Why every "gamer" should play World of Warcraft.

I like many non-WoW players spent years on the outside looking in. Hearing stories of WoW addiction, picturing in my mind that overweight, unkempt, hygienically challenged WoW fan. While over the years I definitely realized the fallacy of that stereotype, meeting folks of all walks of life that enjoy and sing the praises of World of Warcraft. Now that I've taken the plunge into the "WoW-nerd" family and thought that I'd share some of my observations about the game as an "experience".

I find myself at an interesting and unique position within my World of Warcraft progression. that being that I've advanced my character to lvl 77, I'm approaching Mists of Pandaria, and then will be moving into Warlords of Draenor, having moved through a massive amount of the world and the content put forth by previous expansions. I've literally moved through YEARS of content. I've put in nearly 7 days worth of play time in game, and one would think that I would have a good grasp on the world, the lore and the overarching story of the game.

Amazingly I don't have much of an idea what's going on in Azeroth. It's so very easy to move through this game and simply mindlessly quest, to move through the expansions and worlds without truly experiencing them. For most quests it's not even necessary to read the story, you can skim over it find the key words like "gather", "murloks", or "go to", and from there determine what path you need to take and where you need to go without truly taking in the story and experiencing much of anything in the way of a narrative. The ability to gain a flying mount and completely remove interacting with the world, simply dropping in and out of quests and flying back to the quest giver without ever truly having the experience of being "in" the world, definitely makes one feel removed from the experience.

This play through has been about leveling, about getting my character up to 100 as quickly as I can so that I can play with my friends who's tenure in the game is much longer than mine, and are already involved in the end game content. I find myself yearning to experience the depth and breath of the World of Warcraft experience more than I currently am. There's so very much to experience within the massive world that Blizzard has created, so many characters with their own stories, and so many rich fleshed out story lines. At times it seems that there's equally as much to miss within the game as there is to experience.

Players with a WoW tenure of years will take this for granted, they've know Thrall, Jana Proudmore, and many of the other characters, for some, most of their lives. The story has evolved organically over time and many have had the honor of being involved in that ever-expanding story. Players have seen the world grow, shape itself, and tear itself apart. As a newb simply rambling about this can be a daunting experience.

One revelation that I came to late last night running dungeons from Wrath of the Lich King, was that the beauty and longevity of WoW is not that there is one experience that the developers want you to have as in many games that I played in the past. The game is a living book, something that is meant to play the way that you want to, but within the confines of the developers storytelling. WoW with the entirety of the world and the additions to the game over the past years, the game is unlike anything that I've ever played. While there is a story-arch and something to follow, there's also an inherent freedom in the game, the ability to play the game in the way that you'd like to, to explore and grind levels, role-play, pet battle, truly explore the rich lore of the world, or anything else that you can imagine.

While I was upset and frustrated at my play experience and the fact that I felt like I was missing out on things, I'm encouraged by the fact that they way that I've played this character is simply the way that I've played this character WoW will still be there when I hit the level cap, and level all of my raid gear, all I need to do is spin up an alt and play the game entirely different. That's amazing feeling to have as a gamer, and finally after years of gaming I see what the big deal is with WoW and I would encourage anyone that considers themselves a "gamer", not that you should experience it, but you need to experience.

Thank you for reading, keep your eyes open as you may just see this newb rambling about Azeroth!

Should you participate in Battlegrounds in World of Warcraft? Thoughts from a Rambling Newb.

So tonight I thought I'd try something a bit different and run some Battle Grounds. Everything I've heard from all my friends that only PvE is that PvP isn't fun, it sucks, it's a waste of time, and they don't have fun with it. I've heard that PvP isn't "really playing WoW", that it's just a cheap experience when placed against modern games like Call of Duty, or all the other FPS genre games out there. "If you want to run and gun then go pop in Battlefield.

I'm happy to report that everyone of those folks was entirely wrong, at least in my opinion. PvP is definitely not the "WoW experience" that I think of when playing WoW, or maybe to be fair it wasn't the experience I thought of before playing WoW. I can definitely say that PvP is a fun distraction from questing and dungeons, and actually puts a bit of thought into the game. Now I know what my lvled up buddies will say, that raiding and end game content takes organization, and "real strats", so PvP might not have it on the strategy market in WoW, however for a lvl 74 Windwalker Monk, it was a whole lot of fun.

First off the windwalker isn't most folks first, or even second-fifth choice of PvP class, most folks say that we aren't very good for PvP especially after a previous patch nerfed our roll ability (which I must say I noticed immediately and it was schockingly nerfed for someone that hadn't been in a BG before). Personally I found that it forced me to think a little bit harder about how I approached the instance, and how I would go about tackling each encounter. There definitely wasn't any running in and wrecking the other folks in this outing, it was much more about hanging on the fringes, throwing out some clutch heals, and darting in to do the damage that I could. While that might not be the best strat for running WW in BG, I will say that it was working for me, and even though I was never at the top of the damage counter, I never got kicked and I felt like I was making a difference for my squad.

Secondly my toon is NOT geared for PvP, with the difficulty of questing being so low I never really saw the need whilst lvling to really worry about my gear, so while I have some 150-ish gear, I'm also rocking some lvl 53 stuff, I don't like spending my gold on gear when I end up finding something better in my next dungeon, so I've stuck with what I have. It doesn't matter much running around the world exploring but I could definitely tell a difference in my gear compared to others in the starting zones, and then that same difference showed itself out in the BG.

Finally, I'll wrap this ramble about PvP with this, if you're a WoW player don't let others ruin your chance at running PvP, I didn't even give it a go until lvl 73, and mostly just to do something different on my Twitch.TV channel. I ended up having a very enjoyable night, while I didn't get quite the lvling done that I would've liked I got a whole lot more enjoyment than I do running around picking up random items!

Until next time adios and adieu from the Rambling Newb! See you in Azeroth!

World of Warcraft, from the perspective of a true newb.

I honestly don't know how I made it this far in my tenure as a gamer without ever delving into World of Warcraft. I've watched friends play it for years, had those same friends beg me to play, tell me how cool it is, heck I've even spent some time listening to WoW podcasts, even when I didn't play the game, specifically TotalBiscuits podcast. I've always been intrigued by the lore of the game and also by the fact that it could maintain for so long.

It's been more than 10 years now for World of Warcraft, and with over 6 million subscribers, the game is still going strong. I actually found out a few days ago that I play on what's call a "low population" server (Undermine) and I honestly couldn't believe it. It seems like there's people everywhere in the world. There's always a few others doing the quests that I'm running at the time, and never a long wait to get into a dungeon run, I honestly wonder at just how busy a "high population" server really is.

Getting into WoW has honestly been amazing for me, I constantly marvel at the depth of the story and the lore, the expansiveness of the world, and the beauty in the game. There's breath-taking scenery around every corner and over every rise. It's very tempting at time to simply stop and take a look around. Often times (especially when streaming on Twitch.tv) I find myself having to "wake up" and actually get back to questing because I'll just be sightseeing around the world without heading in any particular direction.

There's definitely been some challenges getting into this game, first and foremost as one would guess, the player base has been around for a long time, and developed it's own culture, complete with lingo, rules and ethics that are sometimes universal and sometimes limited to your specific server. I quickly realized I was in a new world when I first saw a chat that said "LF DPS to do daily heroics", while this now seems like such a simple statement to me, those first few days I felt completely lost. One of my goals with this site is going to be to compile some WoW resources, while there's plenty out there from WoWpedia, to WoWHead, and plenty of others, what I found lacking was resources for complete newbs. The community seems to measure you "status" by which expansion you came into the game with, and even those designations are deeply steeped in "WoW Jargon" that may be very confusing to the newb. Whether you came in for BC, RotLK, Vanilla, or MoP, will mean something significant as to your status and rep in the "wowverse".

Simply getting around the world and being able to know where to go and when, making sure you're not aimlessly wandering into a realm that's above your level and immediately have a seriously not fun time of it, to understanding what PvP means, and why at the lower levels you should never put that flag up. Figuring out roles in dungeons and how to then properly execute your chosen role, as well as figuring out the eticate for "rolling" for loot in said dungeons. All of this I've ran into and had to overcome, much as ever WoW player has. However many folks have been playing the game so long that they don't remember what it's like to be a newb and occasionally it's not the most welcoming environment.

All in all, I'm having a blast with WoW and while you may see this blog focusing on WoW a reasonable amount here in the near future as it is the game that I'm currently putting the most time into, also look forward to other games both new and old, and hearing my thoughts, opinions, and critiques of said games, because let's be honest, it's my blog so you've got to listen to me if you're going to come here!

Thanks for reading and come back soon and often, I appreciate your time and your readership.

My first day on Twitch, or "how I built it and they didn't come".

For years I've had the mantra "if you build it, they will come" echoing through my head thanks to the Hollywood classic, Field of Dreams. Today I built my field of dreams, I set up my own Twitch.tv Channel, after watching streamers there "raking in money" and followers galore. Heck there's even one guy that plays Clash of Clans on his cell phone and has 3k+ people watching him. With this in mind I figured that at least a few people would come watch the hilarity that is me attempting to play World of Warcraft.

Well that wasn't quite the case this evening, I was live streaming for nearly 4 hours, and I had a whopping 1 visitor to my channel, he stayed all of 2 minutes before he left. About this time you're either laughing at me, or wondering what exactly this self deprecating blog post is really all about. Well I learned a valuable lesson today, while "if you build it they will come" may be a timeless adage from the silver screen, we like to read it as "if you build it, they will be clambering at the door to hand you fistfuls of money, and you will be an instant success". For those of us that have spent years gaming we know this not be to be, there are very few individuals that can sit down and "ace" a game right out of the box. Sure you see Call of Duty fans immediately take to the newest iteration, but let's be honest, CoD is the same game regurgitated each year with a different skin, if you're good at Modern Warfare, chances are you were good at Ghosts.

Take for example the #AGDQ2015 stream over on www.humblebundle.com raising money and awareness for Cancer Prevention. These are guys that can run through a game in a fraction of the time it would take you or I, but what you don't see in these epic speed runs is the hours and hours of prep work and sweat that have gone into those flawless runs.

I say all that to say, tonight I had 1 follower, by the end of the week if I have two I'll be marching in the right direction, and that's not all to bad for a Rambling Newb!

Hi, I am a Newb.

Well there it is, I'm a newb, always have been and I probably always will be. For those unfamiliar with the term "newb" and curious as to why I would call myself such please refer to this definition from Urban Dictionary, I've been gaming for more years than I can count. Now in my early thirties with a wife and child, I honestly can't remember a time when gaming hasn't been a big part of my life. My Atari, Nintendo, and SNES were huge parts of my childhood, my PS2 got me through my college years, my Xbox has been with me through 2 marriages, and I was playing Call of Duty on 360 when my wife went into labor (don't worry I finished the match THEN we went to the hospital). Now my X1 and PC have been a respite for me from the rigors of a demanding job and a busy life.

I have always been a gamer and I always will be. On this blog you'll find myriad ramblings, both tips, tricks, reviews, and sometimes just thoughts about gaming both my own and the gaming industry as a whole. You'll find links to my Twitch Channel, updates on goings on in the gaming world, and all sorts of other happy fun things. I hope that you enjoy this blog as much as I enjoy writing it, for I truly am launching on a journey of passion, taking something that has meant much to me over the years and sharing it with you, the humble interwebs.

So join me on this journey, follow my Twich Channel and let's see where this adventure takes us next!