A Load Of Bull

Session Time: 2h spread between Friday and Saturday; advanced from 3 to nearly 7. Would have been more if life had not interfered.

So this weekend was my first experience as a member of The Horde. This is as opposed to the horde I was already a part of, ie pasty-faced nerds with the second-most popular thing in their hand on a lonely Friday night– a mouse. As stated before, I was playing a Tauren Shaman named Shalalah. And the first thing I noticed is that the Taurens steer like cattle. This is not an idle gag meant to go for the easy bovine pun; I mean that quite literally. It seemed as if my enlarged, meaty bulk actually had a significant more amount of inertia to overcome before I could even start moving. I caught myself pressing down harder on the “w” key, if that tells you anything. I am very glad that there’s no voice-chat built in because the number of times I screamed “MOVE, DAMN YOU! RUN LIKE RONALD McDONALD IS BEHIND YOU WITH A MEAT GRINDER, YOU GOD DAMNED SIDE OF BEEF!” would certainly seem to be annoying to other people. I know it was to the police.

Public disturbance aside, I had my first experience on a real team this weekend. One of my quests was, again, to go into some cave and retrieve the cranial section of some named monster. As a Shaman, however, I realized I was a bit more fragile than I was as a Hunter. So as I entered the cave, a Tauren Warrior offered to team with me, as we had the same quest. We joined forces, and set off together. I’d said I don’t usually play support classes in games; I prefer to get my hands dirty myself. However, hanging back and casting spells seemed to really jive well with my partner’s hacking and mauling. Now, granted, it wasn’t always clear as to who got to loot what corpse; yeah, there were the sparkles, but it wasn’t clear why I was able to loot or why he was. As we approached the monster’s lair, I began wondering if I was going to get shafted once he got his monster head. Boy, was I surprised. As it turned out, once the named monster was dead, we were both able to loot the requisite noggin. So, score one for that system. Still, I wasn’t thrilled witht he prospect of walking back home alone, so I used my hearthstone.

Which turned out to be really, REALLY dumb as I was dumped back to the starting village. Because I’d been smart and decided not to set the village with the inn as my home point. So, score one for my own idiocy. I would much rather that the game give you an option of home points to jump to.

One other thing happened of note; I had completed a quest and progressed past the ‘complete’ text a little too quickly. I wondered if there was a ‘completed quests’ log, but couldn’t find it with a cursory inspection of the quest log interface.

I realize that within the lore of the Warcraft universe, the Taurens are the ’spiritualists’ of the Horde. They are the analogues to the Native Americans, who are supposedly in tune with nature and in harmony with the earth. There is definitely a very strong tribal vibe to the Tauren environment and the quests themselves; at one point a spectral vision hound led me way out into the middle of nowhere to meet some old geezer in a shallow cave. And while I might be flippant about it now, while I was doing it I found myself slipping into it just a little. Leaving monsters alone when I didn’t need their loot, that sort of thing. Even without paying too much attention to the storyline, that says something.

But I swear to high heaven, if you make me chase another phantasmal monster that I can’t kill or tell to slow down while I get away from the five wolves following me and chewing away at my HP, I will tell you exactly where to stick that totem. And it ain’t gonna be in the well.

The Good: There’s variety in the missions depending on your starting race. Short sessions still feel productive. Teaming is easy, and efficient even at low levels.
The Bad: Teaming needs a better explanation in-game. Taurens move slower than my XP bar does in CoH. Skill ‘upgrades’ are unclear– should they replace old versions of spells, or go aside them?
Opinion Change? No change this session. Partly because there was a lot of not-playing going on this weekend, but also partly because it’s just not wowing me as much as it did previously.

11 comments August 6th, 2006