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World of Warcraft – A recall!

Today I am posting a FollowUp on Rosiv’s blog, where he wrote about his
experience. The reason why? because I started playing WoW thru him. Funny
Story anyways. Up to date I was not that keen on playing MMORPGs and
mostly played games such as SimCity 4, Diablo 2 and Command&Conquer.

Today I am playing these titles, too but additionally there’s WoW and also Eve Online. Where as Eve Online is not that much of a MMORPG but rather a giant space-oriented multiplayer mass online game. So why this article on WoW anyways?

Well, as I initially wrote, Rosiv has given you the possibility to experience the sight of a casual to experienced gamer who made a break with the game in between. I am playing WoW ever since then and here and there our views may be equal but they may also differ.

So whats equal. At first it’s to say that it makes fun playing with your friends together and fulfill quests that mostly consist of Slay monster XY, find place XY, talk to XY etc. Sounds boring but is by far not! Why? Because the scene changes with every quest and it gets (of course!) harder and harder the more advanced you are. Are the first 20 levels of your char like “Piece of cake”, the difficulty level will increase the further you advance. Of course your character will also advance, get better equipment, spells and stats and the like. When Rosiv stopped playing WoW, the game was version 2.1.3 (Burning Crusade), so it means, main game with first extension. Has the game been offering a wide variety of skilling your character freely, so have the new patches and addons smallen the variety by defining the main skill tree by now. The maximum level was Level 70 and instances such as Karazhan were top of the world (maybe Black temple, too). While Rosiv was away from Azeroth, I kept playing WoW in these years and two more enhancements have taken place. These are “Wrath of the Lich King”, what has expanded the world by Northrend and just in 2011, “Cataclysm”, a total change of the old world (Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor) as we know it from 2.1.3.

What else has changed in between? Of course the Level capping has been risen from 70 to 80 and then from 80 to 85, however the steep increase of stats and item levels in levels 80 to 85 were so hefty that Blizzard considered changing the itemlevels to more human values. If you imagine this: A good skilled L70 character was able to barely hit the 10K HP limit. A good skilled L80 char i9s able to hit the 20K HP border. A level 85 char nearly rises it’s HP poits 6 times, so it’s not uncommon to see a L85 character with about 120K HP, even more is possible (one L85 character, I saw had 165K HP!).

Another radical change was in the talenting and skills system. With Wrath of the Lich king, your character has been given chance to modify certain spells and skills with glyphs. The skills and skilltrees itself were unmodified till then. With the release of Cataclysm, the change was radical and your char is given choice of one main skill tree that corresponds to healing, Damage or Protection/Tank. The dual talent option allows you to cover two of these. The two-talent-system has also been introduced with WoTLK (a.k.a. Version 3). However specializing in one skilltree and leaving only a hand full of skill points for the other skill trees don’t give you much variation. So you might determine, that many characters look the same when you compare your stats with them. Most changes are given by items, Tier items and crafted items. Crafted items, that’s one thing that also came with WoTLK. Tired of having Stamina, Agility and Strength on a cloth ithem for your mage? Well, with crafting, you can randomly change the attributes to other things. Maybe you’re lucky and the crafting gives you Intelligence instead of Strength… at least, WoTLK has given WoW a massive overhaul. You notice this when you updated your game with addons to have a better Look’n’feel of the game. I will post pictures to show you the difference between the standard interface and my game interface. So don’t wonder if you see WoW in many flavors at different gamers. WoW has been, as far as I know, the first game that allowed you to script addons for the game engine and lets you change the interface to your needs. Pretty neat. Hardly any other game has allowed this kind of modifications. Only games after WoW have thought about such options. but none have been so extensively used as in WoW.

So, what’s my private intention to play WoW after such long time? At first I’d like to say that I played Diablo 2 with a good friend of mine for years and WoW took me whn Rosiv called to arms with a test time subscription for 10 days (and 20 levels). Soon being convinced that the game is fun, I decided to play WoW on a regular basis. That kept until today. The loss of Rosov as a good player bsides me was truly noticable, so it’s great to see my buddy back in Azeroth not only challenging the L85 hunt but more the challenge to reach different trophies and achievements. Most of the Achievements have been enrolled with WoTLK by the way…

Of course I did start on a diffeent realm with no PvP intention to level my char(s) without any disturbance of the other fraction (there are Humans and Orcs as you might know).
My first char gained L80 when Cataclysm has been released, so I could just start off running for L85 and reached the goal within a time of 3 weeks. Why? Because Cataclysm’s new worlds, Vashj’ir, Hyjal, Uldum, Shadow Highlands and Deepholm (hidden in the Maelstrom) have each a long questline that plays as if you were reading a book. The Quests more or less depend on each other, forming a giant puzzle and giving you much excitement when playing them all and in line. That’s why I played Cataclysm mostly at weekends when not disturbed and for at least 9 hours a day. Anyways it’s frightening how fast the time passes by when you play WoW… you start at noon and you find yourself still playing at midnight…

Vashj’ir, Hyjal, Deepholm, Uldum amd Twillight Highlands – click to enlarge

I prefer Uldum. I looks so mystique… Vashj’ir has also very mystique and unique elements that make you stay there for a long time ;)

This is a screenshot showing the new world of Mists of Pandaria:

You see… even after 7 years, the game still is trilling and the upcoming expansion, Myths of Pandaria, will change the game experience once again, as the talent system is overhauled again, the level cap is risen to Level 90 and the plans of Blizzard to do an item level cap in order to have the items not skyrocket to unbelievable high stat values.

I played a lot of hours together with Rosiv, I was annoyed by that pesky Allies that have slain my char and Rosiv’s of course several times, the instances were sometimes pesky also when we suffered a complete wipe (the complete playing group is readicated) but all in all it has ever been a great time. And I hope this will still be a great time!

From these 7 years I have been part of WoW for 4 years, quite a long time. And I didn’t regret buying that game nor spending about 13 dollars for 1 month of gaming time. You see: When you go out in the city and having some drink, you’re just drinking away one month of game time in an hour or so. Okay, don’t mess up with the good time being in a club anyways but I thinkm you get the idea. There are many other ways to waste money, this one is giving you something nice in return, even it’s only virtual…

Diablo 3 will be the next great time cosumer on my computer as it will for sure remember me to the opld times when vallZ and I spent hours playing all 5 acts though on the three difficulty levels and kill the uber-Monster Baal at the end. Those were also great times ;) – Hoping to live them once again!

Okay, now I will stop babbling about WoW, the past, the present and the future. Let’s just await what 2012 will bring us. But one thing is for sure: it will be a hot gaming year!

Anything I might have missed? Feel free to leave your comment on this!

Greets fly out to Rosiv! Thanks for the cool time together in Azeroth!


February 22, 2012 Netspark - 1594 posts - Member since: May 9th, 2011 2 Comments »

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2 Responses to this entry

  • Rosiv says:

    Sounds good, and I have to agree to your explanations. :)

    But the Screenshot with the nice Sunflare…. it’s Alterac. ^^
    The Mill and in Background the Stables, I guess……

    And we’ll play together again I promise. :)

    Posted on February 23rd, 2012 at 08:53 Reply | Quote
  • Avatar photo Netspark says:

    Makes sense… didn’t think of MoP either but what dazzles me is that Alterac does not contain much water directly at a mill… well… speculations anyway and as soon as our favourite game mags do provide us with reliable screenshots from MoP, I’ll post them here or in a new blog entry as well.

    Posted on February 23rd, 2012 at 11:04 Reply | Quote

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