Ah, The Den and the Valley of Trials. It’s not Eden, but it’s home!

Gablag sniffed the air apprehensively. “Wut’s dis? A minnit ago I’m standing dere while someone clicks all over me, my hair and skin and face all changin’ all crazy-like, and now here we iz in Da Den. Gotta lay off those ‘shrooms.”

“Wut to do now?” Gablag pondered aloud. “I guess I’ll talk to dis guy with the symbol uvver his ‘ead, ‘e looks excited.”

Just like MMO’s before it, World Of Warcraft provides a number of ‘newbie’ quests in close proximity to your start position to help get you on your way to bigger and better things. A quick stop with a couple of quest NPCs, and I’m off to the Valley of Trials to begin whacking my first MOBs. Die, mottled boar, die! With the lush scenery in the background and excellently modelled creatures, even a simple task such as bashing in boar heads is enjoyable to the new player.

“Dunno wut dat guy wants wit boar bitz, anyhoo,” thought Gablag, as he smashed in the head of yet another inoffensive Mottled Boar. “Dese boars musta dun somethink nasty to him. Mebbe et his lunch.”

After killing enough of the boars, I return to the quest giver to collect my reward. One thing I’m really impressed with right off the bat, is the quality of the reward items. Not only are they useful immediately, they are appropriate to the character level needed to complete the quest! Nothing frustrates me more in other games, like EverQuest, than needing a Level 30 character to farm the items for a Level 20 reward. Crap like that makes quests irrelevant.

Flush from his adventures abroad in the Valley of Trials, Gablag received his reward – a new cape to armour himself with. “Err, wut am I s’posed to do wit dis? It’s not big enuff to wipe me backside wit.”

My only beef so far is what Blizzard is calling a cape these days. If you haven’t seen it yet, it looks more like a napkin draped over your back… perhaps real cape graphics are reserved for the uber-gear? When I upgraded from one newbie cape to another, it looked to me like it got bigger, so I’m hoping the best is yet to come, hehe.

“Live in Da Den all me life, and never did notice these horse-things living around da corner,” mused Gablag, as he impaled a screaming Kolkar through its torso. “Nasty critters, makin’ up invasion plans aginst us! Wut we ever do ta dem, anyways,” he thought to himself on his backswing.

As with the newbie zones for other races, there are enough quests available to the new Orc in the immediate vicinity to occupy you until at least Level 5. Once you hit that point, you are likely equipped with a number of decent bits of armour, and perhaps a better weapon than you were born with. Throughout my first evening with Gablag, I battled the mottled boars, scorpids, vile familiars, daemonbeasties, and cute little centaur thingies called Kolkars. Well, not so cute after all, since they had all kinds of invasion plans lying around their home!

Everytime you level up, you get a point to spend in your class Talent tree. As of the writing of this journal, only Mages and Warriors have access to their Talents. For players of Diablo 2, the system will be familiar – increase your ability in a given Talent by placing your points against it, and you’re rewarded with increased skill of some kind, whether it’s damage from Strike, or more skill with your sword, etc, it’s all good stuff. You only get one point per level, so you will likely want to choose a path to specialize in rather than spread the points around equally, or you’ll run the risk of becoming Jack-of-all-Trades, Master of None.

“There you go, Gablag – you now have the basic knowledge needed to pursue a career in Herbalism! Go forth and practice your skills on the land.” “Errr, OK plant lady,” said Gablag, immediately thinking, “Wut did I just do? Wut’s an herb, anyways?”

Skill points, on the other hand, are generated by killing MOBs and the experience they give. I don’t believe skill points can be generated by the XP given from quests, but I could be wrong. In any event, I invested my first batch of skill points in Herbalism; I’ll see how that works in subsequent journal entries.

My first evening out finished up in Razor Hill, an outpost town just north of where I begain. My next task – take out the dastardly goblin Fizzle Darkstorm and put an end to his Burning Blade minions in the process!