Well, sorta. It almost pains me to admit that I have actually downloaded the game onto my PC and patched it up to the current version and tagged my account for a 10 day free trial. It took little convincing for Graev to join me. While watching Star Trek Voyager reruns we saw the minime commercial for WoW and I turned to him and said, innocently, “Hey, want to play some WoW noobs?”. He turned to me and said, “meh, sure”. From there it was a simple process to get the ball rolling.
It took about 3 hours of downloading, installing, and patching but we finally got the game up and running. It’s been since June of 2006 since I last logged in to WoW and the game honestly felt alien to me. Launching to game for the first time I felt ill questioning if these graphics were what I remembered… I got in game and cranked everything to the fullest and did a restart of the game. Holy smokes. The game is beautiful. I’ve always been a strong supporter of this art style because 1) I think it looks great and 2) It runs well. But DANG! Playing WoW for the first time in wide screen with this PC (my older PC that played WoW never looked this dang good)… I’m seriously impressed. Yeah, the water still sucks, but the game overall looks great. It runs smooth as silk and the animations are superb. Cloaks are still fugly. My staff on my back was a solid foot off my body but overall it was all good.
We decided to play Draenei or Blood Elves because we hadn’t played them before. Burning Crusade is 100% new to us. When our characters were finally done I made a Draenei Mage and Graev a Draenei Shaman. First things first we picked up all the quests we saw and began to work on them. I was enjoying the quests but it only took Graev about 20 minutes before he turned to me and said very nonshalontly, “Yep. I’m done”. I hadn’t expected him to last long but 20 minutes… *shakes fist*. The furthest he got was a 42 Warlock back when WoW first launched. It’s just not his cup of tea I guess. He’s more of a DAOC PvP from the start guy when it comes to MMORPGs. While I side with that style most I can still enjoy a casual PvE leveling atmosphere.
Bottom line: WoW is what I remember. I’ve always enjoyed the leveling process probably more than any other game. I’ve always enjoyed the graphics and the classes. I’m not going to keep playing after this trial runs out but it was nice to just reaffirm to myself that the game was how I remembered it. It’s taken almost 2 years to block out the raiding and WoW end-game. Since I’m able to focus on the good parts (to me) I feel bad for not wanting to keep playing. The new PvP system (remember, it’s been years since I played) sounds really fun to me and if it’s true that I can PvP for gear and still be competitive with the raiders then I would be all for it.
Right now I can’t commit to subscribing but I’m going to ride out the rest of the trial and explore the noob areas. Oh, and I created a character on the Area-52 server. Anyone else play there or did I pick a wack server?
Stay tuned. I might just blog me some more adventures in Azeroth.
Eek! 😉
I’ll admit that out of every MMORPG I’ve played, WoW had the best PvE from 1-70. Unfortunately, PvE from 70+ (ie. raiding) made me want to rip off my eyelids and head-butt a salt lick… repeatedly.
The PvP was really fun in the BGs and even in the open world but I felt insanely gimped in the arenas because I refused to raid-grind endlessly for top notch gear.
I sold my account for $300+ in early spring and I’m happy to say that I’ll never go back to WoW. Not because of an extreme distaste for the game; it’s just that I pretty much maxed out my potential in it due to the amount of time I could invest.
Hope you’re having fun!
I’m seriously considering going back… I’ve been playing LOTRO for over a month and I haven’t gotten a character past 13… not a good sign.
You change games more often than I change my socks 🙂 .
I don’t really change games. I just play them all. 😉
I’m in that transition stage where I’m playing anything and everything to keep me busy until my next game of choice.
Right now I’m playing:
EQ2, Shaiya and DOMO, WoW Trial, Call of Duty 4, Eternal Sonata, and PotBS Beta. I dabble here and there.
Raiding for PvP gear is now entirely pointless. PvP gear is FAR FAR better for pvp, even than the highest level of raid gear.
And vice versa. PVP gear is pretty crappy for PvE/raiding gear, though it is pretty good for soloing.
In PvP these days, someone in full honor bought gear ( season 3 non-set pieces and season 1 set armor), will decimate someone in tier 5. Thats assuming roughly equal skill and a decent class matchup. There is still the paper-rock-scissors aspect in 1v1. Some classes are seriously disadvantaged against other classes. Someone in tier 6 equivalent gear might put up a good fight, but it will not be a huge advantage.
The bottom line is that raiding is no longer a valid way to gear up for pvp.
I’m curious what makes someone who has not played a game in 2 years an expert enough to make predictions about the decline of a game that has steadily increased (still) in subs?
You seem to have a thing for WoW other than a semi nice piece about playing a little but on trial and your partner never got above level 42? hardly experts, more like noobs pretending to be experts.