I Will Be Level 70: Chapter Three: Epic Fail
I am writing this today with defeat hanging heavy in the air. Agyeman sits in the Undercity, feeling as lonely as I did when my dad remarried his secretary and left me alone to take care of their newborn baby. That was the worst sixth birthday ever. I have not logged into Azeroth in nearly two weeks and the last time I left, I was sitting at level 29, not a girl, but not yet a woman. Before I get into the story of my defeat, allow me to tell you a few tales since last we met.
Jump for my latest adventures
The Legend of Ganky McGank
Whilst venturing though Tarren Mill, it was requested of me to bring the skulls of several farmers to my Horde buddies. Can I take a moment to ask how exactly my adorable little Warlock was able to skin heads down to bone with just a dagger and determination? Anyway, I was picking off farmers all by my lonesome until I was asked to party with another adventurer. I will not mention his name because I was brought up with manners so we'll just call him Ganky McGank or McG for short. McG seemed nice enough, he was all about knocking farmer heads and removing skulls so I thought we'd have a beautiful friendship. This is when I learned about the dark side of WoW, looting. When I had grouped before, someone always had the loot set so we split gold, the quest items were for everyone and everything else was that need/greed thing. It worked fine since I would just grab the textiles for my day laborers in Taiwan and leave the rest of the stuff for everyone else. McG had a different looting method which I affectionately refer to ass "What the frak?" In McG's world, looting was a first come, first serve deal. Being on a laptop without a proper mouse, it took me a few seconds to right click on corpses and by the time I clicked, all their worldly possessions were in the hands of my partner, including skulls. I was helping this guy out while he was taking all the glory, and I do not stand in the background and let that happen, so I asked him nicely to change the looting because I was getting screwed. He politely declined and said it was fine, so I politely mentioned I would maybe like to grab a skull every so often since I only needed 3 more and was doing this for fifteen minutes with him without adding a single addition to my collection. I ended our relationship rather quickly after that.
Well Hello Mr. Helpful
Now don't go thinking I do nothing but hate on other players. I do hate on other players 99% of the time, but every so often a player comes along who rocks my socks off. I cannot believe I just said that... When I was finishing my stay along the Dead Scar I met this awesome guy who offered me a staff that he couldn't use. So began our partnership to finish out my quests in the area all with the support of my new friend. We plotted how to effectively take out big bads, we laughed when we were torn limb from limb by the big bads, and generally had a good time. The good times though are not the best mines for writing an article, but they're there and reason enough to play online.
What Went Wrong?
Time is nobody's friend. Did I really think I'd be able to hit the level cap before the release of Wrath of the Lich King? Darn tootin' I did. I really did try, I'd put off sleeping and eating and plotting against the Russians to play WoW. I would have gotten through it if it weren't for a few wide-eyed children looking at me like puppies at a pet store. I'm talking about my consoles, the boys and girls I had been neglecting. I was born a console gamer, and I'll die a console gamer and only my games will mourn me. In the past few weeks I picked up several high-profile games, not for review or anything, just for enjoyment. My backlog of unfinished games is huge, and even as I have
So will I be canceling my WoW account? Far from it, I plan on picking up Lich King right around release day and will continue to turn Agyeman into the greatest Warlock in all of Azeroth if you don't count every other Warlock in Azeroth. Now though, I'm going to take the time to enjoy myself and make some new friends, because isn't that what online games are about, interacting.
Oh and a special thanks to all the readers who found me on Norgannon and gave my words of encouragement or just said "hi". Now if you'll pardon me, I have to go sell my body for enough gold to buy a mount at level 30.
TheDoctor
Posted to Video Games on 29 October 2008
· Comments (9)
Other stuff like this: blood elves, burning crusade, mmorpg, warlocks, world of warcraft, wrath of the lich king
*hugs*
Those pants seem to draw into the crotch area.
i was wondering how you were doing, so this is a timely post.
don't feel bad -- i've been playing just over a year now, and i STILL haven't hit 70. it's a hard, hard uphill task. don't despair, though -- you'll do it, and then it will be all worth it.
as for McG, to hell with him. there are a lot of asshats in WoW, but there are also a lot of really amazing, wonderful people. you'll meet a lot of the former, but it's the latter that will keep you playing.
i was hoping you'd also mention the recent zombie plague (or did you miss it because you were spending quality time with the console games!?)
That's not how loot works in WoW.
It does not matter what loot mode you put it on. Quest items will drop randomly and independently for each person in a party.
You can never loot someone else's quest item. And whose item it is will be determined when the mob is created, not when you kill it. Getting angry at him for something he has no control over makes you look like an asshole.
This random behaviour is well documented by Blizzard CM's in their forums.
oh Doctor... I'm so sorry... /hug
To cheer you up, my lil'hunter is far from level 70 too!(I blame my alts,grr!) So we will both wave off the Zeppelins headin' to Northrend filled with more fortunate players
With a heavy heart...
Luckily I have a level 70 Troll Hunter ready to go to Northrend.
So I can enjoy Horde WoLK content and I can make a Death Knight.
I just recently renewed my subscription though and I'm trying to get one of my level 34 Alliance characters as far as possible in the two weeks left to enjoy their WoLK content as well.
My advice for someone rushing to 70, coming from a casual WoW player with with 2 lvl 70s, 3 lvl 60s, and 2 lvl 50s, is to do your research and do some planning before starting your WoW day.
I started WoW by finding all the current guides to WoW from sites like WoW.Wiki and Allakazham, copying and printing them off the sites (or just bookmark it if you can do it via phone/blackberry/Iphone).
Since I wish to retain more time for RL and play other games, I plan ahead on how I'd like to quest. This way when I do start, it will be a breeze. This is enhanced by some mods that helps a heck lot like QuestHelper
off wow.curse.com, which directs you to where the quests mobs or items are instead of getting lost for hours on end trying to find them. My planning time usually take 10-20 min and can be done while I'm commuting or while watching TV, and can save me 1-3 hours of frustration.
Having minimized my grind, I usually find that I have more time afterward to enjoy the game via killing random mobs, or PvP or do Holiday Events, or chat with friends, or help out friends.
While in the topic of Holiday events, I found this year's addition of EXP with holiday events to be amazing. I expanded all my Flight Points and gained 1-3 levels on all my toons (or between 100-300 Gold on my 70s) just by sight-seeing and doing naked-runs of Azeroth and Outland.
So keep it up, Doctor. You'll be up there in no time.
Agyeman...isn't that the last name (or something along the lines) of the actress who plays Martha?
Anyways, I feel for you. Unfortunately, having a large population of players means that there will always be a semi-large population of jerks. Make liberal use of your blacklist for minor jerks, and don't hesitate to report the major jerks. There are some awesome people out there adventuring too (as you mentioned), so don't give up hope. :)
Also, I would not recommend QuestHelper. Sometimes, the information is just plain wrong, and a lot of other times the add-on itself interferes with game functionality and/or other add-ons. I would recommend using a WoW search engine like Wowhead for information, and Alt+Tab'ing between the game and browser window as needed.
I am going to come and give another vote for QuestHelper. I won't deny that it sometimes does not show me quests that I have picked up, and I can't say for certain whether it's messed up any other game functions (none I've noticed as of yet), but it has made my life SO much easier. It'll not only tell you where you need to go for a quest, but it'll give you a rough estimate of which order you should do them in, so you are not running back and forth.
The only reason I disagree with SZK on this matter is because for reasons unknown, my internet browsers do not take kindly to me alt-tabbing from a game and then trying to use them. Furthermore, I have yet to find a site that shows maps for EVERY quest. I usually use wowwiki, and then take their links through thottbot, allakhazam, wowhead, etc, until one of them has a map. But so far, QuestHelper has not let me down.
Oh, and I've played since about 2005, or 2006 and my highest level character is 49. In fairness I've quit four times for several months at a time (sometimes a year), but still. I'm compromising and hoping to get to 55 before the expansion comes out, as much as I don't think I'll like the Death Knight.