Adventures of Taas

I’ve been back in World of Warcraft now for about two weeks and I’ve put around 20 hours in during that time.  At first I have to admit I was having a little trouble getting in to it but at some point between reading up on end game, talking to Chris about end game and genuinely having fun ploughing through some quests it started to click.

I’ve done level 28 to 35 (I think I might get 36 done tonight if I can avoid too much blogging/greader/twitter/interwebdistractions) and I feel the casual time I’ve put in to the game has given me entertainment in return.  One of the key indicators that I am starting to get back in to the game came today when I spent almost two hours just pursuing some meta game – got enchanting to 225, have made around 300-400 gold working the AH and mining as I level and at one point… wait for it… I even was chatting with some people at the Orgimmar Bank… IN WORLD OF WARCRAFT!  TALKING… TO PEOPLE…

Daggerspine (the server Jim is blamed for landing us on and Chris for keeping us on ) seems to be a little quiet (compared to my Alliance server Medivh) but Orgimmar is pretty hopping during prime time.  The community disappoints me a little (I don’t think there is a server community in WoW that would please me) sometimes when it degrades to pure fuck-tard-ery but all and all they seem to be a good bunch most of the time.

One of my biggest hesitations of playing WoW with the guys in the past was the fact that Daggerspine is a PvP server.  I’ve heard too many horror stories of being ganked and corpse camped for hours to be able to get too excited about a PvP server but I must admit I am starting to warm to the idea of a PvP server.  I don’t think I would go out of my way to play on one in any game but I’m starting to feel comfortable with Daggerspine as a PvP server as my home.

The biggest reason for this comes from an experience I had the other night.  I was in Stranglethorn Vale for the first time (anyone who has ever played on a PvP server go ahead and take a moment to grumble and moan – I’ll wait) and within 30 seconds I was ganked.  Fuck this.  I hate PvP. I’m quiting.  Another 30-60 seconds after that the calvary came running in and a handful of level 80s put the ganker out of his fuck-tard misery.  I grumble, piss and moan but eventually realize I need to realize this is the cost of playing with my friends so I headed off to the north end of SVT where you start questing.

I start doing the animal master quests and within a few minutes I’m seeing high levels of both factions running around in mounts.  I got the distinct impression I was about to be caught in the middle of a warzone and my only option for contributing to this war as a newb was to bend over and end up a corpse.  Luckily the tension between the 80s in the area never spilled over and we all sort of watch each other with a bit of unease.  It was once the dust had settled I realized the tension was very engaging from a gameplay point of view.

So I carried on and about five minutes later I ran in to a level 38 alliance hunter questing and I thought, shit here we go again.  I /bow’d in a lame attempt to not get two shotted and I don’t know if it was that or the guy just wasn’t up for a fight but we ended up questing side by side for quite a bit and aside from one of his multi shots going wild and hitting me (man we stared each other down for like 5 minutes after that I thought for sure he’d get a preemptive jump on me).

Another thing I noticed was that other people questing in the area tended to hang close together.  It felt like everyone was sort of watching each other’s back and it was a really neat sense of community I’ve rarely experienced outside of guilds in World of Warcraft.

So there we go – I still wouldn’t go out of my way to play PvP but I think I’m learning to live with it.

All and all this has been a successful return to WoW so far.  Onward to 40 and beyond!

Here is my first weekly update – a look at how I spent my week gaming!

By the numbers:

• Everquest 2 – 11 Hours
• Warhammer Online – 3 Hours
• Team Fortress 2 – 2 Hours
• World of Warcraft – 2 Hours
• NHL09

This week was supposed to be all about World of Warcraft but I found Everquest 2’s expansion and the temptation to join back up with my EQ2 guild (League of the Ignoble Liver) was too great to avoid. The Shadow Odyssey is EQ2’s 5th expansion and is focused primarily on the high end. Those who played EQ1 will be familiar with one of the primary features – doing dungeons for points that can be spent on a wide range of gear – known in EQ1 as LDONs.

These instance based missions are awesome. The expansion added just over 20 new such mission instances and the three I’ve done so far have all been a blast. My personal highlight was in Deepforge (one of the instances based out of Lavastorm) having to fight the instance boss on the run because he drops AOE pools that will erase your health bar in minutes and you have to run away from them.

In a few days I’ll have a full TSO review up… but for now I’m having a tonne of fun with the missions and the expansion as a whole.

As for the Saturday night raid, my first since May, it went extremely well. We raided a Tier 2 RoK dungeon (my first Tier 2 RoK run – we were stuck farming T1 when I left in the spring) named The Temple of Kor Sha. We cleared several of the nameds pulling in quite a bit of loot (mostly healer stuff) and eventually had to call it after wiping several times on one of the final mobs (the name now escapes me). For my first run back in EQ2 it was a huge success, I had a blast.

Warhammer Online got more attention than I expected it to get this week. The Live Event stuff for Heavy Metal is currently going on (Heavy Metal is the upcoming patch where they are introducing two of the cut tanks – they are doing daily events to get people to unlock them early) and I’ve been logging in every day to complete the daily tasks. Every time I log on my Rune Priest I’m reminded why I don’t want to level him anymore – he’s just such a bitch to level.

I have started a new chracter, a Shadow Warrior, and he has been a great improvement. I’m really evaluating what future I have with WAR and the fun I have with my Shadow Warrior over the next few weeks will be crucial in deciding if I stay or go.

As for World of Warcraft – My Warlock is now level 16 he really should be higher but the distractions above have made it hard to find time to log on. I really hope to spend more time on him this week (20 by mid week would be nice). The time I’ve spent in WoW so far has really been enjoyable it just has to compete for my time with everything else I have going on (both gaming and other wise).

I rounded the week off with quite a bit of NHL09. I’ve gotta say – the boys at EA Sports did a great job with this iteration. The game is actually quite challenging. I’ve been whooping the AI in the NHL franchise for years but this year I’m really getting a challenge out of it. Hell – my Detroit Red Wings are in 6th place in the Western – since when does that happen?

That was the week – I have a test this week at school so the early part of the week is going to be a write off but I should get some gaming in later on in the week1