Our Return to World of Warcraft

fter some long and hard debating, Alice and I have returned to the World of Warcraft. We had a number of reasons for thinking about doing so, and it started from talking about how Mists of Pandaria didn't make sense oddly enough, but then it also brought up that Blizzard might also be improving on the aspects of WoW that we liked, so we ended up trying to look for some trials we didn't use to see how the game would be after so much time passed. We had some trials that Blizzard sent out for the release of 4.2 however when I tried to activate mine it turns out that the link wasn't existent anymore, so we didn't have anything else to fallback on other than that. That led us to purchasing a full 1 month subscription and using the Scroll of Resurrection on me where I will also purchase 1 month during that time. In any case, that leads us to where we are today and why I haven't posted much, we've been changing our regular games quite frequently now but as of now, we're back in WoW. These are basically a few things of what we've done so far.

-Leveled to 19 on new mains, I am a Goblin Warrior, and Alice is a Goblin Mage

-Fished up Ol' Crafty again in Orgrimmar which was really lucky on my part

-Found out that while Blizzard seems to have cut back on “twinks” (player characters that basically have the best equipment in a lower than endgame level) they also seemed to have enforced/supported twinks at the same time through Heirloom equipment.-

-Found out that Bind on Account items cannot be sent across servers

-Were astounded by a member of a random dungeon group we were grouped with which I won't go into further detail about at the moment, but may possibly later

-Were able to see the improvements on the Goblin starting zone from the beta, mostly in that they added a cut scene, and they fixed the “Town-in-a-box” which used to literally be surrounded by an invisible wall, making it impossible to get in without managing to climb the wall

-Lastly we quested farther than we have in the past on the post Cataclysm Horde side, our previous highest levels before then were 73 Paladins.

So far I'm really liking the quest lines because it's interesting to see how some characters are warlike like Garrosh or more civilized and “new Hordelike”, the ones that were basically more like Thrall and to an extent, Grom Hellscream, and I'm interested to see how the quests will progress and if the two distinct faces of the Horde will clash, I've heard about the Thunder Bluff predicament of course, but other than that I'm pretty much unaware of there will be any more tension within the horde.

That about wraps up what we've been doing lately, we will still also be involved with League of Legends to an extent, but we've added World of Warcraft into the games that we're primarily playing right now.

My problem with Real ID (World of Warcraft)

I'll start off by saying that I know saying something about the real ID system is months late, but when that system first came around I wasn't blogging to begin with, I did have considerable problems with it however even then. This post will also ramp up later about the things that I think about the new World of Warcraft patch so far, but there hasn't really been too many previews released about it, nevertheless I do have a good amount of thoughts on the matter. Plus also on that matter, there was a recent update to the Real ID system that allowed players to join instance groups with each other regardless of what server they're on initially, while I do think this is a good feature and I think it's neat, it also brings back the issues with Real ID that I had to begin with.

Starting from the top, when I first heard about Real ID a very long time ago I thought it was a neat system, I didn't know at the time of course much about it, I don't even remember it having a actual title other than “the system Blizzard is working on that will let people from different servers communicate” and it was especially effective when thought of with Blizzard's other multi-server feature, the cross-realm Looking For Group tool. With all of that said, things have backfired since the days when Real ID was just a unimplemented system, when it first came to light that the system would use your real named tied to the account, I personally was very distraught about that because it required the sacrifice of one of the main reasons why people like the internet (this is of course, not the only reason) the reason of having constant anonymity unless desired otherwise, to make things worse apparently the system forced people to use their real names on the forums when posting as well. While both aspects of using real names with the system was met with heavy opposition by the player base, Blizzard intervened and got rid of the forced real name on forums, however the requirement for using real names on the in-game service is still there.

I really like being anonymous to people unless desired otherwise and even then only known by my in-game name except by a few people because I personally am very anti-social and I just like leaving those details behind when it comes to enjoying video games. To that end, requiring real names basically cut off all of my intentions to use the system, and left it in the dust. While I don't mind the way Blizzard shaped it out to be, I feel like if it was simply a more advanced friends list with all of the features that it had inside of it, it would have been more widely achieved. On the other hand, in a more aggressive stance, I don't really understand why you would need a social network for a singular company's video games; other companies such as Xfire, or even Valve with Steam are more set up to do that because they don't limit themselves to their own games. The Real ID method only serves and benefits people while they're playing one of two games and possibly three soon, and while it does do a good job at connecting people who play that, it won't have the longevity that normal social networking systems do such as Facebook.

With that aside, the system ended up being used in two ways, either people started to just add as much people as possible similar to most people's usage of Facebook, or they used it for people that they are close to them such as family members, which is more aligned to Blizzard's original statement on the system. I believe in fact, one of the first things that the system notifies you of is that you should be sure that you trust the people that you add to Real ID, but even when it's used that way it's not reaching it's full potential that it could have had if it were simply again, a normal in-game friend's list with more advanced features.

Singilized Experiences - My first MMORPG main character (World of Warcraft - Stormwind and Deadmines)

Finally at last after a few days of being unable to write for personal reasons, I have part two of my first experiences playing an MMORPG seriously. If interested part one can be found here. With that said and without further ado, here's part two.

As World of Warcraft was my first MMORPG there were a lot of things that I now know are pretty standard fare for MMORPGs that I didn't know at the time, such as large captial cities where players could socialize at, and do other things that they wouldn't find in other places. In World of Warcraft's case, use the auction house, use the flight hub that connected to basically everywhere else, and it was also the main area where most people purchased extra skills for their character at, there were a few other class trainers but only the Captial cities had them in all together at once, in a easy location to get to. Of course to house all of that, the city is very big, and that was my first realization of when I stepped into Stormwind.

When I went onto the Stormwind bridge and I heard the music change from the normal ambiance to a very human-like heroic theme I liked it immensely, that coupled with walking through giant statues of historic lore characters who I didn't really know at the time but I found out more about later on, and who were also apparently in past Warcraft games that I've never played, was just an unbelievable experience. Another thing that probably helped that was that I really liked playing the humans in Warcraft 3 and the architecture of Stormwind City. While it obviously looked much more impressive than a Town Hall in WC3, it still had the same feeling of it, on a much larger scale. In any case however, after I stopped enjoying the scenery I pretty much immediately got lost. Despite that I still enjoyed wandering around the city to even just find out where the exit was and finding out the city had places like “The Park” where it was very nature oriented to accommodate the Night Elves, to the Dwarven District which was considerably darker than other parts of the city and of course, made for the Dwarves and Gnomes. I ended up spending most of my time at the dwarven district when I eventually became a Engineer and Miner later on. Eventually however I got used to the map, and the districts of the city to easily find out where I needed to go, but getting lost the first time and basically stumbling on unique parts of the area was still one of the most memorable experiences of World of Warcraft for me.

Back to the actual gameplay, after making my way out of Elwynn Forest and doing the end quests of Elwynn such as Hogger, and Princess, I went over to Westfall. Much like Elwynn I was quickly astounded by the landscape and how different it was compared to being in a forest, honestly I much prefer drier places in reality and in-game so I was much more drawn to Westfall than being in a forest, and it was a pleasant surprise for me. The not so pleasant parts of it came to me quickly as well however, in that Westfall's enemies seemed abnormally hard for me, even killing something at the same level as me usually involved me having to eat some food to recover. Looking back at it now, I can't remember the exact cause of my weakness other than I was using a shield and a 1 handed sword but even now thinking about it, I think the damage should have evened out that way. There were more than a few parts of Westfall that presented this problem, the ones that come to mind are the Harvest Reapers on most farmlands, the Boars that did a ton of damage upon a charge, and the Gnolls who by themselves, weren't that hard to kill, but usually they in close proximity to another Gnoll meaning engaging them usually resulted in a 1 against 2 or more fight quickly, not to mention they also used ranged attacks, making it even harder to get them in a position to kill easily. All of that however was nothing compared to yet another aspect of MMORPGs that was standard but I didn't know about yet.

That leads us to the Deadmines, one of the most famous instances in World of Warcraft was my, a lot like many other people's, first instance in the game. It was here that I also came to the realization that MMORPGs were not just action oriented and they had to have a full group composition as well as full group in the first place. I was really excited when I first came across the barnhouse that housed the deadmines and went in it somewhat to explore, when I got down into the mines part I really didn't think it was that bad after I was able to kill a nonelite miner, so I got my friends such as Vedelken, and the Paladin who liked the RP, and we tried it out. Evidently with no offense to them of course , none of us actually knew how play in a group based MMORPG scenario, as we tried to do it with just us 3 instead of a full five that's far from the real problems that occurred however.

Due to my lack of knowledge perhaps or the fact that the Warrior class quest wasn't very clear, I never actually went ahead and did the Warrior class quest, and because of that I never got defensive stance, I didn't even know it was possible to obtain at my level. That of course led to big problems, while I did use a shield, my only real threat generation was heroic strike, and with neither of my accomplices knowing how to play their class well either, it was very hard to take down even the first few enemies in Deadmines. We did manage however, and while it felt like a near impossible task I was glad that we did, it felt impossible enough for me to hope that the Deadmines wasn't very long, and when we did get to the first boss Rhak'zor he of course, destroyed us. All of that was very demoralizing because we literally spent hours getting to him only to find out that we couldn't beat him. We ended up stopping our incursion there for awhile until we were a few levels higher then we came back, I believe we also came back with a full group this time. I was surprised and happy to see how easier things were even though I was still the Warrior with a shield and without defensive stance but I still managed to hold aggro enough to keep them off people and for us to do our job. It took us a long time but we did manage to proceed deep into the instance which amazed me in not only how difficult it was but also in it's environments. I really enjoyed going into goblin shredder area and having to fight goblins that were considerably harder than the Defias bandits that we previously killed, and moving onto the boss itself which I was really scared of aggroing constantly while we pulled the enemies back. That of course led to the boss fight with Sneed who was a lot more intimidating in appearance than he was in combat, I was surprised to find out how easy he died, and I was also happy to be able to complete a quest I found in Stormwind, while it was out of the way, I thought it was neat being able to have a quest that most people wouldn't find unless they also went to the Dwarven District beforehand, which I know isn't that rare to do before Deadmines but I still felt that way about it.

In any case, after downing Sneed we went into the foundry which I loved simply for it's ramp, it was also the part where I realized a lot of wipes could happen very easily if noone did something about the goblins who summon additional golems. The trip went fairly uneventfully from then on until we got to the hanger area where Van Cleef was creating his ship. I generally like all parts where we fight on wooden docks in any games, so this part was especially fun for me, from being on the docks in the first place to having abit of trouble with Mister Smite who was my first glimpse of a Tauren in World of Warcraft, so seeing that was neat in that regard as well as him being a fun boss overall. All of that led to of course fighting on the ship itself, while the pulls were abit glitchy and we did wipe more than once because of pulling enemies that were out of our line of sight but still in range, namely Captain Greenskin's group. Speaking of his group, they were actually fairly difficult to take down because we had a lack of CC, lack of all CC infact except for a fear which I quickly learned was bad to do in instances, but we did it anyway for the sake of surviving. After taking care of him we finally got to Van Cleef himself, he wasn't so easy with his summoned guards that he brought in making our survivability and mana management difficult, I can't remember the specifics but we did end up killing him which led us to the first blue drop that I liked in all of the instance, that was the Cruel Barb, and while I didn't win the roll, it did inspire me to run VC again even more at higher levels just to dual wield Cruel Barbs, and it was also leagues ahead of any items that I saw so far.

In summary, while I did do a lot of “noobish” things while first starting out with World of Warcraft they made me a better player and definitely a more knowledgeable one. When I first started out I didn't even know terms such as CC, DPS, Tank even meant and like I mentioned I also didn't know about the defensive stance that a Warrior could obtain , I did however pick those up after the ordeal, and also did the quest for my defensive stance. So, while the entire experience was a challenge to overcome, it was a very fun and memorable one, and while I did forget the specifics of my first Deadmines run such as who did what or how many times we wiped (which was a lot so I'll settle for vague quantity), I'll never forget how it was my first instance run ever.

That'll sum up the main thing I did want to write about when I started thinking about my first experiences in World of Warcraft, there are quite a few more I could write about but I will also be spreading out my subjects for now. However, I will eventually write about more of my experiences like these, and I hope you'll look forward to them.

Singilized Experiences - My first MMORPG main character (World of Warcraft - Introduction)

I'll start off with some clarification on the title of this post, my first MMORPG was not actually World of Warcraft, instead I've played games such as Runescape, Everquest, and a PS2 version of Everquest before that, both of which I never really played a lot or enjoyed much at all. I played Runescape quite a bit but I never enjoyed it fully as I did with other games from the start, it was more like a time sink for me with some neat features; whereas Everquest's subscriptions never lasted for more than a month, because while I liked the idea, I just didn't enjoy playing the games themselves, and I was also very uncomfortable paying monthly for something that I didn't like completely. All of that turned me off from MMORPGs for awhile, at least until World of Warcraft released.

The first time I witnessed World of Warcraft was from watching a trailer that came with Warcraft 3, I was very excited for the game after that because I liked the idea of being down in the maps with units which made Warcraft more actionlike than being a RTS. When I first saw the trailer, Warcraft 3 : The Frozen Throne wasn't even out, meaning it was quite some time before I actually got my hands on the game. I didn't even know what kind of game World of Warcraft was going to be other than it didn't look like much of a RTS and with new types of gameplay plus Warcraft's lore, I knew for sure that I wanted to try it. I can't remember when but I did find out it was a MMORPG sometime, around the time when it started to near it's release date, and finally fast forwarding to it's launch, about a week after it finally released I went out and purchased it. I never knew I would be buying the longest lasting and one of the games that provided me with the most fun in my life, plus a whole new experience beyond anything that I could have imagined or expected.

I quickly went onto creating an account and setting up my subscription which wasn't as painful as it was for Everquest as I was much more optimistic for World of Warcraft than I ever was for any other game I've had to purchase something else for. After that I got started, for some reason I didn't really look at the races much and decided to go with Human, as I like fairly standard things and I didn't really want to be any of the races on the Horde. As much as I liked Thrall and the Orcs in general in WC3 when given the choice I usually pick the thing that's the most simple (at least in the past, I've changed abit since then) and Humans were definitely the most standard thing in the game, with Dwarves and Orcs being next. As for a class I personally like melee classes with minimal magical power but I still like having the magic element there instead of being a pure swordsman or something similar, so since I was on the Alliance I ended up choosing a Paladin. Since I played WC3 I knew that the Warcraft Paladins were fairly standard in fantasy lore, being protectors of people while using holy magic, however I was surprised immediately at how similar it was to controlling a Paladin hero character in WC3, from having only autoattacks to providing auras, and later on being able to turn invincible for a few seconds. Besides all of that it was also my first revelation that World of Warcraft was amazing, it was simply fun to play in the Warcraft universe while being basically one of the units that you would normally have controlled from a RTS perspective in previous games.

Despite the good start of a Paladin however, I was kind of turned off by the fact I wasn't doing as much damage as other classes, so I decided to recreate my character before too long. After deciding that I still wanted to be a melee character I decided to go with a Warrior because I felt like I didn't like the play style that the Rogue description said it to be, which is Stealthy, and I would rather rush into battle headfirst. Luckily for me, that's what the World of Warcraft Warrior is all about, I had a blast being able to charge into enemies and start fights that way instead of just running in. I also was glad to find out that I had actual attacks that I could press instead of just auto attacking, and later on, the thing that really solidified my decision to level my Warrior up was the fact that I saw dual wielding in the training menu when I got to Goldshire.

Going back a little bit, besides having a fun time playing my Warrior in general, I also really liked roaming around the environment in Northshire Abbey and doing various quests for the NPCs around there. Right from the first zone it really felt like being in the Warcraft universe even without the involvement of iconic characters like Thrall or Jania Proudmoore. In any case besides admiring the environment it was fun to explore the game in general, after I left the abbey I was greeted to the sight of dozens of players roaming around Goldshire, I minded my own business for the most part while looking for things like profession trainers, and trying to restock on supplies for going out into the wilderness, but watching a bunch of people grinding around the town was quite memorable.

Professions were somewhat of a iffy spot for me, I could never be happy with just two and I wanted to do everything, but at that moment started off with skinning because it felt more new than things like mining or herbalism, and I forgot the other profession I took but I believe it was leather working.

With that I set out to quest and quickly found out things were much more difficult out here than in the abbey, I remember struggling considerably actually forcing me to go to a armor and weapon vendor to purchase some of those, as a Warrior I did notice the difference in difficulty afterwards and it was much easier. Despite that when I had two or more enemies on me I usually would end up running away or dying and this point was especially true when I got over to the Murlocs who not only were hard to kill, but also fled too quickly for me to kill them before they got to another Murloc and started attacking me again. In the end though, I managed to complete my quest I also saw a island in the middle of the murloc area that I decided to check out, and I found Defias casters there. The casters were fairly easy to kill which was like a dream after taking on the Murlocs, so much that I ended up grinding the casters for some XP, and I later went back just to farm them some more, even now however I still don't know what the island is for, I believe I remember going there for a Rogue quest once.

Other than simply exploring the gameplay aspect of World of Warcraft, I delved into the social aspect as well. More than a few times I would be questing in the same area as someone else and they would ask me if I'd like to join up, for the sake of politeness I usually did accept their invitation and ended up having a fun time grouping with them. A few of the people that came to mind were Vedelken who was a Priest that I enjoyed talking to, a Mage who's name I've forgotten but she went onto leading one of the endgame guilds, and a Paladin who liked to RP for fun. While I didn't interact with the Mage much, I did quite abit of things with Vedelken and the Paladin, from questing to instances to even alittle bit of PvP. I'll go more into those events in a future post. In any case, there were more people who I grouped with to aid in questing such as someone who's name I forgot who I farmed Gnolls with for awhile as the Gnolls were hard on their own but they went down easily against both of us. A Dwarf Warrior who was fun to talk to, and others that unfortunately don't come to mind at the moment.

That about wraps up my experience from the first area of World of Warcraft for me, it was a fun experience that was mostly fun and some challenge, the real challenge came later on which I will post about when I went onto the next zone, went into the Dead Mines, and of course explored Stormwind City.

Singular Thoughts - Machinima

I'm going to try writing from the Blogger word processor instead of OpenOffice for once. In any case, I just wanted to say that and with that out of the way I recently visited Oxhorn's website who is a well known creator of World of Warcraft machinima and I realized I've done a lot of machinima watching in my life but mostly for World of Warcraft. Regardless of that, after thinking about that and my experience with machinima in general, I became curious and looked into it further, I discovered a few things with that curiosity. The term (machinima) itself (at least according to Wikipedia) comes from using "3D graphics rendering engines" to create a cinematic production. So to that end, pretty much everything related to video games that results in creating some sort of visual production can be technically considered a machinima, Wikipedia even lists Quake speed runs as a form of machinima, I guess what it comes down to is as long as it's more like a video than a game, it's considered a machinima, even a cut scene in a game would fall in that category in that case, unless it's an interactive cut scene anyway.



However at the same time machinima is generally more closely associated to user videos than it is to in game cut scenes, bringing it more close to fan fiction more than anything else (except it's a video of course). Despite that, machinima is still very popular, and while it takes quite a bit of practice and effort to truly become a expert at, it's requirements are probably the lowest in the field of computer video production making it somewhat easy to pick up and get started at.

From what I've learned about machinima even though I've never actually created one myself is that you need to first have a capturing software such as FRAPS, or wegame's client (which was suggested by Oxhorn in a tutorial video that he made and I even recorded one thing with it, however at the same time it also seemed to crash WoW constantly), after that is a engine or game to work with, as well as a way to import and tamper with the models, in WoW's case the game is WoW, and WoW model viewer would allow you to alter and edit models, you also need a movie editor like Windows Movie Maker or Adobe Creative Suite , and finally you need a way to mix and add sound effects. While all of that seems like a lot program-wise, if you're looking to make movies out of a game then it's much easier as the only external equipment it requires is a PC pretty much, unless you go the Adobe Creative Studios way, then that's also buying something that can be very pricey, but other than that all of the other programs can be downloaded from their home sites.



While I'm sure different people use tools differently, many people have gone into the machinima field and came out with at the very least a greater understanding of everything that goes on in making machinimas but some have also become fairly popular. A few of those teams or people are the Red vs Blue team that created the Blood Gultch Chronicles using Halo games, Oxhorn of course who created his own story universe using World of Warcraft, Myndflame who did the Illegal Danish series, and many others. So with that, I believe that machinima makers definitely have a big enough footprint to at least possibly become more of a widespread profession.



The main thing keeping most machinima makers from doing it professionally is probably their limit of license if they use a game to film their footage, while it definitely would get them popularity they are still within the agreement that they won't sell things created using the game's property unless they talk to a sales representative about it otherwise, or unless the game doesn't include that in it's signed agreements. As the agreement is pretty much part of all games, machinima makers don't really get to expand very far. However if they would be able to get the right to sell their works while still using a game's engine they probably could get very far and do well especially since many works of machinina makers are either very entertaining to watch, or expands on the game's world somehow, either way if the game is large and popular enough word of their works will probably get around quickly, and like a lot of the machinima creators I listed, they'll be able to have a good amount of fans and traffic.



So in the end, while I think the state of machinima is currently only as a hobby that people do if they want to, I believe that it has plenty of potential to either lead to more beneficial positions or to even possibly become a business in itself if companies become generous.

Singular Thoughts - World Firsts

A friend had brought up the idea of writing about World Firsts, and while I don't think I ever had any, and if I did I don't know about them, I generally think they are worthy of recognition and I guess to an extent, respect, but at the same time I don't think they should be something that people should go seek out. People generally do very unethical things when it comes to popularity, world firsts in games aren't really an exception either. For example, I know certain people in World of Warcraft have done things that exploits the game play mechanics to get things such as a abnormal amount of experience, or boosted arena ratings. I've also seen people win trading to get more honor when the honor system was the main source of endgame PvP rewards, while that doesn't exactly directly aim for a world first it still attempts to get things quicker than other people usually a abnormal means.

While some can argue that the same thing has been done on a smaller scale for things like achievements, doing things like finding out where the highest concentration of a single mob type to grind out to speed up the progress on the achievement, or even organizing ways for multiple people to get an achievement still stays within the boundries of the game by using game mechanics. Doing things such as killing bosses and having 1 person get all of the xp is not exactly normal because one person is getting credit for the work of a lot of people, while that's probably what they have in mind and that's what they're trying to aim for for one reason or another, the game was not designed with that kind of play intended, and so acts such as those fall into the category of unethical, or more commonly, cheating.

So while I don't mind world firsts in the grand scheme of things, I do mind that people would essentially “do anything” to get them, this usually puts the whole term on a bad reputation, and it isn't seen too positively by others for a number of reasons from not liking the way they possibly got it, to wishing they got it before them to begin with.

Singilized Experiences - First PvP Server

I have played World of Warcraft for quite awhile, while not as long as when it was in the beta, but only a few days after release. I originally started out on a server called Draenor as a Human Warrior named Sindri ,I had a fun time leveling him up to 60, I was on a normal server so primarily what I did at 60 was craft items, and run through a few endgame instances such as Strathlome, Lower Blackrock Spire, and Upper Blackrock Spire a few times.

I didn't really mind my experience there at all, in fact I made a few friends, and I had a guild that did endgame content somewhat regularly. When it wasn't doing anything, I had other things to do like try to get gold for a epic mount, or level up engineering because it seemed fun at the time. I did however leave it because of an unexpected influence in reality. I met someone at my school who I found out also played World of Warcraft, and because he was a much more standard gamer than I was, he already had PvP experience, and was on a PvP server already, but somehow he found out that Blizzard was opening a couple of new servers and included a few PvP ones in it, He probably looked at the World of Warcraft community site and it was listed there, but I didn't do that much either. I ended up deciding to go with him over to a PvP server that he had picked, it was called Firetree, from there I found out how vastly different a PvP server is from a normal server.

The first thing that was different for me was picking a character to play, I saw a few Horde characters while I was on Sindri, I was intrigued by the Orcs mainly after I saw their dance and I thought it was funny and neat. Despite that, I first wanted to try out a “holy” class of which only Trolls, and Undead were able to choose, Undead didn't really appeal to me, so I went with a Troll Priest. That didn't last very long in-fact I don't even remember his name. I ended up only getting to about Sen'jin village before deciding that I really didn't like not being able to do as much damage in favor of healing; so, back to the character creation screen I went. After thinking for awhile, and deciding that since I was on the Horde, I might as well play the Horde specific class, very easily directing me to Shaman.

I honestly knew nothing about the Shaman other than it was Horde only when I first started out, luckily for me I was very pleasantly surprised with it. Right off the bat, I enjoyed small things like the fact that Rockbiter was a weapon enhancement even though I spent most of my time casting Lightning Bolt, and that Earth Shock was a instant cast. I had experience interrupting spells from being on my Warrior before, but I much preferred Earth Shock even though I remember it's range being fairly short, I think I just preferred it because it looked a lot better than pummel, so I ended up really enjoying a Shaman for their interrupting abilities as well. All of this made leveling very fun, along with the fact that all of the quests and areas were completely new to me, it was somewhat confusing to get used too especially with how much traveling around there seemed to be as opposed to being on the Alliance, but at the same time I found out that many things were more confined than Alliance zones, the lack of any sort of random elites or high level things such as the dust devils in Westfall was also a plus.

The main PvP server experience came to me later on, it was also the first time I met up with my RL friend. In Ashenvale, when I was about the right level for it, I went over to it to quest, I originally was avoiding it because it was the first true contested zone that I knew of other than Stone Talon Mountains where I didn't really see any Alliance at all. I wanted to not be under leveled if I had to fight but as I was running out of quests I ended up going to Ashenvale anyway. While I was on my way to do some quests, I ended up getting a message from my friend telling me that there was a big fight on the road, so I decided to go over there, and see what was happening. I remember the numbers on both sides being fairly equal and the horde pushing forward by the time I got there, I don't entirely remember how big the battle was but it wasn't more than 10 people on each side give or take. I joined the fray and decided to see what I could do, I can't remember the exact things I did, but I do remember helping route the Alliance and killing all of them before they got away, I also remember me and my RL friend survived, and I healed him after the battle. Looking back on it now, I believe we won because for the most part we out leveled the Alliance fighters, and my friend's rogue was about 5 or so levels higher than the average for Ashenvale. In any case, after the battle my friend decided to log for the night, and I went on my way questing, I remember getting into a few more fights with the Alliance while I was questing but nothing that was too bad, I never went looking for fights, but instead I just attacked any Alliance I saw while moving from one area to another. The only real problem I remember is when a few high level Alliance came to the Splintertree Outpost, I can't really remember what I did in that situation but I do remember running into the tunnel and hiding, I forget if I was ever found and killed.

From then on into the higher levels it continued pretty much the same, my friend stopped coming online, and he moved away in RL so I was pretty much on my own but it wasn't so bad. I was much more confident in my PvP abilities after Ashenvale, but for the most part I don't really remember being bothered too much in zones such as Azshara, Desolace, and even in the Plaguelands, I believe I might have skipped Strangle Thorn Vale because I was more interested in leveling rather than dealing with Horde/Alliance hit squads, and when I was in STV on Draenor I really didn't like the quests there at all save for the Naga Explorer quest, I mainly liked grinding them because they were fun to kill, plus they were a good source of clams.

I kept on enjoying seeing my Shaman progress especially past level 20 when I got my Ghost Wolf, I think since I was cheap I ended up using that all the way to level 60ish, I do remember I bought a mount sometime around then though. Besides for convenience sake, being a Shaman was just a joy for me to play because I liked being able to do pretty much everything decently. I knew no single area was as good as another classes' and I had to make up for that in other areas, but I felt like I was able to pretty much adapt to nearly every situation. Even at level 60 there were hardly any situations I couldn't find a way to get through. I also enjoyed providing buffs to party members, as a Warrior I had short duration buffs like Battle Shout, but it felt like I had a much bigger impact on others with totems that lasted longer and especially that they had unique and fun effects like putting Windfury or Flametongue on someone's weapons, and being able to share the excitement of Windfury to others was always a fun thing to do.

Despite all of that, my experiences at level 60 ended up being the most fun. I met a lot of different people who I would consider friends but I unfortunately went away from, and didn't keep in contact with them. Evenso I still have nice memories of the people I met such as Smashem, and his friends who were nice enough to let me join their Scholomance group, where I ended up having a lot of fun with them, I also spent a lot of time with them afterwards doing more instances, Skitzors and his friends who broke away from Maelstrom and ended up making a PuG MC raid that resulted in forming Fallen Requiem that I was a part of, and we ended up progressing far, I didn't really talk to Skitzors much but he was friendly enough, and of course many people of Fallen Requiem that I didn't know before the guild was formed, but I enjoyed talking to them.

On the PvP side of things I met a bit more “focused” people who weren't fantastic and not exactly the most friendly people around, but for the most part I PvP'd alone unless I was invited into a group which wasn't too often. I was super excited when the honor system was implemented and I had pretty good gear by then even though this was way before I was going to Onyxia's Lair and Molten Core, I think the most the server had progressed at the time before the formation of Fallen Requiem was Lord Kazaak, and Azureagos. In any case, with a bunch of dungeon items that I put together, as well as a spec that a lot of people would consider weird now days (doesn't go all the way to the end talent, but still concentrates on enhancement for things like flurry and weapon enhancements, but also specs into shocks, and finally it goes into resto for nature's swiftness to get fast emergency heals off) ,and finally with a shield and 1h, I went out looking to get into some PvP battles. At first since I knew Hillsbrad was the center of it all I decided to try there for a few days and while it was pretty fun, especially the hectic moments of the Horde being pushed back and me retreating somewhere to regen my health, or when we managed to push the Alliance back to Southshore or us back to Terran Mill, I found out more about how the honor system worked and with more people, less honor was actually being gained, so I went off on my own. I decided to go ganking essentially, and I searched for Alliance to kill in places like Eastern Plaguelands, Winterspring, Burning Steppes, and so on, it wasn't exactly the most ethical thing to do now that I think about it since it's essentially using people to farm points, but I didn't think that way at the time. However, a lot of the people I found weren't people that were just questing, while I did get some of those now and then, I ended up killing other PvPers, and gold farmers the most, I never camped anyone because even then I hated camping and felt like that was way too much griefing unless they deserved it for one reason or another, and so a lot of the time I ended up just searching, and finding nothing. To that end, being in Hillsbrad 24/7 might have been a better way to go, but I was pretty dedicated to hunting people solo, and I killed about 50-100 people regularly on a daily basis sometimes more. While it wasn't the funnest thing to do, it did pay off in the end I think, as I at one point had the highest PvP rank on the server which was Lieutenant General at the time, and I got my epic mount that way. I was regularly ranked in the top 10 for honor for the week, but I slowed down and eventually wanted to do other things.

I forget the exact reason why, but I ended up leaving Firetree even though I had tons of things going on for me there, and rerolled as a Human Mage on a new server, I think it was out of my want to try to get Grand Marshal before anyone else did, and for some reason I felt like on a new server that would give me a easier chance, I don't exactly remember my logic at the time. What I do know is that I ended up regretting it, and disliking the PvP system for it, I also really didn't like being a mage and that further turned me off, the last straw was that I joined a raiding guild that couldn't be more different than the one I had on Firetree, it was a lot more typical, and the members did things that I really didn't like often, lastly it wasn't serious enough (but it was still the most progressed guild on the server) to actually make any real progress so I got fed up which ended my WoW experiences, at least for awhile.

While none of my PvP server experiences were quite as fun after the first one, I was lucky enough to find one that was very similar to it later on in The Venture Co. so things did turn around eventually. In any case however, I'll never forget Firetree, and while I do miss it when I compare it most of the PvP severs I've been on, if I didn't leave it I possibly wouldn't have ever gone to The Venture Co. and while that itself wasn't the most uplifting server ever, it did have more than enough unique people and experiences in it that I wouldn't want anything any other way.

Singilized Experiences - Server Firsts

One very controversial aspect that's most often associated with MMORPGs but still overshadowed enough to prevent any permanent damage are “Server Firsts”. They usually involve doing something that a lot of people do, before anyone else on the server does it. Despite the accomplishment, server firsts usually are not looked upon very favorably by the majority for a few reasons differing from person to person. One is the obvious bragging rights that having done the server first and having proof of it, would give a person. The other is that in the end, except for the satisfaction of accomplishing a server first, the person who accomplished this doesn't end up with anything else, they come to the exact same spot that everyone else will eventually get to, just having gotten there faster. Because of how small of a impact server firsts serve for the entire game as a whole, usually they aren't much of a big deal, that is until the game itself decides to make it a bigger one, this leads us to World of Warcraft, and also where I have my first hand experience with server firsts.

In WoW, server firsts take a more visible form in Feats of Strength achievements. Since the achievement system released there are Server First achievements that reward the player for doing just that. While it was definitely possible to achieve a server first before the system was ever released, it was never actually given any sort of acknowledgment except through third party means by taking a screen shot, or something similar. Implementing them as achievements however has resulted in them becoming very widely known within the WoW community, and thus resulting in server firsts having a bigger foot print than it had before. This isn't exactly to the game's advantage, as for some people who have previously played the game for fun, if they had a desire to get attempt the server firsts themselves, all of that fun switches over to efforts to prepare, and achieve the server first. At the same time, server firsts are usually set in stone within 40 hours of a expansion going live, again since it's not possible for most people to do something about them, and even the people that do them themselves will move on and enjoy the game as it was before, it does still have it's lasting impacts.

I personally have been one of the people who attempted to get a Realm First level 85 achievement at the release of Cataclysm. This was actually coincidental, as the original goal in mind was to simply level to 85 within a day so that the people with time restrictions placed on by one reason or another in real life would be able to experience the end game content as soon as possible rather than spending excess time leveling.

The group we took was composed of a few guild mates, Cortegos (Warrior Tank), Ampedup (Warlock), Me/Kreszentia (Paladin Healer), Presitus (Shadow Priest) , and my girlfriend, Belahn (Hunter). To prepare ahead of time we didn't really do as much as other people with similar goals have done. I spent the day preparing 25 quests to turn in because I heard of it, as much as I felt like that was cheating, it was to our advantage so, so be it. Cortegos spent the day slept in preparation for staying up all night, I'm not entirely sure what Ampedup and Presitus did, but I believe Ampedup was at least at work because I remember him coming on a few minutes late, and finally Belahn was at her last day of work before her vacation. All 5 of us had pretty much played through the entirety of Wrath of the Lich King, so at least I felt like I had enough of Northrend. Even so, doing the same quests again in Icecrown for the last time was pretty fun, maybe it wasn't the quests themselves but rather the situation I was in, but I enjoyed my time while being anxious. I had also prepared a lot of supplies, mainly flasks and healing potions since my characters had those professions, and it was the last day to really get some usage out of them before stronger versions were released. We were in a raiding guild, so we had plenty of supplies to use from the guild bank too if we wanted too, I ended up not taking any of those but I think we got permission to use a few fish feasts, and other kinds of buff foods. In any case, the day felt like it passed fairly quickly and before I knew it, I had all of my quests ready to turn in about an hour before midnight, so I spent the rest of the day doing last minute preparations.

Cortegos, and Belahn were the first ones to be on, our plan was to instance grind essentially off the information that Ampedup had heard from a blue post stating that xp from instance grinding, and questing should be almost the same. We planned our group ahead of time, for all of the members except for Presitus, who as rude as it is to say, we took because he was on (although I wouldn't really say any bad things about him, even though I'm pretty much a loner, and I hardly talked to anyone besides Belahn, Presitus was funny, and fun to be around) and we never actually added a 5^th member to our group ahead of time. Finally, by the time it was actually midnight everyone was on and ready to go, Cortegos, Ampedup, Belahnrelogging, we quickly did that.

Getting back on the server proved to be our first ordeal, one that we couldn't really do anything about but hope that it was working. I presume because of the server traffic, everyone was having a hard time getting back onto their characters. I ended up being the first one in the group to be on (which I thought was funny since I have the slowest Internet connection amongst the group), there were only a few people in the guild who got in too, although we weren't a huge guild, so it's not much of a representation of the server. I quickly turned in my quests, and realized I didn't get any xp for them, when I told the others they were considerably and vocally bummed out about that. I felt somewhat of a relief though, since I didn't like it much to begin with, only a few minutes later everyone was able to get on, and after turning in our quests simply because they started to give us guild reputation, we headed off to start the grinding.

Our plan was to start in Black Rock Caverns and grind to 81 then check out Throne of the Tides' XP gain. Ff it wasn't high enough then we would hearth back to BRC, and then at 82 we would see what it was like at Vortex Pinnacle. From then on we would either quest or grind Grim Batol.

We had some experience from being in the Cataclysm beta where we were able to pretty much see everything the bosses were capable of and develop strategies for them. A few things were changed from beta to live as we found out, and we forgot a few other things but the experience in general was pretty much spot on for what we prepared for. In BRC we were able to quickly burn through all of the trash mobs which felt surprising to me, I had put a few points into talents that would let me contribute to DPS to speed up the process. The first boss didn't present any significant problems, and with how weak the chains were, I was able to break them on my own letting the others focus on the boss, because we had a gear advantage, we were able to kill the boss sometimes before he even did his ability that he casts after he chains the party together, I can't remember the name of the ability at the moment. As with anything new, we were surprised to see some good items drop from the boss that we could use, but we still over leveled the items, while it was nice, we didn't really take anything in BRC until later. After some trash we reached the second boss which I especially enjoyed because she couldn't hurt our tank at all, and since we had Ampedup, and Belahn handle the beams, I was pretty much regulated to doing nothing and standing there; the experience we've gotten from fighting her on the beta proved very valuable here since without it we probably would have wiped. The third boss was one that we forgot the strategy to for a attempt but we figured it out quickly. The fourth which we decided to do for fun was easy because she was essentially just a hard hitting boss with fears, and a little bit of CC management. Finally the last boss was probably a lot more stressful for the ranged DPS since they had to kite for the first time in the instance, but again all I did was pretty much get rid of snares, and heal the tank, and sometimes the kiter.

We were surprised at how much xp we got from the instance and it didn't take much convincing for us to keep doing that over and over again, even on level 81 because we deducted that it would take too long to go to Throne of the Tides. It was around this time where we realized we were the highest levels on the server, and no one was close to us, and that was when we decided to try to go for the server firsts . It sped up our runs considerably, while it was pretty much the same thing over and over again, it was enjoyable to me because it was like being in a race constantly. We also had a few malfunctions to make the instance more interesting, although somewhat time costly; the first one was when the second boss' mechanic didn't work, and he constantly did fire novas when he wasn't near the fire, resulting in him quickly killing all of us, despite my best attempts to heal through it, although if they didn't make any changes to healing mechanics I probably could have. The next we found is going back a bit, somehow the others in the group found out that the xp for quests wasn't working properly or was disabled, and quests done in older areas were working properly now, this was way after we turned in our quests though. Finally we had a few of the mobs that a friendly NPC was suppose to kill come after me, resulting in me dying.

Despite all of that, by the time we reached level 82 we were excited to move onto VP and try it out. I got somewhat confused on the way over there, since I couldn't find the entrance, but other than that it was exciting to transfer to a new area after hours, and see a little bit of the questing zones that we were skipping. The first thing I noticed in VP was that the trash was considerably harder to kill, and did more damage, it wasn't anything too uncontrollable but it definitely woke me up. I had also never done VP before the live release of Cata, but a few of the others had. The first boss I thought was neat because of the strategy we did, even though I was somewhat bewildered by having tornadoes go into us, and not being able to see my character, but by then I played WoW enough to know that most of the time you can't see your character. The second boss was kind of troublesome for me because I couldn't get a hang of avoiding the tornadoes, but luckily every time I got caught in one, I had everyone already topped off. I also was very confused about how to recognize “which way the wind was blowing”, in-fact all I did for that part for every time I fought the boss again was just move around until my buff changes into the “good” one, and I was happy every time I was lucky enough to still be standing in a good one after the winds changed. On the way to the final boss was probably the most interesting and frantic part of the entire instance, to survive the astral stars (which we accidentally pulled when we weren't ready and while Cortegos was explaining how the stars worked) I was pretty much forced to hitting my fast and strong heal until all of them were dead, when I figured that out I was able to stabilize everyone's health rather than trying to conserve mana and leave everyone in a pretty bad situation, when I tried that it ended up with a few people dead, actually I think everyone died except for me and Belahn. Finally, the final boss wasn't too difficult, on more than one occasion we did overestimate how much protection the lightning triangle makes, resulting in a death but all in all, it wasn't that bad.

Around this time however it was when real life interfered with our progress, a few people had some sudden things that they had to take care of and we were forced to resort to questing for a bit, this is the part that ultimately put things not in our favor however, as questing with a large group was a lot slower than we predicted, and at the very least, it was much slower and less efficient than instance grinding. We went over to Deepholm, and did a few areas of quests while we waited for everyone to come back, we had most of the group together except for one person, but then even still questing was rather slow, and not the high point. On the other hand as planned, there wasn't any horde resistance other than maybe 3 people, and we still were pretty much ahead of the entire server except for a few other people in other raiding guilds. I also had some RL chores to take care of at this time that I did quickly, so we decided to take a short break while I did that.

Eventually after about 2-3 hours of questing, the entire group was back together, and we started the instance grinding up again, but at this point we were behind others, so we tried hard to catch up, but the mood was generally disheartened. I personally didn't mind so much because we were still on track with our goal of getting to level 85 quickly, I think about 10 hours or so had passed by then, and people were getting drowsy, especially since most of the group had been up the entire day before, and were working. It was around this time after a few more runs that Presitus decided to drop out because he was too tired, since we had a few guild members on who at least logged on to see what the release of Cata was like, if not level like us for a little bit, we ended up bringing in Marrak (Shadow Priest again) since he got to the start of our level by questing, and he wanted to come. With having a new person around, it was fun to show him around the instance, we were able to continue on our way to level 83, at this point we tried to go to Lost City of Tol'vir but it proved too tough for us with most of the enemies being in the orange level, and doing too much damage for me to heal through reliably, especially the second to last boss. It was also at this point where I noticed the Cata mode of mana management coming into place, it was very hard to get used too, and it didn't help much when I needed to use strong healing spells. From then on we went back to VP and grinded a few more rounds, but it was also at this point that we were noticing the impacts of being behind and this caused Ampedup to want to drop out. Since Belahn and I were still on track with the other people on the server for the highest level Hunter and Paladins the group as a whole decided to stop instance grinding and switch to questing in small groups while Ampedup went to bed, since it was possibly a lot faster that way, and decided that that questing in a large was too much of a time hindrance.

From then on it was just me and Bel, and we quickly noticed how fast the xp gain was, also how interesting the quests were. I didn't really read much of the quest descriptions for time reasons, but it was still fun to be involved through cut scenes, and the sort. We quested at a good rate, and got 84 a little behind the people who were ahead of us. We hardly had any horde problems still, the only ones that we did we were able to take care of easily. A lot of the quests were also super easy to get through until ones that involved being in a tomb with Harrison Jones, since there were other Alliance there as well it took more than a likable amount of time to complete the quests since they also had a slow spawn rate, I was almost considering moving to a completely different area. In the end, we did just do that however, as we were getting to the point where quests weren't numerous, and since everyone else was 84 went to Twilight Highlands, we decided that's our next stop.

Getting vendor trash was definitely more noticeable as we quested, but we had plenty of ways to quickly sell to move on without having to take a selling break at a town. Twilight Highlands was quite an experience for me, as it was probably the zone I was looking forward too the most as well mainly because of Grim Batol, I didn't really look up much information about Cata other than playing on the beta, and the zone wasn't open when I was over there anyway. We found maybe more less group friendly quests in TH however, most notably the ones in Thundermar that involved getting beer, and foodstuffs, it was also slow enough to make the drowsiness for both of us start to feel evident. We also saw quite a bit of yelling in the zone chat from the new Ring of Blood, The Crucible of Carnage, it was also very tempting to try to get a group for it, but we decided against it.

Unfortunately it was around this time, and ourselves being about 40% into level 85 when we saw the realm announcement for someone getting the Realm First Paladin go off, while I was little bit bummed because of it, I didn't mind it in the end, and kept on going. The Hunter Realm First however went to someone that we didn't really expect since we used /who to keep track of people, and that didn't account for the Horde side, we didn't think the Horde was much of a threat to our achievement anyway. At about 70%ish if I remember right, another Hunter got the first level 85 achievement, we both didn't get our achievements but we wanted to finish off our hard work; around 20 hours or so had passed by then, so we were both very tired, but luckily for us, the quests started to get more exciting too, we ended up getting our level 85 achievement with another achievement and I very well remember it being in the mouth of a old god. Needless to say, after that we got some praise from the few people who were still online, and then we quickly went to sleep.

Normally that would be enough of experience to end my want for a Server First but I kept on thinking about them, and I decided on the next day that I would spend the entire day getting my professions up to 525, I was a Jewelcrafter and a miner. Belahn decided to work on professions as well, so we ended up farming, I did some research online from beta testers and found out that Deepholm was the best place to get ore. First though, I had to get to a point where I could mine Elementium, so I circled around Hyjal for a few hours, and eventually reached the skill level where I could move on, I was also annoyed at mining by the time I got there since everyone was in the zone, and it was hard to find ore anywhere because of that. The mining experience in Deepholm on the other hand made any annoyance fade away, I literally in all of my time with WoW have never seen ore so close together as it was in Deepholm, it made getting ore super easy, but at the same time the difficulty of getting 525 Jewelcrafting made that balance out. I did other things while mining, mainly going back to Stormwind to prospect, and do a few of the higher level instances with my guild, but even then I brought tons of ore to the instance to prospect while waiting around.

When I cut gems, I had tons of them, and I was happy to put them into the guild bank for others to use, especially since with all of the gems I ended up cutting. I was even, able to fill up an entire tab with nothing but things I made, I even moved a few of the WOTLK gems to a bank alt to put back later. It was nice and enjoyable to get to around 520 since I like making things in bulk, and prospecting ore by the dozens was fun too, past 520 however was a different story. I was forced to make rings out of a specific gem, which by itself isn't very hard, however it was a green leveled recipe with a very low chance to raise it up, I believe I spent most of my ore working on that, I even asked Cortegos who was also mining to lend me a few ores which he did so I could have another chance at leveling up before I headed back out. Eventually after a long time I did get 525 but one thing that I did consider and I thought it would bypass was that I was a Draenei, with a 5 JCing bonus which allowed me to get to 525 literally, but not technically resulting in it not registering as a server first so I thought someone got it before me. I did realize that I also didn't get the achievement for reaching 525 with 2 professions, so that gave me hope, and I decided to save my jewel crafting tokens to get a recipe that would let me get to the actual 525.

The recipe in question was a meta gem that required a transmute, I decided to make 50, I would ideally only need 5 but since it was a yellow leveled recipe I didn't want to take any chances. Since making a uncut meta gem required one of each green quality gem, I went out again and mined tons of ore to get 50 of each, one thing I didn't consider however is that it made more than one, and the alchemist I had made it, Ampedup, was a transmutation master, so I got a ton of extras from him. I also had a long talk with others about which meta gem I should get first, since I was also the first one in the guild that was capable of it, and wanted to make one that was helpful. I decided on a tanking one that reduced magical damage (I believe it was stamina, and magic reflect specifically).

Eventually it was the time when the daily would reset, I would then quickly complete it, and then get my skill level to 530 (or 525 normally). Belahn stayed with me, and we waited with a bunch of gems. I was super anxious for the dailies to reset since it was possible that no one else got the server first as I never saw the notification come up. When it was time the JC quest was something that I didn't plan ahead for, I kept a bunch of the green quality gems, except for night stone, and of course to my horror it was one that required night stones, I currently only had 2, and I needed 3. We quickly went to the auction house and bought a ton of ore, and prospected it. Luckily I got a night stone fairly quickly, I turned it in and started to cut the meta gems. As anticlimactic as the action in general was, it felt like it took forever to cut the gems, and even longer when I was at 529. Finally at 530, I got the achievement for getting both skills to 525, and the realm first. I was extremely happy to be able to get an achievement like that, especially because I felt like all of the crafting achievements should have been done by then, but even still I didn't care at that time since I was super glad and relieved. I also received a ton of PMs from people saying congratulations , I was happy and surprised for that too, so I thanked all of them.

In the end, while all of that was a ton of work, from leveling as fast as possible at the start of Cata to farming thousands of ore (I believe by the time I got to 530 I had cut nearly 4000 ores, mostly Elementium) I think it was a fun experience but tiring experience, being with friends was a big part of it, and actually having a chance at the achievement was another. It is also a completely different mindset than just leveling, it almost completely replaces the normal procedure of leveling with being a frantic race. So in the end, I personally don't believe server firsts are much to brag about, but then again, I don't think anything is; I do however, think while Server Firsts do lead to competition, and competition leads to unordinary things, sometimes often unethical ones, Server Firsts in general ,left alone with hardly any planning ahead of time are a unintentional incentive for a unusual and exciting type of fun, and at least a rare experience.

After notes : The spawn rate of the ore deposits in Deepholm have significantly decreased since the release of Cata.