I have been a gamer for many years now but I have never played WOW. I have tried MapleStory in the past and enjoyed that but have never found myself in a situation to give WOW a try.

Firstly this may annoy hardcore WOW fans I am coming at this from a source of great ignorance about all things WOW.

Also I would imagine the will be story spoilers as well. That said Free account signed up for and download started.

On the Install screen Looks like we have a green ape, a bison and scantily clad attractively drawn magician OK I’ve been around the internet for a while lets continue.

Licence agreements, Blizzard really do like using brackets for everything. Most of it is standard stuff but what on earth is the “I represent that I am a ‘natural person’” bit? A little strange but whatever Agreement Accepted.

10GB you say this might take a while. Downloading starts and the first thing I see is an UPGRADE NOW message. Now I know you are here to make money on your game but do you think I can try the game first before you encourage me to upgrade.

The ability to play while the download happens is a nice feature. I am presented with the same licensing agreement I just agreed to. So I confirm I am a natural person again and on we go.

The next thing to do is pick a language and a Realm.

Realm style Normal I guess. Don’t think there is much point in PVP when I don’t know what I’m doing and the role playing option seams a little to serious at this early stage.

Ahh the character creation screen, so I now know the green ape was an Orc and the bison was a bull. Looking at the other characters they all look interesting but I go for a Female, Human, Hunter (I liked the look of the pet). Manage to think of a name that didn’t need to have numbers or xXXx around it so looks like we are off to a good start.

And so priassaphire (Prias Saphire) enters the world of WOW.

I am given a quest and go off and kill 6 dogs which look as though they may be related to my pet which is slightly unsettling. There are a lot of people around here but there seams to be plenty of dogs to kill so it doesn’t take long. The targeting method is a little strange to me and I am having trouble understanding why my character sometimes shoots an arrow and sometimes hits the enemy with an axe.

Aha so right clicking on the enemy will use your attacks, that makes sense and how far away you are decides on the crossbow/axe. Next up are a group of spies they go down easily enough.

I then have to learn a new skill and shoot some dummies. I had a little trouble here as I didn’t realise I had to learn the skill from the NPC first but after a bit of clicking and running around I got the gist of it. Dummies defeated I return and claim my prize.

Next up I get sent to kill some elves and then revive some soldiers and return to get another quest. I was beginning to question what I was doing and then saw the quest entry for the “rear is clear” and the 12 year old in me laughed and so I carry on.

After that I go and kill some Orcs and put out some fires return to the quest giver only to be asked to go back to where I just came from and kill their leader. Surely you could have asked me to kill him at the same time I killed his friends.

I run back and kill the leader, first time someone helpfully came over and killed him for, so I waited a few seconds for him to re-spawn and then got the job done.

On my return I am told that some elves are having problems in the forest, I will find out what’s up later.

At this point I decide to call it a night and reflect on my first experiences. I think it is too early to pass judgement. Already I can see where this has influenced other games and it is nice to be playing the “daddy of them all”. However do I think this will grab me and take up all of my spare time? I can’t see it but it is still early days.

I have been a gamer for many years now but I have never played WOW. I have tried MapleStory in the past and enjoyed that but have never found myself in a situation to give WOW a try.

Firstly this may annoy hardcore WOW fans I am coming at this from a source of great ignorance about all things WOW.

Also I would imagine the will be story spoilers as well. That said Free account signed up for and download started.

On the Install screen Looks like we have a green ape, a bison and scantily clad attractively drawn magician OK I’ve been around the internet for a while lets continue.

Licence agreements, Blizzard really do like using brackets for everything. Most of it is standard stuff but what on earth is the “I represent that I am a ‘natural person’” bit? A little strange but whatever Agreement Accepted.

10GB you say this might take a while. Downloading starts and the first thing I see is an UPGRADE NOW message. Now I know you are here to make money on your game but do you think I can try the game first before you encourage me to upgrade.

The ability to play while the download happens is a nice feature. I am presented with the same licensing agreement I just agreed to. So I confirm I am a natural person again and on we go.

The next thing to do is pick a language and a Realm.

Realm style Normal I guess. Don’t think there is much point in PVP when I don’t know what I’m doing and the role playing option seams a little to serious at this early stage.

Ahh the character creation screen, so I now know the green ape was an Orc and the bison was a bull. Looking at the other characters they all look interesting but I go for a Female, Human, Hunter (I liked the look of the pet). Manage to think of a name that didn’t need to have numbers or xXXx around it so looks like we are off to a good start.

And so priassaphire (Prias Saphire) enters the world of WOW.

I am given a quest and go off and kill 6 dogs which look as though they may be related to my pet which is slightly unsettling. There are a lot of people around here but there seams to be plenty of dogs to kill so it doesn’t take long. The targeting method is a little strange to me and I am having trouble understanding why my character sometimes shoots an arrow and sometimes hits the enemy with an axe.

Aha so right clicking on the enemy will use your attacks, that makes sense and how far away you are decides on the crossbow/axe. Next up are a group of spies they go down easily enough.

I then have to learn a new skill and shoot some dummies. I had a little trouble here as I didn’t realise I had to learn the skill from the NPC first but after a bit of clicking and running around I got the gist of it. Dummies defeated I return and claim my prize.

Next up I get sent to kill some elves and then revive some soldiers and return to get another quest. I was beginning to question what I was doing and then saw the quest entry for the “rear is clear” and the 12 year old in me laughed and so I carry on.

After that I go and kill some Orcs and put out some fires return to the quest giver only to be asked to go back to where I just came from and kill their leader. Surely you could have asked me to kill him at the same time I killed his friends.

I run back and kill the leader, first time someone helpfully came over and killed him for, so I waited a few seconds for him to re-spawn and then got the job done.

On my return I am told that some elves are having problems in the forest, I will find out what’s up later.

At this point I decide to call it a night and reflect on my first experiences. I think it is too early to pass judgement. Already I can see where this has influenced other games and it is nice to be playing the “daddy of them all”. However do I think this will grab me and take up all of my spare time? I can’t see it but it is still early days.

My greatest experience in gaming was the initial mad rush and excitement of playing WoW for the first weekend shortly after release. I burnt myself out a long, long time ago, but I will still argue the case for WoW as the best game of all time.

I have never understood why people think WoW is so great, I played it around the time it launched and was never super excited, it was just another MMO. Grindfest+shitty PvP=not very good.

There are many far better MMOs out there, different one's depending on what you are looking for in an MMO but WoW really does not do anything that great (besides simplicity I guess).

Back when I played WoW you couldn't even play as a Human Hunter, and you didn't get your pet until level 10.

Get of my lawn.

You seem to be over analysing it so far.
Just play the game, see where it leads you.
 
The interface, controls and starting benefits have been severly upgraded through the years anyway, however bad you think it, it was worse and you should enjoy what you get! 
Try to have fun!^^

Nice to see a total fresh experience, and interesting to say that they have indeed made it pretty approachable. It didn't seem to take you long to figure anything out.

@jking47: It's the polish AND the breadth I think. It's had what, 7 or 8 years to refine things? The WoW we have now is totally different from vanilla wow, especially since cataclysm actually revamped everything prior to the first expansion. If you compare "wow clones" like Rift to original vanilla wow, the newer games are leaps and bounds better. Of course, you can't make that comparison, you have to compare the products that are out now. However, it's really tough for a new game to manage the level of content that a MMO that has been around for years has. I play a ton of MMOs, and complaints range just from simple quality of life things that WoW makes really easy, to that the world simply doesn't seem nearly as vast. Which is perfectly understandable, there's no way to release a world that is as big as WoW's straight out of retail.

For me though, the reason I keep going back to wow is simply the community. Not that I think wow's community is particularly excellent, just that I have so many very close friends that continue to play wow, that I can't really shift my allegiances elsewhere. MMOs are an inherently social game, so if all your friends are playing something, it's probably going to be a better experience. With still around 10M folks playing wow, odds are you know people playing it. For someone jumping into an MMO, that is an appealing thing.

@jking47: There really isn't much grinding in WoW. The game has also drastically changed since launch in almost every way possible and PVP nowadays is pretty fun since they've mostly killed off the Arena (which is impossible to balance) in place of Rated Battlegrounds.

What WoW does is offer something for everyone with different types of PVP, 3 different endgame raid difficulties, and they are finally taking it a step further in the new xpac with side things such as farming, pokemon collection+battles, time trials for dungeons that reward custom gear models you can't get anywhere else, and so on.

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

You seem to be over analysing it so far. Just play the game, see where it leads you. The interface, controls and starting benefits have been severly upgraded through the years anyway, however bad you think it, it was worse and you should enjoy what you get! Try to have fun!^^

It maybe seam like that as I am writing stuff down as I come across it so it may be a little disjointed. That said constructive comments are always welcome.

Just know that the WoW that everyone loves isn't the leveling, it's the endgame. It's raiding with 24 other people, killing bosses and getting loot.

I am a rookie, too!