Soup of the Day

Day 1 – 2 In The Beginning, It Was Boring.

Well, after downloading the Game, and installing all the patches required to play I jumped into the most convenient PVP realm, and began my character creation.There are an unlimited, or seemingly unlimited, (read: Unlimited enough) amount of characters you can have on any one account which is an absolutely awesome feature if you ask me. Which you did.

You can choose one of two sides, Horde or Alliance, to take up arms for. The Alliance are composed of Humans, Night Elves, Dwarves and Gnomes as well as the Draenei- a race of giant humanoid penises made available with the first expansion to the series. The Horde is sided with Trolls, Undead, Tauren, Orcs and the Blood Elves, the Horde’s newest race to offset all the people clamoring to create an Alliance Manpenis warrior.

Having played through Warcraft 3, and developing an affection for the proud might of the Orcish tribes, I created an Orc Rogue. Rogue being one of many classes that each character can take on. Like Ranger, Hunter, and Mage in PSO or the various Jobs characters can take in Final Fantasy. A rogue is a knife-fighter relying on stealth, cunning and strategy to their physical attacks. They are often incorporated into guilds and teams based on their ability to reduce enemies’ status and deal damage very quickly.

Your world begins with an overshooting view of the municipality that you, and a few hundred other players at any given time, call home. Often taking the form a small village where heroes begin their journey. A brief narration explains the Orcs place in the Horde, and the ultimate objectives of your people. You are born into the world a naked, poor, and hilariously weak individual. Killing, or attempting to kill, small animals in a feeble struggle to raise your wiener level. All pretty tedious and uneventful for the first few hours. But, at the same time, I was just learning the ropes, controls and boundaries, so I was pretty forgiving to it. Among the hills and forests I found a number of NPC Orc Peons mining for minerals, just as you would find them in War Craft III. Now, that’s pretty neat attention to detail, don’t you think? Well there’s thousands and thousands of little attentions to detail. Everywhere.

I signed off for the night having leveled up to Level 4 and replaced nearly all of my Newb ass-gear with slightly less ass-y gear.

Excellent little thing about World of Warcraft? There’s a small purple bar that borders the on-screen control panel that represents how much experience you’ve gotten out of how much experience you need to level up. Most useful thing ever in an RPG. Perfect spot for it too.

Day 3 – 5: Meet and Greet, Leet and Beat.

So I wandered. Playing alone is not really what this game had intended as I soon learned. Being brutally murdered and having my dead body ravaged by wild beasts with levels so low that a drunken, illiterate war-amp with downs could count past such a number. But I stuck it out, and leveled up a bit.

I found that in the hills are a number of small caves with a bit of a payout in gear and gold when you reach the end. This is where I met up with a band of level ten trial-testers. Upon hearing that I was having some trouble leveling up they swore an oath to stay logged on until I leveled up and got the loot at the end of the troll-infested cave. And we went into the bowels of the cave, working as a team to kill higher level monsters and pillaging as much

And that’s why this game is cool. You don’t often run into the screechy crowd from games like Counter Strike or Call of Duty, where people are just cock-heads for fun. Because in this community they pay monthly to have their fun. with this specific game. Throughout my days in the Orcish hillsides there were a few groups I banded together with in order to complete a quest or level up someone in need. Including a raid on a Goblin traitor in Thunder Canyon, Defeating a renegade Village of Tribal Trolls, or a slaughter of murderous Harpies. This was the best experience for me: traveling with perfect strangers, our group expanding as we came across other low levelers having trouble with the same quest that we were. Alone we were weak, and useless, but together we could successfully complete the quest as many times as there were members in our group.

The second best thing about my MMO experience was the scale of the game. Everything was huge (Read: huge). I started out traveling to about three or four small villages and outposts around my home village. These had small shops and inns to heal yourself and stay for your logged off periods of time, which added benefits to you character rather than keeping them in the wilderness for your off-time. Plus dueling players on the streets and quest givers, job and class specialists used to level up your skill sets.

There were a few times I hooked up with strangers and formed a team of players that played off of each others’ strengths in order to complete a quest for the mutual benefit of everyone involved. It was nice that no one was a cock and once they got their quest-related item, they would just split from the group. We each played until everyone had the quest-related item they required and then like a Journey song we went on our separate paths.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though This is not nonstop action and butt-clenching suspense. It is very calmly paced, maybe frantic, mouse clicking. You will die and you will die often. Your Ghost character must sprint from the nearest graveyard or regeneration zone to your fallen body, which is most likely being brutally raped by a number of enemies that had already killed you once. Alternatively you could regenerate at the graveyard with the payment of the pristine condition of your gear. But any common blacksmith or dirt farmer can easily repair your equipment for a small fee.

I got sick of dying so much in my tiny trial, and you would get sick of it too. I kept going due to the freeness of my game, I had little to complain about. But paying to play by the month? You might get a little tired of it very fast.

I noticed a Zeppelin flying from the horizon, and begging it’s decent outside of a canyon I was fighting in. I ran to the outside to bear witness to one of the most mind boggling things I had see in the game through my entire trial: Orgrimmar. The Orcish capital city. The Zeppelin set down in front of the city gates, as the Horde Metropolis buzzed with people.

This was an amazing place. As a new player I marveled at the high level characters riding into the city gates upon strange beasts, with glorious weapons hanging off of their backs. Many stores, an auction house, specialty trainers, and class experts are all housed in here. Passing by crowds of players watching dueling characters, a test of strength between members of the Horde for statistical bragging rights. It was a city that felt alive, and the pulse that it carried was entirely generated by other players. This is why people play MMORPGs I thought to myself. My experience in Orgimmar was the most positive of the entire trial.

I also managed to find the underground City of the Dead through my explorations. It, too, was pretty damn cool. These games would be worth playing for about a month just to level up and explore the world map.

Days 5 – 10 Rinse, Wash, Repeat, Crap Pants, Rinse and Wash

The last days of my trial were taken up by exploring areas I had no business exploring yet, taking on some cooler quests and upgrading my equipment. The trouble is, this game was all about exploration for me. But I ran into the Plague Lands within the Undead territory and had my ass handed to me by every single moving creature there. Let alone the trio of Undead Bears (Yeah. That’s right.) that sodomized my broken body over and over again while I had to just grin and bear it until I got back to the Necropolis in the Undead Capital City.

I managed my way across the Savannah Plains to the West, and hit a small town after an hour or two of travel. Plus I ran into an Alliance meatbag that I managed to kill despite being two whole levels higher than me. It was also thanks to my Rogue abilities to be a complete dick.

The game was getting pretty redundant by this point. I found that without direction, the proper levels to navigate areas successfully, or people to communicate with, it was a pretty dull experience. But with the addition of a few friends- even if you don’t know them- the game escalated in excitement and meaning. Take a few quests with a few people and the game is excellent. The mindless grinding wouldn’t be so bad if you’re spending the time talking away. However, unlike PSO, the combat isn’t so mindless that you can just chat away to your friends while playing the game. Although, I never had the opportunity to try, I’m sure it’s a little more engaging.

As I reached the village in the Savannah I re-equipped with some better weapons, sold some stuff, rested up, and found a large pterodactyl outside. Its owner offered me a ride back to Orgimmar for a few silver. I gladly payed and was WOW’d ( This is the kind of writing you get when you wait on a post for a few months.) by what I was watching. The creature flew me, in-game, high above the plains I walked along to get here. I even saw the resurrected Human I had killed a few minutes before. I could turn my head and see a group of Horde players travelling, and fighting creatures on the ground before the creature rose up the ridge I had jumped off of to get to the Plains. It continued to fly at the gates of the Capital, where I assumed it would drop me off. But I never expected it to swoop under the gates, over the traffic moving in and out of the city, and around the buildings. Taking me to the highest point in the city, before swooping off back to its perch in the Savannah heat. My jaw swung open like a buttery gate that just got kicked the shit down.

It was an awesome view, a wonderful ride and something they could have just as easily replaced with a fadeout/fade-in warp. I promptly saved my game, and shut off the computer for the tenth night.

I know why people are addicted to World of Warcraft. But, frankly, with so much more to do in terms gaming and the battered social life I have left, I don’t think I could be that person. Then again, I didn’t get into the really epic stuff or had anyone to play with on a regular basis.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 11th, 2009 at 6:19 pm and is filed under Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.