*** I originally posted this to the official World of Warcraft forums. ***

I was having a conversation with my 11 year old last night where he asked me what toys we got for Christmas back when I was his age. Action figures were my most common toys. Dolls were my wife’s common toys.

After that discussion, I sat down at my computer for a little WoW time. Looking through my many characters, it struck me: my WoW toons are my action figures. Even more: my WoW toons are also my dolls. Not only do I play adventures with them, but I also like to dress them up in special clothes/gear.

Bullgrit

*** This was originally posted to the official World of Warcraft forums. ***

I’ve been reading several threads, here, and it seems that everyone who posts here are level 100s – very experienced and long-term players. I thought it might be interesting to post some observations about current WoW from another point of view, or two.

I played WoW for 4+ years, from before BC up until WotLK was new. I played about 8 hours a week, reaching level 60 not long before BC was released. I reached level 70 before WotLK, and quit the game just two levels into that expansion.

When I started WoW as a pastime, I chose to play an orc hunter because I liked the concept of lone hunting through the wilderness. 90% of my play time was solo play, 9% grouped with some real-world friends (my old D&D game group), and 1% in a guild raid (with the guild my D&D group were members of). I never joined that or any other guild.

I was a solo player. The couple of guild raids (20? people) I was a part of were rather disappointing – not bad, just not as fun as my solo playing. Although one of my favorite memories of all my play time was a PUG raid on the elven city in Ashenvale, (can’t remember the name). I was top level (60), then, and that 1-2 hour long battle was just crazy fun. There were between 10-20 of us Hordies attacking and from 0-20 Allies defending – the numbers rose and fell as people came and went. (I had a grand total of just one PVP experience before that, in a battleground.)

I enjoyed this game until the end where it started to feel like a repetitive grind. So I just moved on to other things.

Recently, my sons got me into Hearthstone with them, and this got me interested in trying WoW again. So we, (my two sons and I), all got accounts to play together. We’ve played a few hours, and are enjoying the time. (We’re only up to the Northern Barrens so far.)

The game plays much as I remember it, at least at low levels. The change in landscape kind of threw me off for a bit. (For example: I tried to run from Durotar to Mulgore at 4th level!) But the biggest surprise/issue for me and my sons was the enormous variation of mounts and pets everywhere. It’s kind of cool to see an occasional dragon rider overhead, but the city streets are sometimes packed with huge beasts running to and fro, or standing in front of vendors and auctioneers. It’s gone from “oh cool” to “geez, just get out of the way.”

Both my sons have commented that it ruins the mood of the sort-of/kind-of medieval fantasy to see so many motorcycles and machine mounts running around. Especially in Thunderbluff, (where we all began). I kind of agree with them – it’s a bit overwhelming, the variety of the super-fantastic when you’re still challenged by normal wolves in a near-stone age environment.

As my family is playing, I’m remembering many of these quests we’re undertaking. And playing as a [small] group is very different than playing solo. My older son (14 years old) is picking up all the quests, running around as an orc warrior killing and looting everything, gaining xp hand over fist. My younger son (11 years old) picks up just one quest at a time as a tauren shaman, does it in a straight line there and back to turn it in, gaining xp much slower. I want to point out about this: They both are intentionally role playing a bit – the feral orc running into the thick of action, and the peaceful tauren helping NPCs and avoiding unnecessary conflict.*

It’s an interesting lesson for game designers to see how my boys enjoy the game in two very different ways, and how I’m now experiencing the game in a very different way than I previously did. I’ve read many threads here discussing various late game aspects that I probably won’t ever see, (and honestly don’t care if I see).

Anyway, that’s my story, for now. It’s interesting to see the game from different points of view.

* It would be nice if you could gain xp and levels without being a blood-thirsty kill-em-all player. I know I’ve felt . . . icky . . . doing some quests that I wished could be done in ways other than attack and bring back their head.

Bullgrit

Both Calfgrits know about World of Warcraft from watching me play it in years past. Over the past few months, Calfgrit12 has become interested in the game for himself. He has a friend who plays it with his dad, and CG12 has been collecting some WoW sets by Mega Bloks. So we told him that if he wanted to play the game, he needed to save up money to purchase the game and to pay the monthly subscription fee, ($15). Well, he did it. A few weeks ago we downloaded the program and I created his online account. (I also reopened my own subscription account.)

At first we said he could only play it while I could be online in the game with him. I needed to refamiliarize myself with the online game environment, (that is: how the real-world people were interacting with others in the online world). (It’s been a few years since I last played.) The two of us started playing a couple of Taurens — him a paladin, me a shaman. We designed our characters, (I never liked to say, “toons”), independently of one another, and despite the dozens of possibilities, we ended up with identical bulls. Like we were related.

We played together a few times, leveling up to about 10, until I confirmed that there was minimal contact with other players in the game. And since he plays on the downstairs computer, right in the literal center of the house and family activity, where we can see everything he does as he plays, we started letting him play on his own. He now has about half a dozen characters of various races and classes, on both the Horde and Alliance sides, leveled up between around 5 to 12.

He only plays on Saturday and Sunday, usually for 1-1.5 hours each morning, if he’s been good all week. (Good school and behavior.) Occasionally I’ll get on and play with him again. Our Taurens make a formidable pair, and we really need to take on tougher challenges.

I have other characters I can play, but as they are all significantly higher level, (my orc hunter is 72, my human priest is 63), our teaming is not as fun as when our matching Taurens quest together.

As a side note to my adventures with my son in WoW, I’m amazed by how the game has progressed in my long absence. The top level is now 90 — almost 20 levels higher than I’ve played. And the higher level gear . . . holy crap!

I hadn’t really looked into any gear when one day, while just running through a city, I saw someone offer a purple item for sale on the general chat. Out of curiosity, I clicked on the name to see what it was.

A cloth item giving 1,733 armor, and ability bonuses in the 4 digit range? Holy ever-lovin’ crap-a-mighty! The best gear on my level 72 character gives bonuses in the +50-80 range. Granted, all my gear is green to blue stuff for level 65-70. I then went to the auction house to look at what other outlandish gear was available nowadays. I found a level 85 gun to compare to my absolute best item — my [purple] level 70 gun. Look:

Seeing this stunned me. Look at those numbers! 1,711 DPS compared to my current 128 DPS. I know a lot of my readers have no idea what any of this means. But for those of you who have played WoW, you can understand my astonishment at seeing this amazing list compared to what I thought was a decently good piece of main equipment.

Bullgrit

The last time I posted anything on WoW was last December. I played only a time or two after that post, and I let my account expire in early January. I was just finding the game, “meh.”

But then in March, I had the hankerin’ to explore Azeroth again. I reopened my account, played a couple of times over that week, and then let the account expire again.

Now, it’s been another few months since then, without playing WoW, and I’m again feeling the urge to explore a fantasy world. So last night I restarted my account. Unfortunately, I had to download all the updates that have come out since March.

I would like to say that after downloading the updates, I at least got to log in and see my old characters. But the updater was taking so freakin’ long that I just went to bed before it finished.

I think that fact that my regular, real-world, face-to-face, game nights are only once a week — at best, when we don’t have to cancel for one reason or another — that makes me long for the instant gratification of logging into WoW for some adventure.

Will this newest attempt to get back into WoW play stick, or will I again find it lacking the real feel of fantasy-world adventure that I’m looking for?

Bullgrit