick it up to talk to a telemarketer. You watch the screen as Bears 3, 4 and 5 bite you and die from your Thorns spell. Bear #6 bites you and dies too, but at the same time he kills you. A huge green button with the word “GO!” on it appears on screen. You click it and your character stands up with his health bar full again. Bears 7, 8, 9, & 10 bite you, reducing your health, and die from your defensive spell.

“QUEST COMPLETE! You gained a new level! You learn FIREBALL!” the NPC yells. Your health bar fills up. When he taps his staff this time, a shield appears in your hand and shoulderpads grow out of your shoulders. The NPC has a ! over his head.

You click him and he says “The villagers need food. Hunt some deer!” The woodland scene continues to play on the screen and 10 deer teleport into the room. You’re off the phone so can focus again. You click the first dear and your avatar stabs it. It dies. You click the second deer and your avatar shoots a fireball at it. It dies. Click deer #3, another fireball, another dead deer. Click deer #4 and it’s a stab again, and another dead deer. You quickly click the remaining 6 deer and the NPC yells “SPEED BONUS!” and suddenly there’s a decorative butterfly fluttering around your avatar’s head.

As the 10th deer dies the NPC yells “QUEST COMPLETE! You gained a new level! You learned Hack!” His next quest has you fighting 8 tigers to get their teeth to make daggers to arm the villagers. The woodland scene is replaced by a jungle scene. When the tigers appear and you click on them you sometimes swing you dagger overhead and yell “Hack!” when you attack. Other times its a thrust and others still, a fireball.

The NPC pauses the action and says “In WoW 2.0 you don’t have to worry about what skill to use…we take care of that for you!” You pause a moment and a tiger bites you and you die. The big green GO button pops up and you click it and continue where you left off. This fight has a Boss Tiger at the end. You click it and your avatar does a crazy cool combo attack that consists of a fireball followed by a hack. “QUEST COMPLETE!” yells the NPC. “You’ve gained a level. Only 196 to go!”

And then my time machine pulled me back to the present. But I can’t wait for this version of WoW to arrive. I loved how you could do everything with 1 mouse button. There was no pesky moving hither and yon, or inventory or stats to worry about. No painful death penalty. No having to figure out what skill or spell to use next. I mean, these are COMPUTER games, right? Why should WE have to make all these decisions when the computer can do it for us!? Let it keep track of the numbers, right? We just want to click on stuff.

I read that the internal code name for the next generation of WoW is: Bubblewrap.

WoW is starting out ever easy

Posted on by Nimgimli

So as I mentioned in my last post, I started a new character yesterday. He’s now level 15 or 16 and holy smokes, World of Warcraft is holding my hand to the point where I’m feeling molested.

Now to be fair, level 15 or 16 is maybe 5-6 hours of playtime? My /played is around 8 hours but I have a habit of walking away from the computer and leaving my dude sitting around while I take the dog for a half hour walk or something. So I’m guessing 5-6 hours of actual game time. Maybe 6.5.

The new player experience really couldn’t be much easier. Everything you’re asked to do is carefully laid out for you. You’ll never have to make a decision for yourself when questing. At the most I’ve had 4 quests in my log (if you don’t count a couple of Harvest Day Event quests) and usually it has been 1 or 2. They’ve always been carefully grouped together so I got to an area, kill 10 rats (1 quest) and picking up 6 widgets (2nd quest) and killing a named mob (3rd quest). An arrow on the mini-map shows you what direction to go. In the case of a named mob, he shows up on the map as a skull so you know exactly where he is. Anything you need to collect has huge sparklies that you can see from far, far away.

Once you complete one grouping of 2-3 quests in a location you’re led by the nose to the next NPC who’ll give you 2-3 quests in the next highly specific location. (Sometimes it’s a cluster of NPCs). So far I’ve found exactly 1 quest that was ‘off the beaten path’ a bit.

If the area you have to do quests at is more than a few seconds run away, there’ll be a temporary (and on rails) mount available to take you to where you need to go. When you level up, pop up announcements tell you if there are new skills available at your trainer (who, btw, appears on your mini-map) and reminds you if you have a talent point to spend.

Speaking of talents. When you hit ten you have to pick one ‘branch’ of the talent tree to go down. That’s the first real decision you’ll make in the game after picking your class (you’ll be locked out of the other two for a while once you choose). Once you do that, you’ll have 3 talents to choose from, so that’s another decision, but as of right now I’ve maxed one of the 3 talents and am working on a 2nd and still haven’t unlocked the next tier of talents.

The level of difficulty so far has been near 0. I’ve died once or twice from not paying attention (you tend to zone out pretty quickly – like once I was poisoned and never noticed since I was watching TV while I played) but always it’s been a few seconds away from a graveyard. Health and mana regenerate like crazy so I’ve never needed to eat anything or use bandages or anything like that. Granted as a druid I can heal myself, so that probably has a lot to do with it. That poison (corruption, actually) might’ve been a much bigger deal for a non-healing class.

Now, I’ve been sortof enjoying myself just because the lore is quasi-new and I’ve been enjoying seeing how the world changes, but I would NOT want to level a 2nd Night Elf because the actual gameplay is about as compelling and mentally stimulating as playing solitaire.

Hopefully by level 20 or so things will start to branch out, but damn, this is the longest tutorial I’ve ever played through.

Back to WoW again!

Posted on by Nimgimli

Someday I should count how many blog posts I have that are titled “Back to WoW.”

But here I go again! But c’mon, how could I resist? My history of WoW is long and at times intimate. I have a friend who works at Blizzard who got me into the Friends and Family Alpha long, long ago, and I played the heck out of WoW for the first couple years it was out. That was before it was hugely mainstream and everyone was expected to have exactly the right gear and play their classes exactly the right way — back then we played to have fun. Crazy, huh?

But the world of Azeroth became more or less real to me in some ways. I mean the locations. There are (or were) places in that world that invoked specific memories. So how could I not go back to see what’s changed?

The last time I went back was just a few months ago when, for reasons I no longer recall, I ran out and purchased the Wrath of the Lich King expansion and rolled a death knight. In 2 months of subscribing I played enough to get that death knight to level 58. That’s what? 2-3 hours of play? So that was a good investment of cash, eh? About $70 between the expansion and 2 months of sub.

So today I renewed and rolled a Night Elf Druid. Yup, starting from scratch (for now anyway). I dunno how many of the differences I’m seeing are from the Cataclysm patch, but they’re interesting to me (even if I’m not sure I agree with all of them). The Level 1-5 area for the Night Elves has been super-streamlined and you get through it in about 6-7 quests, some of which take seconds to do. Vast swaths of that area now go untouched. That’s great for vets but I’m not sure if it won’t be a bit overwhelming for newcomers, if any exist.

Owners of the WoW Collector’s Edition now get all three pets instead of having to pick one. 🙂

Here’s a really odd change (and I’m sure you can turn this off). Mobs only have names floating over their head if you have a quest to kill them. That’s really bizarre, but I have to admit it makes it super-easy to find the things you need to kill. Just look for anything with a neon sign over its noggin.

I do have Cataclysm pre-ordered but I almost wonder why. My highest level character is 60 (the cap when I last played with any kind of regularity) so the extra levels aren’t of much interest. I guess I’ll get access to the two new races but beyond that…it seems like most of the changes that come with Cataclysm, at least the ones that pertain to lower level characters, are included with the freebie patch.

We’ll see, I guess. I imagine I could have fun playing a Worgen for a little while..

When I played WoW…

Posted on by Nimgimli

Riffing on a quick back and forth I had on Twitter, I thought I’d wax nostalgic a little bit about my WoW phase.

When I played WoW, I lived alone. I was unemployed and in-between job interviews and freelance gigs I’d spend 20, 30 or even more hours playing each week. These days if I spend 10 hours gaming in a week, it’s a big gaming week.

Because I spent so much time playing, I was in an active guild and knew everyone else in it. We’d be on Vent with open mikes, laughing, talking, cursing, and laughing some more. I knew my guildie’s spouses and kids (tho as often as not, said spouses and kids were in the guild anyway). I knew when person X walked the dog at night, and what time person Y got home from work. These people were my social circle at the time. We weren’t big enough to be a raiding guild but back then doing 5 & 10 man instances had enough of an end-game feel that they felt very satisfying.

When I wasn’t doing something with the guild, I’d hang out in Stormwind. There was a strong role-play community at the time and I spent hours just sitting around in the taverns in Stormwind, chatting with people while drinking real beer in the real world. Not having a job to go to, I didn’t have to go to bed at a reasonable hour and so got to enjoy “late night WoW” which, at the time, was a period starting at 1 or 2 am and stretching until dawn when a lot of the ‘noise’ of the server went away and the people left felt like a real community. We’d chat until all hours. Azeroth became, effectively, my local bar to hang out in. With so much time to play, I never felt pressured to hurry through anything.

Then life changed. I got a job, got a girl, we all were sort of feeling like we’d done everything we could in-game and people started trying other titles. I didn’t have time to keep up. The guild kind of drifted apart and I left the game.

I’ve tried to go back a few times since, but it’s like going back to the places you spent your evenings-out at as a young person. There’re still people there, but you don’t know who they are, and the music they’re playing is different, and the decor is different, and the guy behind the bar sure doesn’t know you…he was probably in diapers that last time you hung out there. You just don’t fit in any longer and it just feels kind of depressing.

And yet today I bought Wrath of the Lich King and now I really don’t know why. I know I’ll log in, feel incredibly lonely because my old friends are no longer there, and log out again. Maybe Cataclysm will change things up enough that WoW will feel like a new place to me.

An evening with the CoW WoWs

Posted on by Nimgimli

I ended up spending most of the weekend in EQ2 with the significant other, but last night I jumped back into World of Warcraft. I was still running solo, taking my shaman from level 9 to 11. I’m not so used to Bloodmyst Isle that I can stack quests efficiently or I probably would’ve made a bit more progress.

I’m *loving* being in the WoW branch of the Casualties of War guild, more so (sorry CoWs!) than I ever did in the Warhammer branch. I feel much more connected to my guildies by dint, I think, of achievements. I know that sounds odd, but people are constantly getting these achievements (which I admit, I poo-pooed pretty strongly before I started playing again) and each one garners a round of “congrats!” and these in turn often spawn some chit-chat via blessed, quiet, text.

Honestly I’m very comfortable soloing in MMOs, which I know sounds really bizarre to some people (“Why not just play a single player game!?”) but with a single player game, you get what’s in the box and never anything more, whereas MMOs are living systems, always changing and growing. So being more or less alone on Bloodmyst Isle isn’t bothering me a bit, but it IS nice to have a guild to trade items with, to chat a bit with, to give and take support from. CoW WoW is currently what I’d call a mid-sized guild… plenty of people on, but not so many that you get lost in the crowd.

The only tiny fly in the ointment is that Rexxar isn’t an RP server, but you can’t have everything. Most of the guildies chose reasonable names (my main reason for preferring RP servers is naming conventions), and only one person has gone with something that really makes me cringe (have I mentioned that I’m an MMO Name Snob?), but that name is so bad I assume the person will end up getting it reported and have to change it. I’d report it if I wasn’t a guildie, but I do have some sense of loyalty. 🙂

But yeah, that’s a teeny, tiny fly. Otherwise, it’s been nothing but good feelings and good times logging into WoW again. And Winter’s Veil starts in a couple of weeks. I love Blizzard’s events!!

Remember, Casualties of War is still recruiting!

What a difference a CoW makes…

Posted on by Nimgimli

Last night I was back in WoW. After the buyer’s remorse-fest of Sunday, I’m not even sure why I logged in. Stubbornness perhaps, or maybe as a show of solidarity with the guild.

This time, I started a Drenai Shaman. Good move on my part, at least the Drenai aspect. I have started literally 20+ human characters, but only a very few Drenai. So their “crash site” starter area is still at least somewhat new. I swear I could close my eyes and run the human abbey quests at this point. 🙂

So I was already more pleased with my return to WoW, but then I contacted the Genda (I think?? Most of us are using WoW names and I’m not always sure who is who at this point) and got a guild invite, and from there on in the night was nothing but fun. I was still playing solo, but enjoying the companionship of the guild made everything feel more fun.

We’re recruiting, by the way. If you’re playing, or are interested in playing, Warhammer Online or World of Warcraft, and you’re looking for a guild, give us a look. I don’t even know how to describe us anymore, but I’ll just say we’re a generally mature and easy-going guild. We get that games are games and real life is real life and that the latter is more important. Lots of us have kids and/or spouses that deserve attention, and we get that you probably can’t be (or don’t want to be) in-game every single night.

We’re still a fairly young guild, too. Just a few months old. But the plans are for eventual expansion into other MMOs, and “unofficially” some of us are gaming together on the XBox or in non-MMO games like Left 4 Dead.

Look, I’m a bitter, angry, cynical old man, and I get around the CoWs and just grin and have a good time. If *I’m* not finding anything to bitch about, you can bet this is a great bunch of people. So give us a try! Start by registering at the forums. Tell ’em Pete sent you; they probably won’t hold that against you.

Willpower saving throw: Failed

Posted on by Nimgimli

So at approximately 11 pm last night, I renewed my WoW subscription. And yes, the baby polar bears figured into that decision, more in terms of timing than in terms of the decision to renew. I felt it coming on, now that CoW is moving into WoW, and figured I may as well get the cute little rat pellet while I could.

I logged in a bunch of my old characters to get the bear and to be baffled by all their gear and crap, then rolled a new character on Rexxar, the CoW WoW server (how could I resist that). And I felt an overwhelming feeling of buyer’s remorse.

THIS again? Kobold varmints, kobold workkers, kobold laborers… defias headbands, grapes and garret’s head? It all came back in a rush. And it really struck me how little WoW has changed in the past 4 years, from the point of view of a level 1 character. I was astounded that, for instance, hovering the mouse over gear in your backpack doesn’t pop-up an “Equipped” window to allow you to compare (though this does happen during quest reward pay-offs). I was surprised that the graphics haven’t changed, that there were no new options for faces or hairstyles. That the character voices were exactly the same. It just felt old to me.

I mean I know that leveling is crazy fast now, and I see some interface tweaks like the fact that PvP has its own Tab, and Blizzard put these totally pointless Achievements in. Pets now ride in a tab on your character sheet. People who’ve played WoW all along told me “It’s like a totally new game now.” and I guess I took that too much to heart. Yeah there are some changes but it doesn’t feel ‘fresh’ in any way, shape or form.

I’m just a bit annoyed with myself. I now have subs to EQ2 & WoW and the on-going LOTRO Lifetime. Which means no going back to Warhammer for another month.

At the same time, I’m excited to be trying a PvE game with CoW members, where everyone is pretty much doing the same thing. We’re all rolling fresh on Rexxar and are going to check out all the old instances and stuff. I’m still trying to decide on a class. The character I rolled last night was a Rogue but I dunno if I’m into that experience. I get impatient with all the skulking around. I might start a drenai if for no other reason than the fact that I haven’t run through the newbie drenai experience a dozen+ times, like I have all the original race areas.