"You must unlearn what you have learned..."

Thanks, Yoda.

Patch 5.0.4, the new version of World of Warcraft, is mere hours away, so sometime tomorrow — probably late tomorrow, since there's a good chance I won't be able to get on until after I get home from work, and I work afternoons/evenings — I find out just how much of what I've learned about WoW in the past month and change, and written about here, is going into the trash.

I'd known there would be changes with the new Mists of Pandaria expansion, but I hadn't realized until fairly recently that the changes would come this far before the expansion goes live in late September. I haven't talked about talents, for instance, because I knew that was one of the big changes coming; apparently it's not the only one.

I've avoided discussions of the changes because I knew I probably wouldn't understand half of what was being discussed. I need to actually see it in action — preferably my action — to really have a chance to understand what's going on. (Not that I always understand what I'm doing...)

So: tomorrow we start again. Should be interesting.

"Interesting." That's a Pandarian curse word, isn't it...?

Beginnings — Draenei, part 1: Flight 815 from Draenor

NAANDIMIRA
Draenei mage
Level 1 
Ammen Vale 

The first surprise was that I was a survivor of a spaceship (well, planar ship) crash. The second surprise was that the crash had just happened — that, apparently, the draenei had only just arrived on Azeroth: my first experience with wibbly-wobbly World of Warcraft time.

I awoke — yes, I'll generally be using "I" and "me" in referring to the character; deal with it — in a valley studded with large red crystals; the crystals turned out not to be a natural feature, and indeed served to drive much of the plot that followed.

In the shadow of no dam

NAANDIMIRA
Level 44 draenei mage
Thousand Needles

MACABURR
Level 23 dwarf warrior
The Wetlands 
 

Time is more than wibbly-wobbly in Azeroth — it contorts, in ways a pretzel would envy, to serve the twin needs of storytelling and gameplay. Thus, even though people may have been playing the game for years before you, for your particular story time starts at zero every time you create a new character. To take the two examples I've personally experienced: If you're a draenei, the Exodar has only just crashed on Azeroth; if you're a dwarf, the Cataclysm has only just happened.

I said time starts at zero, but that's not quite true: the oldest players remember a time before the Exodar arrived on Azeroth, and I think most remember the time before the Cataclysm. (1) This also means that from one perspective, the new draenei is starting almost four years before the new dwarf, which is one reason you shouldn't think too hard about World of Warcraft.

I'm one of the newbies, so I don't remember a time before the Cataclysm. That makes me traveling in Azeroth a little like how it would be in real life if I were to visit New York City, a place I've never been. I've seen plenty of photos, TV shows, films, read plenty of books set in NYC — but I've never actually had the experience of standing in a New York City where two 110-story towers rise over lower Manhattan, and now I never will. (Or at least, not those particular 110-story towers.) Likewise, I've never been to The Park in Stormwind, never experienced Loch Modan as a place that was filled with water, or Thousand Needles as a place that wasn't.

A lot of stories start just before or just after a (lowercase-c) cataclysm, and there's a reason for that: it's inherently dramatic, increasing the challenges that those who survive face. Plenty of adventures start off with adventurers wandering a ruined land, rich in history — that is, rich in backstory. There's a lot of history in Azeroth as well — but one of the things that makes WoW interesting and unusual is that players have experienced at least some of that history.

Shoutout of the day

"Mosshide Representative yells: AAAAAAGH! CURSE YOUR SUDDEN YET INEVITABLE BETRAYAL!"

—"Axis of Awful" quest, Loch Modan

A confusion of choices

It takes a little while to download. Then it takes a further while to download, because it turns out the first thing you downloaded was the program for downloading the rest of it. I don't know how long it took precisely, because I set it going either before I went to bed or before I went to work, I don't remember now which.

The bewilderment of choices started as soon as I launched the game — actually, in a lot of ways, the most bewildering moment is when you start the game for the first time. A dozen races to choose from. Male or female? Alliance or Horde? Warrior? Hunter? Mage? Priest? Shaman? Druid? Warlock? PvP? PvE? RP? POE OPE?

By way of introduction

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The gryphon cannot hear the flight master...

I'd always avoided World of Warcraft before. I had plenty of friends who played it, and I'd picked up at least some of the lore second- and thirdhand — enough to at least smile and nod at Leeeeeeeroooooooy Jenkins and "OK, stop dots" (language warning on those links, by the way). But much of the lingo — buffs and tanks and aggro — remained murky to me.

Then, recently, a hardcore WoW-playing friend decided she wanted a particular bonus within the game that you got by convincing someone to start playing. The "someone" turned out to be me.

That was, oh, a couple of weeks ago. I can't say for certain that I'm hooked, but at least I'm hooked for now.

But the thing is, Azeroth is a large, confusing, overwhelming place, and I wouldn't have gotten very far without said friend providing explanations and advice. So I'm documenting my progression through the World of Warcraft in hopes of keeping the confusion to a minimum for other new players — little things, like how you're supposed to use the neutralizing agent, what to do when it turns out Vindicator Aesom lied about who would be destroying the Sun Gate, and the proper way to not drown — and hopefully providing amusement for everyone else. (Also, I did finally find out what "buffs" and "tanks" and "aggro" were.)

And there probably will be a bunch of new players, as Blizzard accelerates the push surrounding its newest expansion, Mists of Pandaria. Come late September, there'll be a whole new continent to explore, with hints of a deep, dark evil soon to be unleashed (oh, not another one!), wreaking havoc until true heroes can be found to stop it...

And what rough beast, its level reached at last
Slouches towards Pandaria, ready to respawn?