Amazingly, I don’t think Blizzard has ever offered me free time to check out WoW once again before. They DID send me a trial disk for Burning Crusade after it launched, but you had to have an active subscription to give it a shot. When I checked out my account page, there was the free week offer, there was an offer for 10 free days of Burning Crusade, there was the link to download all the game files in case I didn’t have them…. It was a warm, fuzzy feeling. They really wanted me back!
All I had to do was merge my WoW login with my Battle.net ID… easy enough… and download just over 4 gigs of data… at 2.6 Kbps. According to the timer on the installer, it would be finished in ten million years, just in time for the Sun to go nova.
Friends on Twitter suggested downloading the free trial, and just logging in with my account info. That was no better. I went to Google, and it led me to FilePlanet. FilePlanet had the free trial AND it downloaded a hundred times faster! It still took it most of the night and through the next morning while I was at work. Turned out that free trial was an older one, for the WoW patch 2 era. WoW wanted immediately to patch it through its history since then. The WoW installer was, THIS TIME, working pretty fast. 3.5 gigs of data for the first patch to bring it up to 3.0, then smaller amounts for 3.1, 3.1.1, 3.2, 3.2.1, etc. It’s downloading 3.3 right now, I believe, in preparation for next week’s patch.
After just a few days of downloading and installing, I could log in to WoW. There’s still problems — it doesn’t remember any of my settings for some reason, so I have to reselect my realm and video settings each time. But! It’s World of Warcraft! It’s cool playing WoW, you feel in tune with the entire population of the Earth. I’m not playing some “other” obscure-o game, I’m playing the ORIGINAL. I’m in ORGRIMMAR, trick! And everyone knows exactly where I am. Between the mailbox and the auction house, right? You know the spot.
NOW what?
I remembered what I was doing the morning I quit WoW. I was working on some quests with my level 25 Tauren druid and couldn’t think of any reason why I needed to finish them. I logged out, unsubscribed, and haven’t touched it for three years.
What I needed on my return was some incentive. I subscribed to 38 Studio’s Azeroth Advisor, which gave me some hints on where to go. For my 60 priestess Kanda, it advices a trip to the Outlands. For my 32 rogue Tipa (guild leader of the Snacks for the Horde!) it suggested getting groups for Razorfen Downs and Scarlet Monastery. And for Etha, Gnomeregan and Blackfathom Depths. I have great memories of all those places, aside from the Outlands, a place I’ve never been. (Azeroth Advisor told me how to get to it, though).
Even when I did play, WoW was nearly impossible to manage without the help of add-ons. Raiding as a priest was as simple as pressing one button for Decursive and another button for Healing, and watching the screen for instructions on where not to stand. I understand they have nerfed those particular add-ons to make raiding at least a little challenging, which is a very good thing. Nonetheless, I wasn’t going to be the only WoW player without a full set, so I went to Curse.com and loaded up on them. QuestHelper, Auctioneer, some dps ones, better maps, all sorts of stuff. It’s easy; the Curse interface lets you get them by the shovel-load. There’s even one that tells a rogue when to sap, what poisons to use and when — it’s all very professional.
QuestHelper IS aware of flight paths, but doesn’t know YOU have them until you actually go to one and an “a-ha!” moment occurs and suddenly the little marching ants march to the flight master instead of directly across a swamp. I was halfway to Dun Morogh before I remembered there was a flight master in Menethil Harbor. When I went back to take it, I wandered off to the docks and saw a boat I didn’t remember seeing before, one that went to Durotar. I took it and came to a dock city where city guards were taking down a giant sea monster named Tethys. It seemed like a good idea not to linger.
That was Tipa, my sole Alliance character. I logged back on to Kanda, the troll priest, and decided to get some of those old quests out of the way before I headed to the Outland. Blackwing Lair attunement quests, DON’T NEED. All the Zul’Gurab quests, DON’T NEED. A quest for Upper Blackrock Spire? Really? DOn’T NEED. I was left with a good selection of quests that seemed to deal mainly with battlegrounds or other PvP objectives, so I set out and followed the marching ants to a balloon and thence to Stranglethorn Vale, where I had a faction turn-in for a Zul’Gurub quest I’d apparently finished a long time ago. On the way I was attacked by a low-thirties troll NPC, and nearly killed.
I’d totally forgotten how to play a priest. I apparently wasn’t even shadow-specced any more (oh, they reset my talent points. Gee, thanks.) I decided to choose an easier class.
Tipa had to kill a lot of orcs outside Menethil Harbor, set catapults ablaze and then kill a chieftain. A rogue is a rogue anywhere, and I didn’t really have much trouble once I remembered how to pull. I keep hearing how easy WoW is these days, but maybe they mean how easy it is these days if you have up-to-date gear. I actually was doing fairly well until I fell off a wall and out of the encounter.
I decided to give the druid a try. In her heyday, I was able to solo many portions of Shadowfang Keep, one of my favorite instances. Prowling from boss to boss in cat form. QuestHelper advised me to finish off some Ashenvale quests, which seemed like a good place to start.
This night elf and I were working our way through a satyr camp when it occurred to me that we were enemies. Weren’t we? Way back when, you’d never see an Alliance and a Horde working together so casually. One or the other would /flag themselves for PvP and taunt the other. Friends would be called in, and before long, there’d be a fight going with lots of death and people running in from graveyards. We had lots of fights right there in Ashenvale, in fact, some really good ones. Now, we’re all friends, good buddies, and we work together in love and unity, Alliance and Horde, 2GTHA 4EVA. *hug*!
It took awhile to remember how I used to druid. I remembered I used to shift between forms all the time. I’d root and nuke a few times, use my root shield buff to root them when they hit me, step back, do it all over again, toss in a moonfire and a rejuve, shift to bear form, tank them until they ran, then shift back to druid and finish off with another moonfire.
Took awhile to remember that. Probably an add-on for it.
I still am bitter that I don’t remember how to play a priest. I kinda failed at that, and I don’t know if I should try soloing in Outland with my skills so poor.
I did start a new character, a blood elf mage, to try out the Burning Crusade. Point and shoot. Nothing to it 🙂 Maybe starting from scratch is the only way to really appreciate all the changes three years has brought to the world. of Warcraft.
17 thoughts on “World of Warcraft: I fail at WoW.”
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Restarting a new Char was an interesting experience: My Warlock was exalted with Stormwind before level 40 within a few weeks. A feat that my Paladin did not accomplish in much more time – he never got so much reputation, xp and all that from the early quests.
What I REALLY hate is when you go back to an MMO, and they’ve tweaked their UI, and I have NO IDEA what the heck all the new features are. Like that little obsidian compass thingie in EQ2? Or the magical suit of armor that pops up at the top of your screen from time to time in LotRO? ( I figured that one out to be damaged gear, but not before I went screaming to Twitter for help)
I recently purchased a boxed version of WoW from Best Buy for $5 in the Black Friday hubbub. I’ve never actually read the manual that comes with the disc before.
It’s no WoWWiki, but it’s actually a pretty decent little book (the size of a small novel, really). I’m really trying to see what it would be like to come to the game completely new after all this time, comparing it to my beta testing of Allods Online.
It’s an interesting comparison.
Tipa has joined the world again! Jk!
For the priest if you want to heal on her still, HealBot is the greatest addon, for any healer honestly. And instead of Quest Helper you may want to check out Carbonite. I love those two. Most of the quests will point you where to go next, take this note to so and so. So you feel more direction as you level.
If you really want a fresh start come on over to Silvermoon! I’d love to give you a helping hand if you need (I’m usually on Nyomi.. Alliance), or always feel free to ask me anything you might feel puzzled about. Sometimes having someone to talk to and ask questions can make the game more enjoyable, you don’t feel so lost.
In any case, I do hope you have more fun this time around!
. . . the game that shall not be named . . . /hangs head and gives a moment of silence. Poor Tipa. Having all that fun and stuff.
Actually, I’m kind of doing the same thing only with LOTRO. As Emirl would say, I even kicked my old LOTRO blog up a notch: http://minstrelmagnet.blogspot.com
“All I had to do was merge my WoW login with my Battle.net ID… easy enough… and download just over 4 gigs of data… at 2.6 Kbps. According to the timer on the installer, it would be finished in ten million years, just in time for the Sun to go nova.”
I had to explain to my wife why I was laughing so hysterically, awesome!
OMG I remember Snacks for the Horde! Those were the best times of WoW for me. The Snacks, Vena’s Z.E.R.G. guild (Vena/Vera moved to Austrailia and never logged in again as far as I know) , the Yunk vs Nummie Gigglepie adventures, I remember we had this ridiculous gnome fight at the arena and you showed up on Tipa. A few people from ZERG were in the Coalition of the Horde which i was in for a while as a member of the Poor Sages on my forsaken.
You know that first year of WoW was the best ever on-line gaming experience. I’ve never been able to replace it. I wonder if your first year is like that for everyone? And I’ll never get that magic back, or is it reproducable somehow?
All this stuff about Add-Ons really flummoxes me. I only ever tried two Add-Ons for WoW, one to stop me getting Duel invites and another to, um, I forget. Something similar. Both of them broke after the first patch and I never bothered to update them.
Mrs Bhagpuss, who plays WoW more than I do, has never used an Add-On and indeed wouldn’t know what one was or even that they exist. She seems to enjoy herself just fine. I do know they do all sorts of stuff for you, but, perhaps naively, I thought those things were what I was paying money to be allowed to do for myself. Why would I want to be told where a mining node is by an Add On when I have an ability in the game that shows me? Why would I want to be told when to fire off an attack or a heal when I have a brain and fingers?
Same thing goes for Guides. The NPCs tell you everything you need to know about the quests when you speak to them. Why would you need someone else to repeat that?
Seriously, while I understand why Add-Ons and Guides have become embedded in WoW, it still seems to me that all they do is take the game out of the game. No wonder people find it too easy and boring if they automate away all the actual thinking and deciding.
@Bhagpuss – well, no other game I play uses add-ons to such an extent to ease gameplay. I do use a map add-on for EQ2. I figured if I were going to give WoW another shot, the least I could do is go whole-heartedly into the things that are uniquely WoW, like the pro add-on culture. I was fairly free of add-ons my first time through WoW (I did use a roleplay add-on) until I started raiding and received a list of add-ons I would be required to use and master if I expected to raid. Decursive, a healbot add-on, an add-on that warned me when raid bosses were about to do something of which I should be aware, etc. That made raiding very dull for me.
@Yunk – I LOVED that Arena fight! All us gnomes had this thing going on in the KT forums 🙂 It was great. Best times in WoW for me were those few months we had the server to ourselves, before they opened up transfers.
@Friendly – *gasp* you’re back in LotRO?
@Jaye – 🙂
@Kaozz – I’m not sure I’m coming back to WoW — not yet, anyway. I’d been planning on checking things out when Cataclysm opened and lots of people would likely be restarting. But it’s nice to say hello to my old characters 🙂
@Longasc — yeah, I don’t remember every quest giving faction, but it sure seems like they do now.
@Tesh — you may be the first person in the world to ever compare WoW to Allods Online. Usually, it’s the other way around!
I won’t debate the use vs. overuse of WoW addons, but I do want to highly recommend the addon manager available at wowmatrix.com for dealing with the technical side of addon installation and updating. I tried almost all addon managers and found the wowmatrix one to be the best for my needs, with minimal advertising and fast updates of most supported addons.
I’ve had some other WoW characters over the years, but by far my favorite was the WoW version of Toldain: A blood-elf mage, with red hair, of course.
Curse.com’s AddOn manager is very nice. Nice enough that I gave them money, which is about the biggest endorsement I can manage.
I discovered this blog a few months ago, so I haven’t been reading it for all that long. Imagine my surprise to realize after reading this that I knew you! I played a Forsaken priest on Kirin Tor and was in Prophetic Fate (but mostly, I pvped a lot). And I remember Snacks for the Horde! I guess it really is a small world…. I think those early days on Kirin Tor were the most fun I’d ever had in WoW. Nothing afterward ever quite lived up to it.
Early days of KT were simply the reason why I play MMOs 🙂 What was your character name? Some of my best times in game were with Prosthetic Feet…. My first Onyxia kill, all those Molten Core runs 🙂
I have to say: you sound so excited about restarting WoW perhaps it’s just me projecting the reasons I quit onto your blog post, but to me it sounds like you’re not all that enthused, even though you seem to want to be. perhaps time to try another game entirely?
I just need a goal in the game. If I have a specific goal to work to, it’s easy to get deeply involved in a game again.