World of Warcraft Day 3

Day 3

More quest work and a bit of time spent hack-and-slashing things that roam around.
Professions picked.

I decided to go with mining/blacksmithing as a profession, but didn't work on any profession-related stuff other than training. I will probably do fishing as a sub-field, because I enjoy the idea of fishing.

6:30am started out and had the fortune of getting spam-invited into a group that was heading over to the next island for some sort of quest. I accepted the invite and tagged along. The location that I was in was a series of islands just offshore. I was collecting stuff for quests and generally soloing things on one island, one mob at a time as two = death.

The quest the group was after was that I'd signed up for, according to the log, so I joined in and fought whatever was pulled. There were three other people for a group of four total including myself. They were not talkative at all. There was no plan besides attacking voodoo-looking type mobs, which we did with abandon. The loot system isn't bad. If there is a quest item you need, then a copy exists for everyone. There was some loot that people rolled for. However, mobs are quite dumb. The don't run, they generally don't protect their own, they don't swarm. The aggro radius seems really small. Chain aggro hasn't occurred at all so far. It was like fish in a barrel this morning at the voodoo camp. The small island I was on was a bit harder, but the mobs popped in the same spot every time, and they were all equidistant with the aggro ranges non-overlapping. I could have stayed there indefinitely, as long as I was careful about catching aggro from the crab guys in the water near the shore.

Once the number of required kills was reached, one person simply started running back to town. Another person pulled a mob. The third person ran off in a different direction. I helped fight the mob, but the person that pulled it died. The mob wandered off, even though I'd hit it several times and it probably could have killed me. I'm not sure why that happened, but I'm glad I didn't have the minor inconvenience of running the short distance back to recover my dumb dead arse.

The reason I didn't get lost at this point, since everyone ran off before I looted the last quest item, is because the map system in WoW provides pretty much all location information on it. You have pointers back to the places that you've already been. I have tracking as a "hunter" (ranger) so I tracked to the nearest group member. People were disbanding as I swam to the island that I had been on earlier.

I thanked the group member (in a say) that I had tracked to for the group, and was asked if I was being sarcastic. I said "no, why would you think that? I appreciate the group and had fun".

There was no response from the other person. So, first group experience could have been played by computer-programmed in-game avatars, rather than people. It was very hard to tell if anyone was having fun while doing this brief expedition to the other island.

Getting your armor repaired, purchasing upgrades, etc is quite straightforward and doesn't tax the finances very much at this point. Completing the island-quests leveled me up to 8 at 8:15 am. I logged out near the fishing village having done quests, a group, profession training, and dying in the water to something that I should have been able to kill on dry land.

I read some of the realm forums and came away with a negative impression of the people that post there. I have to assume that people like me, who type in (generally) complete sentences, enjoy games, and try to be civil and social with other players are simply all in guilds, and post to their own boards there rather than public forums like the one at the World of Warcraft site.

I haven't been invited to a guild at this time - I would reckon it's pretty much required to join one in order to really take advantage of the PVP opportunities on the server that I am on (Agamaggan). It probably wouldn't be that fair of me to join one, since I can only play a few hours in the morning and the jury will be out on WoW until after this 10-day trial.

I am looking forward to being able to have a pet.

From Hunter Site

"What level can I start taming beasts?
You can start taming beasts at level 10 after you complete your Hunter quests. You will need to talk to your local hunter trainer and they will give you a quest to go talk to the hunter trainer that will teach you how to tame beast. You will then receive 3 taming quests each one has you tame a different beast that is local to the area you are in. After you complete the taming quests you will receive Beast Taming, Calling and Dismiss skills, these are in your spell book under Beast skills. You will then receive another quest to talk to the trainer in the main city for your race. After talking to that trainer you will have the Feed, Revive and Training skills. These are also under Beast skills except for Beast training which is under general skills."

It does sound fun. I hope I have enough time to level to 10, learn about pets, and do some mining/blacksmithing in the next week or so.