Archive for July 25, 2010
The Ongoing Saga: Amarin and the Exodar
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I was kind of thrown for a loop after creating Amarin: she was a survivor of the crash of the Exodar, some kind of ship that was carrying a sizable compliment of Draenei on their way to…somewhere. Actually, I think they were running from the Burning Legion, or were meeting up with other allies when they crashed. Thankfully, they crashed in a nice, verdant area filled with fuzzy moths and snow-white stags, which is always a bonus.
I suppose this was the opening salvo of the current “technology” bent that has crept into World of Warcraft. Originally it was the mechanostriders, but now we’re talking space elf-goats with holographic projector technology. We won’t even get into the chopper mounts or the upcoming technopocolyptic starting area for the goblins in Cataclysm.
One of Amarin’s first tasks was to help with the relief efforts. This amounted to healing a single wounded Draenei survivor. Just one. But to spite the developers, I made sure to heal as many survivors as I could when I came across them. I was hoping for some kind of achievement for being a good citizen, but meh.
It seems that the crash of the Exodar did more then cause work for me, because many of my first tasks involved decontaminating the surrounding area that was experiencing some serious side-effects from the Draenei power crystals that had been flung far from the crash site. I guess the Draenei are the BP of Azeroth now.
As WoW is wont to do, I was pushed ever onward across the map. I was sent to meet up with another splinter of survivors on Azuremist Isle, close to the actual site of the Exodar crash. It was here that I uncovered a plot by the Blood Elves to exterminate the Draenei. I guess they didn’t take too kindly to our messing up of their coastline. A secondary objective was to make contact with an Alliance expeditionary force to the south to let them know we had recovered a wounded Night Elf. Naturally, these trusting souls put me to work killing naga and sirens, and recovering their stolen goods. Along the way, we uncovered another plot by the sea-spawn to overtake the island. The Draenei certainly aren’t making any friends with the presence of their crashed technological wonder-ship.
That’s where I left off last night, having reached level 9. As always, Blizzard’s quests are tight, if less then exciting. I had forgotten how slow PvE combat was, having only a handful of actions available, most of which were ranged and were applied within seconds of one another while the target was still at range. I suppose that being a hunter means never wanting to see the whites of their eyes.
The Ongoing Saga: Back In The WoW Saddle
3After watching a 30 minute video of some of the changes forthcoming in Cataclysm, I decided that I’d re-up for World of Warcraft. Again. It’s not WoW per se that brought me back; I do have a known history of revisiting my history, but in this case I feel that Cataclysm seems to be doing a lot of things that bear witnessing if I want to keep my “MMO Gamer” card in good standing.
Unfortunately, the {air quote} Universe {air quote} didn’t want me to re-join it seemed. I had received an email from Blizzard several months ago telling me that my (inactive, unsubscribed) Battle.net/WoW account was locked for “illegal behavior”. Sue enough, there was an authenticator attached, which I didn’t do. After some rather pleasant interactions with customer service, I managed to get my Battle.net account back, but only recently did I get my WoW account back. I logged in and found several level 1 characters on various servers all over the world, which I promptly deleted.
I also scored a decent deal on the expansions, which I had not picked up when they were current. After adding them to my account, I hit the ground running and headed back to Azaroth to enjoy the world one last time before it gets all fucked up.
I’ve never been one to chronicle my play sessions like others do. I find that I generally play by the seat of my pants, knocking out quests and generally moving forward, head down…not the most exciting stories to read. But since I’m returning to the game after a prolonged period of inactivity, and returning to a game where I’m technically two expansions behind, I decided that this might be a good time to start “live blogging” my perspective. WoW blogs are a dime a dozen, so don’t expect anything new, exciting or in-depth. I’m not a min-maxer, lore-monger or gearscore whore. I play to see the sights and do the deeds.
I decided to roll on the Raxxar server, since a few Twitterites had mentioned it in the past week. Since I had never had access to the Burning Crusade expansion, I opted to roll a Draenei, which from what I gather is either some kind of alien night-elf/goat cross-breed, or unknown neighbors from the other side of the planet (I told you I’m not a lore-monger!). I’d never started in this area, which was important to my enjoyment this time around. I went with the hunter (yes, hunTER, as I refuse to give in to WoW slang) because I’m a ranged DPS kinda guy, by the name of Amarin.
So be warned: I’ll be interspersing my usual pointed-stick posts with run-downs of how things are going leading up to the release of Cataclysm, or as I like to call it, “Deathwing’s Raging Kegger”.
