Wow, It's WoW

I'm sure that if you do not know about World of Warcraft by now, either by just hearing about it, reading about it, etc. then you pretty much live inside of a cave far, far away from any humanoids, er, I mean mankind. World of Warcraft, the well-known MMORPG created by Blizzard, has recently been introduced into my life and has been abducting it for the last four days. In my last blog entry, titled 'Good Bye Runescape?', I brought up concerns about my feelings toward the previous MMORPG that I have played for over two years of my life, which of course is Runescape. I pondered at that time if I should quit Runescape or not. Should I play a repetitive game that has become more of a chore than a fun gaming experience or should I take the fun route and get World of Warcraft? In the end, Runescape membership was canceled, I gave a small amount of my items to Craig (he was mad at me), and I bought World of Warcraft. A new adventure was about to begin.

In Runescape, I felt like a noble king. I was higher leveled in a large amount of skills, I looked pretty cool with my full kyatt, dragon woodcutting axe, and my woodcutting skill cape as my usual outfit, and I still had that little goal in the back of my head of one day becoming a player moderator. But now in World of Warcraft, I'm nothing but an inexperienced newbie. However, I am catching on quite fast. My dwarf hunter (Buddyfoote) is level 15 and my pet wolf (Kappa) is around level 14-15. I'm somewhat satisfied that I achieved those levels in four days of playing after going from a much easier game such as Runescape, where you just simply click to fight and then sit back and watch, to a hardcore game like World of Warcraft, where at any moment you may have a monster riding up behind you attacking you like crazy and you must have your own strategy to come out of a fight alive. Seriously -- You must make sure no other aggressive monsters are around you, then you must make sure the monster you're attacking isn't with more of their kind or another monster so that you're not outnumbered, and then you must send your pet after the monster, then you have to cast some long-ranged spells as you're shooting the monster with your gun, and then if the monster reaches you at all, you must melee it and use some spells, and then you might back up to book somewhere if you find yourself almost dead. Yes, it's hard compared to Runescape. The thing I like is that there's really no worry if you die, as you can just run back to your body without suffering any penalties, besides maybe losing some durability on your weapons/armor.

It's funny how I suddenly found an interest in World of Warcraft. I was always against the game, thinking of it as the enemy to other MMORPG's such as Runescape and even lesser known ones that deserved a chance to shine (even though they probably were horrible in some way or not balanced). But that one day last week when I went to Carol's house with Kyle, we both found a sudden interest in the game and we both got it. I think the introduction of WoW in person at that time when Runescape seemed dull to me threw me off, and I thus was hungry for WoW. Does that mean I may come back to Runescape sooner or later? I don't know. I'm still not familiar with many aspects of World of Warcraft, and as it being that I'm on a PVP server and I was turned off from player killing on Runescape, I'm not sure that I may like the competition aspect when I venture out into neutral or enemy zones. I don't want to have that feeling that I dislike PVP, then I'll have to leave that toon that I spent hours on leveling/adventuring, and then change to a different realm, create another toon, and be unable to communicate or receive aid from friends on the other realm. And I don't think I want to hand over the large fee to switch my one toon onto a different realm. That's just ridiculous. Well, this is the way I'll have to force myself to look at it -- If I find myself getting defeated a lot, I must level up, ask Carol to go on her level 70 main (her night elf rogue) and maybe get Kyle to come along and everybody else in our guild, and we shall kick ass.

I have to say that WoW has a much steeper learning curve than Runescape. Honestly, WoW comes with a 195-page game manual (excluding the addition non important information at the end) while Runescape comes with an okay sized Knowledge Database and the in-game Tutorial Island, which leaves out a lot of explaining (hence the Lumbridge tutors, and even then members don't have help in member-only skills). And even the areas of WoW take a while to get familiar to. WoW sets you in a starting area when you create a new toon with no objective to fulfill (unless you start the quest(s) that are mostly right in front of you) and it gives you a map that you must fill in by exploring areas. Just to quickly add this in, you gain xp by doing three main things: killing monsters, doing quests, exploring new areas. Quests are mostly the best xp givers, as the process of doing a quest (say for gathering an item by killing monsters, having to kill monsters to access an environment object safely, or by just having to kill an 'x' amount of monsters to complete the quest) can give you a good chunk of xp. Overall though, you need to experience the game in order to learn what the hell is going on.

I believe that WoW, however, literally takes away your time. With Runescape, I can constantly see the computer's clock on the bottom-right hand of the screen and be reminded that it's late and best to turn the game off and turn in for the night. But for the first two full days that I had WoW, I was not wearing my watch and I rarely peeped at another clock in the same room, so when I looked every once in a while and noticed that every time I looked, I was warped two hours ahead into the future, I then concluded that this game may be bad for me and my sleep. Last night I stayed over Craig's and I was up until six in the morning playing before my eyesight became blurry -- you would have a hard time making me do that playing Runescape even if you offered me one thousand dollars. Craig even commented that it was the longest he ever saw me stay up when I stayed over. I'm debating if I even want to play it tonight. I have that little urge poking at me in the back of my head, and I'm trying to fight it, but it won't go away until it becomes stronger tomorrow morning. But I think I was the same way when I started to play Runescape. I was intrigued by Runescape when I first started playing, camping at the level two giant rats behind Lumbridge Castle, where I would firemake and cook their meat. But I'm still not sure about WoW. Do I even like WoW? I don't know -- it's still toying with my mind.

Well, maybe I will go play World of Warcraft, but only for a little while.

Here's my character by the way. If the link doesn't work for you, then go to the World of Warcraft official site, find the button for 'The Armory', and under characters search for 'buddyfoote'.

Have a good one.