2008-01-07 The Ghostlands

The "Grunt Foundation", a name picked by the lone troll in our group, made our first foray sunday morning. Perhaps there should have been a bit more fanfare involving the choosing of our moniker, but we were too eager to get started to fuss over a name.

We all met at the Warfarer's Rest, an Inn at Silvermoon City, and talked about what we should do first. All five of us showed up on time and all made it to level 10. We were ready to go. The first suggestion, by Breaco, was to tackle a pair of bosses on a group quest in Ghostlands. He shared the quest with the rest of us, but a quick look at the wowhead description (provided in game by an addon called Lightheaded) showed that the bosses were level 20+. We all laughed. We aren't ready for that level of competition quite yet.

We decided to just head down to Ghostlands and pick up quests along the way and at the Ghostlands town of Tranquillen. That suited everyone else and off we went. As usual I immediately got behind everyone else while typing a chat message to make sure they all talked to the flight master just outside the gates.

By the time I caught up with them they had left the road and were being attacked. Philly tossed some Renews (instant cast HoTs). We had all just by nature followed the warrior, as the tank often leads groups. Well, not all of us. The warrior, Huldu, said he was following the pally, Arq. As to why we were well off the road? Well, explained Arq, he'd just finished levelling another character here and knew his way around. He was taking the direct route to Ghostlands, killing whatever got in our way. Sounded like a plan, so off we went again.

Arq really did know his way around. As we collected quests he would immediately head off in the direction required. The five of us could pretty much empty an area of life on any of the kill quests we tackled. I had set the warrior as focus, expecting him to be the lead tank/melee, but the pally was nearly always the first to mix it up and Philly soon switched to the pally as the main heal target. At this level players heal pretty fast (because we don't have much health to start with), so Philly's one HoT spell was usually good enough. The mobs generally died too fast to worry about aggro, so neither the mage or warlock took much damage.

Our most challenging area were the murloc hunts, since they come in packs and tend to attack everyone. Philly had to slow things down to restore mana a couple of times against the murlocs, but other than that nothing slowed us down and no one died. I was actually kind of tempted to let someone die just so I could use Philly's resurrection spell. But I resisted the temptation. We'll start getting into things that'll kill us soon enough I expect.

We all made level 11 and a good bit of the way to level 12 in a little over an hour's work. At such a low level we could probably solo level faster, but more important now is getting to know each other and our play styles. One thing I hope our friend Arq knows how to do is manage aggro, because when we start needing a tank the warrior will need to step forward. Based on what I saw today, I think we are all competent players, so this should be a lot of fun. It sure was on sunday.