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.