Bestiality Now!

August 3rd, 2006 at 06:52am TheFurryOne

Session Time: 1h15m. Advanced Ceilai from 9 to 10; gained various pet-related abilities. The Talent system first became available.

I have always said that I’m “too busy” to do certain things. This is usually an alias for “too lazy”; however last night, I actually was too busy. See this wonderful new site and all that jazz? I did this. Took me the better part of the night, too. So at around 8:30, I figured, “It’s hunter time.” I logged in and found myself at an awkward stage.

I wanted to go back into the Barrow Den, knowing that I was close to completing the quest but also knowing that I would be violently and repeatedly destroyed. However, I also knew that I was very close to Level 10, whereupon I’d get all those lovely pets that pretty much help to define the Hunter class. So, I did what any self-respecting gamer would do. I decided to grind the last three bubbles to 10 by hunting random monsters. Now, under normal circumstances I’d be looking at a good hour by itself of killing; however, I’d left Ceilai logged out and at an inn since Monday evening, so she had a significant amount of rest piled up. Within about twenty minutes, I was happily at 10– and I still had rest left over!

I ran back to town, dumped the less-desirable detritus (Herbalism is a very nice skill to have, as flowers tend to go for relatively high prices), and went to see the trainer. Three quests, in sequence, had me taming various animals in the lower parts of Teldrassil. Granted, I had little knowledge of what I was doing, but the quests were extremely simple and I was quite happy with the results– bucketloads of experience and a handful of skills “for free” (I’d been expecting to have to pay 4 silver for the right to tame a pet). I don’t exactly recall where on the experience bar I logged out at, but I’m sure it’s at least a third of the way towards 11.

Also, once I hit 10, I was awarded a Talent point. This works somewhat like feats and skills from the D20 system (specifically, Neverwinter Nights or KOTOR). Talent points go into a class’ talent trees, where they can be allocated towards skills such as enhancing your strikes or giving you an edge while taming beasts (to use the Hunter examples). It’s a staple of most RPG systems, but I fail to see what’s so special about it that it had to wait until Level 10 before it became usable for the player. Also, I certainly hope you get more than one talent point each level, because right now it looks like the system will have very limited use beyond specializing your character into one skillset (ie it’s not possible to make a limited jack-of-all-trades who can fulfill different roles in different parties). Not saying that allowing someone to focus their Hunter into archery or beast taming at the expense of the other is a bad thing, but it could be seen as limiting by someone like me who wants to be as flexible as possible in his play style.

In short, I want to be a min-maxing twerp. But that’s not easy with the system. Ergo, the game sucks; and certainly my dissatisfaction can’t be the result of me trying to shoehorn my preconceived notion of how to play into an extremely rigid system.

The Good: I’m sold on the rest system; it allows for short sessions to be productive. Beast mastery is an interesting system; I don’t usually play as ‘controller’ types, so managing multiple people on the battlefield is a new challenge for me. The Talent system shows promise for players who want to give their character a focus.
The Bad: Ran into a little bit of trouble in trying to advertise an item in the trade channel; the manual’s instructions (type /trade followed by your message) just plain didn’t work. Finding ‘quick work’ (ie short, readily-available missions for low rewards) isn’t easy. If your rest wraps around to the next level, there’s no indication of how much you have remaining.
Opinion Change? Improved quite a bit. This session was basically a test to see if players could be productive in short bursts. I’m probably going to focus on Shalalah (my Tauren, remember him? I almost don’t) for a week or so to see if the Horde has it any easier.

Entry Filed under: World of Warcraft