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feature :: world of warcraft neverending review
World of Warcraft Neverending Review
Introduction : PART 1 ( Page 1 : Page 2 : Page 3 : Page 4 ) PART 2 ( Page 1 : Page 2 : Page 3 : Page 4 )
At this initial stage of the game there is a good flow of quests that are connected to a greater story for your character. I'm not up to date on my Warcraft lore however, and can't say for certain how much of it, if any, fits in with the Warcraft 3 game. Either way, it felt like there was one MAJOR quest I was pursuing, as I was taking more minor quests around me in order to level my character up and get access to more weapons, armour and skills. Levelling up never felt like a chore, and to be honest, didn't take that long. I was at level 9 before I knew it, even though I had been playing for a few days (not solidly, I do have another life to live), the hours didn't feel like they went for very long.
This initial process was a steep learning curve for me. There are a lot of things that aren't mentioned in the manual, or if they are, I must have missed them. For example, there are a few quests that require you to kill some creature and return with the item it possessed. Since there are a lot of people doing the same quest, you would eventually find the creature, only to find multiple elves standing around waiting for it to re-spawn so they could kill it themselves and collect the item.
This was really frustrating for awhile, until a higher level character introduced me to the concept of grouping, which I was not familiar with yet. Basically, he invited me to join his group (which consisted of just me and him), and since we shared the same mission, when either of us killed the creature and collected the item, we both received it, therefore allowing us to both complete the mission as a team. Very nice.
At level 10, and after a lot of quests, I finally reached Darnassus, the largest Night Elf city, which continued the sweeping grand scale of the level design. There was a huge guardian creature out the front which I was well impressed with, and it was here that I learnt two more important and valuable things through the major quest. After travelling to an area called Nighthaven, which was the first time I had seen somewhere that was radically different in look and feel, I jumped through a lot of hoops and finally learnt the ability to shapeshift into a bear. Which was very exciting and cool. The other thing I learnt was in regards to the main modes of transportation to travel across long distances. From Darnassus to the mainland, I could either take a ship or fly a griffon. The first time I took a ship because the griffon seemed expensive, but to get back I chose the griffon, and was very impressed that there were no transition graphics, no loading screens, but a seamless and flawless flight from one area to the other.
It was also at this stage that I met and spoke to one of the elves on the ship about the bracketed text underneath their name. He said it was his guild that he was in, and he then proceeded to add me to it. I had no idea what this meant, other then the fact that there now appeared to be a guild specific chat taking place in my chat box now, indicated by the green. It was friendly talk, although not many people seemed that interested in a low level night elf druid, which is fair enough, since I mostly just made puns of things other people were saying.
I reached Auberdine, and although there were many specific quests that my character should have taken, I was keen to meet up with Matt (Whitegold) who had chosen to play as a Human Warrior, and was making his way towards an area that was closer to where I was. I caught a ship over to the eastern side of the map, and ran for a very long way to meet map in the grand City of Ironforge. There was so many changing lands that I passed through it was hard to take it all in. The other thing was I began to see more and more of the other Alliance races, especially humans. I felt almost out of place being a low level night elf in some of the more human dominated areas.
After much dancing and other stupid emotes, Matt and I ventured out and decided to try and complete some quests together. We took an underground train system (another cool form of transportation) to Stormwind City, another major stronghold. Matt was already familiar with the area, and led the way to Eweyn Forrest, where we proceeded to kill monsters and the occasional rabbit. In the town of Goldshire, we both learnt about the Player vs Player aspect of World of Warcraft. Since the server we were on was not PvP by default, you either had to turn your PvP status to 'on', or you could pick duels with random people. These duels actually had no consequences, nor did they keep any sort of score, but it was a good idea of what potential PvP battles would entail in the future.
This initial process was a steep learning curve for me. There are a lot of things that aren't mentioned in the manual, or if they are, I must have missed them. For example, there are a few quests that require you to kill some creature and return with the item it possessed. Since there are a lot of people doing the same quest, you would eventually find the creature, only to find multiple elves standing around waiting for it to re-spawn so they could kill it themselves and collect the item.
This was really frustrating for awhile, until a higher level character introduced me to the concept of grouping, which I was not familiar with yet. Basically, he invited me to join his group (which consisted of just me and him), and since we shared the same mission, when either of us killed the creature and collected the item, we both received it, therefore allowing us to both complete the mission as a team. Very nice.
At level 10, and after a lot of quests, I finally reached Darnassus, the largest Night Elf city, which continued the sweeping grand scale of the level design. There was a huge guardian creature out the front which I was well impressed with, and it was here that I learnt two more important and valuable things through the major quest. After travelling to an area called Nighthaven, which was the first time I had seen somewhere that was radically different in look and feel, I jumped through a lot of hoops and finally learnt the ability to shapeshift into a bear. Which was very exciting and cool. The other thing I learnt was in regards to the main modes of transportation to travel across long distances. From Darnassus to the mainland, I could either take a ship or fly a griffon. The first time I took a ship because the griffon seemed expensive, but to get back I chose the griffon, and was very impressed that there were no transition graphics, no loading screens, but a seamless and flawless flight from one area to the other.
It was also at this stage that I met and spoke to one of the elves on the ship about the bracketed text underneath their name. He said it was his guild that he was in, and he then proceeded to add me to it. I had no idea what this meant, other then the fact that there now appeared to be a guild specific chat taking place in my chat box now, indicated by the green. It was friendly talk, although not many people seemed that interested in a low level night elf druid, which is fair enough, since I mostly just made puns of things other people were saying.
I reached Auberdine, and although there were many specific quests that my character should have taken, I was keen to meet up with Matt (Whitegold) who had chosen to play as a Human Warrior, and was making his way towards an area that was closer to where I was. I caught a ship over to the eastern side of the map, and ran for a very long way to meet map in the grand City of Ironforge. There was so many changing lands that I passed through it was hard to take it all in. The other thing was I began to see more and more of the other Alliance races, especially humans. I felt almost out of place being a low level night elf in some of the more human dominated areas.
After much dancing and other stupid emotes, Matt and I ventured out and decided to try and complete some quests together. We took an underground train system (another cool form of transportation) to Stormwind City, another major stronghold. Matt was already familiar with the area, and led the way to Eweyn Forrest, where we proceeded to kill monsters and the occasional rabbit. In the town of Goldshire, we both learnt about the Player vs Player aspect of World of Warcraft. Since the server we were on was not PvP by default, you either had to turn your PvP status to 'on', or you could pick duels with random people. These duels actually had no consequences, nor did they keep any sort of score, but it was a good idea of what potential PvP battles would entail in the future.
