After coming back from vacation I had one goal in mind, get in some more WoW time. Over the past 4 days I've been questing, doing dungeons, and generally progressing on the road to 90. When I started my Orc Rogue, I found the game extremely bland, not helped by the fact that the Orc starting zone is a large desert. But as I leveled up and gradually garnered more rewards from the experience, I grew to love the game. No other game in recent memory has gotten me as invested as WoW has, and while I'm still making sure I only play in the evenings I consider myself fairly hooked. There are no other games I'm interested in playing right now, and until Far Cry 4 releases, I doubt anything will change that fact.

So, a quick recap of what I've been doing. After getting my mount at level 20 I dipped my toes in a few dungeons and was delighted at the relative amount of great loot in comparison to simple questing. Also, fighting with other people who have specialized roles is much more rewarding than playing alone, as everyone's unique strengths and weaknesses need to be balanced. The biggest problem that's arisen has been if say, a healer doesn't heal, or a tank keeps getting killed. This is a problem with randomly matching in the Dungeon Finder, but I haven't found that it has detracted from the experience in any significant way. Some dungeon's I've enjoyed more than others, with Deadmines being one of my favorites so far (probably because it was the first one I did). Really the biggest complaint I can level against WoW is that getting around can be a chore at times. Simply learning how to access areas and what pre-requisites are needed is a hefty task, but one that can be eased into over the course of leveling. I think I've been fairly efficient with leveling, seeing as it's my first try at the game, so even if I am stuck trekking from one area to another, I never particularly feel like I'm wasting time. Even if there is a lot of traveling, I really enjoy the scope of the world, with multiple continents that I haven't even stepped foot on yet. There's The Outlands, which excite me because they exist entirely outside of Aezeroth. Northrend looks cool because I LOVE winter themed video game levels. Pandaria doesn't interest me currently, but maybe that's because it seems so far off. It is a bit frustrating that I didn't experience the impact of Cataclysm, because I never played before it, but there's nothing I can do about that.

The combat also gets considerably more enjoyable as the game progresses. As a rogue, I do a lot of sneaking up behind enemies, but the combo system is also interesting. It adds another layer of depth to what makes up most of the game: fighting monsters. If it didn't work as well as it does, I'm not sure that I would have kept playing, so good thing it's as amazing as it is. I'm excited to see how the other classes play, and I hope to try out a tank next, but that will have to wait until I get sick of my current character. I don't see any indication of that happening, as I'm currently almost able to purchase a faster mount, and after that I'm going to give pet battles a try. I haven't even tried PVP Battlegrounds yet, or any of the professions. At the end of the day, the two things that make WoW amazing, to me, are it's scope and polish. As I stated before, the fact that most of the world is not available until later levels makes the allure that much more strong. 10 years is a long time to iterate and improve on a game, and Blizzard may be the very best there is at improving their games post-launch. I'm so happy WoW exists because it's unlike any other game I've played, and it allows the player to truly get lost in it's world. Hopefully I'll have another update in the coming days!