To Die a Slow Death; The Catastrophe of Cataclysm. Part 4

Thanks for coming back for the forth and final part of my history with World of Warcraft. Sorry it took so long.

Brilance and Brallinoth soon followed the success of my Warlock hitting level 80. My Hunter, Drushi, was still stuck in the Outlands. Except for the Death Knight, these were the characters I made in my first month.

The grind continued, when I didn’t get bored with my Hunter I worked on getting him to 80. Every once in a while I would get tired of WoW and experimented with other MMORPG’s like Eve Online, Star Trek (which I couldn’t wait to play and sadly wasn’t pleased with), Lord of the Rings (another disappointment) and Rift. None of them compared to WoW, and I always came back.

One of the greatest things about World of Warcraft was the lore. In WoTLK the questing and dungeons were immersed in it. The normal quests of gathering supplies and odds and ends with a lousy drop rate were still there, but they were always the same quests, always the same dungeons. Even with the guild I joined things were going a little slow and it was beginning to deteriorate.

With all my travels to different realms, and my habit of starting new toons when I got bored, it wasn’t hard to notice that things changed. The beginning areas, where everyone went from level 1 to level 10, were easier. Someone took a nerf stick and started tapping at the Tree of WoW. It felt like they were making the whole game simpler for people that never played MMORPG’s, like me when I first started. As bad as I was at playing this game I really didn’t think it needed “fixing.” The idea of upgrades is to make the game better not easier, in my opinion anyway.

Just as I was getting fed up with the game, they decided to announce Cataclysm. In this expansion everything changed. The story goes that a giant dragon escaped imprisonment and scorched Azeroth, changing it forever. It also introduced two races you could now play, Goblins, for decades they worked with the Horde as indentured slaves. When they get the chance to make their own name in the world they take it. The other race was the Worgen, a werewolf type race that came out from the scourge attack on Gilneas. I wasn’t as excited about this as I was WoTLK. However – when I heard they were taking applications for Beta testers I jumped at the chance.

Two months before its release I was playing it. In less than a month I got a toon Worgen from level 1 to 60. Next was moving Artlu over to the beta server and I took him from 80 to 85. I enjoyed being a beta tester – where you give your thoughts on the quests and notify Blizzard of any bugs, and there were a lot of bugs. I was beginning to think that Blizzard was getting it right this time. The greatest new thing they added was the ability to fly on your own mount in Kalamador and the Eastern Kingdoms, where you leveled from 1 to 60. It came with a hefty price. The starting out quests in Gilneas were fun, a little easy to figure out. I was surprised at all the people in chat asking where everything was. I also started out a Gnome and worked my way out of the startup area. I played the beta for about a month before it was shut down to get ready for the release. As much as I disliked the first 80 to 81 leveling area I worked through it quickly, and the next and the one after that…and so on. There are a lot more breadcrumb quests now, taking you from one place to another, along with the usual delivery ones – now to a NPC standing ten feet away.

A few things that I loved about Cataclysm: the art work and the new profession of Archeology. Here was a gathering profession that no one could swoop in and grab from

you at the last minute. Speaking of the gathering professions, now you earned experience points from the herbs and ores you gathered. These are radical changes – since those are points you use in leveling you could go all the way to 85 just gathering things, but it wouldn’t be much good at getting reputation points and take way too long. There was that nerf stick again – it seemed to be doing more harm than good.

Soon after Cataclysm came out – I moved everyone I could to a different realm to meet a more mature guild – I got tired of the idiocies of the young.

I don’t know why, but after the grinding of dungeons and everything else looking for better gear, I have finally given up on this game. I will stay away until they put down the nerf stick – it isn’t making the game better. It feels like they took a huge nerf stick and beat the tree of WoW to a bunch of splinters.

I can still play till the middle of October, I don’t think I will. I did jump on to clean up a little; I’m down to two realms and eleven toons, including my originals. If I ever decide to go back, they will be there and I shall dust them off and try to remember how to play them.

But until then, rest in peace WoW, I’ll find something else to entertain me when I need a break from the real world.

To Die a Slow Death, Part 2 of my lives and deaths in Azeroth

Please refer to part one of this series on my experiences playing World of Warcraft .

As my first choice I made a Dwarf rogue named Brallinoth. Since I started out after the release of The Burning Crusade I had the possibility to take him as high as level seventy. Each level gave me new and wonderful talents like stealth, pick pocket, ambush…I could go on. Every five levels – if I remembered – I also had to change my armor into something a little more kill resistant. There were professions I tried out – finally settling on one much later in the game. I also discovered quickly that there are many ways to die; one included leaving my character in the middle of the wilderness so I could use the restroom. I looked for the pause button, but never found it. After I died about twenty times, before level fifteen, I decided to experiment with more races and classes. I had a lot to choose from in the beginning, human, Orc, Tauren, Troll, Undead, Draenei (which came out in Burning Crusade), Night Elf, Blood Elf (which also came out in BG), Gnome and eventually the Worgen and Goblins. I stayed in my comfort zone for a while and just made Dwarfs, only reaching out and doing a Human once or twice. When I made a warlock – the game changed for me, I wasn’t dying as much but I still had trouble finding my way around. I ended up trying out every class and every race – yet I played my hunter, rogue and warlock more than anything. The warlock was the most fun for me. All the other ones I eventually deleted or made into bankers.

My first toon, Brallinoth the Rouge

Being a little bit of loner I preferred to play by myself. If I ever needed help killing one particular Boss I would ask my stepdaughter to assist me – until I got my sister sucked into the game. She enjoyed it almost more than me, but she always wanted to group up and run through dungeons. I did a few, died a lot. I didn’t like dying.  Every so often we would get together and start a character, usually a Dwarf, from the very beginning and see how fast we could level them. Something always came up and we had to stop, leaving our toons safely at the closest Inn.

Since I didn’t like doing dungeons, or PvP Battlegrounds, my gear normally sucked and I had to rely on the Auction house, what I jokingly referred to as WoW-Bay. The prices were outrageous, but they had a point – if you really wanted a high end pair of boots you would buy it. Of course being so new to the game I was never sure about what gear would work best for me, but at least I didn’t insist on making it color coordinated like some new players. And if you didn’t like it you couldn’t take it to the closest Wow-Mart for a refund. Since the best stuff was also the most expensive you had to make the gold to spend it, that’s where the professions helped the most because you could make stuff one of your toons could utilize or just gather things (farming) and sell them on WoW-Bay. I hated to farm, preferring to level with quests. However, there was that dying issue again. Even adding player inspired add ons didn’t help that situation and I had over one hundred and twenty. (Add ons, not deaths. I think.)

Finally, after making and deleting over a hundred toons (it seemed like it) I sat down and decided to really concentrate on one and only one character, a Human warlock named Artlu. After searching around the internet for information I finally got an idea of how to play him so he wouldn’t die as much. It took a lot to kill him; luckily I could bring him back to life quickly with a spell if I remembered to stock up on the soul shards that made the spell work. I played him nonstop from level forty until he hit the cap at seventy. Next, I went back and leveled my original rouge from twenty-five, still having trouble learning how to stay alive. I thought it would be easier because I had just done these quests on Artlu. I was wrong. Before I had a chance to finish him up at level Seventy – Blizzard decided to add an expansion pack called Wrath of the Lich King. Now you could cap at level eighty – and you had a chance to make what they called a Hero Class toon, the Death Knight. You could only start one on a realm that had a level sixty (I may be wrong on that since they have made so many changes since then.) I grimaced a little at this news, dreading the climb of ten levels when I still had over twenty characters below level thirty.

On November 13^th, 2008 – I got off early from work (don’t ask me how) and became one of the 2.8 million people that bought The Wrath of the Lich King within the first 24 hours of its release. After fighting the packaging, almost as hard as some of the quests, I eagerly pulled the disc out and loaded it into my computer – ready to play NOW – but having to wait almost an hour before I could. Once it was loaded and working right, and all my add ons were disabled (they tend not to work after patches   which happened a lot), I made a Death Knight. I didn’t start on him right away – I had to wait for my sister.

Yeah – I had it bad. Now I knew I was officially addicted to WoW.

Come back tomorrow for the third and final part of To Die a slow Death – my life as a WoW head.

Hello, been a while – too long in fact.

My day started off fine, normal 3:15 wakeup call on the alarm, and then I spent a few hours flying around Azeroth with a snot nosed kid following me around. It is Orphan Week in Stormwind and I volunteered to take the little turd to Westfall and then to Ironforge. I couldn’t believe they opened up Old Ironforge to show off the frozen king beneath the throne. But the kid thought it was cool. After that a boat to Darnassus and then back to Stormwind for a kite and more fattening stuff. It’s bad enough I can’t stay away from it at home, but now it finds me out here as well. I can’t really say I was volunteering, since I got paid in good gold. If I have another chance, I need to get back to Shatterath City for the Darkmoon festival too. Last time I was there someone one was dancing around with a sword and almost split me open. Speaking of sword dances, I found a nice little trinket as I passed through the Badlands, a golden mug. When I rubbed it I saw an image, four dwarfs dancing around waving swords. It looked oddly familiar.

I took a second as I flew to glance around the real world. I noticed that one of my books got a review on Smashwords. It is about time! Thank you mystery reviewer for your honesty and reading my book. I never heard of John Norman or his Gor series of books until I looked him up on Wikapedia this morning, they look interesting, but honestly with all I have to do in Azeroth this week – I really don’t see me having the time to check them out.

Science Fiction is a strange genre to be sure, that is one reason it is called fiction. I’m sure you can compare every single book out there to someone else’s and to be honest I am flattered when my writing is compared to someone else’s. And one more thing, if you have seen as much horror and sci-fi as I have, something is bound to over flow. Trust me, if I would have read a canon of books (26 now I think) I would have remembered it.

Let me spend a few more hours in Azeroth….

March Madness and more

The door opens, creaking from rusted hinges and echoing through the empty blog. I stick my head out – waving shyly.

It’s been a few days since I made an appearance in here, but I will try to catch up.  

My books, Journey of Tara and The Set’la are now available on Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. (I did a search on Amazon for them, but couldn’t find them listed.) They are both in desperate need of reviews so please let me know how you like them. I have had very favorable comments on both of them so I am doing a March Madness sale.

Only on Smashwords until the 15^th of March, you can get Journey of Tara {use coupon code HH39D} and The Set’la {use coupon code QT34P} for the low, low price of a click. That would be FREE! Yeah, I don’t care about making money, I just love to write. I just don’t do it as much as I should.

All I do ask is that you leave a review once you have a chance to read it.

Trying to desperately fall asleep to Criminal Minds, the repeats on A & E I thought of a sequel to Journey of Tara and I honestly thought of getting up, kicking my stepson off my computer, so I could start it. As I look back, I should have done just that – because I have since forgotten. The wife was sound asleep anyway and I didn’t want to wake her up by moving.

I think I’ll be spending the day in Azeroth trying to remember it.

I recently received a copy of King Solomons Journey by Sammy Sutton I am greatly enjoying it so far. Thanks Sammy.

Recently I finished The Yaakmen of Tyrie by Mark Paul Jacobs. I gave it five stars. Here is my review:

In the northern most continent of a strange alien world live a group of humans. As they battle to survive during a rough winter that only seems to be getting tougher as time goes on, they discover clues to their past, clues pointing southward into a strange new territory. Quintar is a high ranking Yaakrider, Yaaks are huge beasts that seem to form an affinity with their riders, is thrust into politics unwillingly and after a winter of fighting against terrifying snow beasts begins a journey southward through uncharted territory filled with magnificent wonders, treacherous dangers, snobbish warlords and new technology, all to discover a lost secret about their unknown past.

In The Yaakman of Tyrie Mark Paul Jacobs has invented a fresh new world and a culture with very believable characters, intriguing subplots and a mystery that will have you guessing till the end. I would recommend this book to you if you enjoy science fiction adventures on strange new worlds

That’s it for me today – maybe.

Question, do you think that is too many hyperlinks? I like doing those.