WoW Journal - 23-May-2005

A sunny weekend resulted in me spending Saturday at a barbecue instead of in front of a screen. But I still got to play Friday and Saturday evening and all Sunday. Friday I had borrowed the French WoW CD's from one of my D&D friends, and I managed to install it in addition to the English client. Took some registry tweaking, but I managed to get both versions running. Makes communication with my French speaking friends and guild easier. While it is possible to play with the English client on the French servers, that has several disadvantages. You are blocked out of the public chat channels, you still see everything in English and don't know how things are called in French if you want to talk about them, and if you link items in chat, people see them in English and don't understand.

I don't recommend playing on French servers if you want to learn French. If you think that English speakers are butchering their language in online games, using "u" for "you" and so on, you haven't seen nothing yet. French spelling is highly difficult, and correctly spelled the words are a lot longer than in English. So there is a lot more opportunity to brutally abbreviate the spelling, and write things in a phonetical shorthand, which has nothing to do with real French orthography. And you need to know a lot of spoken French before you are able to understand somebody exclaiming "pt1!".

Saturday was a dud. I managed to reach level 22 with Honey, the gnome warlock, and arranged to go to the Deathmines in the evening. But just when we reached Moonbrook, my internet connection collapsed. Some problem on the ISP side. After I couldn't reconnect for some time, I abandoned the idea, and called it a day.

Sunday I decided to play Raslebol, the troll warrior again. Due to holidays and the new character, Raslebol had accumulated the maximum rest xp bonus. So on Sunday I went from being just at the start of level 54 to dinging 55, and making about a third of the way into the next level. And I still have a third of a level bonus xp. 18 days and 6 hours played, and level 60 only 5 dings away.

Sunday morning I was soloing, doing quests in the Burning Steppes and Searing Gorge. There is a hilarious quest in Searing Gorge about a dwarf who got locked into an outhouse, and is now desperate for revenge ... and for 15 silk cloth, of which he is reluctant to reveal what he needs them for. :)

Sunday afternoon I was in groups most of the time. With two level 50 guys, a druid and a warrior, I made a quick tour of Zul'Farrak, where we managed to do both the big battle event, and slaying Gahz'rilla. Then ina another group of 3, with two guild mates level 54, I went first to the Hinterlands, summoned an impressively huge spider god, and stormed an Inca style troll temple full of elites. We passed the altar where the mallet of Zul'Farrak (needed for summoning Gahz'rilla) can be finished, but as I hadn't done the first step, that didn't help me. But we got the ancient egg, which is needed to summon another god in the Sunken Temple. We then tried to do Maraudon with the same group of 3, teleporting into the middle with my staff and moving towards the end, but that turned out to be too hard, and we got wiped.

Sunday evening my guild did a raid, and I opted out, not really seeing the use of raiding a difficult dungeon for little xp, no quest advancement, and just a tiny chance of finding some good loot. So while I was standing in Ogrimmar wondering what to do next, somebody was looking for a 5th group member for the Sunken Temple in the Swamp of Sorrows. As I just had gotten the egg for a quest there, and already had two other quests from there in my journal, I joined them. Communication was difficult, I think they were all Italian, but the dungeon was fun enough. One quest I got partly done, one quest we finished, and the third quest I messed up. I used the egg to summon the god while most of the others were standing back. What I didn't know was that there were portcullis slamming down, and so three of the group members were locked out of the fight, and obviously we couldn't win with just two of us. Then one of the group members wanted to go to the cinema and see Episode 3, and the group disbanded. Well, I got to know the Sunken Temple a bit, it was a cool enough place, and I have to return anyway, as I didn't even have all the quests for there.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:13 AM Permanent Link