(It’ll be just like) Starting over

What if you were given the chance to start over completely in World of Warcraft? What if you lost your account, and Blizzard offered you the level 80 of your choice (or, if you love leveling, you may start at level 1). Would you stay with your current class? Race? Faction? And what would you do with this brand-new toon? PvE? PvP? Troll trade chat in Dalaran?

If Blizz suddenly offered me a brand-new level 80 for some reason — because my account was lost or hacked or Chris Metzen just decided I was the hotness — I do believe I would just keep my priest. I know I actually haven’t written a lot about my priest here yet, but I really love playing her. She has two — count ’em, TWO — healing trees to choose from. In fact, I recently dropped my Shadow spec and went back to Holy as my second spec. I wanted some more options for healing and there are some things to love about a Holy spec (i.e., Circle of Healing, a kick-ass Renew, Body & Soul). I’ve been running five-mans as Holy to keep fresh on playing it, because I think Disc is still my stronger raiding spec for most fights.

I probably wouldn’t change race, because I really like the trolls. They’re tall and interesting and the females can stand up straight and Berserking is really quite awesome. So no, I can’t say I would pick a new race. Certainly I wouldn’t change my faction. For the Horde, baby! And if I’m taking my priest back, I definitely want her at 80 already.

All that said, I do love to try out new classes. I’ve rolled every class in the game at this point, at least to give them a try. And I have, in fact, started over several times.

My first real main was my hunter. I loved having a pet to help me solo anything. My bear, Treadwell, was my faithful companion, keeping mobs off me while I killed them. It was easy mode.

I started fooling around with a rogue alt soon after Burning Crusade came along. I loved getting the jump on my enemies, stealthing up behind the unsuspecting and picking their pockets before swiftly slaughtering them. I could sneak around mobs I didn’t feel like fighting. I stealthed my way through the pet quests in Blackrock Mountain, and snuck past enemies to get my Elder achievement at the lunar festival. My other toons had to fight their way through, but not Marsha. She just slipped past. It was this character I took up to level 80 and discovered raiding with.  The hunter remains on an abandoned server, stuck at 66, probably forever.

I had some other alts: a warlock and a warrior and a druid… but none were as much fun as my rogue. I started a priest, but it was brutal. I died all the time. Leveling was taking forever because I was always on a corpse run. I dumped her at level 24.

Ha! I picked her up again, months and months later. I got her a pair of heirloom shoulders and learned to be a lot more careful with my pulls. I tried out some healing in low-level dungeons and while it made me anxious, I also kind of liked it. Marsha was still my main, but I was liking Sindei more and more. I knew Marsha would always be my main, but I was spending a lot of time on Sin, especially once I hit 80 and wanted to gear her up. Before I knew it, Sindei was definitely my new main, and Marsha only came out for farming.

Lately, as you know, I’ve been leveling an Ele/Resto shaman. I wonder sometimes if I am starting over again. I spend a lot of my spare time leveling Gin, though I never neglect Sindei’s daily frost emblem run. I’m healing lots of PuGs with my shammy and enjoying it quite a bit. It’s a different healing style, but I like it. I can’t say I like it better than priest healing, but I do like it. I don’t think I would give up my priest — but I guess I won’t know till I get there.

This week’s Blog Azeroth Shared Topic was suggested by Pieces at Blasting Away.

 

Game changers

In the spirit of getting this party started, I thought I’d post on one of Blog Azeroth’s shared topics: How will Cataclysm change your game*?

Like many others, I’m eagerly awaiting the Cataclysm expansion. I admit, I sat in front of my computer monitor during the BlizzCon DirecTV stream, hanging on Chris Metzen’s words during the opening ceremony, waiting for the announcement we were all waiting for. Right, so now you know what a geek I really am.

I’m excited for a lot of different things in Cataclysm: new races, revamped zones, Archeology, broader talent trees… all of it! But honestly, how can I predict how it will change my game? This question really made me consider the past more than the future. My game has already changed significantly since I started playing WoW, and I couldn’t have predicted any of it.

I started playing WoW several months after launch. New to MMOs, I didn’t really have a good understanding of the social aspects of the game. I’d played plenty of video games, particularly Civilization and the Warcraft series, but mainly in single player mode. I was unskilled against other players, and getting my butt handed to me on the regular did not seem an especially good time to me. I preferred a casual, low-pressure style of gaming.

Which is exactly why I played WoW as a solo questing game during Classic WoW (aka “Vanilla”) and most of Burning Crusade. To me, the leveling process was the game. I ran few dungeons, since groups were often hard to pull together and the instances seemed to take a lot of time. I had a husband and two children, any of whom might call me away from the computer at anytime, so my solo play style also suited my real life schedule.

Things began to change for me not long before the release of Wrath. My casual social guild on Sen’jin was increasingly involved in raiding, something I knew nothing about. They were spending lots of nights in Karazhan, and I got curious about this raiding business. For the first time, I educated myself about my class, the best ways to spec, what rotations to use, and how to get better gear.

Then Wrath dropped, and I never did get into Kara. Everyone wanted to run the new Wrath instances, so off I went, learning how to play as part of a group. I wasn’t part of our progression team in Naxx, but I did get in some occasional runs and had a blast. I got hooked on raiding,  and when it became clear that I was not on our raid leader’s usual pick list, I left my longtime guild to find one where I could be a part of a regular raid team. My game had definitely changed.

My search for a new guild took me to a large guild on another server, where there were plenty of folks running all levels of content. There were several 10- and 25-person raid teams, but none fit my schedule. I did a few pickup runs, but I still wanted a regular team. Finally, I decided to see if anyone else was in the same boat, and I started my own 10-man team. I’d planned to raid on my rogue, but we needed a second regular healer, so I started bringing my priest. I was a little nervous about raid healing, but I had such a great time that the rogue hasn’t seen a raid since. I dropped shadow and picked up discipline as my second spec. All heals, all the time, baby.

That was another serious game changer for me. As a rogue, soloing was easy. I could play as part of a group, but solo play was seldom a problem. Healing, on the other hand, is inherently a group style of play. Standing around healing yourself is not that much fun; you need others to play with. I can certainly get through my dailies in Disc spec, but the real fun only comes if I’m running with a group.

From dps to healer, from casual solo player to raid leader, it’s been a lot of fun discovering this game over the years. And now, here comes Cataclysm. I plan to level both Sindie and Ginger to 85, and I plan to level a goblin to at least 60 to experience the changes in the Old World. Those things aren’t really changes in my game play, though; I expect to continue doing just what I do now, more or less. But I never could have predicted the ways my game play has changed over the course of my game, so who knows? I can’t say how Cataclysm will change my game. I can only say that I’m certainly looking forward to finding out.

*edited to add that this Blog Azeroth Shared Topic was suggested by Rilandune of Heroically Random!