So I'm a Liar, Sue Me

OK, I guess I wasn't completely lying. Or even lying at all, really, depending on how you look at it. Yeah, I like that. Allow me to explain.

I was going to post about the first pair of the Project, and that pair consisted of my hunter and my friend Aw's paladin. And I was going to devote a post to each pair as I played them each, which we arbitrarily chose to be the first inn each pair reached during the course of normal questing. Fortunately, I came to my senses around character number six and realized that when you're leveling levels one to five (sometimes six), there's not a lot to say. So I'll go over my quick impressions and give you the rundown on the pairs, and let's hope that's sufficiently compelling.


First up was my hunter and my friend Aw's paladin. Here is my hunter, Macc.

Poor Macc, pet-less, of course, being only level 6. A few thoughts on hunters before level 10: I forgot how robust I could be without a pet. Not that I need to go running about without one very often, but concussive shot, serpent sting, and arcane shot almost finish off the baddies, especially with a little help from my friends.

Speaking of friends, let's meet Navid. This is Aw's paladin, and he will be Macc's faithful companion until death do they part (it's not like that, really). Or at least until Aw and I figure out some other way to run this project (we're kind of making up the rules as we go).



So here he is: Introducing...

Navid! So far I'm not totally sure how the hunter/paladin thing is going to work, or if it is going to work. I'm sure it will be dependent on their respective specs, to some degree. I have played the hunter/priest thing before, which worked beautifully. To tell the truth I haven't, for whatever reason, had alot of experience partying with hybrids of any kind, from a non-hybrid perspective. I hear it can be frustrating, and I hear it can be a wonderful experience (yes, I include Zeph in these comments).

So we'll just have to see.

As for the rest of the pairs, getting to that first inn in Falconwing Square, or Brill, or Bloodhoof Village, or Razor Hill got fairly tedious by character number nine. A little hint of what was to come was afforded, however, from time to time, and it kept me speculating as to how some of these pairings will fare in their coming journeys.

Next we come to an Important Decision. In discussing when our next "benchmark" would be, in other words, the next time we'd stop and move to the next character, we decided that level 10 and our first Talent Points were a good, solid signpost on the road to [wherever we're going with this]. And this brought us to discussing where these talent points will be spent.

In the interest of variety and driving ourselves crazy, Aw and I decided that for each class we had, we'd choose a spec that would not be played by his/her counterpart. For example, our warlocks, who's fate was to be paired with each other, can not both pick Demonology, Destruction, or Affliction. If one of us wanted to play Demonology, that spec would not be an option for the other. So ensued much discussion, and we settled on almost all of our characters' future dominant talent trees.

Oh! And Macc and Navid have been the first to hit level ten! It must have happened while we were talking about specs and such. How time flies. Anyway, the highlights for me included acquiring Concussive Shot, as I mentioned, and which I always seem to find much more useful at lower levels than high. Also, the ubiquitous Aspect of the Hawk made its first appearance at Rank 1. See you later, AotM! For Navid, the ever-utilitarian Seal of the Crusader has arrived, as have Hammer of Justice and Blessing of Protection. All very exciting.

As for those first talent points, ol' Macc had a dilemma. I've been a Beast Master with every hunter I've created, as I love it so, and it tends to be very very fun and makes leveling a bit easier to boot. But as all this is the case, I feel like depriving Aw of Beast Mastery would be a cruel thing to do. So, BRK forgive me, I've chosen to try survivalism. Recent posts on the aforementioned "King of BM" (as I think of him) have gone a little way towards convincing me it might be interesting at the least. I do NOT intend to do anything that approaches melée-huntering (it's not green because I don't consider them to be hunters), but it sounds like I can end up with lots of crits, which are nice. We'll see how it goes. Navid has chosen the illustrious Holy tree to which he will devote his points. Aw has not played a paladin, and is looking to me for guidance. I am currently battling with my conscience over whether to tell her that her duty is to heal my pet.

And finally, speaking of pets, Macc has found his first companion from the Azerothian animal kingdom. (S)He does not have a name yet, but will soon, I'll just have to think on it. And do believe that we ran all over Durotar in order to find one that matched my hair. Smile, piggy!

Good piggy.

Edit: Macc and co. are now in a guild! We scraped together our entire fortune at level 7 for it, all ten silver, and bothered many a lowbie, but we got our sigs. Special thanks to both Aw and The Egotistical Priest for inspiration for our new home, Badumche.
(also thanks to Aw for the pic of Navid)

I'm all a-flutter...

Wow. I haven't even really started explaining the project, and I get a comment from my official Hunter Role Model, BRK. I've got to make sure I've earned it, I suppose.

So here is the part where I explain a little history behind my project, now that you've gotten to know me and we're all cozy.

I've always loved my alts, and no matter what class I've played as a main, I've always had several on the ol' back burner. After playing WoW for about a year and a half, I started to absorb some interesting positions that are taken on alts. Being the interesting and handsome blogger that I am, I will list them.

1. Pick a main, and stick with it. Alts are a waste of time; time you could be spending grinding/farming/raiding/getting loot on your main. They distract you and break your rhythm, and make it harder to get back in the groove, so to speak, with your main.
2. Alts are fun! They are a great way to unwind, especially when you have a main who the guild relies on, or who has a crucial raiding position, or who is a paladin and everyone knows they can't farm worth garbage and I only need two more Primal Fires for my FR set and god please make it stop (ok maybe I've been in that position, sue me).
3. Create Alts! Learning to play other classes enhances your ability to play your main, whatever its class. It allows you to see how game mechanics work from different perspectives and so the better you are at each class enhances your play with other classes.

The first opinion I see very often coming from hardcore raiders. They have a point, in that if you are supposed to play a hunter and your alt is a priest, you don't want to be fighting Aran and have instinctive moves towards your heal button...and oops, that's distracting shot, and you've pulled aggro, and you suck and people hate you and you die. It happens. It also does cut into time that could be otherwise spent more productively. For myself, if I'm worrying too much about economy of time, then I have ceased to play a game and begun playing a work simulator. No thanks.

The second view is very common, and I myself have played alts for this reason countless times. Alts can be a great way to blow off steam if you are just sick of getting beat down by Horde, or by Fel Reavers, or because if you have to run Arcatraz one more time for that lamp with my priest friend I will seriously lose it. (Just kidding Jinkes, I will help you run as many times as you want until you get it :D).

The final view is something that I developed after raiding more seriously with Zeph, and learning more about the game mechanics side of WoW. Around the time when I was doing MC for the first time, and I was asking things like "How much aggro do I generate with Cleanse?" and "Why do people make so much fun of ret pallies?" Some of the theory I found uninteresting (ever listened to three rogues fight about how to spend their tenth talent point for ten minutes? I have). Some of it is fascinating, and useful to boot (I knew about Fade, but hadn't known that you gain back all your lost aggro after it goes away or until you cast a spell).

Anyway, I started to think about how I play my paladin, and how the way other people play their classes in groups affects my effectiveness in the group, the success of the group, and the strategy on both the indivudual and group levels. And being the hands-on kind of guy I am, I decided to actually put some of these things into practice as I played the various alts I've created.

And let me tell you, it was like having a light switch flipped.

Zeph was getting easier to tank with (yes she's prot). Zafir needed to learn how to chain-trap. Zwift, god bless her, could put out dps but really needed some tanking gear as well. Maybe this is all frighteningly obvious, but I found that I just understood more about who was doing what and why in groups.

So that brings me to the Project. To reiterate, I've created nine horde characters. I pulled class-race combinations out of a hat, allowed myself one veto (I really wanted my hunter to be a belf for some reason), and by taking one race/sex combo out of the pot (orc females just don't sit right with me), to make everything even, I had my list. My friend Abby went through the same process. Then to make it officially anal-retentive, I mixed each of our lists so that we'd have class duos that were also completely random (other than sharing a starting zone). I agonized a bit over what to name all the characters (a minor obsession of mine, maybe I'll adress that later), and then we were good to go.

Up next: Day 1 - A story of a hunter and a paladin

*tap* *tap* ...hello?

Greetings! I was going to add something about how We are Legion, for we are many, but I don't want to really give the wrong impression about what I'm trying to do here. As far as that goes, I'd better start by introducing myself.

I'm a 24-year-old guy who loves his video games. Particularly his World of Warcraft. I started out when a roommate told me all about this interesting new game he'd stumbled across. He'd done right by me in the past, introducing me to games I'd never played before, and enjoyed heartily, including Age of Mythology, Warcraft III, and Neverwinter Nights. I'd had little experience with online play, most of which consisted of blundering about on some hardcore roleplaying-oriented (*shudder*) private servers for NWN. I wasn't very impressed, mostly because the servers were sparsely populated, and the rules were very strict. But that's beside the point. World of Warcraft soon taught me that online play can be whatever you want it to be, and some of the best things about it can be the people you play with.

So to resume the flashback, I will introduce you to Loritekk. Say hello, Loritekk.

Isn't he adorable.
He's the first character I ever created for WoW, and I leveled him for a day or so before I showed him to my roommate. "Hey [insert roommate's name here]," I said, "check it out, a gnome rogue, isn't it great? Now we can play together!"

Alas, it was not meant to be. Despite his very Gnomish name (still proud of it), and his stealthy moves, and his nifty goggles, Loritekk was Alliance. Apparently this meant I could not play in a friendly way with roommate's character, Thunderhorns, who was, yes you guessed it, a Tauren. On the Horde. A new dimension of gameplay had presented itself to me. I soon learned that in addition, Loritekk and Thunderhorns were on completely different servers. Bah. Lesson learned.

And then came Lodaxus.

(Lodaxus is no longer with us, as he was cruelly deleted to make room for a flashy new character, but more on that later)

Wow he was slick though. He cast magic spells that brought pain to his enemies, and he had a choice of several demon pets with which to strike terror into the hearts of his foes. Warlocks were awesome! I leveled him almost to 20, and then decided he was very easy to kill, as he had no armor, and his pet was not very helpful in slowing down the getting-killed process. Also I was a newb and had a lot to learn. What was I to do? I knew so little about the game, leveling was becoming a frustrating challenge, and I needed something that would let me make my newb mistakes and yet remain alive. What to do indeed.

And so I rolled a hunter. And so my first main, Mangle, was born. Say hello, Mangle.

Aw, he's shy. Probably because I've been neglecting him. Don't feel bad though, I'll never abandon him like I did Lodaxus. I learned how to play the game with him, for cripes' sake.

Mangle was my first 60, and he, his faithful pig and I went all over Azeroth together: nearly all the five-man dungeons, Upper Blackrock Spire, Molten Core, and even once, briefly, into the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj. The raids I participated in weren't terribly successful, but they were fun, and I learned a lot about my class, and the game (not nearly as much as I have in the last month or so reading BRK though. check him out).

A lot of time passed, and I accumulated a healthy stable of alts, most of whom languished while I played with Mangle. After a while, though, and as seems inevitable, Mangle's guild deteriorated a bit, and circumstances led to me creating Zephérine.

Say hello to the friendly people, Zeph. (assuming anyone is reading this)

My, exuberant, aren't we?

Zephérine (now Zepherine, thanks to Blizz' impossible-to-decipher ToA* and an unfriendly snitch) quickly became my new main. We raided together, much more successfully than I had with Mangle (due mostly to the great team I had joined, rather than any stellar gameplay on my part). She's now 70, and happily searching for gear to make her the best Paladin ever. Ok maybe that's shooting a bit high. But it's good to have goals.

Zeph has many friends at this point. In fact, I have maxed out the number of characters I can have on Cenarius, the server I've played on almost since release. There's Zabulon, Zwift, Zafir, Zaneta, Zobera, Zahid, Zeppy, and Slap (maybe I'll share that story later). These keep me busy, although I am taking my sweet time in leveling them, and some have been at their current levels for quite a while.

And now we come to the point of this "web-based log" or diary or as the kids call it, a "webliary":
I've created a monster.

Actually, to be specific, I have created nine monsters. And I've somehow convinced a friend of mine to create nine monsters of her own. On another server, we have a horde alt for each class. This blog will be about their story.

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*go ahead, follow the link, you won't find the rule there. Bonus points to anyone who actually digs it up.