Friday, September 12, 2008

The end of the World (of Warcraft) as we know it!

I was invited to the Lich King beta, along with 10 thousand other people in a desperate attempt to get WoW players to keep playing. There was also a pet penguin in my mailbox. Adorable yes, but not enough to salvage the wreck that is WotLK. Here's what I have to say -

I was in school, on a break when I first found the invite in my email. It congratulated me on being chosen. made it seem as if it was very exclusive. Out of curiosity, I decided to go ahead and set up my account and transfer a character over, and I must say, I was a little excited to be able to see the game for myself. Giggling ensued.

I got home at 6:30 PM, and hoped right onto my computer, and started downloading the client, that would then download the installer, that would then install the game. The client took about 10 minutes with a T1 connection. This was my first hint there were more then a few people who just got in. The actual game installer took about 5 hours to download. Install went pretty quickly, only took about 15 minutes. I then began patching, the first one patch was 1.3 gigs. It was estimating a 15 day download time. so I sought some alternatives, but all had similar times, so I gave in and let the download go. about 10% in it decided it was only going to take 20 minutes. After that, and a slew of other patches, it was 2:15 AM and I was ready to go!

I loaded the game up and was surprised at the loading screen, I thought it would be another portal just tinted blue, or something lame like that. but instead its a very noisy dragon swooping around an icy landscape. So I logged in, brought up the server list (noticed only 3) and went to the server I had previously transferred my character to, and logged in.

There were so many people playing these premade level 80 characters, that there was a solid 4 second delay between anything you do and when it actually happens. I made my spec (and yes, each click of the talent tree took 4 seconds to register.) In between clicks, I brought up my character sheet to see what the hell I was wearing. It looked like Dungeon 2 gear combined with Tier 2, colored brown and sanded down to have all smooth edges. Looking at the weapons in my bag, and the gear on me, I concluded Blizzards solution to PvP epics was to make them blue. golly! thats clever! Now we can't call them welfare epics anymore, and welfare blues just doesn't have the same ring to it. so GG blizz, you solved that problem.

So I finished my spec, and went realized I had mail. found the nearest mailbox, which was quite easy as there was one at each corner. (this is in Dalaran) I had 2 letters, one had a pet penguin, and thanked me for having a World of Warcraft account, the other was a package of various potions from an NPC congratulating me on level 80. So I opened my bag to hop on my flying mount, but it wasn't there (No, I didn't read patch notes) so I asked a guard where the mount trainer was, I ran over, clicked on him and he said I knew how to fly (cold whether flying..) so I brought up my bags again and realized no pet either. then remembered a friend told me there was a new tab in character sheet that held these items. Sure enough! "Pets" tab and "Achievements" tab. So I brought up the pets tab, and within it was a "Mount" tab, and in it was a Nether ray, and raptor. Clicked my Nether ray and Took Fli--- what? I can't get on flying mount in Dalaran? Ok, so I hoped on my raptor and took off looking for a place to mount. Finally found one by the flight master, so I hopped on my Nether ray and took flight!

First stop - try out spec on equal level mobs. Fortunately, that was right below be! so I tested out Heroic leap first. Went Nice and high, popped and demounted. I had sufficient rage, came in range of a target, and Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, dead.

Wait.. thats not how it worked in the video I saw, so I hovered over the ability and realized it was changed to take 25 rage.. bummer. Bloodrage only gives about 25. But the graveyard was within feet of me, I guess Blizz planned for idiots like me. So I got to my body and a friendly dwarf dropped down next to me and changed stances. then I realized it was a PvP server.. dead.
But again! the graveyard was mere feet away, so I waited to the dwarf to leave and I popped. Blizz also gave two 22 slot bags full of bandages! sadly, they didn't heal my 22k health. So I killed some level 78's until I could use it again.

Then I spotted him! A level 80 elite tree. I remembered the article of the mage killing him with his images.. I thought, I duel wielding weapons as big as I am! I can take him. and sure enough, I could. (thanks to my buddy execute) but what I noticed was, I was hitting about as hard as Poosh hits.. level 70 with t5 equivalent.. and here's a level 80 with almost double all my stats (minus hit rating). So I killed some more things then gave into my craving to make a death knight.

Pulled back to character selection screen on my server, and couldn't make new characters there. So I went to server selection screen, and saw the 2 other servers. I clicked on the one called "Lich King" and couldn't connect.. theres a good sign! so I went to the last of the 3, and got on no problem, and thankfully it was PvE. I went to make my Death Knight and first thing I realized was the armor changed. No more does it carry the warrior look, I was wearing a paladin style black plate robe and shoulders. Looked pretty lame to me.. shoulders totally didn't go with the outfit. Sheesh! So I made an Orc, and entered the game. Cool little cinematic, you seem to be in one of the plaguelands, on a floating necropolis type thing.

I gain control of my character, and a familiar face is in front of me.. could it be? Noo.. why would he be here? but sure enough. first quest giver is the Lich King himself! (I guess he couldn't connect to his own server either, so he came here too.) So he's so leet he's got his own voice over. sadly though, its off timer. so I had already read the quest and accepted it before he even started saying the greeting. So I stuck around and listened to his bad ass voice, then turned.

Now, any self respecting WoW player knows, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and we take that line no matter what! So when I turned around and saw two winding stair cases, I said "fuck that!" and jumped down the middle. I landed in a metallic circle on the floor shooting up pink colored lights. wasn't sure what to make of it, and didn't really care, I had auto run on and I was outta there. then I hit what I thought was a spot of lag, but it passed. so I ran around, and around, and around, and no quest giver! I saw his mark on my map, but it lined up with a hole in the floating platform. I tried jumping, but with no success. So I ran back to the lich king and he wasn't there, I figured he got sick of all these DK scrubs, but then saw the pink lights again... what are the chances that's a portal? Damn good ones. I hopped back on and was portaled to the upper level again. I think Arthas actually laughed when I came back to the right level.

So I found my quest giver, and accepted first quest - go find a sword. I had passed countless sword racks on my way to him, but alas.. none of them had the sword for me. I ran around in circles a few times until I spotted the sparkels in the corner of a side section of the room. Grabbed my sword, went to the forge, and made it a runeblade. turned in the quest, and the next one was to forge a rune on it. So I opened the character sheet and looked to see if I had to click the sword like a socket, tried dragging runes down.. nothing. finally went to character sheet and saw I had an ability like making poisons. So I forged it, turned in the quest and then was told to go kill some unworthy guy, and was given a key. I jumped down, skimmed my abilities to get a grasp of what they were, then engaged the enemy. Had a tauren not came over, I probably would have died. I had no clue what I was doing, and this guy did. Maybe he wasn't unworthy after all.. so I I looked over my abilities and I decided on a rotation I could use that seemed it would be effective. Engaged another enemy at 60% health, and he killed me. I clicked release spirit and appeared at the bottom of the floating structure. Lost, and confused, I found a flight master who took me back up on a skeletal gryphon.

I turned in the quest and was told to report to the Lich King, ran over and he asked me to take control of an Orb and scout out the scarlet crusade people in the area. Now the Orb is more like a big eye.. that theme is getting a little over used now. The control mechanisms were on the far side of the platform with the Lich king, and sort of wedged in a corner, just out of sight with camera at max distance. So I turned and ran to the middle of the room, did some circles, and no luck.. couldn't find them. Decided this was becoming a trend, and the things were probably right by the LK, sure enough.. so I hopped on one, and there is about a 8 second delay before the orb launches, then you control it and have ti find 5 hunter marks on the ground while being shot at by ground forces. you have 1 cloak, that breaks easily, one offensive ability that turns enemies in range into scourge, and the 'inspect' ability you have to use at each position. My orb died 3 times, and the quest can only be described as failing the Sunwell bombing quest multiple times. Extremely frustrating, and not worth it.. as was my conclusion of the game.. not worth it.

the end.

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