2008-01-03 Finding Our Way

The new "play team" concept took a step back, and then a couple steps forward. The step back was when a poster on the wowhead thread I'd started reminded us that WoW is played on US servers and on Europe (EU) servers. The key fact about that is that one account can only have players on one or the other. Two of the most active posters who wanted to try this idea are on EU servers and did not want to have to buy another account to play on a US server. They are still going to try to set up the same idea on an EU server, but I was already getting to like those two so its a shame we won't be playing together. The others that are interested on US servers seem more interested in grouping for levelling purposes and maybe not quite as enthusiastic with the idea of just having a chance to play together with friends as the EU two. We'll see.

One step forward is that there are still three others on US servers interested. One is a good sort who has never gotten a character to 60, much less 70, because he hates playing alone. This idea should work great for him. Another is new as of yesterday so haven't gotten a sense from him yet. The third is a vet who has been involved in something similar before. We don't see completely eye to eye on how we should run with this idea. My sense is that his idea of group levelling involves a lot more soloing than I envision - instead of an idea to play together regularly for everything this group does, he sees it as grouping for group quests and instances, and soloing in between. We'll see how this plays out, but I'm leading this and if it doesn't work for him he likely won't hang around.

The second step forward is that a yahoo account group has been set up so that we can discuss details more easily and we are already at the point of deciding on class, faction, and playing times. We have decided on horde for our faction, me because I like horde, the others because they have been alliance in the past and want to do something different. There was some initial discussion of going to a pvp server, but I squashed that and it will be pve. A server has even been suggested for us to start on. The open questions we are still deciding on is race, as it bears on where we will be for starting zones and for initial levelling to 20. The races orc, troll, and tauren are all on the continent of Kalimdor, while the races undead and blood elf are on the Eastern Continent. We have decided that it is ok to solo level up to 10 if desired, and that we would start grouping at least at that point. Partnering up prior to that is fine, as well. Once we reach level 10 the Kalimdor side starts questing in the Barrens, while the EC side would be questing in Ghostlands and Silverpine. It would be simpler to just stay with the orc, troll, and tauren races, but I want to be a priest and the only race among those three that can be priests is the troll. Trolls are the worst race for priest. Undead are the best, with blood elves second. For levelling purposes nothing beats the blood elf starting zone and teen area of Ghostlands. But if we stay with a druid idea, and two of us have suggested they want to be druids, we may end up split between continents.

My idea is to get everyone, wherever they start, to level 10, then get them all to Ghostlands to level our teens. We could then work through Silverpine (the undead area) and then cross continents and do the Barrens. The farthest anyone would have to go is the druids, which would have to make a long walk from Mulgore to Org, take the zep to the Undercity on the EC, then the translocator (a teleport device) in the Undercity to Silvermoon City. From SC there are lots of quests that will take us into the Ghostlands.

We could actually be starting play within a few days.