I spent a bit more time playing World of Warcraft the past week, and I have to say that I had a pretty good time doing it. I never really experienced the horde side of the house, and I think that made it all the more fun. That, plus, this new (to me) troll city of Zuldazar on the isle of Zandalar is super impressive.
It be da king man!
It's a sprawling ziggurat maze that feels alive and bustling where troll and dinosaur mingle in the best of ways. The quests found here are really different and interesting. One had me sneaking around as a velociraptor trying not to get caught by guards and spiders. Another had me selecting a kind of soul beast to help me run around the city. A couple of them even had me playing a strange top down mini-game where you led a turtle through a maze.
Not that difficult, but definitely different from your standard quest.
One of my favorite quests happened outside of the city where two researchers were trying to pair up a couple of on-the-verge of extinction dinosaurs. One was using science methods and the other was using that good old fashioned voodoo. Eventually through the quest they decided to pair their powers together and concocted a brew that made those dinosaurs feel the love for each other in all the right ways.
Aww! It's a perfect Valentine's Day quest! If only it was Valentine's Day.
I was able to meet up with my friends Beau and Leala a couple of times and hit up voice chat while playing. A couple of times I got super disoriented and lost my way. Once because I actually had to follow an NPC and didn't click on him. Another time because I chose a different spirit dinosaur than Beau and Leala. Whoops.
I kept finding myself wanting to log on and play more during the week, and leveling just happened blindingly fast compared to how it used to be in Vanilla WoW. All it took was a little bit of dinosaur hunting on the side and before you know it, I was level 20 and in need of making a decision. Do I bite the bullet and subscribe or wait?
The Spawn of Gahz'rilla compels you to subscribe!
Honestly, I'm feeling the pull to subscribe. I love the new WoW. Gobbolicious had 4 mounts to choose from by the end of my experience. He also was running around with a literal army of imps and demons and was able to down bosses in the world while solo.
For my horde!
One thing he wasn't able to do solo . . . the dungeons, and, I mean, that's to be expected. That's also to be appreciated. That's what makes WoW a solid MMO. All in all, I'm quite impressed with what WoW has done over the years. There's a lot of interesting game tech behind it, and you just don't see that update and change as much in other games.
It remains to be seen if I'll sub, but if the intro experience is an indication of the rest of the game, it'll be money well spent and a joy to play through.
Just wanted to get a few things out of my brain that have been rolling around inside it, and for some reason I'm feeling the drive to write more, so I might as well go for it. You know?
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1- SOLO -- I've been hearing a lot about Swords of Legends Online . . . FROM MY WIFE of all people. One of her friends was streaming game play from the Beta and she seemed super interested. Honestly, I'm a bit nervous when I look at the graphics that I'd probably need an upgrade to my computer to really play it well.
My gut wants to label it as Guild Wars 2 that's deeply based in Chinese mythology, but you never know with a game like this until you play it. It's due out some time this summer, so I'm sure we'll be hearing more about it.
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2- WoW -- I've jumped in and started a new character Horde side because guess who else also got interested in the game lately . . . Beau and Leala! My old partners in crime from the Overwatch Potato League. Thus Gobbolicious was born!
trike mount ftw
So there you go. I've got someone new to hang out with in WoW for a bit. Should be fun exploring the game with them. I'm all about replacing those old bad memories with some good ones.
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3- Wizard101 -- There's a new pack that features a itty bitty streetcar mount, a blimp pet, and all the various clothes you'd find on The Art of Warlord's OC (as I teased them about yesterday).
My boi Blaze Lifehammer did a great video pack opening and seemed less than pleased. I'm always entertained by watching pack openings like this.
The three items that appeal to me here are the tiny streetcar, the blimp, and the hairstyle.
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4- DCUO -- Y'all . . . I'm right on the cusp of getting that chroma pack . . . 99/100 seed pods. Thank goodness I still have tomorrow morning to finish this up.
I cri everytime . . .
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5- Project Gorgon -- whoa whoa whoa . . . they're adding a subscription to Project Gorgon?! To be honest, adding VIP is something they've batted around for a while now. It's kind of cool to see it finally come to fruition. Good for them!
The extra bag space sounds so nice. I'm such a hoarder when it comes to MMOs that, honestly I'd probably do it just for the bag space alone. Although the neat .csv exports of data is pretty cool and the ability to level skills while not being logged in sounds fantastic right about now. I haven't logged in to the game in forever, so building up the hammer skill without all the grinding sounds fantastic.
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That's it. Just a few thoughts I wanted to brain dump out there into the void. Lemme know what you've been thinking about in the MMO world! I'd love to hear from you.
I didn't even know that a new tutorial experience was included with the latest Shadowlands Update to World of Warcraft. (It's not too surprising since I like never play WoW.) I was doing a bit of whining on Twitter last night about how WoW felt like abandonment every time I logged on because my friend who got me into the game sold his account. (This isn't the first time I've whined about it.)
Because of that I started thinking about my whole WoW experience and the things I liked or didn't like about it. I also had chosen to play a Paladin because my friend recommended it, and while I enjoyed it, I also hated it. I hated my role in raids mostly.
So last night I started thinking about how the class I personally would have chosen would have probably been a hunter or a warlock. I've already played a hunter several times, but never a warlock. Because of that, I logged on and made a new character called "Thefn" short for The Friendly Necromancer.
I'm loving the 100% Right Slider look
When I saw the new tutorial experience as an option, I was pleasantly surprised. Even better was how fast those 10 levels soared by and how good the game still feels when you play it.
It did expose the class and race I'd like to play most, however. An Ogre necromancer sounds perfect, thanks.
Yes, please
Just imagine you're dragging around a bunch of skeletons and zombies on those chains and throwing them into combat. I'd play that class in a heartbeat.
I actually kind of groaned a bit when the tutorial's ultimate battle was with a dragon at the top of a climb. It felt very cliché to be honest. Didn't we do this exact same thing in Rift's tutorial?
Thanks for explaining why I'm able to take this thing down as a level 10 warlock
I guess I shouldn't complain . . . it did feel pretty epic. In fact, everything leading up to that point felt pretty great too. The spider cave adventure was great. The Harpy hunting was exactly the type of quest you'd find throughout the world. The giant bear boss fight felt dangerous and profitable. Creating a giant boar to trample a hoard of troops felt great.
Hanging by a rope over a giant crowd of nope
Overall it was exactly what I'd want to experience in an hour or so of World of Warcraft. As tempted as I am to subscribe after that great experience. I'm afraid the follow on experience probably won't be as much fun. Plus I've just got so many other games to play. Hmmm.
This past weekend was pretty good at the Friendly Necromancer household! I mean . . . "quarantine good," but still it was a good weekend! I mean, it wasn't like we went to Six Flags and had an epic day of swimming at the beach. But a day spent binge watching great anime and playing MMOs is what it's all about!
Let's jam about it!
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1- My son and I started watching The Dragon Prince last week. It's surprisingly good! If you liked Avatar the last Airbender's style of storytelling, you'll probably like this adventure as well. It's meant for kids, but totally enjoyable for adults as well.
On Saturday we had an epic watching party for the two of us, complete with jelly-filled powdered sugar cookies and golden kiwis, which I highly recommend. Have you guys tasted a gold kiwi? It's like a kiwi and a pear had a delicious fruit baby.
You gotta get your hands on one of these. So good!
I can't wait to see Season 4 of The Dragon Prince now, which is supposed to be hitting Netflix sometime late 2020.
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2- Project Gorgon held their epic Crafting Caravan event that only happens once or twice a year, and let me tell you, there is nothing more amazing than gaining 5 levels of Cooking experience at the back end of the game. I was kind of blown away that I could move the needle from level 52-ish to level 58-ish over the weekend.
Like, you guys know I hate cooking, right? I despise it because of all the inventory problems it naturally creates because . . . it's not simple. Yes, yes, I know nothing is simple about Project Gorgon, but having 50 to, I don't know, 100-some-odd ingredients for making food gets super messy in your inventory. I've got milk bottles and fish fillets tucked away in every refrigerated and non-refrigerated corner of that game.
The "surprise" moment of the event happened for me when I was talking to the cooking NPC at the very start. Get this. Kinira told a grand tale of being trapped in a Gazluk snow storm with her band of crafters and drawing straws to see which member of the crafting caravan would be cannibalized. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), one of the apprentices named Etana got the axe and Kinira admitted to really liking the . . . uh . . . meat. I think the words she used was, "Etana was freaking delicious!" AND THEN, she hands me a bowl of "apprentice surprise." Sure, why not?! I appreciated the free gourmand experience I got from eating a bit of one of the caravan members.
Um, Yum?
But again, the real surprise was the experience. HOLY APPRENTICE SURPRISE, BAT FOX!
3- You ain't gonna believe this, but, I actually played World of Warcraft, y'all.
I've missed so much in this game, and I never really gave it a good play past Vanilla WoW as some of you know. I've talked at length a few times before about my WoW days, or as I used to call WoW: "The game which shall not be named."
As a reminder to those that don't know, you get to play the first 20 levels of any new character for absolutely free in WoW, so I thought I'd re-experience the game with new aged eyes and try the Worgen race since I hadn't done that before.
After spending a while with the character creator, my new level 1 Worgen Hunter was ready to go. I was quite surprised when I logged in to my character the first time and he looked like a super normal human. WHAT?
Normalizing being the most normal normal human ever.
I couldn't even imagine how many service tickets those poor Blizzard customer support people must have fielded. I can see the responses now, "Yes. Yes. Not to worry, keep playing and you'll soon see the real Worgen inside you." It did take about 10 missions or so before I was finally bitten and awoke a couple quests later, firmly in the stocks.
Here's to hoping they never find a cure for the werewolf virus!
Gotta say with the new Shadowlands release for World of Warcraft being only 28-days-and-some-change away from launch, buying it and getting a level 110 character boost is kind of attractive. How hard can it be? Just follow a guide or two on building up your character and then just click the buttons, right?
JUST CLICK THE BUTTONS, DUDE!
Anyway, to cut a story of long quest lines short, I had a lot of fun, and especially a lot of fun with my cute Overwatch baby Winston pet that I have no idea how I earned. What an awesome surprise!
And I even got to catapult myself on to a spooky pirate ship! Winning!
So that was me this weekend . . . hope you had a fun gamer'y weekend as well!
My experience with Vanilla WoW was . . . a mixed bag. I'm sure it's amazing and everyone is reliving all the good times, and I'm also sure if I joined a new guild of people (I hear the Blaugust peeps have a guild going?) and made new friends, I could feel the magic . . . but . . . yo, I need to ramble a bit about that.
Lemme see if I can walk back this feeling inside me:
Chapter 1 -- It all begins with Everquest
I really loved Everquest. Honestly. It was a fantastic game for me, and I felt like I had so much success in it as a player. I had my epic weapons. I was raiding. The lore was deep. The world was wide. Binders upon binders of printed maps, quest notes, and forum posts. (No binders full of women though . . . oh snap!)
I was there when Everquest was king . . . I ran a web page for the guild, made YouTube videos before YouTube was a thing, and was a pillar of my guild . . . and then my friend sold his account and left me. Ooph.
It was ok. I still played Everquest afterwards. I mean, I had new friends and that actually opened me up to new opportunities with larger raiding guilds and I got to finally raid the places I had only ever heard about in passing.
Chapter 2 -- Vanilla WoW
My same friend who dragged me into Everquest joins World of Warcraft and begins leveling. The band is back together again, and I'm invited to bring the party to World of Warcraft! So I jump in!
But the feeling is different this time. Now I'm continually behind my friend in levels and playing catch up. He's got a new bunch of friends with him that aren't really the nicest people, and now instead of it being a big self-sufficient guild, I'm part of a "raiding alliance" where the egos are awful, but we hit Molten Core, Onyxia, Zul-whatever . . . all the typical spots.
I'm there when a rare velociraptor mount drops for our raid group and miss the winning roll by one tiny point (mind you, i'm still burnt about that all these years later -- I've only mentioned it like 3 or 4 times on this blog already).
. . . and then my friend sells his account and leaves me again!
I mean, it was fun, and I liked my paladin well enough . . . well, maybe I should have just played Hunter . . . but it's just not the same without my friend playing. I didn't make any deep ties to people like I had back in Everquest.
I tried to hang on but when all my raid gear was replaced by green drops in the next expansion I felt like I just wasted a bunch of my time for nothing.
Chapter 3 -- Forging my own Path in Everquest
So I return to Everquest with no old friend leading the path! This time I'm in charge and directing my own play. I have old in-game friends, and I don't have to catch up to anyone. I'm behind the cutting edge, but it feels great because I find a really cool friends and family guild and everything is super chill.
And then I get the itch to really hit raiding hard again in Everquest! I'm earning DKP. I'm right back in it and swinging at raid bosses with the best of them.
But, news of my son's Autism puts the kibosh on the raiding lifestyle, and I'm out.
Chapter 4 -- ALL MMO'S ROCK . . . when played casually that is
I played 'em all, but in a way more casual sense -- and I had the children to tend to . . . life had permanently changed.
And of course I found Wizard101 and could play an MMO with both kids and adults and even found success with this blog.
Um . . . End of Imaginary Book
So, I don' t know. It just feels like there's a lot of baggage there. I'm gonna be honest. I've been a little psychologically burnt by my account-selling friend leaving me high and dry and not having solid ties to the game that so many came to love. And I guess for many, WoW was their first MMO, so for them it's probably like coming home, but I don't feel that. I feel that more for Everquest.
I guess joining a new guild would be fine like I said initially in this post, but . . . there's that nagging feeling in the back of my mind. WoW was always more about the people inside the game than the game itself for me. I can't get that back, and I don't know if I want to.
/shrug
I tried to explain it. I hope I didn't sound too harsh about my friend . . . like I still love him and we're buds on Facebook . . . idk. I sincerely hope you all enjoy your time in WoW! Thanks for letting me walk it back with you.
So for a long time on this blog I only referred to World of Warcraft as "The Game Which Shall Not Be Named." This game will easily eat all of your spare time up with about a billion fun things to do, and you will raid, and you will PvP, and you will buy mounts, and you will have a super fun time ignoring everyone in the real world . . .
*shiver*
Just writing this article on it and dipping my toes in again almost made me resub. I ain't kidding. It's super alluring. As a dad of three who are all about to start school again . . . JUST SAY NO!
While you can play the first 20 levels of World of Warcraft free, any characters you previously had that were above level 20 will be locked and unplayable. This severely limited my ability to visit some of the zones I had jotted down from my memories of 2005-2006. But lucky me . . . I had THIS!
Well, at least that helped me get a few missing screenshots . . . and the Internet will provide the rest!
Onward, to my first ten memorable locations in WoW!
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- Zul'Gurub (ZG), or as I first jotted it down before the real research began: "Troll dungeon place"
Apparently also home to really funny looking hydras.
We had a raid alliance with several smaller guilds and this was one of our favorite places to hit for general "gearing up." I got a couple great pieces from this place including this wicked awesome shield.
LOOK AT THAT THING!
I SAID LOOK AT IT!!!!!
(Wait, what are you looking at? Oh yeah, that glowy green cleaver thing from ZG was pretty hot too . . .)
You know what I didn't get from this dungeon? (Like most people) The uber exclusive and super amazing raptor mount. Sure, if you were Horde and a Troll, this was no big deal, but if you were Alliance (like we were), this thing was pretty much the rarest mount in the game at the time.
And it dropped for us in a dungeon, and I rolled a 97 out of 100!!!!!
(and as you can see . . . another dude rolled a 99 . . . I don't want to say I'm still burnt about losing that roll, but I'm still burnt about losing that roll.)
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- Stormwind, the Human town of humanness and humanatude! NORMAL HUMANS!
I made a new version of my female human paladin, Reverencia, yesterday and flew in to Stormwind. I was happy to see that Stormwind's bank was still the popular nerdfest I remembered it was. Good times! Nerd fest! PARTY AT THE BANK!! There was even a guy selling gold for USD!
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- Blackrock Depths. So, there's nothing quite as cool as running down a length of chain, right?
That picture was graciously borrowed from a wonderful blog called Wolfe's Den. You should read his extremely well written blog post where he pines for the WoW of the past (and decries the broken promises) . . . and it's also where this great screenshot above comes from.
now . . . I honestly don't know if this is a headnod or not, but it sure reminds me of something I've seen before in another game . . .
*cough* O.O
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- The Barrens.
You know, I don't know what it was about this place . . . oh yeah I do . . . Barrens chat, as the WoWWiki so nicely puts it: "Barrens chat is like a stupidity centrifuge, distilling the unexpurgated banal thoughts of a thousand morons into a hardened impenetrable lump of smacktardery, spilling endlessly across the bottom of your screen."
I didn't see any of that yesterday when I logged in, but I did get to punch a zebra unicorn a few times!
Worth it.
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- Un'Goro Crater . . . or as I first wrote it down in my notes "Dinoworld."
This picture was also graciously borrowed from a blog entitled Shattered Beginnings. This particular post from 2010 was about the author's journey through Un'Goro Crater for the first time with a new character. It's a great read, and I'm very grateful for the picture above.
Personally, I always thought of this nugget of fun when entering Un"Goro Crater:
Yeah, I watched this show religiously as a kid. It was definitely one of my favorites, and this zone sparked that from my childhood every time I stepped foot in it. Especially since there's a safe zone here called Marshal's Refuge (yup, they went there). How could I ever forget it. In fact, if there was one zone in World of Warcraft that I would want to see again . . . as strange as it may seem, this is the one. Wanting to visit here almost got me to resub. (You're a father of three, you're a father of three, just say no, just say no. breathe.)
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- Stranglethorn Vale. Um, I did some reading up on this. So, it's probably pretty apparent I haven't stepped foot in WoW since a week after the launch of Burning Crusade, but after the cataclysm, apparently this place got split in two. The "fishing tournament" I so fondly remembered is now found in a location known as "Northern Stranglethorn." *shrug*
What I did have on my CD of screenshots, was a picture of my old Hunter, Stingite, flying through the Stranglethorn Vale.
It appears I most liked the "jungle'y" zones in WoW, but what really made me think of this zone was the fishing tournament that happened here every Sunday . . . or rather the frustration of always losing the fishing tournament that I remembered most.
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Scary water island place? So, I actually don't know where this place is and therefore I can't provide you with a screenshot for this memory location. What I do know is that Naga lived there in vanilla WoW. Looking at this gamepedia page, none of the vanilla WoW zones listed there seem to fit my memory . . . so, either I'm remembering this place wrong, it doesn't exist, or some other third thing amounting to, oh well I forgot the name of the place.
*shrug*
Sorry.
It was super cool and the naga were terrifying. The particular area in my mind had a path leading up a hill and view down on to some beautiful ruins surrounded by naga. It was bright and full of sunshine. If you think you know the place, leave me a comment and I'll get this section of the blog post in ship-shape ASAP.
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- Undercity -- home town of the Forsaken.
I had an undead priest that I used to play around with that I think I ended up getting to perhaps 30th level? Not sure . . . but what I do remember is this amazing underground den for the undead. It was probably my favorite city Horde-side.
And just like Stormwind . . . it was awesome to see the nerdfest happening around the bank. PARTY AT THE BANK! (although I do believe Orgrimmar would be more packed if I remember right)
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- The Stockade . . . or as I fondly first remembered it "stupid dungeon in Stormwind!"
My paladin couldn't solo much, but she could rain down holy terror in about five minutes upon this lower level dungeon, and I had a blast farming it for gold waaaaay back when . . . and leaving bodies strewn about in interesting patterns.
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- Pandaria. What?! Pandaria?! How would I remember that?!
Well, I'll tell you how . . . Leala, Beau, #JuliafromKI, and myself actually ran through the starter zone one day a number of months ago. I ain't kidding . . . we all rolled up pandas and played right to the point where you decide if you're going Horde or Alliance. We all went Horde . . . and then never played WoW together again. End of story.
I made a new panda to get the screenshot . . . I like his name. I may have to play him a bit more just because of that.
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And THOSE . . . (which I'm sure many players of WoW would be absolutely dumbfounded by my astoundingly dumb list) are the first zones that came to my mind when I reflected on my time spent in WoW. LOL!
I sincerely apologize to the WoW players out there. I do. I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane regardless. It was pretty fun to take a look back through all my saved screenshots and to log in and play with my new characters. Thanks for the memories, Blizzard!
Happy dueling!
(grumble . . . 97 out of 100 and I still got beat . . . grumble . . . trolled by a troll mount . . . grumble.)
