Welcome back to our regularly scheduled edition of the Noob files. Two weeks ago we found me questing all over the mighty Azeroth. Now questing is enjoyable, albeit sometimes extremely tedious (especially in the old world) not to mention frustrating. Little did I realize that I had something infinitely more frustrating ahead of me.
My questing led me from Azuremyst Isle to Stormwind after completing the initial Draenei storyline. From there I was introduced to a group of individuals I immediately came to hate, the Defias Bandits. What started out as a seamlessly trivial quest line turned into an elaborate journey into the underworld of the Stormwind, Goldshire, Redridge, and Sentinel Hill areas. So much deception and trickery is going on here that I was immediately immersed into the story line. And then, just like that, I’m lead to the Deadmines. The quests within it seem simple enough, kill a couple of leaders, bring back assorted items, yadda yadda yadda.
Like the noob I am, I waltzed right in. I might as well have rang the doorbell because I aggro’d about the entire room upon stepping inside and was quickly sent to the grave yard. What was up with that? These guys were all 2-3 levels higher than me and they had a TON more health points than poor Taiba. I turned to Arturis for guidance, he laughed, for a good long time as I remember at my question of “How do I solo my way through the Deadmines?” His finally responded with: “Get a group.”
“Get a group?” I asked him. “How do I go about doing that?” It appeared to be very simple as I was immediately prompted with an invite to join Arturis’ party. I gladly accepted and found that Mandifesto was present as well. The three of us were off to explore the Deadmines and picked up a fourth on the way. Luckily for me, the alts that Arturis and Mandifesto selected were slightly higher up than myself (level 30+), making things infinitely simpler and keeping me out of too much trouble.
As we trekked through the initial area of DM, I learn a few things very quickly: 1. Stay behind the tank, as Mages don’t tank well and 2. The Omen threat meter is essential (to have and more importantly to USE). This being my first instance I was bound to many noobish mistakes (pulling agro, running ahead of the group, not typing AFK, etc) but fortunately my two main compatriots’ skill levels greatly offset these deficiencies.
Then came the loot, and OH BABY is that awesome. I thought green items were the bees’ knees, until I was introduced to the mighty blues (and eventually purples). Blues to me looked better, had cooler names and most importantly gave me greater stats. Perhaps part of it is that blue is my favorite color, or perhaps it is the fact that I like having the finer things that makes blues so excitable to me. Whatever it is, I was hooked, only probably was, to get the great loot you had to have a group.
As we moved onwards towards my eventual showdown with Edwin VanCleef I really began to appreciate the complexity of these “instances”. The time and effort that goes into creating them must be long as they really provide another style of game play and increase the versatility of the game overall. I instantly became a fan of the instances themselves, but was still confused at the strategy that was required for them. Perhaps, as I’ve said before, it’s my heavy background in FPS type games that makes me oblivious to strategy, but when I used to play RTS games, I’d just make a many of the biggest and best unit I had and would then send them over to slaughter the enemy. This typically worked really well, for RTS and definietely worked with my buddies in FPS games. However instance running in World of Warcraft is a completely different beat.
Having to build a “team” in the best sense of the word was a very foreign concept to me. Why a group of 5 mages couldn’t just go in and wreak havoc was beyond me. But to Blizzard’s credit it is a genius play because it forces interaction within the game, as well as creating roles for its players. Having each class fulfill only certain roles forces users to pick what kind of player they are or want to be. This choice doesn’t make a real difference while you’re questing, however it completely changes the dynamic once you enter an instance. Once I entered with my mage, I was a dps machine, always hitting hard but never too much (or too close).
After completing the Deadmines and getting my first dungeon achievement I felt extremely fulfilled. I had made my way through the next level of WoW content and was ready to continue on to both new instances and zones. With my “blues” I felt that much more invincible and powerful over my opponents. However, in an interesting twist, I found out how difficult it can be to get the good dungeon gear, especially when a “ninja” is present.
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