World of Warcraft
So, after watching tartary_lamb play World of Warcraft since May 22 and then discovering that 
webbgirl was planning to given it a try as well, on November 30 I decided to try out WoW. This despite not being much interested in a game with a fantasy setting (I usually prefer games that are more science-fictional) and having tried another MMO (City of Heroes) and hating it viciously.
So. Sucked. In.
Everything anyone has ever said about WoW being friendly to n00bs? Totally freaking true.
It doesn't matter that I wasn't inherently interested in the setting, because (a) it makes sense, (b) the difficulty starts low enough that you get an immediate reward and feeling that you know what you're doing, and yet (c) difficulty and complexity of the game both scale with your level so that you continue to feel challenged as the time you play goes on. The mechanics are interesting, regardless of setting.
The most frustrating thing about City of Heroes was that I never knew WTF I was doing or where I was supposed to go or who I was supposed to talk to. WoW's system of question marks and exclamation points and maps and guards and introductory quests means that you rarely get truly lost, and when you do it never lasts long.
I understand that there are gamer geeks and experienced WoW folks who are irritated by how Blizzard keeps making the game easier for n00bs, but I am a prime example of why they do: I didn't last 4 hours playing City of Heroes. I've been playing WoW at every opportunity for a month now. And really, what does making the early levels easier take away from the level 80-85 folks? Aside from awe from n00bs that they made it through such-and-such a difficult thing (since it's no longer as difficult).
Anyway, that's my introduction. Here's a ramble about my characters and what playing has been like for me so far. :-D
I'm not going to put the full names of all my characters up because that seems like asking for trouble, somehow. I'll use letters, instead. Here's an introduction, in the order I made them.
B: Orc Warrior (Arms). Level 41. I made this character first because I was wary of...well, of screwing up. I thought I'd make a durable character with a mechanic that I understood, first. I thought B was going to be my main, and he is fun to play, but he ended up being my third favorite.
V: Troll Mage (Frost). Level 64. She's my main. :-D Apparently when tartary_lamb told her guildies that my main was a mage, they were all, "Why did you let her roll a mage as her main?!?" because mages wear cloth armor, which means they don't stand up well to battering. I made her for entirely superficial reasons: the female trolls look super cool and I wanted to use magic. I'm honestly not sure why I enjoy playing her so much. Because she's physically fragile, I have to be very careful and strategic about how I quest, approaching groups of mobs from just the right angle to attack one of them without aggroing the others. I used to die a lot, though not so much anymore. You wouldn't think that'd be fun. Maybe it's just my puzzle-loving brain, because I think I actually enjoy figuring out how to work my way to the quest objective through all the mobs.
T1: Tauren Paladin (Retribution). Level 22. I made this character because I wanted to roll a Paladin, since they can be DPS, Tank, or Healer, but I didn't want to roll a Blood Elf (they just look way too anime for my taste). Tauren are the only other Horde race that can be Paladins. I figured I'd start her as DPS and then dual spec later to try out the other roles. But somehow I haven't really gotten going on her yet. It's not that I don't enjoy playing her. She's fine. I just keep signing on to other folks first. I haven't even run a dungeon with her yet. I keep meaning to pay her more, but we'll see.
T2: Goblin Rogue (Combat). Level 16. I was really excited about rolling a Goblin, and I wanted to try out a class with a different style of play, which is where this character came from. Unfortunately, the Goblin starting zone is (a) REALLY FREAKING LONG (106 quests to get out!) and (b) entertaining, but not strong on actual fighting. This means that the quests are neat and original, but they give you very little opportunity to practice how your fighting style is meant to work.
Thanks to the long starting zone and the Recruit-A-Friend bonus, despite being level 16, this character is only about two quests outside her starting zone and I still have no idea how to play her. This means that I'm not really interested in playing her, and with 6 other toons…well, this girl is my least played character. I've been tempted to delete her a couple of time already, but I keep telling myself that I ought to at least give her a more thorough try first.
Z: Troll Warrior (Fury). Level 28. My second favourite character so far. :-D I rolled another Troll because I still love how they look. I rolled another Warrior because I wanted to try dungeons, but I felt embarrassed taking B or V into a dungeon because they'd gotten high enough up in the levels that I thought it'd look stupid to be a dungeon n00b at that level. More on dungeons later. And I specced her as Fury because I wasn't ready to try Tanking, but I wanted to try something different from Arms.
Z has been fun to play right from the beginning. Partly it's because of how much I like how she looks, partly it's how the spec works. I'm not sure why it feels different from playing an Arms Warrior, but it does. Maybe it's just because B was my first that I felt so much more relaxed with Z. Anyway, I promised myself that I'd run dungeons on Z just as soon as that feature was unlocked for me, and I've stuck to that.
K: Draenei Hunter (I forget). Level 20. My first Alliance toon! I can't entirely call why I decided to make one, except I think I wanted to make a Draenei. She's super cute and I'm enjoying having a pet to use as a tank during questing. Not much to say other than that, since I don't play her nearly as often as V, Z, or B. So many toons, so little time...
X: Draenei Death Knight (Unholy). Level 57. I just wanted to make a Death Knight. *sheepish* I know, everyone does that. I haven't gotten the hang of playing him at all yet, though. Because they start at level 55, I've not had that much experience on him. I did fight my first duel on him, and lost it spectacularly fast. It was really rather impressive how quickly the other played pounded me into the ground!
Dungeons... I've only run these on one character, Z, so all of this experience is from the perspective of a n00b on a Fury Warrior.
After nothing but questing for almost a month, my first dungeon (Ragefire Chasm) was a bit of a shock to the system. The pace is so. much. faster. And if the tank is doing well, I don't build up much rage, so I'm constantly impatient for my next attack to activate.
I didn't get much chance to recover from the shock to the system, either. I didn't realize it until much later, but the recruit-a-friend bonus I was getting from tartary_lamb was leveling me out of dungeons really fast. My initial dungeon experience looked like this, despite the random dungeon finder:
Ragefire Chasm (x1)
Shadowfang Keep (x1.5)
Wailing Caverns (x1)
Blackfathom Deeps (x1)
Gnomeregan (x1)
That .5 on Shadowfang Keep is because the first time I tried it, one of the other group members was trying to dual box and he fucked it up, so we had one useless DPS with us and every time we kicked it, it came back. So we didn't finish.
So yeah. Every single time I zoned in, it was the same deal: "Where am I? OMG, the group is already a room and a half ahead of me! Where am I going? Who is the tank? They're attacking things! *frantic key hitting* Wait, why is Z just standing there? Fuck, I need to turn on the auto attack! Fuck, they're moving again! Ahhhhhh!"
Eventually
tartary_lamb and I figured out that I was leveling out of the dungeons super fast because she'd gone with me on a few of them and we were getting the three-times-the-experience Recruit-a-Friend bonus. As awesome as that is on quests, it made things go WAY TOO FAST for me in dungeons. So we decided not to go together anymore. She also reminded me that I don't have to use the random dungeon finder. I could, in fact, specifically choose a dungeon to go into. That would take the initial disorientation away.
So since then I've run Gnomeregan a couple more times and Scarlet Monastery - Graveyard once, both after having looked up maps and (for Gnomeregan) a run through on You Tube. I felt much, much calmer.
Amusingly, my best dungeon experience so far was in Wailing Caverns, which is the dungeon everyone hates. But I had a really great group on that one--very chatty, and when I revealed that I was a n00b, completely understanding. They were great.
My experience with PuGs in general (out of around 10) has been that one really good one, a bunch where almost no one spoke at all, and two that were slightly pissy, but not actually bad. I took the slightly pissy ones a bit harder than I should have and the first few silent ones made me really nervous, but after those first 5.5 dungeons I was able to readjust my expectations and I'm feeling a lot better about them now.
I haven't actually run one for a few days now because I've been concentrating on leveling my main and trying to chat to my guild to actually get to know them. On a normal day I get about 45 minutes to play on my lunch break, some time in the gift shop (frequently interrupted, so that's questing-only time), and 1 or 2 hours when I get home. Given that a dungeon can take 20-30min not counting the queue, that's not a lot of time. Especially if I want to play more than one character. I really want to play my other toons more, but V, B, and Z have been getting most of the love so far.
Man, I could just keep going and going. There's my quest for my Venomhide Raptor (4 teeth to go!), and the wonder of having a flying mount (only V has gotten that far), and the toons I want to make next (several...and I only have three more slots on this server)...
But this is already pretty long, so I'll stop there. *g*
[This entry was originally posted at DreamWidth (http://crimsonquills.dreamwidth.org/700564.html). Please comment there using OpenID or anonymous commenting. (
comments at DreamWidth.)]
webbgirl was planning to given it a try as well, on November 30 I decided to try out WoW. This despite not being much interested in a game with a fantasy setting (I usually prefer games that are more science-fictional) and having tried another MMO (City of Heroes) and hating it viciously.
So. Sucked. In.
Everything anyone has ever said about WoW being friendly to n00bs? Totally freaking true.
It doesn't matter that I wasn't inherently interested in the setting, because (a) it makes sense, (b) the difficulty starts low enough that you get an immediate reward and feeling that you know what you're doing, and yet (c) difficulty and complexity of the game both scale with your level so that you continue to feel challenged as the time you play goes on. The mechanics are interesting, regardless of setting.
The most frustrating thing about City of Heroes was that I never knew WTF I was doing or where I was supposed to go or who I was supposed to talk to. WoW's system of question marks and exclamation points and maps and guards and introductory quests means that you rarely get truly lost, and when you do it never lasts long.
I understand that there are gamer geeks and experienced WoW folks who are irritated by how Blizzard keeps making the game easier for n00bs, but I am a prime example of why they do: I didn't last 4 hours playing City of Heroes. I've been playing WoW at every opportunity for a month now. And really, what does making the early levels easier take away from the level 80-85 folks? Aside from awe from n00bs that they made it through such-and-such a difficult thing (since it's no longer as difficult).
Anyway, that's my introduction. Here's a ramble about my characters and what playing has been like for me so far. :-D
I'm not going to put the full names of all my characters up because that seems like asking for trouble, somehow. I'll use letters, instead. Here's an introduction, in the order I made them.
B: Orc Warrior (Arms). Level 41. I made this character first because I was wary of...well, of screwing up. I thought I'd make a durable character with a mechanic that I understood, first. I thought B was going to be my main, and he is fun to play, but he ended up being my third favorite.
V: Troll Mage (Frost). Level 64. She's my main. :-D Apparently when tartary_lamb told her guildies that my main was a mage, they were all, "Why did you let her roll a mage as her main?!?" because mages wear cloth armor, which means they don't stand up well to battering. I made her for entirely superficial reasons: the female trolls look super cool and I wanted to use magic. I'm honestly not sure why I enjoy playing her so much. Because she's physically fragile, I have to be very careful and strategic about how I quest, approaching groups of mobs from just the right angle to attack one of them without aggroing the others. I used to die a lot, though not so much anymore. You wouldn't think that'd be fun. Maybe it's just my puzzle-loving brain, because I think I actually enjoy figuring out how to work my way to the quest objective through all the mobs.
T1: Tauren Paladin (Retribution). Level 22. I made this character because I wanted to roll a Paladin, since they can be DPS, Tank, or Healer, but I didn't want to roll a Blood Elf (they just look way too anime for my taste). Tauren are the only other Horde race that can be Paladins. I figured I'd start her as DPS and then dual spec later to try out the other roles. But somehow I haven't really gotten going on her yet. It's not that I don't enjoy playing her. She's fine. I just keep signing on to other folks first. I haven't even run a dungeon with her yet. I keep meaning to pay her more, but we'll see.
T2: Goblin Rogue (Combat). Level 16. I was really excited about rolling a Goblin, and I wanted to try out a class with a different style of play, which is where this character came from. Unfortunately, the Goblin starting zone is (a) REALLY FREAKING LONG (106 quests to get out!) and (b) entertaining, but not strong on actual fighting. This means that the quests are neat and original, but they give you very little opportunity to practice how your fighting style is meant to work.
Thanks to the long starting zone and the Recruit-A-Friend bonus, despite being level 16, this character is only about two quests outside her starting zone and I still have no idea how to play her. This means that I'm not really interested in playing her, and with 6 other toons…well, this girl is my least played character. I've been tempted to delete her a couple of time already, but I keep telling myself that I ought to at least give her a more thorough try first.
Z: Troll Warrior (Fury). Level 28. My second favourite character so far. :-D I rolled another Troll because I still love how they look. I rolled another Warrior because I wanted to try dungeons, but I felt embarrassed taking B or V into a dungeon because they'd gotten high enough up in the levels that I thought it'd look stupid to be a dungeon n00b at that level. More on dungeons later. And I specced her as Fury because I wasn't ready to try Tanking, but I wanted to try something different from Arms.
Z has been fun to play right from the beginning. Partly it's because of how much I like how she looks, partly it's how the spec works. I'm not sure why it feels different from playing an Arms Warrior, but it does. Maybe it's just because B was my first that I felt so much more relaxed with Z. Anyway, I promised myself that I'd run dungeons on Z just as soon as that feature was unlocked for me, and I've stuck to that.
K: Draenei Hunter (I forget). Level 20. My first Alliance toon! I can't entirely call why I decided to make one, except I think I wanted to make a Draenei. She's super cute and I'm enjoying having a pet to use as a tank during questing. Not much to say other than that, since I don't play her nearly as often as V, Z, or B. So many toons, so little time...
X: Draenei Death Knight (Unholy). Level 57. I just wanted to make a Death Knight. *sheepish* I know, everyone does that. I haven't gotten the hang of playing him at all yet, though. Because they start at level 55, I've not had that much experience on him. I did fight my first duel on him, and lost it spectacularly fast. It was really rather impressive how quickly the other played pounded me into the ground!
Dungeons... I've only run these on one character, Z, so all of this experience is from the perspective of a n00b on a Fury Warrior.
After nothing but questing for almost a month, my first dungeon (Ragefire Chasm) was a bit of a shock to the system. The pace is so. much. faster. And if the tank is doing well, I don't build up much rage, so I'm constantly impatient for my next attack to activate.
I didn't get much chance to recover from the shock to the system, either. I didn't realize it until much later, but the recruit-a-friend bonus I was getting from tartary_lamb was leveling me out of dungeons really fast. My initial dungeon experience looked like this, despite the random dungeon finder:
Ragefire Chasm (x1)
Shadowfang Keep (x1.5)
Wailing Caverns (x1)
Blackfathom Deeps (x1)
Gnomeregan (x1)
That .5 on Shadowfang Keep is because the first time I tried it, one of the other group members was trying to dual box and he fucked it up, so we had one useless DPS with us and every time we kicked it, it came back. So we didn't finish.
So yeah. Every single time I zoned in, it was the same deal: "Where am I? OMG, the group is already a room and a half ahead of me! Where am I going? Who is the tank? They're attacking things! *frantic key hitting* Wait, why is Z just standing there? Fuck, I need to turn on the auto attack! Fuck, they're moving again! Ahhhhhh!"
Eventually
tartary_lamb and I figured out that I was leveling out of the dungeons super fast because she'd gone with me on a few of them and we were getting the three-times-the-experience Recruit-a-Friend bonus. As awesome as that is on quests, it made things go WAY TOO FAST for me in dungeons. So we decided not to go together anymore. She also reminded me that I don't have to use the random dungeon finder. I could, in fact, specifically choose a dungeon to go into. That would take the initial disorientation away.
So since then I've run Gnomeregan a couple more times and Scarlet Monastery - Graveyard once, both after having looked up maps and (for Gnomeregan) a run through on You Tube. I felt much, much calmer.
Amusingly, my best dungeon experience so far was in Wailing Caverns, which is the dungeon everyone hates. But I had a really great group on that one--very chatty, and when I revealed that I was a n00b, completely understanding. They were great.
My experience with PuGs in general (out of around 10) has been that one really good one, a bunch where almost no one spoke at all, and two that were slightly pissy, but not actually bad. I took the slightly pissy ones a bit harder than I should have and the first few silent ones made me really nervous, but after those first 5.5 dungeons I was able to readjust my expectations and I'm feeling a lot better about them now.
I haven't actually run one for a few days now because I've been concentrating on leveling my main and trying to chat to my guild to actually get to know them. On a normal day I get about 45 minutes to play on my lunch break, some time in the gift shop (frequently interrupted, so that's questing-only time), and 1 or 2 hours when I get home. Given that a dungeon can take 20-30min not counting the queue, that's not a lot of time. Especially if I want to play more than one character. I really want to play my other toons more, but V, B, and Z have been getting most of the love so far.
Man, I could just keep going and going. There's my quest for my Venomhide Raptor (4 teeth to go!), and the wonder of having a flying mount (only V has gotten that far), and the toons I want to make next (several...and I only have three more slots on this server)...
But this is already pretty long, so I'll stop there. *g*
[This entry was originally posted at DreamWidth (http://crimsonquills.dreamwidth.org/700564.html). Please comment there using OpenID or anonymous commenting. (
comments at DreamWidth.)]