The Pursuit of Justice - A Blood Knight's Blog

[Thracen]

And so it begins.

[Soraya Dwin'urdrenn]

((I hope this keeps me entertained over summer. ))

[Thracen]

One to Twenty
(...in an OOC Blaze)[/i]

Thracen Bloodwarden, looking like a twat: Levels 1 to 21.

If there's one thing guaranteed to kill someone's interest in a new character, it's the fact you need to level all over again.

Lucky for me, Eversong Woods and the Ghostlands creates within my black heart the barest glimmerings of nostalgia. The quests take me back to when I actually read quest text, and the music takes me back to when I actually listened to the music.

Good times, good times.

Here's a photo of me enjoying those good times.

"Sure, I'll go down the Dead Scar. Again."

The first issue was getting out of the starting zone, and 1-5 can be a bitch if there are level 80 orc shamans running around killing everything in endless explosions of howling spirit wolf bullshit.

Yeah, that was priceless.

I whispered this hero and asked him (politely) to calm the fuck down with the lightning and fire and the fucking god-wolves. In true WoW fashion, he replied with "lol".

And some more fire.

I set about trying to waste some time instead.

First things first was the need to get out of the green pansy pajamas they give you at login. To that end, I sent some gold - a bit, not too much - from my warlock, Varath. I also got my girlfriend to make me some bags, because levelling with no bag slots is some fresh hell, let me tell you.

Unfortunately, at such a low level, the gear you get on Sunstrider Isle makes you look like Disney's The Happy Knight.

This is an indignity I am not prepared to endure for long.

After a little levelling, I slid into this grimmer, more weather-beaten look, which I actually quite enjoyed until I started earning my first greens.

Note that I had already run off to the Auction House to get a [Stylish Black Shirt]. Priorities, yo.

After this point, the Disney cycle started again, only this time without the smiley red theme. Frankly, that was a change I could live with.

I found myself growing increasingly clownish instead, which - after several cloth class characters - was still better than anything a warlock or priest can ever wear short of PvP epics.

And... even then...

Ahem.

In my quest to make Thracen my first completely complete character, I started his professions, which had the unfortunate side effect of slowing me up a bit and sending me headfirst into the race-fight for copper ore nodes with low-level characters that have names which betray the intelligence and creativity of humanity as it takes its steps into an online world.

Qwertyuiopl (the orc, of course) is one I'll always remember fondly. He entered the ranks of genius, alongside my all-time classic faves: Burnasshole and Bumhunter.

I like that the new kid's presence gets rid of the ass theme. That was starting to worry me.

I also crossed paths with an enterprising fellow by the name of "Hardcor" on several occasions. He tried to engage me in conversation on one such meeting.

Something in my primitive hind-brain told me that he and I would have little to say to one another if we ever made it past the pleasantries. Yet telling him he was a fucking moron to call his character that seemed, somehow, like I was being the aggressor in the scenario.

The situation warranted tact. Not truth. I remained silent.

Hardcor went on his way, though I sensed we would meet again in the long and winding path of life, and I claimed the node.

Thracen 1, Hardcor 0.

TINK. TINK. TINK.

Towards the end of the Ghostlands, the agony of repetition started to seep into my senses, purged only by weeping tears of concentrated boredom. I snapped this shot somewhere in the late teens, when I was so wrapped up in tedium that it was actually too much effort to log out out and get out of my chair.

Fucking trolls. Fucking troll juju. Fucking Amani catacombs.

Thracen stood in the nightmarish forest of death that had once been his homeland, little knowing his puppetmaster was watching BBC iPlayer on the second screen in an effort to remain conscious.

By the by, Mitchell & Webb is finally getting funny, as of season 3.

It's funny because he's blind. I get it. I get jokes.

When the time came to log out, I was treated to a wondrous slice of The Sha'tar's world-class RP. Silvermoon City remains a bastion of excellent characterisation and compelling storylines.

Nothing says "excellent RP" to me like a troll in a tuxedo and a blood elf whore in bunny ears and [Black Mageweave Sexytime].

I'm prepared to bet that one of these is also secretly a dragon.

[Aythena Bloodwraith]

I lol'd so much at this thread, I love it ! Give more, give more! xD

[Soraya Dwin'urdrenn]

This is excellent! Brilliant read! Moar, I say!

[Thracen]

20-30
(...and still OOC.)

The ever-clownish 21-31, including brief (aborted) tabard design.

I'm not fan of 20-30, it must be said. Considering I once started a night elf guild based in Ashenvale, you might think I absolutely loved the place. You'd be wrong. I think it's a special kind of hell: repetitive layout, shit mobs, and boring to quest in. Worst of all, it's got very specific lore and themes. I could tolerate it as a night elf, but still never enjoyed it. Going through as any other race has always turned my bones into calcified boredom.

My problems started early, when this... guy(?) started telling me what to do.

Who would take orders from a man dressed like this?

The mob density in certain parts of the wilderness is a little like Hellfire Penninsula. The fuckers are impossible to run away from, and you attract more bastards just by starting a fight with one.

I'm okay when mobs call for help, y'know? I like that - it's a nice touch. But the animals of the deepest Ashenvale wilderness don't call for help. They're linked on some unknowable psychic level, like a kind of insectile hive mind. One of them gets smacked in the teeth by a [Blood-tempered Ranseur], and all of a sudden the whole forest is like "Hark! Steve is in danger! TO BATTLE."

I don't actually know if bears are called things like Steve. Shut up, I was making a point.

Plenty of times I was happily clubbing a bear to death, when the entire cast of The Lion King showed up to join in. To hell with that.

If there was an in-game way to piss on these corpses, I can assure you I'd be doing it right now.

Progress from 20-30 was pretty slow, all things considered. Setting up <The Sunfire Vanguard> took a wicked amount of time, even the formative stages. We've still not got the tabard right, but at least we have forums and a vague recruitment process up and running.

I also dabbled in secondary professions, trying to keep them levelled as I go, rather than needing to pick them all up at 80.

Here's a thrilling clip of what I was doing while my guildmates were outlevelling me.

Catching 100 fish is not an achievement. It's a damning testament to a wasted life.

20-30 is the start of many things in Horde-side WoW. It's the start of truly hideous gear, for example. The kind of stuff you only wear on your first character, because the stats are so good and you feel you can risk the embarrassment.

Forever afterwards, on every alt and new main that rolls through the zone and gets given those certain quest rewards, you vendor them immediately and just try not to miss the Stamina and Strength buffs.

But seriously, folks.

A real human being designed these and thought "I did a good job today." And he was paid real money.

20-30 is also the start of being genuinely shitty to the Alliance. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Hillsbrad.

The Hillsbrad Foothills are not, even in my most generous of moods, a fun place to be. They're almost as boring as Ashenvale, and every time I go through them - even the very first time - I'm struck by a vague sense of unease, as if there was a game designer watching nearby, and he's getting some sick thrill over how I'm punishing myself by levelling in the zone.

If this potential fiend is real, and I truly believe he might be, then he's the kind of guy that pulled the wings off insects when he was a kid, and then fed them to smaller, hungry insects in some kind of teeny-tiny pit fight.

I sense this nebulous asshole looking over my shoulder at other times, like Netheryawn and Nagrind, but we'll come to those later.

What was I talking about?

Oh, right. The Alliance.

Being dicks to the Alliance.

"Die for your crimes! Die for daring to be peaceful farmers in your own homeland!"

I killed all those guys at the same time, by the way. Nerf paladins.

After butchering some farmers, I was asked to kill a percentage of every employment demographic in the town (no, really, I was) and to steal the town's charter.

Uh, okay.

I did that, and then had a bit of a sit down in their town hall. Genocide takes it out of a guy.

"Citizens of Thracen Town! Hold tight for another rise in taxes!"

Afterwards, I felt guilty. I wasn't sure I was doing the right thing, and needed moral guidance. In Undercity, a huge demon told me to go to a monastery and slaughter everyone there, too.

Sounded reasonable.

There was no way I was doing that as part of a proper group, so I called in the heavy artillery. Alyxandria, Level 80 Paladin, and my weapon of choice.

We went to the Scarlet Monastery, and I looted the corpses of five hundred holy men and women, while she killed them all. It was the best day ever.

While I was there, I saw this guy:

I have no idea what this man is doing.

And I had a thrilling, life-or-death duel with Herod, the Scarlet Champion:

It's close, but I think I can take him.

After all that excitement, it was time to head back to Silvermoon City and attend to the dull details and banking, selling, and mailing Malathir all the ore I've mined for his lazy ass so far.

That was when I chanced upon a shining star, by the name of...

Now, I'm no psychic, but I had a feeling that Brianzorz, this Champion of Silvermoon, this Hero of the People, was going to ask me for money.

Call it a hunch.

And sure enough...

[Brianzorz]: whispers: can i have 2 gold plz



I am never the right man to ask.

And here is why:

Perhaps out of spite and frustration, Brianzorz fled the scene. During his dramatic exit, he killed a rabbit.

I chronicled this deviancy for wiser minds than my own to study at their leisure.

The rabbit was only level 1. Brianzorz was 17. Little guy never even had a chance.

And on that grim, dark, grimdark note, my adventures in 20-30 were concluded.

Ladies and gentlemen? A moment of silence for the fallen, if you please.

[Soraya Dwin'urdrenn]

I love this blog, it makes my day. I was already pretty happy at having bought myself a new game to fix my boredom, but this just makes it better. Happy Thursday, indeed!

p.s. check your PMs. Bottom right of the index page.

[Aythena Bloodwraith]

*mourns the rabbit* *sneezes*

Awesome, awesome blog - love reading this

[Thracen]

30-40
(And IC at last.)

Beautiful colours. Like Jon Bon Jovi was eating Crayola crayons and bumming a clown.

Not much in the way of gear changes between 30 and 40, until the milestone at 40 when you can wear plate instead of just mail. However, I'm still in a couple pieces of leather, because the stats are too good to drop.

So let's talk 30-40.

I mean, I don't want to, but we really should.

For me, the 30-40 experience is encapsulated perfectly in this shot.

I don't want to talk to any of these assholes.

Nesingwary's camp. That's 30-40 to me. Tedious wankers asking you to do tedious things. While my guildies are in Northrend dealing with the fact that a god is bleeding magic metal, and the king of the dead is up to no good, I'm up to my ass in jungle shrubbery and shitty zoo sound effects, getting cockpunched by gorillas.

I mean, really.

Worse still, I was sharing this epic adventure with a draenei called Vandeath. Oh, you Alliance jokers with your casual adherence to realm naming policy.

One of the truly beautiful things about being a night elf was the ability to Shadowmeld. Questing became almost laughably fast, because of the sheer number of quests you could ride in, stealth to lose all pursuing mobs, kill whoever you were there to kill - rinse and repeat until level 80.

Lacking such an awesome PvE ability, I need to resort to more... creative... tactics.

Some people might call this cowardice. Others might call it missing out on lots of XP. Some may even call it cheating.

I call it exploitation, because X words always sound awesome.

At one stage, I needed to kill the leaders of a tribe of trolls. Between me and those leaders, was this:

14 trolls. 1 tiger. This'll take ages.

Ah, but what's this? A narrow ledge that I can unrealistically ride across at a weird angle, half-melted into the wall?

Okay, you troll leaders. Death is coming.

With majestic power, I launched at the foe. The troll chieftain and his various bitches seemed surprised by a blood elf paladin leaping out of the wall and baking them with golden magical bullshit.

And to be fair, I would've been, too.

None of these trolls are going home to their kids.

But I'm doing 30-40 an injustice, here. Not all of it is a woeful slog through desolate, dreary, dull lands, doing repetitive nonsense that has no effect on anything at all.

Why, here's a shot of a thrilling zone in 30-40 where everything you do is totally equal to the cool stuff you do in other places.

I don't even know why they call it Desolace. It should be, like, Fun Land... or Excitement City...

...

In dire need of a break from the thrill-ride, from the fun that never stopped, I was taking more time to level my professions and secondaries here and there.

<The Sunfire Vanguard>, now up and running, also ate a bit of time, though other people who are actually organised are dealing with recruitment and stuff.

I was never in vanilla WoW, but at the start of BC when I did join, a lot of level 60 content was still pretty sacred. This was before the huge XP buffs and "XP Needed" nerfs to levelling (which, please note, I am not complaining about), when levelling my priest took every ounce of soul energy and concentration in my possession.

Let's just say it was slow, and leave it at that.

But while I'm in favour of the myriad ways to level faster now, there's still something slightly tragic in seeing this nine times every single day.

Thracen stared pensively at the dragon's head, considering using the buff to go to WSG.

While I was back in Orgrimmar, I was treated to a visit from Horde royalty.

Happily blacksmithing away, guess who should walk in? Why, only the great Saurfang himself.

I stood up straight, brushed the dust from my shoulders, and saluted. It was him! The great orc himself!

No, wait. That's not Saurfang.

He has a squiggle over one letter of his name...

And he's level 24...

Something mysterious is afoot.

Shut up about my Recount. It's so I can work out how much damage different things do. I'm new to this class.

I briefly experimented with the idea of killing my enemies in eye-catching positions, perhaps for the amusement of flyers passing overheard, and perhaps just to brighten the place up a bit.

Here, I made a flower out of ogres.

Art using ogres is a medium I plan to take right to the galleries of Stormwind.

Luckily, not all of 30-40 is a torrid pisspit of iniquity and mind-aching boredom. There is, of course, Dustwallow Marsh.

Now, Dustwallow sucked balls way back when, but they patched this bad boy with settlements and quests, and it's all actually a lot of fun. It's my respite, my sanctuary, and I'll miss it dearly once I move on. But at this stage, I'm only 18 levels away from Outland, and the light at the end of the tunnel is slowly coming into sight.

While running after an iron ore node for my guildie Malathir, I saw this excellent and graceful creature walking on the water, regarding me with its deep, knowing eyes.

I'm not ashamed to admit I ran away.

"What the unholy fuck is th-- IS THAT FLYING?"

And as I bid farewell to 30-40 forever, I said what I hoped would be my last goodbye to Strangelthorn Vale. In a moment of inane (and indeed, insane) sentimentality, I thought I'd wave farewell to Booty Bay.

It's hard to get a decent shot there, these days. The place is full of wankers killing everyone to get the Bloodsail Admiral achievement.

I don't care how pretty it is. I am never levelling another character.

[Aythena Bloodwraith]

Brilliant post as ever! I loved the 'excitement city' and Saurfang clips, the flying monster-beasty made me lol a great deal too !

[Syestor Endal'Belore]

I looove this blog! Awesomely, amazingly entertaining
Yup.

[screlen]

Got to say it is fun, enspecialy the pictures, remembering me of old leveling times on pally. But so you know, that saúrfang is now a lvl 80, and he think that rp is bad, something about rpers being hostile...