Day 7 - Weekend @ Darkshore

Seems a lot harder to set aside some time to play on the weekend with life constantly happening, so this is a collection of things I did throughout the weekend. I took the time to explore the corners of Darkshore more, in the pursuit of quest completion of course, throughout various times of the day. In the south it seems that the bears are a little more ornery!
One of the problems with these screen shots is sometimes it's so hard to judge the scale of things. If you look closely you can see normal sized mobs down below this massive sword. Who knows who used this sword, maybe I'll find out one day.
Near the large sword in southside Darkshore was small mine. It didn't appear to be working anymore, most likely due to the golems running around attacking anyone in the area. These guys were around level 20-22, but annoying for me as a rogue since they were immune to stun. That means I can't do my stun then run around and stab you in the back move.
I swear I saw the same owl this weekend at my buddy Chris' house. He was having an Octoberfest (not Brewfest) but you get the idea. Good sausages, but I'm not a beer guy.
Darkshore is, as the name implies, largely shoreline! So I have to get in the water and find all the little goodies in there. Not everything in the ocean was welcoming though...
This elf just kissed my butt all day long for finding the remains of those large animals (like the sea turtle shown above). I don't know what he got out of it, but as you can see in the picture Kaens wasn't interested.
Time to start exploring the farthest reachest of the north side. I love being a rogue. I snuck past this guy and killed his boss, looted the corpse, THEN he comes running in like he's going to do something. Unfortunately for him, I'd already disappeared.
The female to male ratio of bandits up north was insane. It's not much of a surprise that all the ladies, having not seen a real man, were constantly falling over themselves to get to me!
Some didn't take my rejection so well. Don't cry!
One of the last quests I did in Darkshore was to kill Murkdeep. My research told me he was at this camp, but when I arrived he wasn't there. "Hmm, okay I'll kill these placeholders until he arrives." So I carefully kill the entire camp, pulling them one at a time, and get ready for the respawns. Only they didn't come, instead a wave of four critters comes racing out of the ocean and jumps me! Now I'm a rogue not a f'n tank so I barely survived that assault. Having learned my lesson I moved out of the center off camp just in time to avoid another wave that came racing out of the ocean looking for me. This time that old troublemaker Murkdeep was with them and I took them out on my own terms. It was easier when
Having exhausted all the quests I could do now in Darkshore, it was time to take another flight and prepare to explore another zone next time!

Day 6 - Boat to Kalimdor

I have seriously had enough of Westfall, that place is frigging depressing! So I decided I'd figure out how to get the hell off of this continent and make my way to the other Alliance noobie zones. Back to Stormwind where I saw that huge docks, I mean there HAS to be boats leaving from there right? Only logical. Once I sorted out the correct boat (the first one led to a level 60+ zone, whoops!) I arrived in Darkshore. /shriver oooo, say it one more time.. Darkshore! So much cooler than Westfall's Fallout 3 look...

New zones means new mob types!
I gotta get me one of these! You know, as a pet/mount or something.
After a few hours and doing a bunch of new quests I decided to poke my head into the next zone to the south, Ashenvale...
Such beautiful colors in this area, the contrast is amazing. However this zone is a tad out of my level range so I'll have to come back later.
So even though I have a bunch of active quests still, I want to hop on another boat and see if I can find my way to Tendrassil. Here's the view as I stepped off the boat.
Inside of the city is very unique architecture. Naturally being elves the building are intertwined with the trees. Check out the bank for example which is carved into a huge tree...
Also they have a few giants protecting the city, which I thought were cool.

That's it for tonight, I feel like I got to explore a lot and that's the fun right? I do have a bunch of open quests though which is going to drive me crazy! Tomorrow I plan on exploring Tendrassil, completing all the low level quests there and then back tracking to complete some of the ones I have left open. Til then!

Day 5 - Entering Westfall

Finishing up Elwynn Forest I stopped by the level 1 area where they had the cutest old kobolds slaving away in the mines. They were so busy working they didn't even care that I was walking around killing their coworkers.

Having exhausted all of the quests I could find there I crossed a short bridge and entered Westfall. Weirdest thing was it was like a season change to the fall suddenly. I also found a few new mob types, wyverns & the buffest scarecrows I've ever seen!

Near the coastline I found myself some gnolls again. They grow them bigger out here in Westfall! This random gnoll has cool skull shoulder pads and I'm still walking around without any. I did find a nice bandit looking mouth covering bandanna though.

After fulfilling the requirements for a quest or two out here I called it a night. No point in staying up too late when I've already played a few hours and besides, there's a Throwdown on Food Network I haven't seen all of =D

Day 4 - Quick romp in Elwynn Forest

The fellas and I had a brodown tonight watching some Dexter. Afterward I got about two hours to get some playtime in. Found some the Riverpaw gnolls which helped me get a few quests completed.

One of the quests I gave up on was Wanted: "Hogger". The quest journal listed this as for a group so I assumed it was in an instanced dungeon and I wouldn't be able to do it. However as I wandered the gnome area look who I found!

Granted this guy was out in the open but he was no pushover, he killed me three times before I finally got a good enough jump on him to be able to take him out.

I did get a bunch of kill quests and running around quests completed, enough to ding level 15. Also I managed to upgrade several pieces of my gear too which was a nice bonus. Overall, a good two hours and I'm glad I signed in tonight instead of watching tv!

Day 3 - Mass transit

I began my night logged in a the Brewfest area once again. Did my daily ram beer keg delivery and ended up being single digit tokens away from getting my pink elekk pet. Oh well, maybe next year! Thanks to Lert I found out how to get out of my confined space, there's a tram in Ironforge! How the hell I was supposed to know that I do not know. They should post signs or something! Down at the tram station there was this freak who wants me to gather up rats pied piper style.


After the short tram ride I found myself in Stormwind City, which is apparently one of the last outposts of humankind. This is exactly why I starting playing this game when I did. These are the majestic scenes I totally expect to be trashed in the Cataclysm...


Naturally the humans have their own noobie zone, Elwynn Forest. Since at this point I'm level 13 I blow through most of these very quickly, completing a bunch more quests. So much easier when everything is greyed out ;) I did run into the cutest little mob I haven't seen before, a Murloc...

Undoubtedly there will be much bigger versions of these guys later in the game that will kill me, but for now they are just the cutest little buggers! Deep in the back of a new mind I found the source of all the annoying spiders...

After a hard days work I decided to pamper myself and get a fresh cut. You might believe that Kaens is naturally bald, but no that's a look obtained by a strict grooming routine. I have crazy hair if I let it go!

I spent the rest of my night working on my fishing, cooking and tailoring before calling it a night. Another fun evening.

Day 2 - Going a little further

It's been a few days since my WoW adventures started, but I still remembered enough to go do two daily quests for the Brewfest event. More tokens for me, up to 81 now. I probably won't have enough before the event ends to get my pet pink elekk but here's hoping! So like most days, I begin my gaming days be defining my goals for the night. At this point, I don't know enough about the game to even begin making goals so I'm simply doing each and every quest I can in the areas I explore. So I open my quest journal and check off which ones I want to track.

My journal has five quests I wasn't able to complete the last time I played - three are marked completed, one in progress, and "Pink Elekks On Parade". Now I've spent a LOT of time the night before working on the Elekks quest with no luck. I can't find them despite trying to follow the details at WoWhead and really really wanted to complete this quest both because it's a timed seasonal event and because the reward is 40 tokens which would allow me to get my new pet from the Brewfest vendor. I gave up though, and look at my remaining quests.

One of which asks me to collect a bunch of items from the Leper Gnomes I spotted the night before. Time to kill lots of these...

But come on, I'm a rogue.. you don't think I was facing off like that the entire time did you? No, of course not, whenever possible my fights started like this...

After those items were collected I went to another area which I missed despite passing it at least a dozen time. Up a hill near the lake in Dun Murogh lives the Frostmane trolls. Easy to pull singles even though they are in a camp and I quickly finished this quest.

I think I've exhausted all the quests in my immediate area, so I head back to see the King of Ironforge. Dude owed me some reward so I went to strong-arm him. Okay actually it was the guy standing to his right, but the King is more photogenic.

After seeing the king it was time to pack my things and head east towards new lands. On my way I was ambushed by these fools...
Having discovered these savage Rockjaws I stopped to help kill a bunch for the people at Gol'Bolar Quarry. Oh funny story, omw there I passed this little path upwards. Having learned my lesson earlier at the Frostmane trolls I went up to investigate. All I found was a tiny cave, but inside lived a name mob - Vagash. He was only level 11 so I pulled and killed him, nothing. That's kinda disappointing, oh well. So I drop down the other side of the hill where there is a tiny farm. At this farm they ask me to protect their herd of Rams from Vagash . "GREAT! I know exactly where he is, I just have to wait til he respawns."


Feeling like the savior of Dun Morogh, I felt it was time to move on. I found the tunnels between zones and I went to Loch Modan. And look, it's not covered in ice!

All new areas, new quests, no mobs, new NPCs. I completed several (and died several times). I killed lots and lots of Stonesplitter trolls, Tunnel Rats, bears, boars, and spiders...

Finally I rode a griffin back to Ironforge. Now THAT'S EQ style right there! I wish I still had my screenshots of the old Kaens flying on a griffon to do a side by side comparison! LOL

Also of note: out of frustration I went looking for some plug-ins to make my life easier. I installed the Curse client from curse.com and the following plug-ins...

• Atlasloot Enhanced
• Cartographer
• Cartographer_QuestInfo
• TomTom

All of these have made my life much easier on finding things and going where I want to go. I recommend them all. As you can see, I still have the default UI and I plan to keep it that way until I really know what I'm doing.

Day 1 - Getting started

As a former hardcore EQ1 & EQ2 player I fought off playing World of Warcraft due to it's inferiority and simplicity. However it's been years and I'd given up my MMOs the day I got my launch Xbox 360. After nearly four years of achievement hunting and punishing no one but myself I've given in. What caused me to take this plunge after so many years? I heard about the Cataclysm and it sounds cool and I don't want to miss such a huge part of gaming history. Thus today I started Kaens again on the Stormrage server, ooh sorry they are called 'realms' here ;)

Welcome to Brewfest!


And I got to ride a ram and earn a pet! Not bad getting to join a seasonal event on my first night.



At the end of the night I was level 8 and I had done 26 quests, explored a whole section and had a good time. It was very reminiscent of my early EQ days, which is a good thing.