People in Wildstar forum were talking about (the more hardcore MMMOers complaining really) that World of Warcraft was too easy. So I though I finally give that game try. Turns out they have a free version which lets you play up to level 20. After WS, WOW does seem very easy at least in staring areas.

I was trying out a goblin warlock when a GM came in chat to welcome me and asked if I had any questions. I did. My quest cliched. I think you cant go from being in car to control robot. GM said to abandon the quest and retake it. That worked.

Coool, Guybrush, WoW is a lot of fun. They have made it a lot easier...

My first WOW character: Qazari: Alliance: male Draenei Shaman - yes name recycled from one of my SWTOR characters.

My second WOW character: Yulyadya: Horde female Goblin Warlock - also recycled name from SWTOR character.

Jaivyn: Alliance: male Human Paladin - Afican for "light spirit"

Cereneril: Horde: female Blood Elf Mage - WOW name generator web site supposed to refer to fire.

Merilinor: Aliance: male Night Elf Druid

My ugliest character: Kumori: Horde: male Undead (Forsaken) Rogue - one of several Japanese words meaning "shadow"

Lykaoun: Alliance: male Worgen Hunter - misspelling of Lykaon meaning "little wolf" since Lykaon was already taken

Lykaoun when he's not transformed

Tanox: Horde: male Tauren Warrior - built in random name generator

My cutest character: Raiini: Alliance: female Gnome Priest

So I have one of each class except Monk (requires Mists of Pandaria) and Death Knight (which start at level 55. Missing races: Alliance: Dwarf and Horde: Orc, Troll and Neutral: Panderen

I love the gnomes and the goblins and the pandas (which you need Pandaria for)

I'm not necessarily going to keep all those characters. I just made them to try the classes. The Worgen starter area seemed harder than the others or maybe I'm just bad at Hunter, because I actually died several times. I think I'm deleting that character.

Oddly enough the Starter Edition will let me make a pandaren, just not a monk, says monk needs the Mists. It also shows death knight as a class I can make which is odd because it starts at level 55 and the SE only lets you play to level 20.

Every time I log in I get a screen offering me a deal on the full game, I believe Mists is extra though, but I won't to try out the game some more. Its a good deal to upgrade, reguarlly $19.99 on sale for $10.00. Mists I think is still full price though.

Yehtzu: female Pandaren Hunter, replaces the other hunter I deleted - Chinese for "coconut" (no good reason, just hard to find Chinese names not already taken). I love that she has a vicious turtle pet.

The pandas are fun, and usually, hunters are a great beginner pet as you can send your pet in to tank while you range.

This character replaces Tanox Chuugra: Horde: male Orc Warrior

Qazari has learned Skinning, Leatherworking, Fishing and First Aid. Haven't found anyone to teach cooking yet. And cant find any linen cloth so cant make first bandage. He has made himself some chest armor, bracers and a cloak. Next quest will reward him with equally good boots. So if he make boots would sell them.

I guess I should give Yehtzu the same professions plus cooking as soon as I find someone to train in that. Or I could try Alchemy.

Guybrush, when your are choosing professions, each one has a kind of bonus so you might want to consider those. For instance, Alchemists potions last twice as long on themselves, and enchanters can enchant some of their own equipment which can't be enchanted for anyone else. I just chose what I wanted to do, but more serious players who want to maximize their characters take those bonuses into account.

I also found I could just have one character cook for all my guys.

I went with alchemist just to be different. You mail stuff to other characters? Right now I cant use the mail. One of the restrictions on the Starter Edition.

Free to level 20 after that no experience gained.
Cap of 10 gold (yeah right, I'm terrible at money management)
Can't start a chat except in /say, can only respond to whispers, if someone talks to me first I can reply but can't start a conversation.
People higher than level 20 won't hear the say or any emotes I do.
Cant use mail
Can't form a group
Can't join a guild
Can't create a guild
Can't post on most battle net WOW forums (new player one is an exception)

There's a cap on crafting too but I forget what it is.

The Starter Edition keep tempting me with $10 purchase offer (not including Mists which I think is $20) but that would start subsription, after a free 30 days.

Goblin starting area is crazy. Seems like goblins not yet officially members of the Horde or Draenei the Alliance and of course Pandaren start out neutral as well. My Dranei just met some Alliance member night elves and goblin just met some Horde member Orcs. So they're on the way to joining. I figure those two opposite opinion pandaren NPCS are meant to be hints at the alliance and horde philosophies.


Jaivyn has learned Blacksmithing and Mining.

Yes, you mail stuff from one character to the next and you have to be in town to pick up mail.

Yep, it is fun to be able to choose your faction.....that was something that was added later

I made a dwarf. Kind off odd to see all these NPCs with Scandinavian names but speaking with Irish accents. I named mine Anvindr, same name I gave a Norn in Guild Wars 2, which is supposed be from the Norse. Replaces human paladin

Only a dwarf could fit 3 cegs of beer in his backpack (lol),

My Draenei reminds me of Dracula so I think it would have been a good voice for the Forsaken.

Nice to see you're enjoying it so far
Have you tried The Secret World yet? If not, I have plenty of buddy keys for you to try it

The trolls are Jamaican I love it.

Merilinor the druid has reached level 10 and gone Feral, because I enjoyed cat form so much. Though I found a very effective chain is to start in normal form (night elf in his case), use Moonfire to start over time damage, than switch to cat, Rake to start bleeding than switch to bear to Maul because it does extra damage to bleeding foe. Enemey still alive, rinse and repeat.

I played it a lot early on. For some reason, the big changes in Cataclysm didn't sit well with me. Guybrush, you might not be aware that before Cataclysm (the third expansion) the world with all the lower levels was very different than it is now. I got so used to that world that I never really got to like the changed one.

It sounds like there are even a lot more changes now. I might come give it another try sometime soon. I'm happily playing Guild Wars 2 right now.

I don't mean any criticism of WoW. Even when I left it, I thought it was probably the best designed and supported game out there. I'm glad you are enjoying it Guybrush.

Must have been lots of changes. People in WOW official forums telling me that except for whether pve, pvp or rpg rea;ms are not important. Apparently you used to want to pick realms close to you and one for alliance and one for horde but now something about the way the servers work realms are not important anymore.

Mostly for me it was more like a "who moved my cheese" experience. Or maybe another way to look at it was that I was so familiar with the world that I knew that the Cataclysm changes were a bit like taking the world you live in and having it change overnight to a post-apocalyptic world. Everything I knew about safe areas and quests and towns all changed. I think most people welcomed it but it didn't work for me.

Bob, I'm not big on the changes either. I think that is why we stepped away, though we will be back

Guybrush, WoW "consolidated" some realms to keep populations up. I don't think that is the exact right wording, but folks from more than one realm are now playing in the same sandbox

I've started over. Redoing alliance characters on one server and horde on another one, just because I'm an altohlic and easier this way.

Alliance server: Darrowmere
Kewalaka: male Draenei Shaman, specialization: Elemental

Level 12 but still in 1-10 area. Still quests to do.

Horde server: Hyjal
Yulyadya: female Goblin Warlock, Destruction

Qiong: female Pandaren Hunter, Marksmanship
(Qiong chinese for "Red Jade"

Guybrush, you will want to leave the area before you run out of quests...

I will? And miss something?

My latest characters can be found here.

Hmmmm, answered but it's not here.

Guybrush, there are a ton of quests in each area. I do like to follow each chain to it's end, but most people move on to a new area when the quests turn grey or sooner to level faster.

L4L, I'll be back too. You know there are big changes planned in December with the new programming, right? I was using an authenticator, but it got lost when I moved. So I hadn't been online in about 3 months. Got that fixed, but now I am so far out of the loop, I feel lost.
Also I've gotten into ESO and am enjoying that. It's much better than when I did the beta.
WoW is still the best as far as I can see.
Andrea

Andrea, I didn't know that. We have not been playing much so I am out of the loop too, but am feeling the itch to get back. Too many games, too little time....

That would make a nice motto for GameBoomers

From what little I've read about next expansion it sounds like every class is getting revamped. They're also improving how characters look.
Warlords of Draenor. Right now only orc, dwarf and gnome visual improvments are showing and only dwarf has male and female, other two just male.

I understand why they do it, but I really hate having to learn my class over and over and over

Me too, L4L. So many changes. I've stopped being excited about the yearly updates/expansions.

That's one advantage of just starting. By time I'm ready to learn all those skill, they'll be the new ones anyway.

On May 29th fans will able to vote on which of two motorcycles will be in the game as free mounts. They're being built as actual bikes first. See the progress and vote May 29th at Azeroth Choppers

Coming March 2016: World of Warcraft the movie.

Sounds like fun!

That's true GT. Makes me think about deleting some of my older toons and start anew as if I'd never played the game before. I have had a 'mostly' love affair with WoW for years. Also I miss playing along with my GB friends like L4L and her family.
Andrea

Andrea, we are coming back, I promise. Just waiting for life to calm down

Me to my friend, me too. Thoughts and prayers for Soot as he travels.

Kewalaka my new shaman has reached level 15, apprentice in leatherworking and skinning, with skinning maxed. Haven't found anyone to train up skinning yet. A little confused. Map shows 1-10 on it but foes clearly scale up. And I got an add on that shows me quests I haven't done and one it shows as being level 18. Am I supposed to leave and come back later? I assume I need a quest to take me off the continent.

Guy, if you want to do every quest, you may have to leave and come back.

As a Dranei, you should be able to go south and take a boat to the next area. There may be a flight master there too. Are you in the Exodar?

Been in the Exodar once, but the quest was fly in, talk to a couple of NPCs and fly out again. He has a quest now to go to the docks.

Took a boat. Found skinner trainer in Darnasssus, but I don't know what to do next. All the quests I picked up are back on the other island. Doesn't seem to be any to pick up around this new place.

Darnassus is also a starting area. From Darnassus, you can go out the purple portal and get a ship or a flight to dark shore...try there

Yulyadya - female Goblin Destruction Warlock got the goblins to officially join the Horde.

Qiong my new female Pandaren Marksmanship Hunter made it to level 13 and joined the Horde. Before leaving the Wandering Isle, she managed to tame a tiger, a fox, a crane and a moth, in addition to keeping her default turtle.

Woohooo....so much fun to have the different hunter pets

They're telling me on WOW official forum that tiger and crane are not available to other races until level 85, when they can get to Pandoria. Somebody said I should take the crane to level 10-24 PVP because few people would no what it can do.

Oh and my default turtle is supposed to be a very good tank.

It is nice now that all pets can fulfill all roles.

I loved my Turtle Tanks! They are awesome!

Mage too squishy, got to level 9 then it was like playing Wildstar, dropping dead every few seconds. I deleted that character.

Mages can be great in a party, but they so can be squishy too....

Time to vote for the Horde, I mean your choice: Azeroth Choppers: episode 7 and voting

Which one are you voting for?

For the Horde!!

I've been playing WOW for over 5 yrs and i love it!
I haven't done very many Dungeons and raids
i've done mostly quests~ I think once you get higher
levels the quests do get harder~
I'm LVL 84 Night elf hunter and LVL 82 Blood elf hunter
I just started a Gnome lvl 5 and that car drives me nuts lol!


I love both my toons all 8 of them

I have to vote for the Ali

but I want to also say FOR THE HORDE!!

I'm not sure its going to be an accurate vote. Some people, like me, are voting for what the really think is the better chopper, but others who are only playing one side admit to voting for that side regardless. Which I think stinks. Most common comment I'v seen, is that the Horde is best but the Alliance will win because there are more alliance players who refuse to vote Horde.

There are also a lot of people who think Blizzard is lying and that both will appear in the game, so they're voting their faction assuming it doesn't matter anyway. I don't have experience with Blizzard so I don't know if they'd do that.

What's a level 90 charcter doing in gnome/dwarf starter area? And it wasn't very nice of him to come running in behind me and kill my level 7 boss with one blow. He couldn't have any use for its drops, which my level 7 character could have. It will be an hour or more before it respawns.

No it wasn't, Guy...he might have been there to gather resources. He might have thought he was helping you by killing the boss. He might have been working on an achieve, or he might have just been being a jerk. Sorry...hope you got him on the next spawn.

there are a LOT of little jerks playing wow
they are sooo rude
I think they need to make some strict rrules
I try to play when ther in school

I stopped playing WoW a few months after Cataclysm because of the jerks with no tolerance for people learning new roles. (How can you learn to tank if you can't get to try and screw up a few times first?)

Gremlin, I ran into those people too. If it hadn't been for L4L, soot, and the GB Guild, I would have abandoned it long ago. The instances and dungeons were the fun part for me, but if I joined a random group, I would find mean, nasty people with no patience and be yelled at and kicked out. That's no fun at all. And raids? Forget it.
Andrea

I'll need to find a good guild. I've been getting invites but can't act on them until I pay up. The starter edition doesn't allow creating or joining guilds. Or even starting chats, I can only respond if someone whispers me first. I find the no chatting part annoying because I can't ask for help unless other people around and can see me using say which does work.

Yes, If you like playing with others, having guild mates around is great. Soot and I gotta start playing again

I still find it odd that elf characters in WOW can have beards. When I played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, many years ago, it was understood that elfs could not grow facial hear (or body hair). A half-elf (elf parent and human parent) could but not a full blooded elf.

Now dwarfs on the other hand always had beards. In the original Guild Wars one of the dwarf NPCs implies that even the females have beards. That's not true in WOW of course.

Terry Pratchett's dwarves also all have beards. Gender is an issue of delicate negotiation between individuals... nobody else need know, apparently

Azeroth Choppers: And the winner is.....

If you don't want to wait until the end of the video, the winning bike, which will become a mount in Warlords of Draenor, is

Woo hooo

Got my first mini pet, a balloon. (lol)

Also I have one character of every alliance race. Only horde I don't have is Orc.

Grats, Guybrush....it's nice that all pets are now account wide. You used to have to get them on each toon if you wanted them.

Kewalaka my shaman just reached level 20 so no point in playing him anymore until I buy the game. But now is not a good time to buy it. SWTOR adding some new content tomorrow I think. And I'm going on vacation for a week at end of July so I don't want to start any new subscriptions before then. And then in August, SWTOR is adding player housing.

Oh I should I should have said I got the Alliance balloon, but now I got the Horde version as well.

Grats, Guy, how do you like your Shammy?

Still haven't gotten him of starter continent, though he was told he's ready to leave, even though he still has several quests in the area. Apparently I wiped out the blood elfs in the area. I like him. I like all the classes, though I have a problem with paladin being a hammer wielding class. AD&D again, paladins used lance or sword. Paladin and warrior seem to spend a lot if time waiting to use skills between auto attacks.


Switched sides, to horde warlock. She had two quests taking her to different areas. I picked one to do first, and now the other has gone gray. Guess you can't do everything on a single character.

Most be lots of new quilds. I'm constantly getting invites I can't accept with started edition.

Guy, you can do grey quests. You just don't get much experience for them....

I am on Stormrage server as alliance. What servers are you on? It helps to be in a good guild if you want to learn to tank a raid. I am in a nice guild but now many are on vacation or not playing as much because they are waiting for the expansion. It is nice that we can cross travel with the servers.

I went to the darkside when Star Wars Galaxies cane out. It was fun doing all the crafting and making a little town.

Norma! It's great to see you back. Hugs!

Hi Mag!!! Glad to be back *hugs* ! Are you trying out WOW? I am so excited about the remake of Gabriel Knight 1.

I love Gameboomers and all the new games that are being discussed here.

Hi luv,

No - I'm not a darksider, shoot 'em up gamer - as you know.
I'm just watching the forum and saw my friend back. Love it!

There are a lot of new games you'll love to play and oldies that you might want to revisit.

I'm on Darrowmere, alliance and Hyjal, horde.

Hi MaG, I love your website and so glad to be back. How you do make the little icons? They are so cute!


Hi GuybrushThreepwood I will make an alliance on Darrowmere. I will post my toon name here when I make one. Probably not today but soon I should make a horde one too while I am at it because they won the free bike lol

Hi Norma,

Use the fully reply screen and you'll see the different post properties at top of the frame.
Click on the smilet face to see other choices.

Hugs to grandchild.

Hi MaG,

I see

Thanks

Hi ya Norma

Hi WoWers!
The server some of us are on is Draka. There aren't many GBers playing right now, but we do have a GameBoomers Guild. The best guild I was on other than ours, was Kitty Cat Death Squad. They were always there when I needed help and they did raids and such. They are on Draka also. Hope to get back to WoW soon!
Andrea

I plan to be back when the new one comes out. I will have to re-install everything. I had Win 7 re-installed a while back the only thing I saved was the account folder. So I hope I still have Pipen, if not start from the beginning. With all the changes with the game maybe not such a bad idea.

Cheers
Linda

Yes, it has certainly changed. But your characters are on the server, so Pip should be hale and hearty

Hi Looney4labs

World of Warcraft (now includes exverything except Mists and Warlords) is half off this week. Mists of Pandoria is also half off. Dirty trick. I didn't want to buy until after my July 20-27th vacation. I can always get the standard version for $10 through the Starter Edition but Mists is normally still full price. $10 for WOW and $10 for Mists of Pandoria (normally $19.99 each) at https://us.battle.net/shop/en/product/game/wow

Warlords of Draenor pre-order is NOT included in the sale, its still $49.99 (standard) or $69.99 (deluxe).

Pandoria is a lot of fun....

I did it.

My 30 days free will include a week I won't be able to play and will end while I'm gone. I'll start the subscription when I get back. No sense in paying for time I won't be here.

Now to create a monk, pandaren of course.

Naturally the system tried to sell me Warlords, but I'm holding off on that.

Woohooo, Guybrush

Yingjie, my alliance monk has joined a guild, BulletProof Nerds. No idea if its a good one, just accepted a random invite. Third one he got.

Hope it's a fun one!

Kewalaka, my alliance shaman, joined a different guild, Vita Aeterna, and following advice of guild leader, finally left the starting zone. He's my first character, first to reach level 20 (now 22) and get a mount, a Purple Elekk (like an elephant).

I tried random dungeon, twice and both times while I was trying sort out whether to "need", "greed" or "pass" the group ran off without me and I could not find them. Presumably they wouldn't do that if I was tank or healer.

Yes, I am sad to say that though there are exceptions, the dungeon groups are not patient. You can run while trying to decide what to do, although it's not really all that important until end game. Have fun!

The dungeons also give me stuff I cant use. Though I did put a helmet on just because I didn't have one and it gave extra armor.

Hmmm, weird that you would get stuff you can't use....

Guybrush, one of the best sites for class information is Icy Veins. They cover everything from A-Z on whichever characters you choose to make. Check it out if you have time.

Thanks, Debra

Glad I could help.

If it is something you can use, then need it. If you don't need it most people will greed it or pass. If you make a mistake and find that you "needed" something but you can't use it then you can later trade with someone else that really could use it. Happened to me at least once when I first started out. They pop up so fast and the group moves on quickly. Icy veins and wowhead.com are two sites that I check often.

When I do a dungeon it gives me a bag of stuff, when I click on that I get some item, so far item with wrong stats. I know about need, greed from SWTOR.

I got lots of unusable items in all the games I've played and I just sell it to a vendor. The games don't seem to be able to check your stats at the time of receiving the item to be able to match it to your character's build. I wish it did. It made it really fun and like winning a lottery or a huge surprise when something really special or rare dropped that I really needed.
Andrea
Usually it was bound to my account so I couldn't sell it on the AH.

If you are an enchanter, you can always disenchant it for mats, too.

My WOW version of Josra, an undead rogue assassin got his first mount, so my first mount on horde side, a black skeletal horse. I didn't actually see much difference in the horses, guess they supposed have different colored manes (black, brown, blue) but standing there by dealer they all looked the same to me.


My free 30 days expired while I was on vacation,but I knew that would happen. I bought earlier than I planned because of sale. Just subscribed for 30 days.

Riding is sooooooooooo much better than running and at 60, flying

They have a flying mount on sale but I don't think I'll give them real money for one. Anyway I thought it looked silly in the video. Apparently if you buy a flying mount its a ground mount on characters 20-59.

Yeppers, they are. You can get flying mounts in game from various vendors once you can fly.

The Alliance Chopper will appear in the game, for a "hefty amount of gold".

I tried beta for all of 3 minutes. I decided trying to play a level 90 character with no experience was a bad idea. And then since I'm spending all my game time in SWTOR, I canceled my subscription.

Yes, being 90 is nice, but you still have to learn your class. Have fun in SWTOR

Now you can decide what stats you want your loot to be. For example I have a Blood spec Death Knight but I don't want to get gear for a tank, so I specified that I want gear drops for a dps (damage) spec. You can find this by clicking your character picture in the upper left side of the screen.

Isn't that wonderful. I love it! Makes gearing for a healer so much easier