WoW Trial: Day 1

This is the first real post in the in my immersive WoW review. Please note that I’m a complete n00b, and that this is my first time trying this game. I tried couple MMO’s before – chief among them is Guild Wars which is the only one that captured my interest long enough to get a relatively high level character, but not long enough to reach endgame. Considering that GW is where I got most of my MMO experiences to date I will be using it as my yardstick to which I can compare WoW. Please note that I’m not indicating one is better than the other – just comparing the two looking for similarities and differences. In this first post I will be talking about game mechanics and how they compare to other stuff I played. It’s really aimed at people who like me never actually tried WoW before. I know that there are countless reviews of this game out there, but this one is mine – consider it a complete n00b’s take on the game.

If you are a seasoned player, please interrupt me at any time to correct me when I’m wrong, or give helpful advice. Sorry if this initial review is boring – in the following few days I will try to concentrate more on discussing the game world, the quests, story aspects of the game and the community which might be more interesting to you than the discussion of the mechanics. Having the short introduction out of the way, let’s jump right in.

First things the game made me do is to choose the realm, noting that I ought to try a low population PvE server first. While playing on an unrestricted PvP server sounds fun I figured that 10 days is not enough to level up a character for serious PvP action and since I didn’t feel like being repeatedly pwnd by some alliance asshat camping near the newb areas I figured I follow the recommendation. I briefly considered an RP server, but… The idea sounds intriguing, but in practice it’s probably an overly dramatic and kinda sad. Actual role playing in online chartrooms and forums tends to be little bit like LARP-ing – a bit to much for my tastes. I much prefer the “sit down, eat chips, have fun and argue over rule technicalities with the GM” brand of role playing. ;P So I figured I’ll skip the whole RP experience. Also, sooner or later I will doubtlessly find myself in a situation when I will want to ask someone a really dumb question among the lines of “how do I shot web?” and I might not feel like trying to role-play that.

Undermine was the first PvE server with low population that came up on my list so I jumped onto that one. I do realize that this choice may mean missing on some cool community driven stuff that goes on on more popular servers, but I wanted to do some solo play and sight seeing before checking out the local hangouts anyway. Lower population meant less competition for the spawning monsters in the initial areas, which meant better grinding. Also, waiting lists are annoying, so Undermine it was.

Next step was choosing my character. This one was a little tougher cause WoW offered several cool choices. I knew I wanted to play a Warrior first. The nice thing about the warrior class in just about any RPG game is that you don’t really need to worry about rules or tactics – your primary strategy in most cases is this:

1. run up to the enemy
2. hit the enemy
3. repeat #2 until either of you is dead
4. ???
5. profit

When I started playing GW made a mistake I rolled up a Necromancer as my first character. This turned out to be a support class specializing in DoT curses and generating short lived cannon fodder undead out of fallen corpses. My second class was Elementalist which gave me access to some potent AoE spells and few semi decent projectile spells. But I found out that at some point handing out with the monk in the back of the company casting ranged spells ceased to be fun – especially when I had to figure out innovative ways to chain my spells to make any difference with the high level, regenerating foes. So I wanted to be on the front lines time around getting the kills and the glory.

First I had to choose if I wanted play Alliance or Horde though. If I picked Alliance, I’d definitely go for a Dwarf. Humans are boring, I didn’t feel like playing an Elf, and I don’t think Gnomes made good warriors so it would be an obvious choice. Besides, Dwarfs are awesome – I’m a WFB. Dwarf player so I have a soft spot for this race.

The horde however seemed cooler – these were the bad guys in the Warcraft games, an not every RPG lets you play the evil side. You also get to yell “For the Horde!” at random times which is an added bonus. :P

Your standard warrior class on the Horde side is of course the Orc. But then I flipped over to the Tauren and I saw they are like twice the size of any other playable race which kinda clinched the deal for me. I wanted to be a hueg hulking minotaur dude with a big double handed hammer.

Character creation screen was very similar to the one in Guild Wars. In GW your appearance was based on your primary class and sex. So you got two body types (male + female) per class, and you could modify facial features, hair and height on top of that. In WoW your body is determined by race and sex. Picking a class only changes your starting outfit so a Tauren druid is just as big and bulky as the warrior which is kinda lame, but understandable when you take into account logistics of a MMO. You also don’t get to adjust the height of your character, but you do get a pretty decent range of customization – you get to change facial features, hair, facial hair, skin color and in the case of Tauren the shape of your horns. There is enough combinations to choose from that you don’t run into your exact twin every 5 minutes as it was the case in GW.

Allocating points for stating attributes does not happen in the game. Your characteristics are chosen for you automatically based on race and class – it all happens behind the scenes. There is really no thinking involved in this process – you just pick a race, class and sex, then adjust your appearance and you are done. I kinda wished there was more to it, but I guess the simplicity of character creation is one of the factors that makes this game so easily accessible to the masses. Also I guess this keeps PvP balanced since there is no way to min-max your character to give him an edge in some area from the get go.

Anyways, I created myself a Tauren warrior:

Tauren may look totally intimidating and badass but if you read their character blurb they are not all that fierce. It pretty much reads: “blah blah blah, nature, blah blah, nature, blah blah”. You know what that means, right? They are practically an oversized ranger race. This is even more evident during the first 5 minutes of the game. The Tauren camp has a distinct Native American vibe, with wooden totems totems and big open tent like structures made out of stitched leather:

You can see that these folks are the outdoorsy, nature loving kind. In fact, your first quest is to go and hunt some animals – classic Ranger mission if you ask me but oh well. I’m guessing every race gets one of those at the beginning. There was also another short mission about helping an old woman to carry watter from the well which I guess was supposed to show you that Tauren are good natured, and humble critters, and also teach you the “fetch object” mechanic.

The questing interface is deceptively similar to that I knew from Guild Wars. Quest givers have an exclamation mark over their heads – yellow if you can attempt their mission, and gray if you are still to green to even think about it. You walk up to them, click them with RMB and a dialog pops up where you can read the quest description and either accept it or decline it. If you accept it, it gets added to your quest log available under the L key. The only thing that is missing is the helpful map marker. In GW your objective was automatically marked on your map and you could see a helpful arrow on your mini-map pointing you in the right direction. In WoW you have to find it on your own given vague directions like “South-East from the camp”. I had no problems finding my objectives in the starting area, but I can see how that could become a problem later on.

The controls are somewhat intuitive. They are not much different from GW for that matter, only you get to jump and swim which makes the game seem more flexible and immersive from the get go. I really enjoy skipping and hopping so this was very nice. Despite this increased range fo movement, the regular speed at which you move is slow. You feel it when you need to cross a lot of terrain – I kinda wished there was a sprint button or something but I guess this is what the various mounts that you can get later in the game are for. :P

I was surprised by the small size of your starting backpack. It is a mere 4×4 grid giving me only 16 slots for my items. That is very tiny and it fills up very quickly. For example note how my backpack is completely full of absolutely random shit collected from drops in this screenshot below:

Fortunately the items stack, and everything takes exactly one slot. This means that a double handed war hammer takes the same amount of space as a single feather. Not very realistic, but who cares – I guess they are trying to keep things simple. You will also notice that there are 4 slots for extra bags – another game mechanic that also existed in GW. Over time you will probably get access to all kinds of container items that will greatly increase the number of equipment slots available to you so the 16 slot starting backpack is not something permanent. In fact I found a small bag with 4 extra slots in the starting area letting me carry more stuff even at this early point in the game. It was dropped by a wild boar that I killed.

Yup, that’s correct – the drops are a bit random in this game. Most of the time animals were dropping stuff that I was expecting – like pelts, meat, chipped tusks, feathers and etc.. But every once in a while a boar or a mountain lion in the starting area would drop a chain mail, a pair of shoes, some gloves and etc… This didn’t happen that often though so I’m not really complaining.

Combat is really simple – you run up to the enemy, click him with RMB and then sit back and wait till he is dead (what did I tell you about warrior classes at the begging of this post? Didn’t I tell you they are easy to figure out no matter what system you are using?). There are different special skills you can use in combat – I started with Heroic Strike which simply deals more damage than regular attack, but requires rage. Warriors get a little rage bar that fills up when they get hit and dissipates over time. GW used a very similar mechanic only that they called it something else (I don’t remember what it was anymore). So it was vaguely familiar.

I actually died once while grinding in Brambleblade Ravine. It was my fault – I somehow wandered away from my party, and managed to aggro several Bristleback Quilboars and a Shaman at the same time by running past them. One on one these dudes were really no match for my character. In fact, if I turned around and took them on I probably had a chance to survive. But I didn’t and instead tried to get away. I forgot that my character was slow as shit – they kept gaining on me and hitting me on the back. This is how I became a ghost:

I haven’t really explored the benefits of being in ethereal form. I kinda wanted to get back to my body, and finish the damn quest as soon as possible. In retrospect, I should have made a short detour into the camp and check out how it looks in the ghost world – for example, if the NPC’s are still there, or is it an empty “ghost town”. In the end I don’t even know if being a ghost would allow me to pass through solid walls, or swim without running out of air (it would make sense, wouldn’t it?). I will try to figure this out before the end of the trial as I will surely die again at some point. :)

Leveling up was another surprise. In most games when you reach your next level you drop everything, open up the character chart and start pondering which attributes you should increase. Not in WoW – when you level up, your attributes are automatically upgraded based on your class. This means that every warrior is pretty much progressing along the same path. Once again, WoW puts simplicity ahead of customization. On one hand this is a good thing because you can’t really set yourself back by pumping points into the wrong attributes early on. On the other hand it prevents any kind of min-maxing. Your character will end up well rounded and balanced whether you want it or not. It’s a bit unfortunate since min-maxing and specialization sometimes creates memorable fun characters.

You do get some control over the skills you learn though – you buy them from a trainer. They cost money, and you can only learn them if you reach specific level. I trained few introductory skills – my favorite ones are Charge and Rend. First one is kinda self explanatory – you “charge” the enemy from a distance, stun them for a second, and generate some rage in the process. Rend on the other hand makes the enemy bleed working as a DoT weapon. Nothing spectacular, but this is what was available at my starting location.

There were several quests I could take in the camp. All of them were variations on “go kill N of X” or “collect N of Y by killing X”. Also, most of the missions were happening in the same area so I would take every single one available at the time, then head out and get them all done in one go grinding on my way there and back. Completing all the available missions in Camp Narache and surrounding area brought me to Level 6. It’s at that point I got sent to the neighboring Bloodhoof Village.

This is where I found these two dudes hanging out at the inn:

I guess it’s one of the Christmas themed things they put in WoW every season. I also saw some mistletoe hanging from the ceiling at the same location. Heh… I wonder how long will they keep these ornaments. :P

This is where I stopped playing on day 1. Next I will explore Bloodhoof and do some more missions, and see what else I can accomplish. I also have few non-WoW related things I want to write about so don’t worry – there will be more random shit here. I have couple of movie reviews coming up, at least one programming post that I have in mind, and a general technology rant that is coalescing in my mind right now. I will somehow try to squeeze all of that in between my WoW coverage posts while keeping to one post per day limit. :P

[tags]wow, world of warcraft, tauren, warrior, mmo, blizzard, bloodhoof[/tags]