It’s day 3 of my WoW run and I’m currently a Lv. 10 Tauren Warrior. Since I’m queuing these posts up, I can already tell you that nothing fun has happened to me on the 4th day so next WoW post will combine 2 or 3 days, putting me officially over the hump with half of my trial time gone!
So what did I accomplish today? Not much. Instead of grinding I went on a little sightseeing trip. One of the missions sent me out into the Barrens which are the Orc territory. Having explored most of the area around Thunderbluff I decided to head out and check out how other races live. I must say I love how the Barrens are very simillar and yet completely different area. You really feel like you are visiting a different country or something – but the change is gradual. First thing you see when you cross the mountain chain is dinosaurs.
It’s cool how the first few settlements you see on the road have Tauren totems, but the architecture slowly changes as you progress through the barrens. Orcs do seem to have a very simillar architectural style, just instead of wooden totems, they go for bones, horns and thorns for ornaments. Still, a Tauren could still feel at home in the Crossroads orc town:
There is one thing I have to say about Orcs: they say Zug Zug! LOL! Awesome! When I first heard that, I almost fell of my chair. This really brings back all the fond memories of playing the RTS games back in the day. I love how they say it in this serious, distinguished tone.
I when I looked at the map to orient myself, I realized that I’m very close to the ocean. It would only take me few minutes of walking along the road to reach there – and that trip would be much shorter than going back to the Tauren area. I pondered this thought for about 5 seconds, and made an executive decision. I was going to see the ocean today! Fuck quests, fuck grinding. I’m going to be a tourist. On the road, just outside of the Crossroads I met these two dudes:
The little guy is a weapons dealer, and the big guy is his bodyguard. A+ for character design – I love how size difference between them is so huge. They could have gave him an Orc bodyguard, but and Ogre is way better. :P This game seems to be full of little things like that which makes exploring the environment fun! I wish there were more things to click at out in the world though. Sometimes I see ruin in the distance, run up to it to explore, and then leave disappointed seeing as it was just a set piece. They could put chests here and there to make exploring these places even more fun. But I digress…
On my way to see the ocean I was half expecting to see a beach of some sort, or an Orc fishing wharf, but instead I reached Ratchet – one of the biggest Goblin port towns in Kalimdor. I know it is because I looked it up. To my surprise I saw some human and dwarf players running around the town. It turns out this is one of the areas that connects the two continents. Out of curiosity I right clicked one of the alliance players and somehow I inadvertently activated PvP mode. Don’t ask me why I did that – I guess I was trying to pull up the usual character menu with stuff like “inspect”. Not sure what I was expecting – either way it was a mistake. The game doesn’t show you the level of Alliance players but I can tell you the guy I accidentally attacked was much more advanced than me. Before my character was able to swing again, I found myself in the local cemetery looking up at the spirit guide. Wow!
After experiencing 3 consecutive one-hit kills from that high level human player (hey, I had to get my body back and he kept chasing after me) I decided to give him a wide breadth (read: hide like a coward) and approach from another direction (ie. run away and wait till he wandered off, then go in the opposite direction). Yeah, laugh all you want – it was probably looking pretty funny having a big Tauren warrior running away from a puny human screaming like a girl.
In all this excitement I couldn’t figure out how to disable the PvP mode. I tried asking the horde players present at the location but they just laughed at my ineptitude and chose to ignore me. Yay community! See, I told you I will be asking people “How do I shot web” at some point and make an ass out of myself! Perhaps I should have joined an RP server. :P After embarrassing myself and being laughed at by players of level 20 and above I went on. To tell you the truth, I felt a little bit out of place in that town seeing how everyone out-leveled me so much. Sigh…
I noticed a ship docking in the bay, so I decided to jump on board and check it out. Fuck, I was doing the tourist thing so a trip on a ship was perfect. I was going to explore the shit out of this game even if was going to kill me… Repeatedly.
Initially I didn’t connect the ship and the presence of alliance players. I expected to land in a different area of Kalimdor and resume my exploration from there. But, wouldn’t you know it – the ship took me all the way to another Goblin town called Booty Bay, located on *gasp* the Eastern Continent.
This one had a clear Caribbean feel to it, which I found kinda amusing. It felt a bit like a scene out of Pirates of Caribbean only with a lot of Goblins and alliance players. I’m pretty sure a 10th level character was not supposed to be wandering around these parts. Actually I know for sure I was not really supposed to be there. You know how I know that? Because as soon as I stepped out of the town I was brutally raped by a gorilla. The damn thing didn’t even have a level associated with it – it just had a skull in the place where the level was supposed to be and it attacked me despite the fact I never stepped off the road. In other places as long as you stick to the roads you can avoid the animal mobs, but not here. Perhaps this is how they keep Horde players away from the “safe” alliance areas or something.
At this point I was pretty much stuck – there was no way past these damn apes, so I decided to turn around and go back home.
To tell you the truth, I kinda hoped that the Eastern Continent will be basked in sunlight – you know, like a different time-zone or something but no. It was dark there too. This darkness thing is really getting on my nerves. :P
[tags]wow, world of warcraft, mmo, games[/tags]
Actually, the skull, in place of a level indicator, means the mob or the player is more than 10 levels above you (I think the cutoff is 10). The higher level a mob is to you, means how far away you can be before the creature aggros (i.e. rapes you). For instance, if you are level 10, and you go anywhere within sight distance of a level 70 mob, it will probably hunt you down and kill you instantly. :)
So, you are right. Don’t go there…stick to the Barrens :)
Ah! That makes sense. Thanks for the info.
I figured that it had to be like that when I saw the skull symbol somewhere in the Barrens and then in Durstwallow Marshes. I got gang raped by hienas and then alligators. :( Not fun.
Sorry to hear that the WoW community hasn’t been too friendly on newbies. Every MMO has its fair share of jerks I guess, cept that it seems WoW has the bulk of them. (Yes, I’m generalizing.. :P)
I remembered one incident when I was playing Lord Of The Rings Online. And I still remember the nick of that person. My map showed a copper ore nearby and decided to mine it since I had the appropriate skill. However, when I got there, there was someone else near it, but he was killing a mob. I was at the ore and was about to ask if he was going to mine it, since he got there first but needed to kill a creep before mining. Was just simply trying to be polite.
When out of the blue, a guy called “Anderson” came up from behind and appropriately mined the ore, while the other one was still in combat.
I was a bit shocked, so I sent this Anderson a whisper (Note: may not be word for word, but the gist is there).
Me: “Excuse me, but i was going to ask that other guy if that ore was his.”
Anderson: “Why?”
Me: “Cos he got here first but prob had to kill some mobs before he could mine that ore.”
Anderson: “Haha. U shldnt have done that. Shld have just taken it.”
Me: “Tts a bit rude. He got there first right?”
Anderson: “Too bad for him. U shldnt pass up a chance. Theres no such thing as kindness in an mmo.” (I still remember the “no such thing as kindness”.)
Needless to say, he’s the first to be on my ignore list, and i promptly recounted the incident to my fellow guildmembers.
Considering that WoW is the biggest MMO out there, it’s probably fair to say that it also has the biggest share of jerks and assholes. I mean, at least statistically. :mrgreen:
That said, most people I met in the game so far were very nice. Especially the lower level players seemed to be really eager to help out, join forces and etc. It’s only where I went to a higher level area and asked a relatively stupid question is when I got laughed at. :P
Anderson is an ass. lol This is the kind of people who play mmo to “win” – they bring the typical online FPS mentality to MMO’s and that doesn’t really work.
I’m not sure how minin works in WoW – I haven’t invested in the mining skill but I’m guessing it might be similar.
I hope you are keeping to your vow to resist buying it :)
Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to buy it. It’s a fun game but I don’t think that $15 a month + $30 for the game is really worth it. But we’ll see.