Not wanting Messiah to hog the entire spotlight on our site for having his own Beta Journal, I’ve decided to make my own in an attempt to give a bit more broad a view of the possibilities for WoW Characters. The original intent had been to do the journal of my Troll Priest, however that quickly disappeared when I threw in my new video card and was able to take some amazing screens with my new character; a Night Elf Rogue.

Having played a Human Mage I was familiar to the Alliance as a faction of the game, however the Night Elves are near alien to my previous character. The scenery for the Night Elves starting location of Shadowglen is quite impressive (and purple) and gives off that “nature loving feel” the Night Elves have become pretty well known for.

So there I was, a single Night Elf Rogue starting off her (it’s a female character by the way) new career in a strange new land. Not really looking into the Rogue class at all before I chose it, I had no idea exactly what it could do. I grabbed my first few quests and then I was off into the wilds.

My first quest was to go off into the vast wilds that surround the Night Elf encampment where I was to slay 6 Young Thistle Boars and 10 Young Nightsabers. Heading off I started to engage in combat with the various animal life of the area (as Bob Barker said, “Help control the pet population,” came to mind…) and I was impressed with how the rogue handled.

Some of the attacks my rogue was doing against the local wildlife were equivalent to the damage done by my level 24 mage in close combat, this class was nasty! I was finding some parallels between the Assassin of Diablo 2 and the Rogue class in WoW. The fact that the rogue performs “combo-attacks” that are embellished with “finishing moves” makes it a really powerful close combat class, however the relative lack of health and overall frailty makes sure the class can’t stand under direct pressure.

It didn’t take me too long to complete my hunting quest and continue on with more quests. My next major quest was to find “Fel Moss” on the corpses of nearby demons named Grells, the tiny little demons fell quickly to the massive damage dealing of my rogue and after some time I had gained all the items and returned them to the dryad who had hired my services.

Finishing with the Grell’s and having a new quest that required me to find a lost NPC, I took this time to run around and get a better feel for the Night Elf lands, as well as get some nice screenshots. During my running around I found the NPC I was looking for and decided to brave that cave adjacent to him.

Shadowthread Cave was filled with nothing but Webwood spiders, so I went to once again “Control the pet population”. Easily dispatching the spiders on a one on one basis (and even a few one on two) I gained my fourth level and departed the cave after dealing with the big spider “boss”.

After heading back to the encampment and learning my new skills I continued to adventure around Shadowglen until I was about 5th level, at which point I left to explore the rest of the lands.

As I left the city I came across the hamlet of Starbreeze and decided to go check it out and see what was there, that was my first mistake. As I entered the village Furlbogs who had seemingly taken over the village ambushed me. Managing to escape with only a handful of hit points I ran off into the nearby wooded area… only to be ambushed by a huge spider and killed (revenge for my genocide on the cave I guess).

After resurrecting at my corpse I headed further off to the village of Dolanaar where I was greeted with quiet a few quests. Also during my stop in this village I received my Hearthstone, which would allow me to escape any far away encounters and return to town ASAP.

Tackling the next few quests would take an hour or so and would get me up to level 7 and halfway to level 8. I decided at this point to check out the cave behind Dolanaar and see what inhabited it. Dying once upon trying to enter the Grell infested cave, I returned to sneak in and begin systematically backstabbing and killing the little demon buggers.

Eventually I acquired the treasure of the cave (some food and a silver bar) and fought enough Grell to get me up to level 8. So that’s when I decided to look at the alarm clock and realize it was 4 in the morning. This was time for sleep…

All in all the rogue class is quite an interesting change for me, especially since I’m used to magic wielding classes. Hopefully my next adventures will bring me out of the “safety” of Night Elf lands and bring in some more stunning visual terrain.

For now I was ready for some sleep… However tomorrow I suppose would be a different story…