My guild in WOW, MeS, hosted our first Molten Core run.  If you're a WOW player, then you know this is no easy endeavour.  It requires gathering 40 people, all of whom have done a fairly extensive quest to gain entry to the MC instance.  It can't just be any 40 people either, you need to balance the classes represented and ensure a good mix of tanks, damage dealers and healers. 

This was my first time ever, so I have to admit I was a bit nervous.  We were all required to be on teamspeak, so I had to pick up a new headset/microphone earlier today.  At any rate it's always funny how most of the guys react when they realize there is a real woman behind a female character.

We had a great time, blowing through the first few mobs with ease, but then got wiped by serveral unexpected spawns and a couple iffy pulls.  Needless to say, it was the first time in a long time I had fun playing WOW and was glad to be a level 60.  For what it's worth if you are a warrior in WOW and planning to do this type of instance run, I HIGHLY recommend a complete defensive spec.

We're going to try for another run next week, since we weren't able to take Luci down.  The thing is, I didn't even care that we didn't get the boss, it was just a fun time all around working as a team and killing the baddies.  Oh and our Druid Naurok scored some "phat lewt" go puppy!

b.

On my WOW server, Stonemaul, they have a tradition called "The Force Wave".  Looks like some other folks picked up on it and now we've gone and gotten ourselves famous.

Have to give credit to the creator of this pastime - my favorite undead warlock - XGoblin - indeed all our alliance wimmens belong to u.

b.

I suppose if a Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) game has millions of subscribers it isn't a stretch to say you might run in to one or two in the real world. 

A while back I wrote a short piece for joystiq regarding love and romance in mmos. I invited anyone who had stories to share to send them my way.  A couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail from a writer at the Detroit Free Press wondering if she could quote a section of the article.  "Of course you can!", I told her and then I mentioned that instead of SWG I was playing WOW as my game of choice.  She quickly replied, "Cool what server are you on? I'm on [insert WOW server here]." 

Around that same time, I also had someone post a comment on my blog relating to my malaise at becoming level 60and having trouble deciding what to do next.  He suggested I roll horde and give the bad guys a shot.  I went to his blog and quickly realized we both worked at Microsoft.  I sent an "I'm not stalking you" e-mail  because it was too funny that we shared the same stomping grounds.

I think "what server are you on" might quickly replace the "what's your sign" of the 70's as the new "hey didn't I know you in high school?" of the 80's.

b.

When I haven't had the inclination to sign in and level a toon, it means one of a few things is going on:

1.  I'm really busy in the world with work, being social and/or fun projects.

2.  I'm just not feeling the love for that class.

3.  I am completely burned out on WOW after getting Kealiha to 60.

I would have to say IRL things are no more busy than usual, so it's really down to number 2 or 3.  The more I think about it, the reason for not playing much is probably a mix of 2 and 3. 

I have played the following classes beyond level 10:

Warrior

Druid

Paladin

Mage

Rogue

I have played these classes to at least level 5:

Priest

Warlock

It looks like the only Alliance class I haven't tried is hunter, and because I don't think it's fair to judge a class until you get higher than level 10, I really can't speak for priest and warlock.

What if it turns out that the only toon I really want to play is Kealiha my lvl 60 warrior and I just need a big time out?  I know it's seems silly I'm putting so much thought into a video game, but alas we all have our own bizarre obsessions. 

At any rate poor Mirabel is logged out in Goldshire waiting to go out and play.  /sigh

Mirabel hit level 10 last night!  I'm really glad I didn't power through to level 10 in one night, and instead took my time over the week.

Most of my time last night was about finishing up the Elwyn Forest quests and making some more progress with my mining and engineering skills.  I have to say mining is a lot of fun, if not absouutely obsessive!  You can turn on a little mineral finder so that deposits show up in your world map as little yellow dots.  If you are type A like me you will stop everything and go out of your way to find a mine.  The main problem is, I tend to ignore the 2-3 mobs surrounding the mine and have to run away before getting killed.  I swear Penny Arcade did a comic about this very subject but I can't find it to save my life.  I'll keep hunting around.

Once I had gathered a significant amount of ore and stone, I headed to Stormwind to make some items and get trained.  I was SO excited when I realized I could make a gun (an idespensible item for folks who can't pull with spells/etc) and then equally dispondent when I made my way to Ironforge and learned Paladins cannot be trained to use guns.  /sigh /cry

It is almost impossible to do solo questing without the skill to pull a lone target away from a larger group.  I'm hoping that Paly's get some sort of distance attack at some point.

Speaking of going to Ironforge, it is a quite a journey the first time you head there from Stormwind.  First you hop the tram accessible by the Dwarven City in Stormwind and then after riding underground (be sure to check out the view from the side!!) you wind up in Tinkertown, Ironforge.  There is a fun little quest you can grab at the IF tram station called rat roundup.  I took a couple of screenshots to show you what an interactive quest looks like, because unlike the normal slash and hack quest these usually invovle using an object on a mob.  In this case I used a magic flute to roundup 6 tram rats, only to watch them put in a box and turned into rat kabobs!!  One thing you should know if you are new to WOW is to hang out for a few seconds after you turn in a quest.  Many times there will be a little story line to go along with it, and some are pretty funny.

My last stop before calling it a night, was to talk with the Gryphon master in Iron Forge and to catch a ride back to Stormwind.  I think riding the Gryph's has to be one of my favorite things to do in game.  If you've seen that latest Harry Potter movie, it's very similar to the scene with Harry and Buckbeak (eek, I hope that's his name).

On to the next ten levels!

Unfortunately Comcast decided to upgrade their networks to support their new VOIP service and Mirabel is still stuck at level 9, so I don't have much to share.

That said I had a couple exciting little moments during the short period between levels 8 and 9.  The first thing that happened is I got challenged to a duel in Goldshire.  Something I have never understood the entire time I have played WOW is what the proper duel ettiquette should be.  I have had someone send me a /whisper asking if I want to duel; a bit of advanced warning if you will.  Then I've had folks announce in general chat or area /say that they are looking for someone to duel. 

Finally, I have received the spam /duel request.  I am literally wandering around and suddenly a huge red flag drops and I get a request to either accept or decline the duel.  99% of the time I click decline and just stick to the task at hand, however, last night I realized I would be missing a great opportunity for a screen shot if I didn't accept.  So I figured, what the heck?  No shame in dying for the great cause of a neat-o screenshot.

We have a lvl 8 Paladin (me) against a lvl 12 Warrior; and after his initial charge/stun shot I figured I was a goner.  But once I recovered and started to fight back, he did the oddest thing: ran away.  It was so strange he just started to run in the opposite direction and then once the duel was cancelled he swung back around and I think tired to train a mob (huge scary hairy spider) on me.  Either that or he was really just running away from the spider and happened to run right back in front of me on his way back to town.  I still had my challenger selected so I just /peered and /shrugged at him hoping I would get an explanation.  Nope, instead I just calmly watched my little dwarf warrior antagonist speed away on his wee little legs. 

My second exciting, dare I say /yay moment, was when I looted my first green.  I'm on the 7th or 8th toon that I've started and I think this is the first time I ever looted not only a green - but one that I could use!  I was pretty pleased with myself.  It's a sweet looking shield too.   Huge Kudos to Blizzard for making each and every weapon, sheild, piece of armor look just a little different or unique.  I have to admit I have a equipped many a useless soulbound item just so I could look like before I sold it to a vendor.  Looking back, I wish I had screenied them.  Ah well, C'est La Vie.

One of the things I learned the first time around leveling a character in WOW is to choose your professions as soon as possible.  The reason is many of the materials you need for your beginning recipes will be found or looted during your early quests.  Also, the items you make will be helpful to you as you level up.  Lastly, since you can only choose two professions it's a good idea to think about which ones suit your class and are also complimentary. 

Since Mirabel is a Paladin I chose Engineering and Mining in order to make supporting gear (and because I'm jealous of the mind control cap high lvl engineers can make).  Although, blacksmith is another good choice I find that most of the dropped gear is either just as good or better than player crafted.  (This by the way is something I wish Blizzard would reconsider ) 

For the most part the professions that are the best for earning an income are the gathering:  herbalism, skinning, mining.  This is because gathered resources can not be purchased by vendors and a wide variety of the crafting professions require various materials for their recipes.  Finally, if you happen to choose a crafting profession that requires a lot of a certain type of material, then it's a good idea to take that up as your secondary. 

Maribel is also going to work on her cooking and first aid skills, both professions that a lot of people choose to not learn, but I have found to be essential.  Food and drink can be used both to heal up between battles as well as to buff stats for a period of time.  If you do a decent job of staying up to date on your recipes as you level you will be in fairly good shape when you need to solo or your healers are low on mana.  First aid may seem like a random profession since Paladins have healing skills, but the other secret is that bandages sell to vendors for very good prices.  It can be especially helpful when trying to get that last 10 gold for your mount.

I think I'm on my fourth or fifth time of running a human character through the beginning quests.  I believe I have them memorized:

1.  Kill 10 Kobold Vermin

2.  Get 8 Wolf Skins

3.  Kill 10 Kobold Workers

4.  Collect 12 Red Burlap Bandanas

5.  Kill 12 Kobold Laborers

6.  Collect 6 Bunches of Grapes

7.  Head to Goldshire

It's a nice series of quests, that will give me enough XP to hit level 5 or 6 before I head down the road to Goldshire.  By then Mirabel will start to trade out her starting squire gear for some low level armor.  One thing to note, for women mail/plate wearers in particular... the better the gear... the smaller it is .  The guys at Blizzard did a nice job of outfiting the female toons in this game in the tradition of Anime and other Comic art genres.  Fairly buxom with a lot of skin showing!

I leveled Mirabel to level 4 today, and was able to train her twice in new skills at both levels 2 and 4.  Paladin is an interesting mix between fighting and healing skills.  I'm pretty used to warrior which is mostly about either taking or dealing damage, so I miss having more fighting moves at the moment.  I should confess, though, that I chose a Paladin for two very specific reasons:  1.  Better chance to solo having healing skills 2.  Free Horse at Level 40 (once you've saved the 90 gold the first time, it seems daunting to do so again).  Although I really enjoy my guild and the social aspects of WOW, I am very much a solo player.  I like moving at my own pace, doing the quests as I see fit and find that in groups I tend to get anxious or frustrated about having to either wait for others or be pushed along. 

I have said this many times and I stand firmly by it: WOW has an incredible capacity to make you evaluate your social skills and ability to play nice with others.  At any time I have had the best in me and worst in me brought out while questing with friends or others.

In between laundry shifts today my goal is to get Mira to level 8 or so, at that point I will then be able to research Pally talents and start building a template.  Not sure if anyone has found their way here to my blog, but if you have AND you know something of WOW Palidins I would appreciate any guidance

Maribel

Mirabel became a resident of Stonemaul a little before midnight PDT on April 9, 2005.  

Toon creation is an ordeal for me, in that whatever you pick for your look is what you are stuck with for life so to speak (no Image Designers in WOW).  Since I decided to roll an Alliance character I was limited to four races:  Human, Dwarf, Gnome and Night Elf, however, I knew I wanted to be a Paladin and that reduced my choice to Human or Dwarf.

I'm not sure if most MMO players feel the same way, but I think of my toon as an aspirational version of myself.  In other words, she is going to be stronger, smarter, and MUCH better looking.  So that said, a dwarf just didn't appeal to my 5'1" sensiblities.  I chose a lovely, tall femail human paladin.  I even decided to go with blonde hair, as Pallys represent all that is goodness and light in Azeroth, so I pictured an angelic, almost, beatific looking creature for my toon. 

Second to character design, naming a toon is an incredibly difficult task for me.  I assign a lot of importance and meaning to my names.  My warrior's name, Kealiha, carries over from my Star Wars Galaxies days and translates to the color white in Hawaiian.  She was a rebel fighting on the side of lightness and good, so Kealiha seemed a fitting name.  After carrying that over to WOW, I named my Night Elf Druid Noire as homage to her being a creature of the night.  My Gnome Mage was aptly named Peridot for her green eyes and hair (as well as it being my birthstone).  For my new Paladin, I knew I wanted a name that sounded Medieval and struck a chord of purity and innocence.  I found a great site that listed some early English feminine names and after browsing a bit, chose Mirabel.  I can't say there was any specific reason, other than it sounded right. 

With her looks set and name chosen, I clicked on the "Enter World" button and my new life in Azeroth began.

Almost two weeks ago, March 27th to be exact, my warrior hit level 60.  Now for most folks this statement means absolutley nothing, but for the legions of us across the globe that play World of Warcraft I had entered into the next phase:  the endgame.  /sigh

Now what?  I literally did a little /cheer and a /dance after hitting 60 and then after hearthing to Ironforge I had no clue what to do with myself.  There was no ticker tape parade waiting for me in Stormwind, no one there to lend me 900 gold for my epic mount, and I hadn't even collected my first piece of the Valor set.  And I was already so...well....so darn tired from the mad dash to 60.  (Although my dash was a solid four months). 

/played = 26 days, 3 hours, 39 minutes, 40 seconds

After two weeks of half-heartedly logging on and off, running a few instances with guildies, and surfing the Auction House for random epics that were underpriced; I began to wonder if it was all over.  Were the glory all-nighters of WOW over?  What the hell did I do with myself before I started playing MMOs?  Who am I??  Okay - not that dramatic - but there was a decided sense of post-wowdom depression setting in.

I tried a few diversions.  Worked my way up to level 14 playing Untold Legends on the PSP, bought a new book The Shadow of the Wind, and went to the movies.   BUT, I still missed the good old WOW questing days (and nights)...

Since launch in November, I have created half a dozen alternate characters.  I have a level 11 Mage and a level 26 Druid, but haven't managed to get into playing either of them enough to make the trek to 60.  I guess I'm just a tank at heart.  Enter Mirabel: Paladin.

I hope you'll join me as I journal Mirabel's journey to 60 on the PVP server Stonemaul.  One rule I'm making is I am going to play her like a true n00b.  No twinks from the guildies, no transfering gold from my lvl 60 toon, and worst of all no asking our resident tailor for four 14 slot bags.  /cry

/charge

Mirabel  - Paladin at Large