7/14/2007

WoW - World of Whatdafuckwasthat?!?!


As I wrote in my last post, I am now firmly lodged into the wonderland known as World of Warcraft. WoW as it's known to it's rabid fan-base has this peculiar trait of making anyone involved in it lose countless hours of sleep with questing, levelling, farming, crafting and whatever else can occupy your time while immersed in this virtual playground.

It's a fun romp usually but with rare unexpected shocks. You're usually just trundling along the cities and forests looking to finish your quests to get an item or gain more levels when suddenly; "WHAM"! You get knocked on your arse by something you never even saw coming.

Undead zombies with rotting flesh can do that.

So can vapor-like beings, giant life sucking bats, huge sabertoothed cats, cow-sized spiders, other races, kappas, ghouls and so many more beings that you'll encounter in your daily travels.

That sounds disheartening to some but most treat it as a challenge. There are those who'll wade into a fight just to check if they can survive it which in my opinion is rather silly but I'm more of the clinical warrior than most... Charging into a fight with only the opponent's level as a guage will cost you not just your life, it'll also take a few coins from your pocket for armor/weapon repair, time for getting back to your corpse and of course there's the abject humiliation of getting slain by a fluffy little cat... Some fighters will choose the bully route and level up and come back to take the monster down when they can dominate and crush that eight-legged abomination beneath their "Rare, +2 Strength, +3 Stamina, 400 Armor Plate Mail Boots".

My take is the more analytical yet somewhat boring to some approach.

I look at the web.

Yes, I research. I look up the monster's stats and abilities then compute the possibility in my head if I can kill it with a good chance of surviving intact. Maybe even factor in a "pop" (where a monster spawns right beside you and joins the fight) for increased survivability. So far it's pretty effective. Useful and obvious but I only learned to do this after a disastrous quest which left me with my jaw on the keyboard.

I was level-12 then and was on a quest with a level-11 monster as the target. I buffed all my stats, walked up to it, mana-tapped (sucked it's magic) and whacked it with my piece-of-crap cutlass. Crit! I hit it with 36 damage. Not a whole lot but that's all my character can sustain at this level. I whacked it again and then it retailated...

Ouch! One-hit and I was a disembodied spirit.

Damn. Running back to your corpse isn't fun.

I figured it was a glitch or some error on my part so I ran back and tried again. WHAM! One-hit and I was down again...


So I hit the web. I surfed at WoWWiki, Allakhazam, WoWHead and Wikipedia. I found a bestiary there listing all monsters and stats. What did I see? "Elite". Yup, it was an elite monster and had spells, a lot of physical power and a lot of def. Most would scoff at the stats but considereing I was a noob, how could I have known.

So what did I do? I became a bully. Levelled up to 17 and came back for the bastard. With new armor, weapons, buffs and skills the thing couldn't put a dent in me!

Take that you misbegotten son of a discolored pixel! If I could have pissed on it's decapitated head and done a cabbage patch on it's rotting corpse I would've been mighty satisfied.

Have you had any strange encounters with beasts on your romp though the world of Azeroth?

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