Yesterday was terrible weather here in the mountains. Cold, rain, wind, plague, that sort of thing. I ran around and did all my errands in the morning and by the mid afternoon I was sitting at home with a bottle of red wine, some cheese and a biscuit. I really should do some shopping. I’ve been on a bit of a Civ4 revival the last few weeks, but suddenly that fell by the wayside. Isn’t that weird when that happens? You’re fully into a game again, even checking out strategy on the internet, (if you thing elitestjerks are full on, go and check out the freaks at civfanatics), and then suddenly you load up the game and … poof, the desire is gone. Sums up most of my relationships.

Anyway, I logged into WoW. It was the early afternoon and my rogue was in Dalaran. This depressed me, so I immediately jumped to Ironforge which for some reason depressed me even more, so I thought, fuck it and I rolled a new alt. I decided to play an undead for the first time as I’ve never played one of them before seeing as I associate people who play undead as emo-goth-freaks-of-fucking-nature, but I hadn’t seen the starting clip yet, so I thought I’d give it a go. Undead it was. I didn’t even play with the facial features, I mean why bother? They all look like an undead dude. Is my face more falling off in this one? So the opening clip was extreme … meh. I think the death knight clip has spolied us, because this was rubbish. Anyway, there I was, a new undead. The thing that doesn’t make sense about the undead race is that they’re all human. So presumeably no other race can come back to life and … oh wait, the death knights. Anyway, the choice of which class to play came next. I’d done all of them, but the only one that I had never got to level 20 was the priest, because back in the day it was soooooo painfull to level a priest. So I figured I’d use this as a little experiment to see just how much easier the game has got, or just how dumbed down it has become depending on your cynical point of view.
So with my festering priest named Drek in tow, I headed out into a new zone for me. First there is the incongruity of having level 65 NPC’s bravely “holding the fort” against a bunch of marauding level 1 monsters. The next thing that caused me to sigh was the fact that every building design is the same in the world, apart from a very few places such as Booty Bay. Hey Blizz, in Cataclysm can we change up the inns a bit? And the barns? But the real difference, the one that made this a faceroll and made no sense absolutely whatsoever, is the fact that all mobs in the starting zone are yellow. The last new starting zone that I did was the Tauran one. Having all the mobs yellow there isn’t so bad seeing as it’s populated mostly by random creatures that just want to get on with their measley lives. But the undead zone is populated by “rampaging” undead and the Scarlet Crusade. Now you would think that this last bunch would be a bit hostile, but no. I strode into their camp, wandering from one to the other blasting them away with my priestly deadliness. It was sad.
I remember the human starting zone when I first joined the game eons ago. Those bandits in the vineyard gave you a lot of problems. I mean, you had to pull very carefully in there. But more to the point, if there were other players in there with you, it was almost mandatory to group up and try to get through it together. This grouping up had the effect of quickly identifying who was a moron and who was not. The cool players that you found would inevitably join you into Elwyyn Forest, and maybe on to Hogger and the Deadmines. In the undead starting zone I just skipped through the daisies from one helpless sap to the next. There were some other players in there with me. I was surprised by how many there were. No interaction at all, why bother? I didn’t need them, and they didn’t need me.
On to Brill. This is an cool town, isn’t it? The biggest graveyard I’ve ever seen in the game. And a much more impressive sized town than other starting areas, it leaves Goldshire for dead. I spent some time in there. What professions? I decided on herbalism for my gathering for quick cash and tailoring because I never know what to do with all that cloth and I’m a masochist. Oh I forgot to buy thread … oh, the tailoring dude is out of town, goddamit.

I’m at level 8 and so far it has been an absolute faceroll. I have another idea in mind with this alt. Can I level it and do instances without using the dungeon finder. It will mean that I will need to start talking to other players, actually “making friends”. I can see me now wandering the streets of Orgimaar asking people in trade chat to run wailing Caverns. I wonder what sort of reception I will get …?