Adventures in WoW (Confessions, part two)

Not a lot to report from the WoW frontlines today, mainly because I’ve spent a large part of the day feeling like death warmed over… and even then only barely. Between that, having to deal with a household nit invasion and trying to keep Di sane during Essay Crunch Time(tm*), my so-called “free” time for things like casual MMOing got kinda eaten up. I did manage a brief break period in the time between when the boys went back to Pre-School and before we had to go and pick up Zoe. Observations, in no particular order, below:

• I’m still playing it like a regular RPG. That is to say, the RPG bit of MMORPG is being fulfilled, but I’m not drawn to other players as yet. I can count the interactions I’ve had with other players on the fingers of one hand; for one particular quest I more (or less) had the help of some kind of mage night elf who fought beside me but said nothing.
• Other than that, my curious (but oh so addictive) habit of sticking my dagger into any rabbit that strays into my path obviously worries some people; I’ve had three people ask why, and one person get quite offended and challenge me to a duel. As I’ve decided that SnilthWimbat is not just a rogue, but a dashing kind of rogue, the fact that he failed to slap me across the face with a glove meant that I simply ignored him and walked away.
• I do feel kinda bad, however, about all the early quests where I’m wiping out huge quantities of Night Sabers and Thistle Hogs. They’re happy little creatures that basically just gambol** about the place until I come at them with blood lust in my otherwise sparkly eyes. They don’t even seem to munch much of the fauna, despite what my quest giver insisted was the truth. What did they ever really do?
• I have, however, moved into darker and more dangerous areas, where pretty much every enemy creature will specifically do me damage. Which makes my whole “backstab” ability a bit pointless, as they’re always charging face first at me.
• I’m still yet to see anything that couldn’t be properly implemented on a console, and indeed, WoW’s colourful visuals practically scream out console game. The fact that it’ll run at a pretty decent resolution on my Macbook means it can’t be a graphics issue. And frankly, given the amount of loot that Blizzard’s pulling in month by month, I’m surprised that neither Sony nor Microsoft hasn’t yet driven the obligatory truck full of money up to Blizzard to make it happen. Not only a license to print money — but also a license to sell consoles by the truckload, methinks…
• It’s still stupidly good fun to stand in a quest giving area and just dance. Today, without any kind of other communication, I got three other player characters dancing with me for a brief while Sadly, I was playing on the Macbook, and couldn’t easily work out how to do a print screen dump of this frankly ridiculous scene.

*Now with added Niacin. I never did find out what Niacin was good for, but boy, it used to feature heavily in cereal adverts when I was a nipper…
** Great word, Gambol. Try to use it in casual conversation today, and see where it leads you…