Addicted already...
My name is Dan, and I'm a World of Warcraft addict. ;) I've only been playing a short time now and the game has already drawn me in. I spend so much time looking at various websites (that aren't blocked) that I think I have burned them into my brain. It has definitely been a lot of fun so far. I got my Night Elf Druid to level 19 last night, can't wait to get to 20 (catform, yay!). I've also managed to get my wife to play, so we have spent a couple nights questing and leveling together. We're still very low level but it definitely helps alot to have someone along to chat with.
Anyways, the other night I ended up going to my first instance, The Deadmines. For anyone who doesn't play, an "instance" is a dungeon or specific quest that is created when you accept a certain quest. That "instance" is only accessible by you and your current party members. WoW has alot of instances, ranging from those that require only 5 people... to those that require 40 people! Of course the majority of the 40-man instances are what people call "raids". Usually a large guild or an alliance of small guilds will form a raiding party to do these larger instances.
So for my first instance, a couple high level guildmates helped take me and another low level player through Deadmines. It was really amazing to see a level 60 in action for the first time. Watching them blaze their way through this instance was fun at first, but eventually I was doing nothing but looting the corpses that littered the rooms. It's not that I didn't appreciate them helping... it was more that I just wanted to try doing this without the help of a higher level player. Anyways, we fought our way through to the near the end, with me only coming close to dying once when both the high levels ran ahead and I started getting beat on by several monsters at once. Bearform proved its usefulness though as I changed forms and started fighting. I definitely love Druids shape shifting ability. Going into "bearform" raises my armor significantly and gives me better combat skills for up close fighting. I ended up having to run though, since the monsters were a couple levels higher then me and was quickly draining my health.
We were close to the end when it happened. A "blue" item dropped. WoW has various levels of items, and color codes them to show how rare/powerful they are. Grey items are considered generic, green items are magical but fairly common, blue items are rare and powerful, and purple items are considered the "epic" items, one's that usually cost tons of gold and require alot of effort to get. I quickly moused over this blue item and saw that it was a 2-handed mace, which is one of the weapons I can use. It also had some very nice stat buffs, the main one I noticed being +11 to strength. Many will say why would a Druid need such an item, but I am a feral based Druid, meaning I have focused on my combat abilities more then anything else. Strength is very useful for buffing my combat abilities, giving me more attack power among other things. So I rolled need for it.
That's another interesting thing to note. WoW has a very nice loot system that a party can configure to their liking. You can set it up where everyone can loot freely, only the part leader can loot, round robin looting, or looting based upon rolling of a dice. You can also set this up based off the color/rarity of the item. So if you want blue items to be rolled for but green items to be round robin, the party leader sets this up. There's another option as part of the rolling of dice... Need or Greed. When rolling is set, anytime an item of that type drops, a popup box will appear for each party member. Three buttons are available, Need, Green, or Pass (the red X). If everyone clicks Need, then whoever rolls highest will win the item. If several people click Need and others click Greed, only the one's that click Need will get a chance at the item. If everyone clicks Greed, then whoever rolls highest gets it. This is nice because there are times when items might drop that nobody in the party can use or that actually needs it. So they just roll Greed if they want to sell it for profit (if it's not a bind-on-pickup item). Additionally, if all but one person rolls Greed, and that one person rolls Need... they automatically win the item. This helps if someone is slower on clicking the button then others but they really need the item, such as during the middle of a fight. It's bad form to try to loot items during a fight.
Wow, that's alot of rambling on. The point of this is that I rolled Need. Everyone else passed. I should have got the item. But for some reason I never received it. It never appeared in my bag. I did not realize this until twenty minutes later when we had finished killing the main boss in the Deadmines, Van Cleef. So, after an hour and a half or so of watching these 60's obliterate everything in their path.. What did I learn?
Always check your drops. Good job noob.
Side note: Thanks to my guildies for helping me out!
Anyways, the other night I ended up going to my first instance, The Deadmines. For anyone who doesn't play, an "instance" is a dungeon or specific quest that is created when you accept a certain quest. That "instance" is only accessible by you and your current party members. WoW has alot of instances, ranging from those that require only 5 people... to those that require 40 people! Of course the majority of the 40-man instances are what people call "raids". Usually a large guild or an alliance of small guilds will form a raiding party to do these larger instances.
So for my first instance, a couple high level guildmates helped take me and another low level player through Deadmines. It was really amazing to see a level 60 in action for the first time. Watching them blaze their way through this instance was fun at first, but eventually I was doing nothing but looting the corpses that littered the rooms. It's not that I didn't appreciate them helping... it was more that I just wanted to try doing this without the help of a higher level player. Anyways, we fought our way through to the near the end, with me only coming close to dying once when both the high levels ran ahead and I started getting beat on by several monsters at once. Bearform proved its usefulness though as I changed forms and started fighting. I definitely love Druids shape shifting ability. Going into "bearform" raises my armor significantly and gives me better combat skills for up close fighting. I ended up having to run though, since the monsters were a couple levels higher then me and was quickly draining my health.
We were close to the end when it happened. A "blue" item dropped. WoW has various levels of items, and color codes them to show how rare/powerful they are. Grey items are considered generic, green items are magical but fairly common, blue items are rare and powerful, and purple items are considered the "epic" items, one's that usually cost tons of gold and require alot of effort to get. I quickly moused over this blue item and saw that it was a 2-handed mace, which is one of the weapons I can use. It also had some very nice stat buffs, the main one I noticed being +11 to strength. Many will say why would a Druid need such an item, but I am a feral based Druid, meaning I have focused on my combat abilities more then anything else. Strength is very useful for buffing my combat abilities, giving me more attack power among other things. So I rolled need for it.
That's another interesting thing to note. WoW has a very nice loot system that a party can configure to their liking. You can set it up where everyone can loot freely, only the part leader can loot, round robin looting, or looting based upon rolling of a dice. You can also set this up based off the color/rarity of the item. So if you want blue items to be rolled for but green items to be round robin, the party leader sets this up. There's another option as part of the rolling of dice... Need or Greed. When rolling is set, anytime an item of that type drops, a popup box will appear for each party member. Three buttons are available, Need, Green, or Pass (the red X). If everyone clicks Need, then whoever rolls highest will win the item. If several people click Need and others click Greed, only the one's that click Need will get a chance at the item. If everyone clicks Greed, then whoever rolls highest gets it. This is nice because there are times when items might drop that nobody in the party can use or that actually needs it. So they just roll Greed if they want to sell it for profit (if it's not a bind-on-pickup item). Additionally, if all but one person rolls Greed, and that one person rolls Need... they automatically win the item. This helps if someone is slower on clicking the button then others but they really need the item, such as during the middle of a fight. It's bad form to try to loot items during a fight.
Wow, that's alot of rambling on. The point of this is that I rolled Need. Everyone else passed. I should have got the item. But for some reason I never received it. It never appeared in my bag. I did not realize this until twenty minutes later when we had finished killing the main boss in the Deadmines, Van Cleef. So, after an hour and a half or so of watching these 60's obliterate everything in their path.. What did I learn?
Always check your drops. Good job noob.
Side note: Thanks to my guildies for helping me out!