My Life in WoW - Day 1

Melodrama aside, I uninstalled the WoW software yesterday, which was a surprisingly fast (as in, blink and you'd miss it) process. Reinstalling the basic software was suspiciously fast as well. I was able to download half of the updates yesterday and the other half installed today without a problem. Yay!

Yesterday, the Good Doctor gifted me with the first two expansions, Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, both of which came in beautiful packaging. I am much more comfortable with installation via disc, simply because it does not rely on my Internet connection, which I am sure my ISP (<cough>Comcast</cough>) has been throttling. Of course, this sense of security was false and halfway through the first disc I encountered my first error. To quote Pepe Le Pew, "Le sigh."

A quick search later I learned I did not need to install anything from the discs - only the activation code was required and I could start right away. Huh, who would have thought? Full of curiosity, I logged in. After a brief movie of a huge fiery dragon wrecking shit, I could finally make my first character.

Zaraelspeth, Blood Elf Warlock
and general badass

What to pick? I waffled between playing a troll druid and a blood elf warlock. Druids get to turn into animals and can heal as well fight, but warlocks get corruption and fire spells and get to summon demons. Warlock it is! I decided to make her female and named her Zaraelspeth ("Zara" for short). And then I clicked the Enter World button.

Boy howdy! The blood elves live on an island that looks like it is in perpetual autumn. The trees are orange and the buildings are trimmed in scarlet. Everywhere, inanimate objects are floating and brooms sweep the floors themselves.

Ooh pretty!

Quzrot the Imp

Zara came with a little companion, an imp named Quzrot. I've decided that's pronounced kiz-rot. Right away, another blood elf, presumably someone in charge, told Zara some history about the blood elves, most of which went over my head, and sent her on a "quest." Like most RPG video games, many of the so-called quests are really just busy work. Characters too powerful to do the dirty work send send novice characters on errands. For Zara, that meant killing lynxes, "mana wyrms" (which look like giant floating paramecia) and feral walking plants. Or, fetching things for folks who just left them lying around. Really, you're too lazy to go get your own shit, blood elf mage dude? Oh, you'll pay me? Well, I guess I can go find your spellbooks then.

Zara and Quzrot go questing

For me, the first quest was simply learning how to move around. WoW uses the W-A-S-D keys on the keyboard to move. This sounded simple until I was actually in the game. It took me about an hour to really get the hang of holding the W key to move forward and then only press D or A just a little bit when I wanted to turn right or left. This is very important. I'm guessing all of the experienced players can tell the newbies because their characters are either lurching around awkwardly or running in circles. It's not dignified.

One nice thing I've discovered about WoW is that it doesn't take long for your character to level. I played for about three hours and got Zara up to 5th level - not bad for my first time "in world." By the end, Zara also got her first real quest: to slay Felendren the Banished, betrayer of her people. This sounded impressive until I learned Felendren is a crackhead who refused to do anything but "feed his insatiable magical addictions." He does have wraith minions, though, so there is that.