the play girlz gaming blog

WoW Observations

by Ingrid on March 23rd, 2006

Note: This was written yesterday while my Internet was down. It seems to be back up again long enough for me to post this. Wee!

I’ve been back to seriously playing WoW for a little over a week now and I’ve been trying to compare WoW ‘then’ and ‘now’ and here’s what I’ve come up with.

Things That Rock This Time Around

• Linked auctions houses - So, so, so great.
• Added auction house in Darnassus - Going to Ironforge every time I wanted to check auctions or put up an auction was more trouble than it was worth. It lagged and lagged and lagged and I’d end up there for an hour having accomplished nothing but falling into the firey canal things. Not fun. Plus Darnassus is much prettier and I’m a Night Elf so it feels more like home.
• My Druid - I played a Druid in Open Beta and I vowed not to play one when the game came out (I rolled a Hunter instead) because I just died repeatedly from things that shouldn’t have killed me. I rolled a Druid this time around very tentatively, but it’s what I’ve always wanted to play, so I figured maybe they’d improved the class since the early days. Since I haven’t kept up with all aspects of the Wow patches I’m not sure what they’ve done to the Druid in the past year and a half, but I’m having a blast playing one. I’ve been clearing things two levels higher than me without dying, and that was certaintly not something I could’ve done in O.B. The Bear Quest was an annoying little addition (I’d heard about it since they implemented it for game release) but my Bear form is rockin’ - though still ugly as sin. Couldn’t they make us cuter .. like a Care Bear or something? Just kidding … sort of.
• No lag - One of the things that sucked the most in both O.B. and the release was the lag. Oy, the lag. I remember having to log in and out a thousand times because my character would get stuck in the loot position and I couldn’t do anything. I remember dying a thousand times because I couldn’t actually defend myself properly. It took two or three times as long to do one thing. Other than in Ironforge, I haven’t experienced any lag at all. It may be because I’m six to nine hours ahead of the U.S., but even at U.S. peak time I haven’t been experiencing any problems.
• Dispersed population - Back in the early days, quests took eight years to do because everyone was the same level and everyone was doing the same exact quests at the same exact time. This also accounted for the lag. Now, there’s very few people in my way. Again, with the time difference, I’ve got an advantage in that few people are awake or are at work/class when I’m playing, but even over the weekened life was grand. I like not having to wait for things to respawn. I imagine this will change at higher levels.
• I have a level 33 character - My level 33 character is very nice to my lowly level 15. I’ve taken to using Exhile (33) as a farmer for Aelora (15) and it works out very well. It also helps that my friends are still playing at levels 45-60 and have toons that can make me cool stuff. Teamwork is great. Even though my poor Guild is dead because everyone left it in my absense.
• Matt - Well, Matt rocked then, too, as we did most of our quests together (I convinced him to get WoW and leave CoH, which is where we met … um, but he doesn’t play MMOs … honest). Matt dropped by last night under his level 47 toon and helped slay some beasts. It was entirely amusing to watch him slay things at my level with a single blow. Sweet.

Things That Suck This Time Around

Honestly, I’m having so much fun, I haven’t had time to find anything to complain about. Especially since my experience with WoW at the beginning and WoW right now are monumentally different. Overall, everything has improved exponentially and I’m kind of glad that I waited a year to get back into things. The only thing I’m sad about is that my Guild kind of died in my absense and now everyone’s joined different ones. I’m hoping to revive it. With luck, I can convince all of my friends to re-roll toons (hint, hint…)

And if anyone reading this wants to join my Guild or just wants to say hi, just contact me in the Elune server, under either Aelora or Exhile.

Things That Never Change

• Bad spelling - I don’t know what it is about gamers in MMOs, but the spelling in the general chat make me twitch. Now, it’s one thing to use acronyms. Acronyms are good. Things like WTB, WTS, PST, etc are excellent (even though sometimes I really have no idea what they stand for). Typos are also fine. Typing in-game is hard, especially when you’re multi-tasking so going back and rechecking your spelling is something that only I do because I’m insane. What drives me nuts is when someone spells generally simple words incredibly wrong.

  For example, yesterday I was waiting around and happened to glance at the general chat (bad idea) and I saw a debate about what is better a Rogue or a Druid. Being a Druid, I was naturally curious, so I read on. One person kept spelling the word “what” as “wat” … repeatedly. Now, I know people shorten things online. I have been known to say “plz” or “thx” from time to time. But “wat”? Is it really that much effort to add the “h”? Is it tiresome to type that one extra letter? Is it wrong that this irritates me so much?

  Then, someone said, “Droods are better.” DROODS? I thought, “Typo…” Then the person continued to say “drood” even though everyone else in the chat was spelling it correctly. This person was going out of their way to ignore the fact that “drood” is spelled “druid”. Y? Sum1 plz tell me.

• Rude people - At lower levels, pretty much everyone is rude and/or annoying. I make it a point to put the Mark of the Wild on anyone I can. Even people just randomly running past me. I don’t think one person thanked me. Not that I need to be thanked, but I noticed that I’ve yet to be thanked. Perhaps no one noticed. The other thing is that, I make it a point to put the MotW on fellow Druids because I know they can’t put it on themselves. But I’ve only had two people put the MotW on me, and they were both strangers at really high levels.

  Also, what’s with people standing around asking for money? This is new to me. I don’t know that it is rude, necessarily, it just struck me as bizarre that I was farming in Teldrassil and this guy came up to me and asked me to spare change. I wasn’t even level 10 yet. How much money did he think I could possibly have? I was actually meeting up with Matt so he could give me some money. Then the guy ran up to Matt and asked him for money, and Matt gave him 50 silver, because he’s nice like that.

• Nice people - For all of the rude people that run rampant, there are some genuinely nice people in-game. I ran into two Druids yesterday that both healed me and buffed me. Then when I sent a tell thanking them, they were incredibly nice. One said, “I’m just glad I was there to help! I hate mobs like that.” Spelled correctly, even! Thank you, again.

Now, the reason I’m going on and on about this is because my Internet is down at the moment and I don’t know what to do with myself. If I weren’t sick and my throat weren’t hurting, I’d break out Singstar and annoy the neighbors some more with my horrible singing voice, but it is not to be. Right now, I should be farming for leather and checking on my eight billion auctions. But nooooo ….

But because I like you all, I’m going to shut up now.

Final note: Join WoW. Six million people can’t be wrong. :)

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POSTED IN: MMORPG, Musings, World of Warcraft