(female voice): “Waiting time: 00:00. Welcome to Azeroth, Royalty Poison.”
Light covers me, and my vision turns white. Next, I feel my feet inside cloth shoes, and soft robes over my body, as well the weight of a simple staff in my hand. And what I see, is a massive crowd. Well, at least the immediate thing that I see is a massive crowd of people. Well, not that massive, just a bout 500 to 700 people.
You would expect a lot more, right? Well, there aren’t that many VR capsules to go around, getting one of the first batch was amazing after all, even more that one of my close friends, Nep, also managed to get one. They do like this, sell a few thousands of capsules per month, and those players can log in first.
That would be a shitty thing for people that can’t get in first and can’t compete to people that are one moth already, but the thing is, there isn’t more than one server for World of Warcraft. There is only ONE world server, shared by everybody. How do we communicate? The game translates everything that we say to the proper language.
Therefore, I’m part of the first ones to log in this game, and I’ll take full advantage of it. I look around, taking a more detailed look on the world around me. I’m standing in a stone and dirt road, leading to a big church, the Northshire Abbey. Massive trees surround us, each three fairly spaced from each other, but so massive and large that they form a closed roof around us.
Some players are already running away from the abbey for some reason, others running straight into the forest, and the rest talking to the NPCs around, and forming lines already. I don’t rush, walking to the line to speak with one of the NPCs standing in front of the abbey.
The line isn’t long, since most players are still kind of lost looking for what to do, and after a few minutes waiting, I get to the NPC easily. The man is bald, with a thick beard and dressed in the classic Stormwind guard armor with a tabard is waiting for us, am man known as Marshal McBride. I smile to him, but he already looks a bit disappointed at me. Probably because the players are generally rude to NPCs in the first few days of the game, before they realized that they are, actually, intelligent.
(McBride): “Hello adventurer. What is it that you wish?”
He asks, on a light monotone tone.
(Poison): “Good morning sir, may I first learn your name?”
He looks at me lightly surprised. Since there isn’t any names floating above anyone’s head, you need to actually ask people.
(McBride): “Good morning to you too, adventurer. I’m Marshal McBride, I’m currently overseeing this area so that I may give you tasks, or so I’m told.”
I nod.
(Poison): “So please, do hand me a task! I’m eager to help around here! What can I do to help you Marshal?”
(McBride): “Firstly, young man, may I know your name?”
(Poison): “Oh, forgive my rudeness.” I say, lowering my head a bit. “Poison, that would be my name.”
He looks at me strangely for a moment, before continuing:
(McBride): “Well, Mister Poison, what you can do for the moment is scout the forest. Wolves have been popping up recently, way more than it should be possible. It’s a blessing that so many of you adventurers appeared. Some of my man are lost in the woods as well, either caught by surprise or missing from looking for their comrades. Truly, the number of wolves is more than we can handle with our numbers around here. Please, do rescue my man and kill around ten wolves, that should be enough to keep their numbers stable without risking your life too much.”
A quest window appears in front of me, with all that he just said. It says for me to rescue three soldiers and kill ten wolves, the rewards being 25 copper and some experience, as well an pair of gloves. I nod.
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(Poison): “You can count on me, Marshal. I’ll rescue your soldiers.”
You have accepted the quest!
I bid him my farewell and start to walk in the direction of the forest, calmly, as players run pass me into the forest. Yes, my objective is the first to hi max level, level 60, however, until level ten, where I get Frost Nova, I won’t be doing much power farming. After I get it though, I can guess that I’ll be at least five levels ahead of the second highest level player.
The forest approaches as I take a look on my current skills. I only have fireball and frost armor. Fireball is self-explanatory, a damage dealing ball of fire. And frost armor guards a certain amount of damage. While crossing the tree line, I close my eyes and focus on the energy within me.
In World of Warcraft there are two ways of casting spells or using abilities. The firs one is mentally activating the skill in the interface. This goes exactly as the tooltip of the skill says, causing X1 damage to X2 damage our blocking X1 amount of damage to X2 amount. The other one is manually concentrating in activating the magic.
This is the difference of a level 10 goon and a lvl 99 mafia boss. Here, there is the alien sensation of mana, the magical energy that allows us to cast magic, and concentrating in using it and casting the magic without the interface allows for mor consistent damage, and even getting max damage and more frequent critical strikes.
And that is what I am going for. As a rogue, some aspects of my skills used energy, that, according to some players, wasn’t that different from magic and mana. I can feel the knowledge of how to conjure my spells in my mind, how do they work and the amount of mana that they use. I decide to turn off the interface of the game, turning off my hp and mp bars from the corner of my vision, as well turning off my action bars, leaving only my minimap on.
This will help me to focus on the spells. I put the staff on my back, it magically sticking there without any holder, and I try to manually cast mage armor. And surprisingly, it works! With a soft blue glow in my hands, I make a hand motion and a frost aura appears around me, disappearing shortly after, but an icy layer of magic covering me as a second skin.
(Poison): “Nice.”
I can barely hold my excitement. I smile to myself, excited, as I wander alone in the forest, and it doesn’t take long for me to hear growling, seeing a wolf walking out from behind one of the trees. Oh, it hasn’t seen me yet, nice! I immediately start conjuring a fireball, putting as much damage as I could on it. of course, it didn’t cost any extra mana, I’m making the most potential of the amount needed to cast the spell.
I point right hand, covered in fire, to the wolf, the fireball leaving my hand, flying straight to the flank of the animal, making it yelp in pain. I turns to me, growling, but it doesn’t stop me from channeling my next fireball. You see, the level one fireball deals from 22 to 25 fire damage, but my concentrated fireball deals 30 damage flat. That’s one third of the wolf’s health.
It charges, the next fireball hitting in on the head, and I’m blessed with fat crit, dealing 65 damage, killing the wolf, it’s body falling to the ground mid run and sliding about a meter before stopping. I smile, approaching the corpse, faint golden particles coming out from it. I touch the body, collecting the loot that is just one broken beast claw, and the body of the beast disappears in faint golden glitter.
I also take a look at my experience bar, going a good progress already. Killing mobs is, after all, one of the best ways to level up in this game. As I walk, I take a look at my stats by opening my character window.
Royalty Poison HP: 61 Mana:165 Attributes: Strength:20Agility:20 Stamina:20Intellect:23 Spirit:23
The most basic stats. None of my equipment gives me extra stats, since it’s all gray starting gear. I won’t be getting anything right now to raise my stats, there isn’t anything nearby that will drop for my level or any quest that will give me anything good until level five to ten.
(???): “Get those wolves away from him!”
My train of though is rudely interrupted by some screams coming from somewhere in the forest, coming from my right. I break a run on that direction, not taking long to find the source of the screams, guards from McBride’s garrison with two players fighting some wolves. Of course, they are getting rekt.
The thing is, two of the three guards are downed, the last one is fighting a wolf and the two players are trying to get the wolf away from him but are being attacked by three other wolves. I smile and start conjuring a fireball. Time to start making friends.