WoW Diary Day 1: The Barrens

A series of side-quests have already pulled me toward The Barrens, but now my attempt to discover how to become The Bear – to me, he has become The Bear – will also take me there. My side-quest involves walking to The Crossroads, supposedly the point where the Tauren and Orc trails meet and the site of their first allied camp and town (WoW is full of mythical details like this that give the world history and weight). As it turns out I stride right past the Moonkin Stone that is the key to becoming The Bear.

The Barrens is a very different place: a dust-bowl with monsters too tough to look twice at, at least for me now. The towns are temporary camps on a road that's no more than tighter-pressed earth. It's still quite something to see, against the gaudiness elsewhere.

It's at The Crossroads that I have my first gentle brush with PvP. As I approach a warning message arrives, frequently. “The Crossroads is under attack!” The “LocalDefense” channel is ablaze. I pick up the pace to town while working out exactly what to do. I think, as a beginner that I'm safe from random PvP on this server. However I also thought this when I blundered out of Moonglade once and was cut down with one stroke.

When I reach The Crossroads there are people flying everywhere – the most players I've seen in one place, even more than Thunder Bluff. I can't even work out what's going on: from mouse-overs there are level 50+ characters involved. I am level 10 at this point and decide to sidestep the chaos.

Unfortunately my contact, Tonga's brother Tuska, has been killed in the attack. It's a nuisance, and if it were my critical to my needs I'd be much more frustrated. Maybe critical NPCs are better protected, or maybe it's just part of the risk. Either way, I choose not to wait on this occasion. The front of the war feels closer than ever.

I catch a dragon back to Thunder Bluff, because I can't find the Moonkin Stone. The option to move quickly between major towns for a fee is common in MMOs, but WoW lets you watch the subsequent ride, further adding to the sense of wonder. It turns out I'm just being dense. The stone is just off the path on the near edge of The Barrens, behind a big rock. I get my buffs up, consider my strategy, and use my moon-dust.

The guardian of the stone appears: it's a close and satisfying fight, that threatens to go against me, but I shade it at the last. With this final step completed, I take another dragon back to Thunder Bluff – I am too excited to count pennies. Tonga finally imparts the wisdom of The Bear to me, and it sits there, a tiny icon just above the action bar, like a tab. I click it, and everything's different. I'm a bear, and I have a new action bar, with new powers, and no mana bar – but something promising called Rage instead.

That seems a good place to leave the first day. It's been long and satisfying, but I've done little else today. The Bear awaits tomorrow...

WoW Diary Day 1: Thunder Bluff and Moonglade

On reaching Thunder Bluff, the first thing I notice is the explosion in the chat channels. As I move through the world, WoW has kept me abreast of the area's local chatter, except it's more of a whisper. Once you reach the big city though, the effect is that of a market. It is a market. Strange and exotic items are hawked and hailed, guild masters tout for members and banter is heard loud across the metropolis.

There are so many traders, there's a baker. Not a food vendor, but a baker, separate from the city's butcher and cook. There's a bank. You can even have a friendly word with the Chief, and cower at some brutal quests. I've come here on a different sort of quest: a personal one. Here I will find Tonga Runetotem, who will complete my shamanic training and grant me the power of the bear.

He's not in a hurry. He teaches me a spell that will take me to Moonglade, where I will meet those with the strongest connection to the Earthmother. Moonglade is gorgeous – all gloomy forest and stone villas. Running into alliance druids in this neutral druidic space is strange, but a reminder that the enemy in the war is not so different from you. Another druid tells me to commune with the Great Bear Spirit. To the north-west. Some things do not change.

After passing an incredible demigod lurking about looking bored, I find the ghostly bear. We exchange meaningless dialogue and I return to be told that I should go back to see Tonga Runetotem. In a classic fable-matching moment, I try my spell, to find myself back at Moonglade. It won't take me back to Thunder Bluff. Checking the map, I realise I'm half a continent away from Mulgore. I don't fancy the walk. Fortunately I set my hearthstone (a well-considered “take me home” item that works once per hour) to Thunder Bluff, but another beginner may not have, or may not think of this.

Tonga has one more step for me. I must go to the edge of the next area, sprinkle some dust on a magic stone, and defeat the creature that appears. Once this step is taken, I will be granted the wisdom of the bear. Already however, side-quests call me to explore the new area – The Barrens.

WoW Diary Day 1: Bloodhoof Village

After a break I return to WoW and travel on the road north to Bloodhoof Village. On the way I pass the enormous border guards that presumably make the entry areas safe for new players. Most races have their own entry area spread around the map, giving you a chance to find the feel of the game before turning you loose. Bloodhoof Village is a halfway area, packed with side-tracks and diversions. There are more traders and opportunities to train.

There are also more opportunities to get butchered. Here, on the plains of Mulgore I suffer my first death. I pick a fight with a wolf nearby: soon, another joins in and I'm overwhelmed. No friendly Orc passes by. I “release my spirit” and find myself in a ghostly version of the world (pretty again, and it's obvious at a glance that you've died), hanging around a graveyard. My corpse is marked on the map. I trudge toward it, thinking of other players seeing the words as they mouse over it: Corpse of Buushasa. When I arrive I can resurrect, within a few yards of the corpse. I'm not quite sure what the penalty is, apart from the tedium of the walk.

Exploring the many options available from the village, I find myself dying many times. Many, many times. The pacing here is a little off – it seems every beast is two levels higher and has a mate and can outrun me. I make the long walk from the graveyard many times. Often the original cause of my death is still there, stalking about my corpse, daring me to retrieve before killing me again. I find with some relief that the ghostly angel that hangs over each graveyard is a “spirit healer”. She will restore my corpse on the spot, at the cost of damaging my items. Since this damage is cheap to repair, it's a minor blow.

At first, I thought the death system was wrong, it seems a pathetic punishment that only inflicts tedium on the player – always the worst negative feedback. I now think it's cunning. Death is the end of one given excursion, but WoW is a long trail of progression and nobody wants to be pushed far back down the slope. To a beginner though, death is a nuisance. If I had died in the caves at Red Cloud Mesa, my trek from the grave would have been massive, and the extraction miraculous. No beginner needs that.

I am on the verge of despair with the supposed mid-level quests I have agreed to (cleverly, their colour in your log indicates their difficulty for you now: sadly you can't check the difficulty before you agree to it), when one takes an odd and glorious turn. I have to break up a mine by butchering miners, collecting five picks and breaking them on a forge. There is one at the mine itself. I size up the guards and plan how to pick off the guards, when an Orc Rogue turns up and starts killing things.

We form a party and work together. It takes ages because I can't find the button that lets me say things, and I don't speak the shorthand that most players have developed. It's glorious, though! Good teamwork leads to the guards being overwhelmed quickly, then the workers one-by-one, the forge reached and the picks broken. We cover each other against the monsters on the plains, all the way back to Bloodhoof to complete our quests. I just get off “thanks” before he's gone.

WoW is obviously designed for many people to play together, with its classes intended to work together, but still the spontaneous cooperation is a surprise. It happens again later on, as another druid gives me a glimpse of his bear form and rampages with me through another mine. It looks awesome. He's only level 10! I immediately want to turn into a bear, more than anything in the world. As a quest to follow a spirit vision leads me to the city of Thunder Bluff, I intend to find out how to be a bear.

WoW Diary Day 1: Camp Narache

World of Warcraft is a fairly painless experience to start. Creating an account is not significantly more complicated than creating one for, say, Amazon. You don't need to submit credit card details from the off, and cancel your account later. (As it turns out, they do not need to deceive people into paying for WoW.) The download client is small – the trial version streams content as you need it, but you can download the 5 GB full version if you want – and the details of logging on are kept out of sight. Only your password is required with each new session.

Once logged in, there is a choice of many “realms”, each an individual instance of the game world. Some realms follow different rules, but I'm playing a vanilla realm, Bloodhoof. The program recommends a a few realms for you. Character creation is simple – choose a side (Alliance or Horde), a race and a class. A few cosmetic choices later, such as gender, skin colour and face shape, and you're ready to go. I quickly create Buushasa, a Tauren (glorious bipedal cow) Druid.

As everything is streamed in the trial, there's a few minutes while the first area loads, as it's unique for each race. I'm finally placed in Camp Narache. A quick look over Red Cloud Mesa to the south confirms that this game is pretty. WoW's unique lo-fi bright style is different from everything else: simultaneously undemanding and staggering, casual and gorgeous, gauche and... pretty. It runs on low-end systems, where it looks just as good. I have seen some pretty games in my time, but I can't name many where I've been excited to just see the next thing.

I'm told to fetch feathers and meat from the plainstriders that are south of the camp. They look like ostriches, and I collect their feathers and meat by hitting them with a stick, until they are dead. It's the quintessential MMO experience – butchering animals for items to impress an NPC. Once this is done, I'm sent to collect mountain cougar skins, slightly south-west. My foes at this point are too weak to present a serious threat. After three of these slaughter quests I'm getting fed up, and the drip-feed of slightly better armour is not enough to compensate. I decide to play one more quest and have a break.

I'm sent to butcher some “quillbacks”, I think, to the east. If I could finish their chief as well, that would be great.

Weary, I trudge back to where I was just butchering some mutant boars to find the camp, and suddenly my heart leaps as a hole in the ground leads seamlessly to a cave and an underground warren, crawling with critters. My heart leaps again. It is a peculiar quirk that killing animals on the plains felt like butchery, since there was no real hunt – I just picked the animals off one at a time. However, fighting a humanoid tribe – enemies of my proud and mighty tribe – feels like war. This is suddenly meaningful. The corpse of another player, just inside the door, emphasises the point.

WoW is very good at showing you something amazing just as you are about to smash your keyboard. I don't know how it does this, but it's the reason play the game hour after hour, day after day, month after month. Quests are offered such that you can push past the butcher quests to more interesting things (though there are far too many of them), so players can explore to their taste. To some players, exploring means seeing new things: to others, it's mastering and expanding their own powers. Whether the combat is, or can be, truly interesting is another question.

You can certainly get better, however. In the cave I get out of my depth and I'm on the verge of depth when a passing Orc, controlled by another player, saves me. He tells me to be careful: “long way from graveyard here”. I can't even get the chat up in time to say thanks before he's gone. It's my first real contact with another player, and I'm the one who acts like a dick.

I kill enough of the enemy to complete my punitive quest, but I settle for not getting the chief. Now, my growing visions and trials as a druid direct me out of the enclosed camp, designed to let me find my newbie feet, and I head out north for Bloodhoof Village.

WoW Diary day 0

I have been putting off a true encounter with World of Warcraft with many excuses: lack of time and money being the main two. Mostly though, out of fear of turning into a total dork. I am slightly scared of WoW: it looks alluring and all-consuming and is the sort of number-heavy experience I love, and yet I am scared of its ability to consume time, and lives, and effort.

It seems to be full of empty calories.

Yet, I'm supposed to be some sort of game designer or something, and I need to investigate it, properly, by playing it. Tomorrow, my girlfriend flies home for a break of exactly ten days. The free WoW trial lasts exactly ten days. I refuse to accept this is a coincidence.

From tomorrow, I'll be playing the WoW trial and posting every day. To make the most of the time, I've made the key decisions that can be made (Tauren, Druid), and I'll be concentrating on key solo elements - interface, control, early combat - Wow is too big to explore within ten days. The other strict rule involves only playing for an hour each working day. If the game is that amazing, I will be in for thirty more, I'm certain.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to prepare myself. In the pub.