Touring the Fjord

Almost three weeks after release, and my impressions of Wrath of the Lich King remain pretty much the same.  It’s a heckuva lot of fun, and Blizzard did a great job with it.  The quests are interesting and more interactive, less stultifyingly trite.  The world of Northrend itself is beautiful and immersive, and much larger than one would believe, looking at it on the map.  There is really very little by way of complaint about the game itself.

I suppose the only thing I would complain about it that it seems to take an extraordinarily long time to level.  That may be more relative to who I am, and how I play, rather than indicative of a problem with the game, however.

Yet it goes to the chief reason why I am not enjoying the expansion as much as I had hoped.  My warlock is 73, and there are Death Knights that have already leveled past me.  Most people in my guild are in their mid-seventies or 80 already.  Five-man groups are already gearing up in the Heroics, preparatory to raiding.  And one of the things I was looking forward to–hitting all the instances at the appropriate level, with guild mates–has not come to pass.  In fact, except for the Heroic groups, I think most people in my guild who are doing instances are pugging it due to the wide spread of levels among players in the guild.

I’m not sure what happened.  I know that many people looked upon it as a challenge to level to 80 as fast as possible, and if that level grind did not include instance runs, so be it.  Other people weren’t doing instances because they weren’t finding any gear upgrades in the regular dungeons–the gear reset in Wrath has been much gentler than in BC.

Still, it’s sad to ask in Guild Chat if anyone wants to run a regular, lower-seventies instance, and to be met with stony silence.

Part of the issue is me, I’m certain.  I missed my window of opportunity to keep up with folks.  Yet, I don’t know that I would be running instances even if I had kept up.  It just seems like no one is running them, or else they are pugging it.  Maybe I should be pugging it, too, I don’t know.  It’s depressing to think that after all the expectation of leveling with friends, instead of trailing behind them, it has all turned out the same way anyhow.

Way Up North

Several events have conspired to keep me from writing lately.  First of all, I had a death in the family on October 29 and travel and funeral took up all of the first weekend in November.  Since then, I just haven’t felt like writing.  I haven’t even written more than a couple posts at my non-WoW blog.

Then there was the election on the fourth, and after blogging about that for months, when it came to an end I sank even further into a non-writing slump.  But now with the release of Wrath, I feel like I am regaining some of my energy.

Last night I was listening to the Instance podcast from November 14,  a day after the expansion was released, and I was amused that Randy Jordan (at that time) had bought and installed the expansion but was stubbornly refusing to set foot in Northrend because there was no NPC in Shattrath telling him to do so.  Instead he was busily doing Netherwing dailies as if no new content had been added.  The other host poked fun at him for his rather luddite-like behavior, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the guy.  He was missing so much fun.

I’ve enjoyed every minute I’ve played Wrath so far.  The landscapes are gorgeous, the story lines are compelling, and sometimes the quests themselves offer something new to the tried and trite “kill 100 rats” formula.  Take The Flight of the Wintergarde Defender, for example.  In this quest, a town is under siege from the scourge and you, the intrepid hero, are tasked with flying a gryphon into the town, swooping down, and rescuing 10 villagers from the clutches of ghouls and abominations.  Other quests have you operating a harpoon or controlling a falcon you send out to hunt for you.

I’ve been working at leveling my Warlock, although unfortunately not as fast as I’d like.  To me, leveling seems to take forever, whether because of my own ineptitude (I have a tendency to fall off high places and then waste a good half-hour trying to recover my corpse) or because Blizzard has greatly increased the amount of XP needed to level up.  Currently Holdwine is at 71 and I hope to level to 72 tonight or tomorrow.

I am also playing my Shaman, Rintrah, who is just about ready to hit 71.  Rintrah is questing in the Borean Tundra; Holdwine is in Howling Fjord.  I’ve been torn between which one to level first, so I decided to level both at the same time.  Ostensibly, my Shaman is supposed to be leveling as a healer to make it easier to get into instances, but in practice I am devoted to Enhancement.

I love dual-wielding axes or maces and just bashing the hell out of things, and then when things get tricky I can call on my Spirit Wolves to even the odds.  I tried leveling as Resto, but even with the changes to spell-damage gear stats (there is no +healing gear anymore, only +spell damage) I found it incredibly slow and boring.  I can really tear through quests and mobs as Enhancement.

If I were a little more sociable, I probably ought to find myself a tank to buddy with, and then spec Resto.  That would make the most sense and would probably make it even easier to find a group for an instance.  That is still an option for me, except that my schedule is so eratic and infrequent that my buddy would probably be lonely much of the time.  Tuesday and Wednesday nights is the only dedicated time I have to play, and I prefer to give those hours to Holdwine since he is going to be my raiding main and needs to level first.

Holdwine doesn’t need any tank.  He is a tank–a cloth-wearing gnome tank that can put dots on ten Shoveltusks and just stand there and watch them die as they pointlessly hit him.  It’s a great thing, being a Warlock.