Messiahs Paladin Journal Entry #1 - Starting out

by Byron Mudry on Aug 30, 2004

<table cellpadding="5"><tr><td valign="top"> Welcome to my first beta journal, which I hope to make a continuing series of beta journal

Welcome to my first beta journal, which I hope to make a continuing series of beta journal

entries. My Character is a Dwarf Paladin, which I knew going in is apparently a very weak class.

My thought is that if I can make a go of it in the beta with a paladin while they are very

weak, it will seem so much easier when they are patched to full effectiveness. My story begins

right from level one. It also starts from a player who while having played MANY games for way

too many hours (almost divorce meriting) has never played a MMORPG. So comments / concerns

should be taken with that in mind.

Once my character was created, I clicked Enter WoW, and away I went. My character appeared in

Anvil Marr a dwarven settlement in the southern reaches of Dun Morogh. It was immediately

apparent that I was supposed to go and talk to a dwarf waving at me with an exclamation point

over his head. Sure enough, he gave me my first quest.

As soon as I started moving around looking at the world I was amazed! The thing that had always

kept me from early MMORPG's before was the low quality graphics on almost any of them. Not that

any of them had bad graphics, it was just that at the time they were not at the same level as

other games on the market. While having obviously seen the graphics before through screen

shots, movies, etc. It just does not prepare you for moving around in the world.

I found several low level quests close by that helped me get started in the game. All of the

early quests were very easy and intuitive. The only thing I found was that they did not help

you through the commands at an early level. I hope that for new players Blizzard has an option

to go through a tutorial at low levels to help people familiarize themselves with game

controls.

Well the first mission was to go and kill 10 Troggs. All in all not a hard job to start off

with. So off I went to kill some stuff! The first thing I ran into was a boar. It didn't

attack me, so I left it alone and just used it to take a look at creature graphics and

animations. SWEET!.

After looking around for I while, I found the Troggs and started fighting. Being low level, it

took a while being not very familiar with the combat system. The combat system is nice and

smooth though. So I finished the quest and went back to collect my reward.

While being nothing special the reward was nice and appropriate. One thing I very quickly

learnt in WoW is that the quests seem to be the best way to level and get ahead. Even ignoring

the items or money you get as a reward, you get a BIG experience reward for most quests. I

really like this fact as it seems to be pushing most people in the Beta to do quests to level

rather than camp areas to kill monsters to level. This becomes even more prevalent in later

level quests (but more on that later).

Finished with the first quest, I accepted another and went off to hunt some trolls in the cave.

Probably at an earlier level than I should have, but I struggled through. It was at this point

I also finally figured out and played with the camera angles and got a head on shot of my

character.

While fooling around with camera angles, I did not see the Troll re-spawn and promptly kill me,

thereby leading to my next picture. My first experience with death in WoW. I actually really

like the death sequence in WoW. I have seen many games where you re-spawn in cities and then

need to run to collect your body unarmed. I really like the ghost mode, with the one caveat

being that I keep feeling I have to look for Frodo. Death itself is very well handled, the only

issue I did not like was that if you die multiple times, when you get back to your body there is

a resurrection timer that does not allow you to resurrect until it has counted down a certain

length of time. While I need to do research on this, it seems to get longer the more times you

are killed quickly after one another. After being purposefully killed about 5 times though, I

thought my poor dwarf had been through enough experimentation for the day.

Once done playing with the death system, I went on to finishing off the Trolls and then sat down

for a much deserved drink! After having a Troll once again re-spawn and almost kill me, I

decided it was time to evacuate the cave. Once safely on the road back to Anvil Marr, it was

also time to experiment with the emotion tags. So in the middle of no where my dwarf broke into

dance! The emotion controls are really pretty cool, and include all sorts of nice events such

as: waving, begging, saluting, bowing, roaring, dancing, and of course being rude and taunting!

Well after a long day it was time to travel on to Kharanos and to call it quits for the night.

I had levelled to level 5 in a few hours and played around with several of the WoW features.

Time to fade into the sunset until its time for journal entry #2.

Overall first impressions of actually playing the game after just seeing all the screenshots and

movie captures? WOW! They could not have more aptly name the game. Seeing stills or movies of

other people just does not prepare you for the game. It is visually stunning. The play is so

far very involving and the quests compelling to finish. Blizzard adds story and character to

the game and the Warcraft universe at every step of play.

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