WoW, woo....

So this weekend I played a lot of WoW and managed to get to level 30, which means I can now turn into a fast-running cheetah. I can already turn into a sabre-toothed sea lion thing (for fast underwater travel and the ability to breath underwater, and no, I don't know why a mammal can breath under water either, I just can). I can also turn into a nifty dark purple sabre-tooth cat that is basically a poor man's rogue (massive damage dealer), or a big bear, which is basically a poor man's warrior (occupies the enemy's attention and is tough to damage). The flexibility of switching from caster to tank to massive damage dealer and ability to travel quickly by land or sea (and to be sneaky like a rogue too, the cat form can prowl about invisibly) is what makes playing a druid a lot of fun, and makes them pretty easy to solo.

And I've had to solo. I'm still not in a guild and haven't made any friends in the game. I've never grouped with skyoxford or jwyldragon (with my main character) and I don't think julesong has even played since helping talk me into playing. At least, she's never been online when I was. ^_^

By taking herbalism as one of my two tradeskills I've made a lot of money. Herbs sell well, and being able to prowl as a cat or swim underwater as a sea lion makes gathering herbs much easier than for other characters. Right now at level 30 I have pretty decent gear and over 80 gold in the bank, so I think I'm doing pretty well for myself. I have both herbalism and tailoring tradeskills at well over 200, although I think I'm capped at 225 until I reach level 35.

This weekend I did the "CLUCK" quest, which is a fun quest that I read about that I can't imagine you'd ever stumble upon by accident. You target a chicken (one of the many level 1 critters that run about and don't seem to do much for the game but add a little atmosphere... Sky likes to kill them off at every oportunity)... and after targeting it, you do the /chicken command, which makes you cluck and flap your arms and do a chicken dance. If you kee doing this (it's best to make a macro for it), then eventually the chicken will look at you strangely, and turn green, and the text suggests you investigate. If you click on it you're given a quest to find "special chicken feed", which can be purchased from a farmer out in Westfall. Once you have the feed you just need to /cheer your chicken (although it can be any chicken at all, doesn't need to be the same one) and then when it responds you click on it to give it the feed, and it lays an egg. When you click on the egg, you get a little pet chicken that follows you around! ^_^

Fun quest!

Another fun quest that I was involved in deals with uncovering a lot of dark secrets that people don't want to talk about. At one point you're supposed to talk to someone who you're told won't want to say anything, and you'd better be prepared to lean on him or get rough... I didn't know what to expect, but when I talked to him he just laughed in my face, said I was an idiot and shouldn't be asking about business that wasn't mine, and then said "have you met my boys?" and it said that I'd have to defeat him.

Before clicking I looked around. There were two other rogue types in the alley, 10th level and 35th level. The guy himself was 26th level. I figured that the 35th level couldn't possibly be part of the quest, or I'd be dead instantly, but I decided what the heck, and clicked okay. Next thing I know I'm fighting the dwarf and two thugs that appeared out of nowhere. I shift to cat form and start wailing on him, certain that I'm going to die, but figuring I might take the dwarf down first. But when he reaches about half health he suddenly stops and calls off the boys and agrees to talk to you.

Let me tell you, that part of the quest was a lot of fun! I had no idea what was going to happen.

The next part of the quest was to travel to a tavern looking for a guy named Slim. At this point he overhears you asking about him and you're supposed to stop him from leaving the tavern... but I didn't know how to do that, when he starts walking away I tried to click on him but he just brushed me off, and then just outside the tavern a friend of his shows up and they gang up on you. He's a level 34... not sure about his friend, but at level 30 I had no chance, they killed me. This part of the quest is clearly not meant to be completed until I'm a little bit stronger.

Another quest I was on was to kill Stalvan Mistmantle, something like that, some undead guy who was level 32 and very tough. I tried to take him at level 29 but it wasn't possible to solo him at that level. When I went back at 30, I noticed that someone else had just killed him and the yard was pretty clear of undead... and there was a chest near the house. I opened it... and what do you know, I got a "blue" robe item. Blue items are fairly rare magic items... I've only got one other one so far in the game, and this one was just handed to me. Always loot your chests!

Then I cleared the yard of undead and took on the dual-wielding head honcho idiot. He was tough, I kept rooting him and backing off to try and regain mana (used two mana potions) and then went to cat form to finish him... I was nearly dead when he decided to run, and I took him down. Woo me!

Also finished another part of a different quest that spawns a giant 20-foot tall undead monster called Stitches. He's a level 35 elite with about 1250 hit points from what I've been told, and hits like a MF'er. Needless to say, I didn't even attempt to solo him, just waited for higher levels to come knock him off.

But mostly the game is getting boring with nobody to talk to or play with. Not sure how much longer I plan on playing. When they were trying to convince me to play this game, Sky said that what makes a game like this fun is having friends to talk to and play with... and that's very true. I had a great guild in Everquest. I had wonderful friends in Toontown. I had a fairly good guild and some very good friends in City of Heroes. So far inn WoW, I haven't had any of that.