30 Day Trial: World of Warcraft - Part 02

I've never played Wow before, but this was still hard to watch in places. Goddamit Dan how did you get so far in videogames.

I've played a lot of MMOs over the years, but somehow managed to avoid getting into WoW.

I don't know that this video series makes me want to either, but I definitely want to get back into FFXIV again. Even ignoring things from Dan's perspective, WoW just seems a lot more... different comparatively, and for sure what I would want out of a subscription based game FFXIV would have.

While I agree that Dan is new and we were all new once, his lack of observational skills are astoundingly bad especially for someone that plays other games. If you're in a group stay with your people. If you dont know where youre going follow others or look at your map - its probably clearly indicated. If you dont know what stats do you can check them on your character sheet. Numerous times he commented on not realizing his health was going down. Oh and the bit with the bag...

These are not arcane ideas exclusive to MMOs here - the game even has extensive faqs and tutorials in game if he ever did care to check. At times it honestly felt like he was going out of his way to remain ignorant because it's funnier that way or something :/ That's why it is so frustrating for many of us I think

I love the feature but damn paging @rorie asap. Just a few knowledge bombs would go a long way.

I'm not sure what was more amusing, the utter confusion at Cerebralbutt, or Brad, who hasn't played in 7 years, overruling Rorie, who never stopped, about which dungeon to play first.

It is fun watching Dan nerd out over the game, though. I even tried to pull up my character from 5 years ago but it's been so long I can't see it ;(

After playing WoW for 5 years on-and-off and getting used to everything about it, it's great to watch a new player like Dan start playing and remark on how awesome everything is. I won't play WoW again, but it reminds me just why I got hooked on it in the first place.

there's a distinct satisfaction to watching dan play arguably the most important mmo ever made with complete irreverence, and still manage to have a good time. that's actually a pretty massive accomplishment for blizzard.

oh and dan- NEVERMIND THE MMO INTELLIGENSIA- YOU'RE DOING JUST FINE.

I'm pretty sure Dan has said that he wants to learn as much as he can by himself...and I don't exactly know how much patience Rorie has, but it would really be put up to the test with this I imagine.

Also this makes me want to level a new character, but no such luck on my own realm with full character list. Hopefully they'll add more in the next expansion at least.

...and yeah, like someone mentioned, the group members not yelling at him (especially with today's WoW community) during the instance was surprising, but then again, lower level instances are so easy now that you barely have to pay any attention in them.

San Andreas came out in 2004. A month before WOW. I never played wow, but these do a good job showing what is interesting about it.

Never played WOW or any MMO, so Dan can play whatever way he wants, and I'll never notice.

This video gave me so much more sympathy and patience for low level characters that walk into walls, attack the wrong elites, and spam taunt when they aren't the tank. They may just be new players, caught up in the wonder of discovering WoW for the first time.

Giant Bomb guys, it would make a great finale for this series if in the fourth episode, the 2nd guy talking was a complete expert on the game who could actually answer questions from Dan.

Oh man this is amazing. I've played every expansion so far in WoW. I barely touched Cataclysm and Panda nonsense, but I did hit the cap and do some raids and such in both, as a dps, healer, and tank. Seeing Dan do so badly in every possible way makes me want to play again and only play to help new players understand what the hell is going on.

Dan is such a console person, he has no idea what an MMORPG is about. I would love to help people like this get comfortable with such an odd genre.

Brad and Jeff being so crazy out of date also makes this very funny to watch. I can't be mad at them for not knowing what has happened in seven years, of course. I do wish they would have turned on the tutorial in the options, though.

Dan would make a good shaman and a decent paladin, though. As a shaman could heal himself a bit and explore some more game mechanics. As a paladin, when he messes up terribly, he could bubble and run away, usually.

But holy shit can someone explain to Dan what taunt does? He is basically being the most annoying person in the game for a tank and healer. When you taunt it forces the enemy to attack you if it wants to attack someone. So if you hit that you will be the one taking damage. If you are not the tank you should never do that. That ability does nothing else, so hitting it is a waste of time (about 1.5 seconds of time) on top of ruining everyone's time.

Please for the love of god have rorie turn on auto loot

Wait.. they took out VanCleef?

Also, install a bag mod. The default inventory system is a joke. The most popular when I played (about 3 years ago) was bagnon I believe.

Please for the love of god have rorie turn on auto loot

They moved time forward in Cata so van cleef is dead in the lore, but in the heroic version of that dungeon vanessa van cleef comes after you for revenge

I love Dan but, as a gaming journalist, how does he not know most of this stuff ("last boss", "credits roll", etc...)?

I hope he keeps going. Seeing this through his eyes really is great. Huge nostalgia pangs of days before kids and responsibilities making a game like this irresponsible.

One thing Dan should do is go to all the dungeons around his level.

You can jump all over with the dungeon finder.

The sense of direction exhibited by Dan and Brad is amazing. I look forward to the episode where they get stuck running around in a loop in a dungeon for an hour.

love Brad the king of misinformation. If he had been paying more attention he could have explained what had happened and given more advice. Hope Rory comes in for the next one so Dan can learn whats going on.

I have to agree with some here that it is kinda crazy seeing someone ostensibly well-versed in video game mechanics having such a hard time picking up stuff that has been around in these kinds of games for the better part of a decade now. Also stuff that is designed to be super accessible. I mean even if you never touched WoW, so much of this has become the standard--even outside of MMOs and outside of RPGs--that it should be almost second nature. Like how the hell do you not know what an instance is?

But I digress...a little...maybe.

I'm all for Dan having fun and enjoying the game at his own pace, opting to learn on his own as opposed to Rorie or Dave (because Jeff didn't play as much and Brad apparently remembers very little) just walking him through everything. However, if I think back to when I first started playing back when WoW still had that new MMO smell, people did not jump in quite so blindly or stubbornly.

Most followed the usual learning process of paying attention to the few bits the game does explain to you via tutorials and tips, sorting out their own class' basic skills and talents, learning the hotkeys and shortcuts, experimenting with gear, figuring out the UI and info it presents, so on and so forth. When that failed, I asked my friends and got advice from more experienced players.

And you know what? I enjoyed the game a hell of a lot more once I got those basics down. At this point, there's so much more to learn that hopping in with blinders on hoping to "discover" as much as you can on your own is just going to be a constant hindrance, making the game unnecessarily tough at points.

But hey (ok, now I digress), no matter what way you go about it, it's enjoyable watching and reminiscing about the good ol' days of WoW.

One funny thing about this game is the drastic difference between the original zones. You really notice it when you have a flying mount. They try to smooth the seams, but the land is pretty much impossible.

A wizard did it.

Bloody hell. Just resubbed. I haven't played an alliance character since vanilla so i figured it might be fun to level up on that side of the story on a new server. Damn you dan! Loving the feature so far.

Brad, time to quit drinking perhaps if you can't remember where Ironforge is after playing it so much buddy?

Whew, realized I'm a WoW snob watching this. And I quit 8 years ago.

I hereby summon the awesome art duders of Giant Bomb to make a Cerebralass hero shot

I still remember the ass-chewing I got for rolling need on something my class couldn't use. Sometimes I wake late at night in a cold sweat with those obscenities repeating themselves in my head, "YOUR A F**KING ROUGE!!!"

Yes, Bielzamuth*, I am a f**king rouge**, and I've still got your f**king wand.

*guestimation of whatever his name was

**his mistake, not mine

didnt even need these videos just the mention on the podcast got me to subscribe again

Despite Dan being extremely derpy with dungeons, unless he ends up training half the dungeon on the healer (Which I can see happening...) any group with a tank and healer in decent gear won't notice the lack of one or two DPS players. Actually having a new player in a dungeon would be refreshing, I think, if everyone was on board.

What I'm trying to say is...

Return to WoW premium content where they roll new characters. Vinny as a prot warrior. Brad as a rogue. Dan as a shaman. Rorie as the healer (Because someone has to know what they're doing, be decked in heirlooms to carry, and it may as well be the healer.) Drew as a mage. Maybe a 10 man run of Naxx when the time comes with the other Last Canadians? Maybe... get in character and freak Dan out?

Just ask the community and they'd sign the guild charter for The Last Canadians.

I love the perspective in these videos. It makes it seem like the steep learning curve in Dota makes more sense. Dan's got 16 hours in this game and is still a baby at it, and you can't blame him! Well except for taking Brad's advice over Rorie's.. that's just silly.

I think I said this on the last video, but I must reiterate. There is nothing, NOTHING more irritating than being a veteran of a game, and watching a newbie learn it. I feel like a total masochist watching these.

Yeah. In the first episode, Dan stated that his intention was to go into WoW completely blind. He's learning a bit from the people around him, but I think Rorie's making a conscious effort not to spill too much knowledge on Dan if he can help it.

I got my ex-girlfriend into the game (her brother was a longtime player and she wanted to try it), and I'm having flashbacks watching this series. It's amazing how just being new to a game can make you look mind-blowingly stupid to experienced players watching you.

Only thing might be watching someone who's played the game years ago give the worst advice ever given to another person with regards to video games.

@conduitfoursale said:

Well, I guess he was scared of PCs in the past.

I don't know if this is a coincidence, but the Alliance starting zones on Aerie Peak are surprisingly lively right now.

17:50 - I have never heard a mind more blown than this.

Oh noooo I'm installing it again. Haven't played since 2007.

"10 Gold? Oh wow, that's super expensive!"

LOL. I don't know if it's changed since I quit, but mounts were 100G. 90 for the mount and 10 for the skill, or vice versa?

I don't know if watching this is actually healthy for me..
Pretty much "no-lifed" my way trough original WoW and BC until i kicked that habit for some other MMO.
But watching this makes me want to go back :/

Damn you Blizzard! It's like WoW ends up being the heroin of video games!

@xenolon: Other way round, because once you were over the hump of saving for the skill it was relatively easy to get all the different pretty colours.

I think Rorie should really be there to AT LEAST help guide him in the appropriate directions and teach him about loot and not just selling everything to the shop. Needs to know about Auction House! If we are also going to see him get into dungeons/raids in later levels he will need to know how to actually play his character!

Dan keep it up, in your free time look on sites for advice or some newbie guide! I hope you are taking a look at these comments and getting some feedback.

Also, yes turn on auto-loot!!!!

I haven't leveled anything in WoW for a long time from level 1, kind of amazing to think how well the graphics have evovled with every expansion, especially the new models coming out with WoD.

Edit: @danryckert, if you die and decide to run back to your corpse you loose nothing other then 10% of armor durability, which costs gold to repair. If you decide you resurrect at a spirit ( the guy you spawn at when you die), you will loose 75% durability (not sure on that number) and get a debuff for 10 min which gives you xx% less stats on everything and basically can't attack anything for that time.

Edit2: Hahaha love the comments of both Brad and Jeff (last time), all based on a looong time ago (which makes sense, that's when they played). Stormwind has been the place to be since Cata pretty much, sadly because IF is so much cooler. Also, really itching for someone to tell Dan that hey needs to remove that auto attack from his bar (as it happens automatically)

Edit3: I love how excited Dan is :D I always loved helping out new players because of people like him. Great :)

Edit 4: Lol @brad

god damn it. I need to log back on to this game

One thing you need to do @danryckert is take the train from Ironforge to Stormwind.

As playing a tank and healer at that level, I can almost be assured that 1.5 members of the party are going to be non-functioning. I can only hope that the healer has some experience.

At Dan's level, it doesn't matter who's paying attention too much. It's only dungeons around the late 30's or early 40's (Sunken Temple comes to mind) where group interplay comes to the forefront.

It's been an absolute delight watching the MMO scene unfold in front of Dan, so I can't wait for the Rorie <-> Dan MMO chat where Rorie explodes Dan's mind like a scene from Scanners when he talks about group composition and precise positioning make the difference between wipes and progression.

@rorie, please join this guy in his next episode and help out. No offense to Brand and Jeff, but they are stuck in vanilla/tbc, this game has changed so much since then!! :)

Hey Dan, you shouldn't take game advice from the guy who plays a trillion hours of Dota.

My favorite part of this feature is all of the out of date misinformation Brad and Jeff are spewing at Dan. Rorie should be saved until the last episode where he can tell Dan everything he's done wrong up until now.

I haven't played since Vanilla, but good jesus its hard to watch first time dungeon run. I'm glad his party didn't rage cuss him out at least. Fun episodes, I hope these go right to end game with WoW master Dan.

I AM NOT PREPARRED

I am really loving this series so much.

GRRR DAN YOURE NOT PLAYING IT RIGHT *writes wall of text*