Witchhazel

As I mentioned in a previous post, I play World of Warcraft. I’m a huge fan of end-game raids, but my other love is levelling. I’m a serial leveller. I’ve deleted more high-level characters than I care to think about. The super ultra awesome rogue I mentioned in the Naxx 10 post convinced me to level a rogue. It’s the last class that I’ve never really given a shot. I don’t think I’ve had one over level 12 in the four and a half year I’ve been playing. I’m primarily a mage, so anything that requires me running up to hit something is almost completely foreign.

Step one: pick race.

One raid night several years ago, we’re all standing around waiting to get into Molten Core. “Why’d Morgor die?” someone would shriek in raid chat. Mogor was a tauren warrior who loved Mortal Strike, picking goldthorn, and dying on every single boss fight. Someone else would respond with “because he ran out of hit points!” In between line after line of lol, lol, lol, lol, lmao, lol, the raid leader would grumble about how it wasn’t funny anymore. The mages would remind the warlocks to use Curse of Elements, the warlocks would grumble amongst themselves, and the healers would quietly remind each other that if the tank died, he was obviously doing something stupid – like pulling when his healers had no mana.

But then someone noticed there was a rare creature standing there: a female dwarf rogue. At the time, they were even rarer than the elusive female orc warlock. The entire guild went silent the moment after someone announced the presence of this dwarf. Then we all began tripping over ourselves to get to her as fast as possible, taking screenshots to one day show our grandchildren that we had actually seen one. I can’t imagine what she thought, standing there as a swarm of Horde descended on her to poke her, lick her, and take pictures.

Since then, I’ve been watching for more female dwarf rogues. The popularity of the female orc warlock (which is what I played in vanilla WoW) has increased with the change in Blood Fury to include spell power, but the dwarf rogue remains an uncommon sight – at least on our server.

I went with Skälm, a pleasant-looking lady dwarf. I was telling the aforementioned damage monster rogue this and he urged me to go human. The human racials are difficult to turn down, even if there are practically no female dwarf rogues.

Anyway!

I start out in Northshire Valley, as you do. By the time I get all my mods fixed, I’m sitting there all AFK. There’s a naked paladin in front of me, dancing and yelling about his junk. This is where the /ignore feature comes in handy.

My first job is to slaughter the local wildlife. No sooner do I pick up my quests to kill kobolds and wolves than I decide to take a break and talk to the rogue that made this all possible. He just finished Trial of the Crusader and didn’t top the damage meter. I feel the need to take a screenshot of this because as far as I’ve grouped with him, he’s never finished anywhere but on top. He gives me advice. I need to remember that when I hit level 10, go down the combat tree. I need to get Precision as soon as possible.

As soon as I start, my fps plunges from 60 to 22. I don’t know how I managed to play when my frames per second were hovering around eight. Ten on a good day, if no one was around.

My first problem, other than eviscerating wolves, is getting the hang of moving with the mob I’m fighting. As a mage, I stand back and throw stuff. But this? I have to get up close and move? It’s almost too much for me! This will take getting used to.

I stab some wolves and steal their meat. Stroll urges me to get some BoA gear. I decline, having blown my emblems on gear for a hunter and warrior/paladin/death knight. Then before I’m done with the wolves, I level!

It took three times as long to write this post as it did to actually play the level. At this rate, I’ll be 80 by March.