The day has finally arrived and despite my previous quarrels over not being able to get the game on the 12th in order to log in on midnight all of that didn’t matter as the game finally installed and I logged in on my warrior around 11:00AM. Before the screen even loaded I was already pushing my hotkey to mount up and ride quickly to the portal in Shattrath that leads to Stormwind.

From the mage tower in Stormwind I rode my mechastrider as fast as it could take me to the new port in the northern part of the human city. Arriving at the dock I was greeted by various other players waiting for the boat to arrive as well. The wait almost seemed eternal, the anxiety brewing within me a concoction of sorts with the ingredients of exitement, childhood christmas memories, and the cup of coffee I just chugged to stay awake due to only sleeping a few hours. Within seconds the boat arrived and about 12 players, all level 70, rode aboard on our mounts. Once the ship took sail (bearing in mind it has no sails, fact I found odd) we all looked on to the northern horizon.

The screen then changed to a new loading screen and once it was done there it was, Northrend! Having debarked from Stormwind we arrived at the Borean Tundra. Simple things like icebergs floating in the water perked the excitement of those of us on board, one player simply stated “i’m so happe”, wonderfully written in the typical PvP server eloquence players have. After landing the first thing I did was dart off after any “!”s I could find, then I proceeded to seek out the profession trainers. Grudgingly I dropped blacksmithing for mining (which I plan on powerleveling up soon) in order to support my favorite profession: engineering. I also realized it would be extremely difficult to level blacksmithing and engineering alone with only purchasing the materials. So farewell [Stormherald], you out lasted your utility long enough as I very well expect to find something comparable near level 75 or so. Until then I’m going to stick with prot to level up easily questing and instancing with my arena partner Luar.

First things first, after getting our bearings settled we headed out of the town to randomly kill whatever I find (it’s my favorite questing technique: kill enough random mobs till a quest objective pops up). Everything is novel again! The area itself is very easy on the eyes, rich and colorful as all of Blizzard’s palletes but with a grey dreariness so subtle in the atmosphere that you almost feel like a cold autumn breeze is carressing your monitor. After the “ooh ahh!” factor died down I then found myself chuckling as I did my FIRST! actions in Northrend lik…

My FIRST!

• New mob type kill
• Item drop
• Frostweave
• Quest completed
• Gank…

Considering I moved to a PvP server to PvP everyone in Northrend seems to be too busy seeing the new sites and questing to pay attention to the war crazed pink pony tailed gnome warrior charging at them with 3K shield slam and devastate crits!

With only a a couple hours before taking a break to eat lunch I prodded Luar into going on our first instance run! Orballo logged a few minutes prior so I invited him into the group as well for… whatever instance was nearby! Yes, I don’t do much pre-expansion research, I like to be surprised and figure out things for myself since that’s half of the fun in my opinion. “Looking for 2DPS for whatever instance is here” was my post in the general chat, literally within seconds I was bombarded with at least 15 whispers “inv” or variations of the same. After shift clicking some of first names that popped up I invited a rogue and a mage, a nice rounded group I’d say: Resto Shaman, Prot Warrior, Hunter, Mage, Rogue.

Needless to say the instance was ridiculously easy but then again I was tanking in S3/S4 PvP gear and was actually half of the group’s DPS. Prot warriors have very nice AoE threat and damage now, but I’ll get to this later P

However it was fun and reminded me a bit of Dire Maul (one of my all time favorite instances to this day) due to the fact that to release the last boss which was in the main corrider soon as you walk in, you have to seek out and destroy 3 others. The fight was actually semi intenseand we wiped on the first attempt due to not realizing that her debuff ticks damage on players if they remain still, so second time around I ran around and it was a good ‘ol tank and spank. One more dead dragon to my list. Above is a picture of our “triumph” over Keristrasza, queen of the Nexus and with that this resumes my first day in Northrend.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 04:13 pm and is filed under Dungeons, Leveling, Quests, World PvP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.