“You monster.”
I receive this tweet from a friend, literally seconds after logging off from a two hour session in World of Warcraft.
“Great,” I think. “What have I done now?”
Then it clicks. No. It couldn’t be. Surely not.
I had spent the majority of the last 30 minutes killing Murlocs. Frightful little creatures. I still have an irrational fear of the froggy bastards since they were literally the first thing to kill me when I started World of Warcraft roughly 10 days ago. Now, in the midst of some pointless, grindy fetch quest, I was in the process of slaughtering them for their torn-up fins for some reason. Fear my wrath Murlocs. I was once a fat useless lump of flesh for you little bastards to chomp on, now tremble in the face of this mighty level 9 warrior with his big hammer thing.
During my routine squashing of Murlocs, I noticed a few messages pop up on my screen. They were mostly pithy remarks, mostly focused on how much of a noob I was. “Where did these messages come from,” I wondered, before writing them off as the workings of some 30-something troll resembling the slouched, pony-tailed WoW stereotype from that infamous South Park episode.
But every now and then I noticed a presence, a character on the periphery that seemed to drift in and out. I didn’t see it as noteworthy – this sort of thing happens in WoW all the time. It’s called an MMO for a reason: massive amounts of players can be online at any one moment. This was just another dude.
And I was done for the night anyway. Real life was calling. Those dirty dishes in the sink weren’t gonna wash themselves.
I logged out. One final message from the troll:
“NOOOOOOOOO WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU HAVE TO LOG OUT AT AN INN.”
What… Oh, you were trying to help me strange troll? Didn’t see that coming.
Seconds later I receive that tweet: “You monster.”
It can’t be.
I make the connection.
I reply: “Tell me that wasn’t you following me about it WoW just now.”
“Yup, fem Draenei warrior. You didn’t even reply in chat. BUT YOU DIDN’T LOG OUT IN AN INN.
“I flew around with a target macro looking for you lol.”
I know this guy in real life and he found me. In the goddamn game. Wow.
Or more specifically: WoW.
Klutar, real name Mark. AKA Alaela, a level 90 Draenei warrior. He convinced me to delay the dish washing for at least five minutes, enough time for him to guide me to an Inn to get the rested XP bonus I wasn’t aware of until precisely 10 minutes ago.
What happened next was life changing.
I log in. I wait. A swooshing noise in the distance. My eyes a-goggle.
In a strange, otherworldly whirlwind, Klutar flies in like Falcor from the Never Ending Story and lands gracefully at my feet. I am a caveman and he is a shimmering God from a distant future. My puny brain cannot comprehend. Who is this creature, what is this wizardry he wields? What is this black magic? I am literally an unwieldy brute wielding a club, Klutar is the master race and what he is about to do is beyond my understanding.
“Hop on,” he says, like Gandalf or Tom Cruise in Top Gun. “I’ll fly you to a nearby inn.”
He is Doc Brown from Back to the Future and I am Marty McFly.
Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need… roads.
A couple of awkward ‘how the hell do I get on this robot dog thing’ moments later and we’re off… soaring headlong into the sky, wind blasting through our hair, tears of joy streaming down my face. Ten minutes ago I was fighting a group of glorified frogs with daggers. Now I was above it all, filtering through the glorious night sky on a robotic horse with a level 90 warrior from another dimension. Me – fly? A level 9 scrub with a chunk of wood for a primary weapon? Who didn’t even think to log out at an inn? Who was having difficult disposing of shitty brown bears in Elwynn Forest. It was like being transposed through time and space to a glorious future I had no business being part of.
After a couple of minutes in flight Klutar drops me off at an Inn, like he promised he would. He is Aladdin on a magic carpet. I am Princess Jasmine. A whole new world, a whole fantastic point of view. I’m completely breathless.
He waves himself off and flies back into the night. He didn’t even stay for coffee.
Wow.
Or, more specifically: WoW.
You can read earlier entries in the Idiot in Azeroth series here
Comments
42 responses to “An Idiot In Azeroth Part Three: A Whole New World”
Hahaha I was actually thinking just that! This is the perfect moment for “whole new world” to start playing and you and Klutar can forever share this moment =P
Also @markserrels in all honesty get out of the human starting area and go to the Night Elf one. You’re about to hit Westfall and its about to get a lot grindier… Ask around in chat on how to get to Darkshore. There should be a ship in the Human city that takes you there. Also the quests in Darkshore are more interesting lore-wise.
On that note been enjoying reading your travels mark =] keep the articles coming!
They’re also closer together and there’re more of them. Westfall is is pretty much yellow the entire way through, compare that to glowy mystical forests of death. You know what you must do.
Personally westfall would have to have my favourite quests in the game. Unless they changed it all in cata.
Post-cata its become very grindy. Duskfall is better than it used to be though.
Personally I love post-cata Westfall. It really shows how the game’s storytelling has evolved since vanilla.
Yeah I agree. While I always liked the Westfall / Redrock / Dusk storyline in Vanilla, its a bit more streamlined and understandable as you go now. Not 3-4 stories going on at once.
I was also thinking of doing the same thing! We’re all stalkers. QQ
It’d be great when Mark finally decides he’s had enough if someone can take him on a tour of the locations he’ll never see!
Westfall is one of the best storylines in the game though.
I haven’t played WoW in years, and when I did I barely scratched the surface, but I’m really enjoying this diary. It makes me want to resubscribe.
Yeah. Feels kinda bad – I’ve been “clean” for a full year, maybe two full years? When did MoP come out? All I know is this is really making me want to resub.
Well I actually resubbed approximately a week ago… I wonder when Mark’s articles started +__+
Mark is Blizz giving you a commission for this?!
Wait, you’re on Dath’Remar? I should resub and come say hi with a care package of shinies
I don’t think he is on Dath’Remar, It only shows the server name next to your player name if they are from a different server to you. It would also explain why the chat is telling him how to add a friend so he could be invited on his Dath’Remar character to the same server.
Its all part of this blizzard cross realm shenanigans.
Correct. That’s my warrior on Dath’Remar. With cross-realm and connected servers though, servers don’t really mean that much anymore.
right you are, it’s been about a year since my last log in, things starting to slip my mind a bit. I still hold that this is a good thing however, just did a quick mental test and it turns out I can’t remember the old haste caps and conversion ratios for priests along with things like stat balancing for encounters etc.
Methinks if I did resub I may actually enjoy it for the game it is rather than the complex math equation that it can be O_o
They didn’t have two-man mounts when I started, so I didn’t quite have this experience. What I did have was a max-level friend (70 at the time) helping me by one-shotting mobs during a couple of tricky quests.
Edit: Also, watching chat as I quest is one my guilty pleasures in MMOs. For the most part it’s garbage, true, but every now and then some brilliant stuff bubbles to the surface.
Barrens chat! Another thing mark’s missing out on by going Alliance… Good ol barrens chat!
Oh trust me, Alliance can be just as… flavoursome.
Oh god I laughed when you said it was Mark.
*spoilers: he’s just as awe inspiring and dreamy in real life as he is in WoW*
@markserrels Let me give you some advice 🙂
Talk to the innkeeper and set your hearthstone to the inn for the area you are questing in. If you’ve thrown away your hearthstone, they will give you another one. It allows you to teleport to that inn by right clicking on it. If you are in an area that gives rested exp, you will have some “zzz’s” near your upper left portait… for example almost all of Stormwind has this so you don’t need to visit an inn to log out there.
You can learn 2 primary professions at level 5. I would recommend double gathering such as two of mining/skinning/herbalism. Every time you harvest something, you can get experience from it as well as levelling up the profession. You can sell the goods you harvest on the Auction House, and professions also give you permanent bonuses(mining=extra stamina, skinning=crit chance, herbalism=small heal/attack speed on use). You could come back later and do it, but sometimes it’s often easier to do it as you level(e.g. you kill a boar… you can skin and loot it right now and get the experience rather than power-level it later). If you get linen cloth from kobolds, you can use it to level up your first aid skill once it’s trained(2nd level of Goldshire inn) so you don’t need to come back in the future to farm more cloth(re-doing content). You can also get experience from some other secondary professions such as archaeology, and things like winning Pokemon battles. Click on guards near inns/cities to get them to point out the trainers on your map.
You’re not up to this yet, but a lot of the best loot and experience for levelling comes from doing dungeons and battlegrounds. The first one you win/complete for the “day” gives you bonus rewards. Even if you lose a battleground, you get honor points… and you don’t need much to buy the OP gear(available at level 18 then every 10 levels after that except for epic bracers at lvl 40).
Also… join a guild if you haven’t! Guilds give a lot of good levelling bonuses.
http://www.wowhead.com/npc=14753/illiyana-moonblaze#sells (PvP Vendor for when you’re level 18+)
e.g. http://www.wowhead.com/item=20439 20honor points
http://www.wowhead.com/npc=15127/samuel-hawke#sells:50-2 (PvP Vendor for when you’re level 28+)
While you’re levelling and doing dungeons make sure to do each one at least once. Every dungeon has 2-3 quests that can be found at its entrance that give a lot of exp when completed. You can only do them once but it makes a massive difference while levelling. (This stops once during level 60-68 during the Burning Crusade expac)
actually there are still a ton of quests in the burning crusade dungeons too. underbog has 3 off the top of my head and most of the rest of them have 2 or 3.
There are but you need to do the relevant quest chains in the regions those dungeons are located in order to unlock those quests! Outside of level 60-68 you just get the quests at the dungeon entrance which is much more convenient =P
Actually that part got culled too, there might be 2 or 3 quests across the entire of outland that require a chain but the rest got dumped inside the instance with not pre-questing needed
It should probably be noted that finding you in game isn’t that hard provided we know your toon’s name. There is a search page on the battle.net site (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/community/) where you just enter a name and it will show you every toon with that name from every server.
Also, one of your screen-shots has the BattleTag for Klutar, he may not want that so public.
@markserrels as red has mentioned above, might want to crop the pics to leave out Klutar’s Battle tag as that’s unique to every single person’s Bnet account.
Loving it @markserrels! And try not to get free stuff from mates all the times. Half the fun is the struggle! But definitely get your friend to help you if you need to know where things are or what to do next. You’ll find yourself outlevelling some areas so ask him where you need to go next 🙂
If your only going to spend a month in WoW, I really hope you take some time to explore some of the other starter areas.
The Human zone would be one of the more boring ones imo. (I find it kinda dull to play yourself in a fantasy game for starters).
Blood Elf, Night Elf, Undead – these will really get you into the whole thing imo.
And try a caster – Hunter or Warlock for some real fun.
But as the squllionth person to tell you what to do – just have fun.
And ride the rails from Stormwind to Ironforge.
I’ve been playing through Jade Forrest for just the second time – this time as a Horde after doing it at Alliance 12 months ago. Holy crap what a great story. And I feel so sad coming through to the end of it because you know whats going to happen and where it all eventually leads to.
Although it’s essentially the same storyline – its remarkable how different it feels playing the Horde side. It’s much more what I expected – all bash and crash and take over the world. With Alliance I felt the Pandarin were challenging us a lot more – kinda ironic in the end.
One of my favourite things about Warcraft – as one of those “been here forever” players, is that you can reinvent yourself and the game simply by changing sides, or even choosing to level a different race within the same faction. Max level to me is a bit boring – the real game starts at level 1.
And that’s exactly what this game is about…. the people/players/friends!
So Mark, what was your server’s name? :}
Also want to know
I don’t want to be rude but this just seems like a load of shit to me. I’m not sure if I classify as a gamer sometimes when I see people really interested in this stuff. It’s like writing about writing a book, severely unnecessary.
@markserrels heads up you gave out your friends battle tag in one of the screenshots. not sure if he is cool with that.
Poor Mark has been robbed of his first flying mount experience! Maybe.
Maybe it’s no different from the first time he grabs a flight point.
Oh well, back to stalking. Hit level 10 already!
I’M SO CLOSE.
I don’t play WoW anymore, never will again, unless time somehow folds on itself (or something) and I end up back in the days long before Cataclysm was released.
This story however, it was…..something beautiful……it made my evening…..even If I don’t get hanky panky from my wife later, I will be satisfied thinking of how this story played out.
before they destroyed the “tree” healers (yes, this long ago i played)
i levelled up to level 10 or so by questing…
then from 10 – 70, it was all dungeons as a healer, was epic fun.
also did it with my warrior, 10-70 just tanking…
Reading these so far has tempted me a bit to get into a MMO but I know I won’t have the attention span required to play for a long period of time. Maybe Guild Wars 2 would be a better choice without the subscription fees.
Keep the stories coming though Mark
Mark’s description of the power differential is amusing. But when it’s experienced between people who are playing at the same time, it is an outright betrayal. Penny Arcade version here: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/12/31/a-being-of-indescribable-power