/dev/games 06 Aug 2008 09:09 am
Dear Warcraft Diary (Part Six)
Day one of The Great Recruiting was a disturbingly powerful success (for Blizzard). Ended up playing some new characters on our server and it was pretty awesome to behold our group (which incidentally will be well balanced for instances!). We have a Dwarf Hunter named Bedrest (my wife Jess), a Dwarf Priest named Foamier (Colin’s girlfriend Mel), a Human Mage named Smeepers (me), and a mostly naked Gnome Warlock named Doomsnuggler (played by professional puppeteer Jack). Juls will also be joining in the fun again, and Mike created a new guy on our server. Jess and Jack have never played the game before, and it’s really interesting to see their reactions to things that now seem so trivial. At the end of the night we walked over to Ironforge and Jack was nearly speechless with reverence. What’s funny is all I see is a gryphon master, an auction house, and a mailbox. It’s nice to see the game along with new eyes, though, as it forces us to slow down and really look at the lovingly crafted world.
So I really think Mage is for me! This was confirmed as soon as I got Frostbolt last night, and all of a sudden my character felt awesome. It’s also a good low-maintenance class I can play while teaching Jess and Jack how to do quests and get they kills on.
The boosted XP is kind of ridiculous. In a party of 4, we’re earning XP that is almost equivalent to soloing from kills. But with 3 DPS classes and a priest we’re killing stuff pretty fast! The level meter might as well just animate. Quest rewards are much higher, too. Unfortunately, it seems like we don’t have to do nearly as much questing, at least in the beginning. In the process of doing one quest we’re earning so much experience that all other quests in that chain are too low level. And grey quests won’t provide the triple XP. Personally I don’t think that matters, as in a few more levels we can start hitting up instances, and it seriously feels like we’d never have to do open world quests again.
on 06 Aug 2008 at 12:36 pm 1.Colin C. said …
I’d just like to stress yet again that if you are going to do a quest, make sure everybody knows why you’re doing it (IE reads the quest text). Otherwise it just feels like you’re grinding through similar enemies all the time and that’s not actually fun when looked at in retrospect.
But I keep stressing that, so I’ll shut up.
on 06 Aug 2008 at 4:46 pm 2.bburbank said …
I think instead that we have a significant option to not even do quests. Like, we come up with good places to fight stuff, do a few quests along the way, and really see the World as a group.
on 07 Aug 2008 at 4:48 pm 3.Sean said …
Reading these entries makes me want to reactivate my old account and start playing again. WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME, BEN?!???!!