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5 Things Learned … Sorta
Published on December 1, 2007 by Phaelia 
Blog, Community, Humor 
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There’s an interesting blog-based “challenge” floating around where authors are sharing “5 Gaming Lessons” (learned in however long they’ve been playing). To give credit where it’s due, I first read about this idea over at The Bronze Kettle though they credit The Game Dame for the original idea and several others have risen to the challenge. While not an exact match persay, this idea has encouraged me to dust off one of my long-waiting drafts, one where I had started writing a letter to myself to enclose with my first copy of World of Warcraft. The idea for this letter was to include the pearls of wisdom that would otherwise have to be hard earned.
Dear me,
- I know the video of the pretty pink elf shapeshifting into a sleek black panther is what makes you think you want to play a Druid. Little do you realize that you’ll end up spending less than 1% of your total time in a Feral form.
- Yes, you’ll choose a Druid, but no, you won’t wear any of the gear that you can craft using the Leatherworking skill. Yes, I know you want to pick it up anyway because it seems Druidy. No, it’s still a bad idea. Be happy with Tailoring. At least you can make yourself pretty dresses. And later, some of the best armor for you will be made of cloth, not leather. Go figure.
- Don’t agree to help start a PvP guild. You don’t even like PvP. And you won’t until the game changes to make PvP more Healing-friendly. That won’t happen until the release of the first expansion.
- Don’t make 5 16-slot bags for every friend who buys the game on the first day they play. Chances are good they may never get past their trial. Try not to take it personally. Unless you didn’t listen to me and made them the bags anyway.
- Put this box down… Okay, now look for the one that’s marked “Collector’s Edition.” It has an adorable little panda bear pet that falls asleep with his round butt in the air and cute little green Zzzz over his head! Much better. Proceed to checkout.
Your friend, You
P.S. When creating your character, don’t name them Gaelic words that no one can pronounce. You’ll end up regretting it and only be able to change it when you transfer servers.
What lessons have you learned since coming into the World … of Warcraft?
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Oh god, Phae. This was good. I think you’ve inspired me. I remember sitting down to play Auryann for the first time. I sat there trying to move my mouse and I didn’t move. I screamed at Chris, “I can’t move!” He then showed me asdw. I felt dumb.
1. Just because you like playing feral the most doesn’t mean that you won’t end up spending 99% of your level 70 career as a healbot. Play to win, right?
2. Key bind EVERYTHING
3. Play on a medium or high populated server
4. Don’t bother trying to raid. You’ll hate it.
Not my experiences, but some comments on yours:
1) That’s not entirely true for feral druids: tanks are always welcome and they spend most of their play time in forms;
4) No point in making them stuff before they upgrade to the retail box anyway: you can’t give anything to them!
PS) No longer true after 2.3: you can now pay for a name change!
@Someone: I’m afraid you may have misunderstood this post (my fault for not explaining better). These were personal lessons learned, not lessons I was trying to teach others. So #1 was very much true for me; the only time I use kitty cat is when jumping from high places. I use Bear for BEAR ROCKET!!! in Arenas and the occassional “Oh s#%$” response in raids (but only when wearing enough leather that it makes a difference). These were also written from the standpoint of being made known to me at release, which is when I started playing. Back when the game was released, there was no such thing as a friend account. This was actually referring to having purchased the game and playing the free trial month that comes with the initial purchase. The name change was also not an option back when I had characters named Creidne and Dympna. I did finally get to change theme when I free-transferred from Icecrown to Azjol’Nerub. Then again when I paid for a transfer to Scarlet Crusade.
Well here is my 2 cents of knowledge
1) Private servers sound cool. Well they’re not…
2) Listen to your friends on what to roll as your main? Yeah right…
3) Joined that guild where the GM is a 16 year old that doesn’t raid and has just exchanged his account? Well leave it ASAP…. You did not hah? Do not accept leading classes… You did? Well then do not accept being an officer… You did too? Well do not lead raids alone…. You did it again? Then you have to start asking people to respec something other than dps… They do not listen to you right? Well do not run the entire damn guild alone… You did it again did you? Well at least do not let that stupid GM brat spoil your raids without even participating in them… What? You could not do that either? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE MAN? MOOOOOOVE OOOON.
4) That JC proffession sound cool hah? Well it might be but you really should not consider losing enchanting while you are on level 350 and already having spent an entire fortune on it… You just could not resist that button could you now?
5) It’s just a game man and that beautiful girl still seems to like you. Thank god you managed to do this the right way… Two raiding nights sound fair for everyone…
Can relate to #4… Have bought a good 12 bags off the AH for friends who played their characters for a good week. *sigh*
The lesson I have learnt.. Never ever ever play the same class as your other half. Need rolls can lead to days of not talking and no breakfast in bed.
1). A feral will always be asked to heal, a resto will always be asked to tank, and a boomkin will get either headscratches or haters for no apparent reason.
2). You will rawrsplat, it just happens.
3). Raiding is serious business, even if you try and joke, there will always be some hardcore raider who takes offense at your good times.
4). Make sure your friends can separate loot from reality, if not, don’t take them to runs, it’ll only end bad.
5). Fishing is the universal language of WoW. A fishing pole and a fashionable hat can speak mountains to the other faction.
Mine:
1) Don’t get crafting professions with your first character. You’ll always be broke and by the time you get nice recipes your level will be too high to give them any use. (Yeah, I thought it would be druidy too)
2) PuGs are a terrible terrible idea. Heroic PuGs, after patch 2.3, also make you want to shoot yourself (and others)
3) You shouldn’t have rolled alliance when you wanted horde.
4) You shouldn’t have chosen a PvE server when you wanted PvP.
5) You shouldn’t have rolled horde on a PvP server with your “second main” when what you really wanted was RPPvP (I never learn =_=)
And a sixth I learned from a furry tank:
6) Charging while /yelling “Bio? I laugh at the face of bio!” is funny only until the AFK people come back to see their corpses.
@Ermengol: “6) Charging while /yelling “Bio? I laugh at the face of bio!” is funny only until the AFK people come back to see their corpses.”
OMG, funniest line ever! I snorted my milk!
I always had a massive stockpile of Runecloth so I’d give friends 14-slotters and said “Give em back if you quit”. One bank alt has a total of 27 bags sitting in his bank.
@Dimitris: It sounds like our experiences with private servers were pretty similar. I played on one for EverQuest for all of a day. After the initial novelty of wearing the best gear in the game and having every ability available to my class (Ranger), I decided that I had to stop before the regular game seemed boring and pointless. =)
@Arianrhod: That is definitely a good lesson and once I thankfully didn’t have to learn. I originally planned to play a Hunter because I’d played a Ranger for 5 years in EQ, but then my husband decided during open beta that HE wanted to play a Hunter. So I picked the closest thing I could find: a Druid. He’s now on his fifth main character, and I’m still playing Phaelia so I think I came out ahead!
@Aiuriun: The only time my guild asks me to tank is as a joke. ^_^ And that’s what it would be. Although there was this time I was asked to help tank the double pull of hard-hitting undead that can’t be CCed and aren’t tauntable in Kara. About halfway through, it was pointed out that I still had Salvation. Oops!
And I loved your point about Fishing. It’s amazing how much respect one faction will display toward the other when carrying a fishing pole (though I am not sure this rings true on PvP servers).
@Ermengol: LOL @ #6; And great point about the crafting professions.
@Brent: Yikes! I think you should be able to disassemble items made with large swaths of cloth for 1/2 the amount of cloth that was originally used. I’d sure like to turn my Primal Mooncloth set into bags.
Sioban- pronounced sha-von, not see-o-ban or soy-bean. I gave up on explaining how it’s Gaelic after about ten minutes. I still wish my guildmates would pronounce it right but I’m sure it’ll never happen.