Day 03 – Your first day playing WoW

Spellbound and the, 20 days blogging challenge

Day 03 – Your first day playing WoW
Though not really, it is long and full of nostalgia… Much less a first day account, and more of a first months/year account...


First off thanks to all the real people that told me to, “read elitist jerks”, “level just one toon first”, “Use Grid and Clique”, “get DBM”, “Don’t be a screen (c)licker”, “level your tank, not your hunter”, and the multitude of other tips tricks and secrets of the game that were unlocked only because someone else told me where to look or what to do… Thanks for all the real people that make the game and community what it is…


THE FIRST TOON

Well, it was so long ago that I really don’t remember.  I had finally fallen to friend’s suggestions that I start to play.  I was scared of the MMO trap, that there is no pause button, but I finally started up, and since have come close to finding a balance in WOW vs. family and RL.

I think the first toon was a rogue, but not knowing anything about anything, he was hard to play... I took the "cool" talents and specs, instead of the "useful" ones, on what I thought was going to be a cool toon, stealthy, sneaky, havoc maker… but the game flipped the coin on me since I was BAD and a total NOOB.. and I had no idea about dungeons, or gear or anything.  I also thought I would level concurrently a toon with every profession, that way I would be able to make all the gear for all my toons.  Gosh I was a NOOOOB…

What I did not know, is that instance gear was OP, and that crafted gear, was only occasionally better than quest gear.  I stayed in low level zones and wanted to clear every quest. I did not know better gear from other zones quests... I actually read the quests... Somewhere along the way, I started a druid and a hunter and others I don’t remember... I found WOWHEAD and alakazham, wowwiki and thotbot....

 I guess at some point I decided I hated the druid and deleted it, then forgot I had ever played one until I went to level another one years later and remembered doing the aquatic form quest... that stupid quest... took hours to get all over the world... what a pain in the tail... and that was the only way to even get aquatic form back then… One item off the coast of Westfall, one off the coast of Swamp of sorrows and one more off the coast of Darkshore (I think)... It’s all gone now after the sundering, and it was not learned at the trainer back then...  So lots of running, you did not have a mount till level 40 then, you had no 2 passenger mounts to get around, and that fed ex portion of the quest was several hours… I was alliance then, and remember running so many toons through Dun Algaz tunnel to get the FP to IF… What a different game it was then.

Eventually, I saw my friends leveling just one toon faster than me and the little utopian army of crafting alts I thought I was so smart with… I settled on the hunter for some terrible reason... When, I got to cap in BC, I remember the patch that released the Black Temple had recently hit the servers, I did not even know what a raid zone was at the time… I remember spending 7 hours in the old Sunken Temple, and the group fell apart at the last boss… some green dragon… That was when that place had like 4 levels, and silly stuff to get all the bosses to spawn and lots of stairs and running in circles… easy to get lost… I also remember the first time clearing BRD.. that place is still about the same, but imagine doing it with about 1/3 the DPS that players go in there now with… there was no heirloom gear, and tanks were all about “let me get 3 sunders before you start to DPS… “ what an epic accomplishment that was back then.

I never got into any raid zone really other than Kara, a few runs in Mag’s lair and Gruul’s lair, One partial run in SSC and BT… Never saw the inside of TK, or She Sunwell… I was off grinding dungeon gear sets to be able to raid in Kara, and doing the attunement quest line to be able to walk through the door... I really miss attunements... There was a real sense of accomplishment when you finally got it done, and when you had the gear to actually be able to raid... I miss the big efforts and the massive work that went into the marginal gains... I did not raid anything current, But I found a lot of people like me that needed the attunements to get to the next raid tier like me so Kara was still a lot of fun and even when it was not current, it was still current for a large community of new players and new alts…

EPIC… Like, I did all those quests and dungeons for what… “to get a key, to a door, to be able to raid, or event to run heroics back then…...  Kara was and still is a very cool zone.”

I  was stupid about rep, and purchasable items with rep, and so had really found myself behind the curve on that front too, and somewhere between grinding rep and trying to raid, and gearing in dungeons... I found out that there were a lot of really bad hunters and I was one of them... I clipped my auto shots, pushed buttons for abilities because it was fun, and did like 3-400 DPS... I was at the time a screen clicker, and fixated on my bars, then I met some benevolent people that told me just how bad I was and introduced me to "Elitist Jerks".  Almost overnight I started doing 900+ DPS…  BM hunter rotation was simple, Steady Shot, Auto Shot, Kill command… Most ran a one button macro… The light bulb went off, and I went from barely beating the tank on DPS (back when they did no DPS really) to double my DPS... or more... That is when I started the guild leading thing and raid leading thing... and then I leveled up a Pally tank, and found a new way to play the game, It became my main... I really like tanking, it was easier to lead raids, from that role I thought, and so... I began with a new resolve of "play to raid" gaming that I still play...  Wrath released and I began again the leveling gearing, grinding for raid readiness.. Tanking Nax, this time I did it smart and right… or certainly a lot better, paying attention to rep and rewards with factions…

The gold making evolution began… I finally decided to get epic flight… I have a level 80, Prot Pally that is a BS engineer and has no gold to speak of… How to make gold… I found the value of my engineering farming in Sholozar basin… Zap throttle mote extractor… that was when eternal fires would sell for 45 – 75 gold each… I just sold them, but I was starting to get a glimps of markets and price fluctuation, but really, I was farming for gold, the gold I needed to be able to learn how to use that “turbo charged” flight machine thing in my bags…  I got the epic flight learned and started having gold all the time for anything and everything I NEEDED to raid…

Next thing that came along when Nax was still current, I saw an opportunity to play a priest, you really almost had to have 2 in the raid to clear Nax 25 (enter Instructor Rasuvius)... so, you could be a completely terrible shadow priest or healer, and bring your mind control and to get a raid spot, and if you were good, get added to several peeps friends lists... I did the Mind Control thing, and I was not terrible, it was easy since I knew all about how to do it having done it as a tank on 10 man, I had a set of hit gear just for that fight… as a Disco healer for just the Mind Contol... I was actually finding I was decent at healing and disco priest in raids, was at the time, fun, still is actually, but more so then since it was new and different in the raid world. Disc had previously been the PVP spec only and had no place in PVE… Playing that priest was a new evolution to my playing… I then learned, in a whole new light the value of macros and addons, I installed and still use the Grid/Clique composition for healing (again smarter people telling me that was the way to go)… For the first time I was not a button bar clicker… that was fun, but more raiding meant another toon needed to be leveled, since you were locked to a single raid ID back then…

At the time bloodlust/heroism buff would get you a raid spot, so Shammy became the next toon to roll up... Ele/Resto was the plan… and what lot of fun that was… and BL got me a lot of raid spots… the hunter was still only level 73 now, as the 3 level 80s I had were the Pally, Priest and the Shammy… This was evolution of phase of playing DPS with key bindings instead of playing as a screen clicker... No looking back on that, and again it was someone that pointed me in that direction and told me I was bad to be a screen licker (or screen clicker)…


I had fun writing it, I hope you had fun reading it... though if you have been playing less than 2 years... a lot of it will be lost to you...

Attunments
Heroic Keys
Fed Ex quest lines across 4 continents
Questing for abilities instead of going to the trainer
7 hours in a five man dungeon, (old sunkent temple)
5 hours in BRD...
getting your first 5k for epic flight
getting keyed to Kara
and so much more... ...