World of Warcraft - My Experiences in The Trial - Part 2

Welcome to the second part of my WoW trial experiences! If you haven't read the first part, then do so by clicking any part of this sentence!

Let us begin!

(If you're an active World of Warcraft player, there's a guide I mention in the Conclusion of this article that you may want to get.)

While I did not know this at the start, I would come to realize that Day 3 would be the last day I would play World of Warcraft. However, that would be starting at the end, so let me talk about what I did. ;)

As usual, I logged into the client, spawning in the Inn at Goldshire once again. I turned in a quest I had forgotten about yesterday and went to the mines to kill Goldtooth and retrieve the necklace to end that god-forsaken long chain of quests I initiated yesterday. Being an area with several quests as it is, the mines were bustling with player activity once again, and I distributed some attack boosts to any players that needed them, before heading in. Goldtooth himself was easy, but he has this nasty tendency of running away when near death. Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for me, he ran into a spell cast by a player that was nearby and dropped, lifeless, to the ground. I claimed his Gold Tooth (worth 26 coppers. :P) and the necklace I needed to complete the quest. As I turned in the quest, I received another quest.

This new quest had me killing a boar named Princess because she was getting fat off of the family's crops. Since when is that my problem?! -_-

Anyways, I went and did the dirty deed. After finishing that quest, I leveled up and decided to tackle the Murlocs once again (you know, the ones that sent me to the spirit world -_-).

The end result of that was:

Since I realize the picture makes no sense in its current context, let me explain. You needed the 4 pieces of Crystal Kelp from the Murlocs to create an invisibility potion so a separated couple could be together. The quest description I'm showing you tells you to go take the potion to the woman who would drink it. ;)

Essentially, the rest of the time I played, I was either fetching something for a quest giver, or killing monsters, also for a quest giver. Fetch, kill, fetch, kill.

I decided that I had seen enough and decided to stop playing. I'm going to summarize my impressions and add some things in the next section.

First, let me start with the good:

• This game lives up to its genre. It is definitely a Massive Multiplayer Online experience, with particular emphasis on Massive. In these three days I played, I was in or around the area of Northshire and Goldshire, and there are several continents, so that should tell you something of the amount of content this game has.
• The players on the server were, for the most part, pretty nice. Granted, they couldn't do much to help me due to the trial version restrictions, but it doesn't matter too much.
• The game interface is easy to pick up, once you realize that using the WASD key scheme is better for moving than the arrow keys, and that you don't use the mouse to move, unlike Diablo.
• The difficulty curve for leveling up is pretty light for the genre. I recall how frustrating it was to take 4 hours to get one level in Runes of Magic, and that's while I still had about 7 levels to go to reach the maximum level. In this game I got roughly 9 levels in 4-5 hours.
• There's a lot of potential for character customization, what with the ability to get Talents and the vast amount of items you can receive as well. Even at my low level, this was pretty obvious.

Of course, not all that glitters is gold, and I have to say some negative things as well:

• Playing as a low-level STINKS! The only other words I could use to describe how tedious questing is at a low-level are not meant to be read by minors, so I'll leave it at that. Oh, and that's considering I didn't play a Hunter. I've heard that some people rage quit before reaching level 10 as one, since it's so slow and dull. If someone from Blizzard Entertainment ever reads this, I sincerely hope they try to make the experience more gratifying. After all, mid-game and late-game content involves large groups of players, which is social and inherently fun (unless some people in the group are being turds, but that's besides the point). But, early-game content is like: "Complete me so you can get to the fun part." That makes the early levels feel like work, and you shouldn't mix your work with your play, in my opinion. ;)
• The trial is way too limited. Granted, you do get a taste of the game, but some of the early quests are better done as a group, and you can't be part of a group if you're a trial player, unless I missed something (feel free to check the list of restrictions and correct me if I'm wrong). That's without mentioning your relative inability to chat, which shuts out the prospective payer from chatting with veterans of the game unless they're so lucky that they meet one on the beaten road (and then you'd have to chat with /say, which is horridly clunky as compared to regular chat). I don't mind the character restrictions so much as I mind the restrictions to grouping and chat.
• The game needs more variety of quests. I can only speak from a beginner's view point, but it feels like all you do is fetch and kill, fetch and kill. If the end-game is fetch, kill, raid dungeons, then I'd still be underwhelmed (raids and instances are pretty fun, but if that's all you're ever going to do, it seems like a waste of content potential).

So, that's all from me. Now you have a taste of what World of Warcraft is like. If your interest was piqued by my article, feel free to download the trial client and give it a go yourself. If you enjoy games in the MMO genre, I'll daresay you won't be disappointed. However, if you're used to the quick leveling of conventional RPGs, then the change of pace MMOs will bring may not be to your liking.

If you play World of Warcraft on a regular basis and want to learn how to get gold faster without having to resort to illegal methods, you might want to check out this link.

Until the next time, take care and have fun! ;)

-Winterfate

P.S: Check out my loot at the end of my trial run. My character has one thing to say about his final moments as well (read the caption. :P).