A Confession and a Diary

[Anery]

So, I've been pretty fucking bored recently. No games on the horizon (apart from Witcher 3) which I want to play and no MMOs to grab my attention by not being shit or underpopulated or fucking hard to find dungeon groups or all three at once.

OK, so maybe I was wrong about that last one.
There is one MMO which held my attention for five years, and despite my insistence that I would never go back I have already installed and reactivated WarCrack.
I'm sorry, I know I have let you all down but I'm pretty sure some of you are totally not fucking surprised because I am a bit of a cupcake and a 5 year habit is hard to shake when there are no good drugs MMOs out there to take it's place.

Well, thats the confessional bit over with. I'm going to try and diarise (not a fucking word but it should be) my attempts to try and reintegrate with a game that has gone through some pretty big changes.

Day 1.
Patcher is still downloading but it says it has downloaded enough optimal content to be played, so fuck it here I go.
Took a few minutes of messing about with the interface before I worked out how to get to my old server, apparently the game HAS to offer to set you up on a server before you can get to the browser, hmm ok. I'm getting a picture of how much time I have spent in this game 8 characters on one server and another 10 spread over another 4 servers - eesh.
First stop is to check in on my beloved druid, he's a troll now as I tried to maximise damage output as much as possible and troll rage is castable in cat form - fuck me I was an obsessive twat.
I have no fucking clue what the key commands are, and the interface seems alien, I spend 10 minutes exploring all the buttons and looking at the talent tree. Ha! fucking talent tree, from what I can tell the whole thing has been streamlined into make a choice out of 3 options every 10 levels. I pick what I think is the best combination and have a root through my bags.
Well, I have no idea what the hell all that shit is in there, I close the bags pretty quickly again.
Found the character screen. Hey look, I have epics in here! worth fuck all now and all these items seem to have numbers against them...gear score?
Someone just offered me 50g to sign his guild charter, sure why not. After a bit of rooting I spot my current balance, 2.5k....errr....wait...thats probably not a lot nowadays right? inflation and all that jazz.
I have a look at my spell book and then my inscriptions before I give up and log off my druid. I need to rediscover the interface before I jump back into it.
I've decided to create a space goat on a different server, a paladin because I really don't want to have to think about the combat too much for the time being...now for a name...10 minutes later and I finally find a name that is not taken and I'm in the starting area.
Graphics are not brilliant and it shows the age, still not bad for a 7 year old game.
Question marks have been spotted and I am off questing, hurrah! beating up some moths and some other gribblies, key bindings need remapping, shame that the game doesn't have the copy key bindings ability that Rift does. Rift did a lot of things right but fuck was it grindy toward level cap. I've managed to reach the giddy heights of level three! seems abilities are learned automatically now as a new thing has appeared on my toolbar, adds more damage to my attacks if I use this thing - moar powah!
Time for work before I get too carried away.

I'll keep this updated for as long as I have the interst. I'll post server details etc if anybody want to join my retarded quest through time and space.

[Anery]

Day 2
Deciding to reroll on another server was probably not the best idea I have had. No heirloom weapons and armour and no access to ready cash. I'm having to do this the hard way.
That said, so far nothing has been particularly taxing.
I automatically gain skills as I level, I have no real need for a trainer anymore and so far at level 7 I have only found one type of mob that is hostile. I'm pretty sure this was a lot harder at some point in the past...
I'm noticing a few things that are new, apart from the passive mobs, new tooltips appear at the centre of your screen when you are subject to crowd control - the one I have seen is a stun notification which helpfully tells you the timer on when it will lift, could be quite handy in PvP to know what type of stun a rogue has used on you and whether it is worth breaking.
Another nice touch are the profession trainers. I remember it being a struggle to find the one you wanted when you wanted to learn your professions, now it seems that there is one guy you can go to in lowbie land who is a veritable virtuoso and will teach you any gathering and crafting profession. It may be that this has been the case for a while but I have always had trouble finding the right chap for each profession, with some of them only seeming to exist outside of the starting area. Despite this I can't seem to find soembody to teach me how to cook, a problem that I have in real life too.
Apparently pokemon is now all the rage and I can learn to have my vanity pets fight! for a fee of 9g of course, which I don't have. I should point out that ALL pets collected on ANY character are now available to all your characters. Which is pretty nice. Sadly mounts do not work the same way.
Also, I seem to be seeing folks from different servers here. Character names then "-Bronzebeard" after it, not sure how Blizzard are managing their server tech these days but it seems that low pop areas are shared?

Annoyances so far:
1. Quest items still take up bag space, at low levels bag space is a premium so losing 4 slots to quest items is a major hindrance. As I said earlier, I am doing this without the cash of a higher level character and no heirlooms so I don't have lots of cash to splash on bags.
2. Item comparisons only seem to work when choosing a quest reward, if I pick up a random weapon or piece of armour I have to manually check the stats and late game I can see that being a problem - I DID have an addon that did this for me but I have none right now.
3. No "sell all crap" button
4. Oh dear god stop running so slow!

Just went to kill a quest NPC and the fucking guard stole my kill - twat!

[Dr. kitteny berk]

I think holding shift and mouse over items does comparing.

Yep, they introduced cross server zones for low pop areas to make it feel busier.

[Dog Pants]

I like the sound of the improvements, and apparently the game has improved a lot in the later Pandaland patches. I don't blame you for dipping back in - if I had the time I'd be tempted myself. I have to admit, I love the idea of the pet battles.

[Anery]

Day 3

Yup still here and still going.
Reached level 10 earlier and instead of opening up talent trees it gave me the option to choose a specialisation. Each specialisation comes with its own special abilities at various levels (I suspect these are the same skills that were available through speccing into various talents in the old skill trees) The three available to me as a Paladin are:

Holy - Heals
Protection - Tanks, shield specialist
Retribution - Badass

So, um, yeah. I assume that it makes your relevant abilities a bit stronger? but there is no mention of that in the descriptions
I chose Retribution, I don't want to have to think too hard about what I am doing, I might elect to secondary as tank if dungeon queues are slow later but until then I plan on rolling my head up and down my keyboard.
Back to the gameplay, the dripfeed of skills every other level is an incentive and an annoyance. I don't get the big payoff of a trainer visit and learning three new abilities at once but I don't have to visit my trainer or spend money training anymore and I know that I will be getting another skill every other level...swings and roundabouts. The exception to this is the profession skills, you still have to visit a trainer for these.
Bagspace is now a massive problem, I refuse to buy the overpriced rucksacks and satchels from the vendors so I am left with the 16 slot default backpack and a 4 slot pouch I picked up from somewhere - doesn't sound too bad until 4 slots get taken away with stuff like hearthstones and profession items which have to stay there all the time and then there are quest items and the results from my mining...doesn't leave much room for anything else. I might visit the auction house later and see what's selling cheap.
Stortywise, it turns out that all this corruption on that land that I am fighting was caused by me in the first place, seems my spaceship crashing into the planet caused a few problems with the local wildlife. Which makes me wonder, if space goats are clever enought to have spaceships capable of travel between planets - why are they still using bows and arrows, swords and shields? where are the fucking laser beams? I know the Naaru (god types) are involved somewhere so I wonder if it was more a Noahs ark type affair.
Anyway! Hit 15!
I get my first choice of talents. This is a choice between a set of three talents a different set presented every 15 levels. This is probably going to piss me off, not having the immediate reward of levelling up.
First round for Mr paladin here is:

1. Speed of light - Increases movement speed by 70% for 8 seconds, 45 sec cooldown - boring
2. Long arm of the law - a succesful judgement increases your movement speed by 45% for 3 sec, yawn again
3. Pursuit of Justice - You gain 15% movement speed at all times, plus an additionsal 5% movement speed for each current charge of holy power up to 3. Dear god someone wake me up.

OK, I can see what they are going for here, I don't like any of those choices but #1 is limited in usefulness, good for PvP but I'm PvE for the time being. #2 only lasts for 3 secs and casting judgements enters me into combat, unless I can find one that heals and has a really quick CD this is out...#3 looks like the best all rounder, I do often end combat with excess holy power and a 15% increase all the time might be nice, hopefully stacks whilst mounted.

That was dissapointing, utility wise a speed buff is quite nice but it's not exactly inspiring, but I guess putting point after point into a talent to make is slightly better isn't that inspiring either. Hmm.

Logging off at inns has become second nature once again.

For those interested, I am on Blade's Edge playing Alliance. Paladongs name is Vallerus.

Also, I think Joose has a confession to make too.

[Joose]

Also, I think Joose has a confession to make too.

Curse you Anery! Yeah, ive resubbed too, just to see. Despite the changes its still basically the same old WoW. Its been a long enough break for me that its holding my interest again for the moment at least. I cant see that lasting too long though.

[Anery]

Day 4
Now this is actually quite good.
I hit level 20 (yes, yes, obsessive cupcake, I know) and automagically gained the ability to ride stuff around - no more slow running about for me thanks! but not only did I gain that ability but I can now use ALL the mounts I amassed on my main character - Raven Lord, Chopper, Drakes, Frostbrood Vanquisher...I can't use the flying ones yet - ability not available for a while, but when I can learn to fly - I can fly in style!
That has really perked me up, Raven Lord is one of my favourite mounts but because of changes to the game I never used it, flying was much better and all my terrestrial mounts were left in my collection. Now I can use them on any character that can ride and they get used again - I'm quite chuffed.
Now, I'm not sure on why I automatically learned to ride - I THINK that it's because I am a paladong and we get free mounts at level 20 anyway. Which would mean that other characters need to pay to learn the skill. Still, it's not like I've had to pay for much so far.
Seeing as I don't have to pay out for riding skills for a while I have bought myself into training for pet battling - for 9 fucking gold!
Anyone who has played Pokemon knows how this works, you battle certain types of critters in the wild and you level up your pets making them stronger, yadda yadda yadda. There are several types, mechanical, elemental, undead etc each with a strength against certain types and a weakness against others - the job is to work out which ones to use agains which enemies. Just like pokemon, and just like pokemon you can capture some of the critters you defeat.
Aside from that there is very little to it - an amusing diversion at best.

[FatherJack]

Now, I'm not sure on why I automatically learned to ride - I THINK that it's because I am a paladong and we get free mounts at level 20 anyway.

Paladins and Warlocks always got free horses but the Warlock's one was better because it was on fire. You used to have to a do a stupidly complicated, potentially expensive and quite-hard questline that you needed mates to help with to get them, but they got rid of that and replaced it with a quest to 'go to your trainer and get it' - sadly just after I'd purchased all the items I'd needed to do it.

[shot2bits]

So i thought id give this a go as i never really got into WoW in its heyday so made a free account and got the battle chest upgrade for only 2.50 and have been having a mess around with the missus.

So far I've got a level 19 mage and im quite enjoying it, cat jism didn't seem to change the landscape as much as i thought, in fact it mostly seems as if any crevices have just been filled with water and the cities have been given an overhaul, but as Joose said before its different enough to hold my interest.

I'm playing on Blades Edge as well but i made a gobbo because horde, i dont know why but i just preferred the cities and style of all the horde areas to the (imo) generic looking alliance territory.

Also the goblin starting area is great fun, completely hatstand.

[Joose]

Also the goblin starting area is great fun, completely hatstand.

Very true, its awesome silly.

[Anery]

Yeah, the goblin area is quite fun. I might roll one just to replay that area.

Day 6
Yes, I missed a day in there, mostly because I was hungover, and then because I had hit the horror of Stranglethorn Vale.
Now, so far I had been heading through NElf lands admiring the carnage that a combination of cunty-balls Hellscream and Deathwing had wrought on the area. Places I knew well were burnt out, beseiged or just fucking missing. It was emotional but I needed silver in order to progress my jewelcrafting skills and according to WoWHead the best place to find it is STV.
So off I trotted - no really, I have hooves instead of feet - no wonder the damn Exodar crashed they probably had no idea what pedels they were pressing.
Now, if you have played WoW you will probably have come across STV and you will probably have your own opinion of it. That opinion is probably pretty low. Well, I am here to tell you that despite Deathwings best attempts the place is still a fucking horrible place to level up.
Hemet Nesingwary is gone! replaced by his son who hands out the same god damn quests to kill 10 raptors, then 10 more, then some more before finally taking out the boss raptor and the same with tigers and panthers.
So, why did I stay there and waste a day doing shite quests that I almost overleveled?
Well, I was smashing some trolls around the head with my axe when Blizzard did that thing that Blizzard are very good at - they established an emotional connection with what was happening.

So there I was, smashing trolls face in for no other reason than they were between me and some poor wildlife I wanted to murder and this little raptor hatchling pops out of nowhere and starts following me around.
Now this is a bit weird, this random non-combat npc running after me like it thought I was it's mother or something. Then I noticed that it had a skull in its mouth, not unusual raptors are carnivores after all, but I clicked the little guy to see if I could get more information about it. This then kicked off a quest to go talk to some totally throwaway and forgettable character about this hatchling, so off I went to find this person and work out what was going on.
What happened then was I proceded down a line of quests all relating to this little chap who followed me about all the way through the quests and through STV. Had this not happened I would have abandoned the area to go somewhere else, as it was I had worked my way through the entire Vale looking after this guy and working out where he came from. Things like this make the game stand out for me, it was a suprise and it kept me interested, despite the shite area around it.
As for the little raptor? If you want to know what happens you will have to go through the quest line yourself, I defy anyone to not get attached to the little guy.

And now, now I'm just bouncing around dungeons for a bit. Fuck STV, Fuck it in the ear.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Just be glad the fucking book quest is gone.

[Anery]

Just be glad the fucking book quest is gone.

AH was the only way to do that quest without going batshit crazy.

[Dog Pants]

I'm not sure about Blizzard being great at making emotional connections, but that does sound good. Also, that fucking book quest was shite.

[Anery]

I was formulating a decent argument about Blizzards ability to make emotional connections and realised it all depends on how you play a game.
A game to me is just another delivery method for a story, even if that story is something that you make up yourself.
Being involved in a story either as bystander like a book or actively driving it forward like a computer game elicits some kind of emotional response - fear, happiness, sadness... If I don't experience anything then I stop playing, it's why so many people were pissed at the ending of Mass Effect, during the experience of three games they became emotionally invested in the characters, their development and their final destination in the story. When these investments were returned with a shoddy ending folks became unhappy.

You could of course argue that you play games for their gameplay and graphics - in which case you get enjoyment - happiness - in well made products and fun mechanics, again it is an emotional connection.

[Dog Pants]

I play games for the stories, which is why I hated the combat in Mass Effect 3, it got in the way. I didn't get much story from World of Warcraft for the same reason (although I did from Starcraft and Diablo/II, so I can see your point).

[Anery]

Might I suggest that is probably because you never stopped to consider the stories? Some of the longer quest chains have some really nice stories to them, like the paladin in icecrown who had saved many lives at the broken front but had contracted the undeath plague so had removed himself to the mountains to die? The ongoing investigation as to where the hell the dwarves came from? Don't foget the Onyxia stuff in vanilla...there are shit ton if you read some of the quest texts - yeah, I know there are so many of them it can be difficult to track whats going on.
Can't believe I am arguing in favour of this game...

[Dog Pants]

Suggest away, you're exactly right. Unfortunately the quest stories are presented in such a dry, uninspiring way that I just didn't bother reading them. SWTOR did a great job of presenting the stories, but again drove my interest away with poor and intrusive combat.

[Anery]

I conker, they could have put cutscenes in for some of the (I hate to use the word but it fits perfectly) epic storylines, it worked for the first GW game, and SWTOR and worked for the Wrathgate event etc, so I see no reason why not.
As for SWTOR, the gameplay let that game down - the storytelling was spot on (at least for the agent anyway) but the grind was so uninspired and uninspiring. They should never have made it a multiplayer game but folks just couldn't resist the lure of the MMO cash-cow - the dicks.
ME I didn't mind the combat too much, I quite enjoyed it at times. I played the first one 3 3/4 times and the second one twice.

[Dog Pants]

The set pieces in Wrath of the Lich King were pretty good. The ones which explained what you were doing as you did them, like the assault on Undercity. The combat in Mass Effect 3 wasn't necessarily bad, it was just too prolonged and samey.