My WotLK Weekend

I had great plans to have ongoing reports in here of my first hours and days of WotLK.

Big fat thanks to a great fucking game, I failed. :D

So since it’s Monday morning and I’m having a rough time adjusting back to any semblance of an RL schedule, let’s recap in brief:

Wednesday evening, Nov. 12.
Left work in a rush for last-minute errands; got home around 6pm, Pacific. Logged in to check server stability, since all servers were offline Tuesday evening. Everything appeared OK, and guildies were excitedly chatting away. Knocked out Shattrath fishing and cooking dailies and logged out.

Ate some dinner and then napped from 7:30 to 9:30p. Woke up grumpy and pissed off, for some reason. Actually considered blowing off midnight release. Smacked self across the face for blasphemy.

Hopped in the car – still grumpy – and drove across town to the mall. Why are there so many people out this late, and why do they suck at driving? Walked into the mall at 10:10p and found a long line of WoW peeps waiting patiently outside Gamestop. Some were chatty, some were somber. Some were wearing armor.

Got my receipt and number (52) around 10:45p and the milled around the vicinity inside the mall, waiting for midnight to arrive. Also picked up a WotLK game guide, so I was able to peruse those pages for a while.

Formed a new line according to copy number around 11:45p.

Thursday morning, Nov 13.
Copy received minutes after midnight.

Zoemgee.

Drove home, stopping at all-night Safeway for energy drinks, water and food.

Home by 12:50a. Popped game disc into computer for installation and settled back to watch Hellboy 2 while I waited. Only got through the first act of Hellboy before the opening cinematic started! Re-installed the previous two patches, and the game was ready to go. Sorry Hellboy, another time, maybe. (Great fucking movie, by the way, can’t wait to see what Del Toro does with The Hobbit.)

I logged in to World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King around 1:40a. Hot damn. Rolled my Tauren Deathknight and left him be. Logged on to Paquita and chartered a zeppelin to the Borean Tundra.

Now, I’m not a terribly expressive person in RL, but I think it would have been interesting to have a camera on my face for while weekend. My jaw was literally as far down as humanly possible in the first 10 minutes of Warsong Hold. And that place isn’t even all that awesome in retrospect, compared with what was coming. Spent nearly 250 gold upgrading all my tradeskills, with very little left for actual recipes.

On to questing. Kill these! Open these! Collect some more of these! I don’t really care about these sorts of quests, actually. It’s experience, it’s the game world, and it all tells the story appropriately.

The Borean Tundra is gorgeous. Took a magic carpet tour for the full effect, and even waved to Kel’thuzad! Played through those initial quests, encountered the viking giant dudes, the Tuskarr and the Taunka. Love, love, love, love, love the Tuskarr and their villages. That whole design is dead-on for indigenous arctic peoples, and the water, glaciers and ice floes are just beautiful. Loved the Tuskarr even more when I saw that Kalu’ak rep gets you a pet penguin at exalted! There’s also an epic fishing pole that allows underwater breathing! Immediately started doing these quests and dailies.

Stayed up until 7:30a on Thursday. Completed quite a few quests in the Tundra, and found my new most-hated mobs – the level 70 kobolds and gorlocs. /Shudder.

Very nearly hit 71, but alas I wasted some time exploring, fishing, mining and crafting. Wandered around the Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Crystalsong Forest, Grizzly Hills and Howling Fjord picking up available flight points. Cursed Dalaran for being so high in the sky, and the Kirin Tor for being too snooty to let me teleport into the city at level 70.

Thursday morning, Nov. 13, part Deux
Woke up around 11:30a and made coffee. Logged in and found that to my eternal shame another guildie had already beat me to 71. Noooooo! Sneaky freakin’ druid. :D

Ah well. Moved on with more quests and DINGED 71! Played an unhealthy length of time throughout Thursday and dinged again before logging off on Friday morning.

Friday, Nov 14.
Limited playtime. Hit Honored with the Kalu’ak and Warsong Offensive. Leveled trade and secondary skills. Swapped my wolf, Fettgisicht, for Kriegaffe the Gorilladin since I seemed to be aggroing entire groups of mobs fairly often. Wandered into Sholazzar Basin and let Kriegaffe tackle groups of 4 and 5 level 76 mobs – hunter and pet were only 72 and 71, respectively. We survived. AND we got a the manual for Heavy Frostweave Bandages off a level 76 scourge mob!

Saturday, Nov 15.
Limited playtime again. Awesome guildie warlock summoned me to Dalaran! Niiiice. Hearthstone set. Wrapped up quests in Dragonblight and triggered Wrathgate. ZOMIFUCKINGGAWDthatwasawesome. And the follow-up quest with Thrall, Sylvanas and Vol’jin? There are no words to express that kind of badassery. WotLK wins on that stuff alone.

Sunday, Nov. 16.
Hangover. Let’s play WoW! The sneaky druid dings 76 and I’m left in failure at level 73. I later understand that he’s uber-leveling, neglecting tradeskills and anything not having to do with gaining experience points. I’m taking my time and not doing too badly in the larger scheme of guildie leveling progression, so I don’t feel that bad.

Hit Revered with Kalu'ak, completing all of their regular quests. That leaves 3 dailys per day at 500 a pop. It'll be a while, but I'm well on my way toward exalted. Also broke down and adjusted my Beastmaster spec to allow exotic taming. Got myself a rhino, Ryanseacrest. He's massive and gets my way all the time, but strangely comforting. Dinged 74 before logging Sunday night.

So, WotLK, from what I’ve seen, is pretty goddamn phenomenal. The quests are several steps up from those of the Burning Crusade in terms of fun and ingenuity, and the overall story is truly the stuff of legend. Many screenshots to come, whenever I get motivated to post them. :)