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!