A photographic tour of World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft is one of my favorite guilty pleasures now. Two of my main characters are now in the 30ish level range, which means the next milestone is getting my mount at level 40! Hey, get your dirty mind out of the gutter! I'm talking about an animal you can ride instead of having to run from place to place. Geez. Get up to speed with the terminology/slang of Warcraft already!

Well the purpose of this post is to show off some screenshots I've taken recently (having just learned how to do this) to show all my readers just what I do with all my gaming time.

I'm not totally impressed with the mapping system. While this photo looks a whole lot better than say, the Oblivion Map, the more local terrain maps seem to leave out large obstacles that I'm constantly needing to find my way around. Maps inside most large cities still confuse me, as there appear to be walls and tunnels where there are none, and vice-versa. I have not yet found a way to make my own permanent map markers, but that is a feature WoW sorely needs.


The Barrens. Much could be said about this place, but the less the better, really. The Barrens Chat channel here is unbelievably juvenile and peppered with obscenities and strange references to Chuck Norris. My God. At least it's not David Hasselhoff. Barrens is a pretty good area to grind on critters for stuff like skins and meat though, if you are trying to pump up your Leatherworking or Cooking skills. Takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to run across, hence the desire to hit level 40 to get myself a nice mount to ride.

One of my favorite things in WoW is the 'public transportation system' of boats, zeppelins, bats and griffons. For the price of a few coins, you can hop a scenic flight through all the amazing terrain, while watching the critters and mobs below in real time. For the longer trips, a boat or zeppelin can travel with a large group of people at once. Since your character is usually safe from harm during travel, it is a common occurrence to take a break from the computers at this time to go to the bathroom (called 'bio break') grab some food or step out for a smoke. However in PVP areas, Rogues have been known to hide down in the hold of the boat, to appear in mid-flight and kill other players, so watch yourself...not that I would ever do such a thing. I'm perfectly visible in the photo above. See? No stealth here. Nope. Just minding my own business...

Here's me and my raiding partner. I'm the Undead one on the left. Scream casts the spells, I backstab and eat the corpses. It's a great relationship, really. If it weren't for my raiding partner (who I think should start a business coaching WoW n00bies) I would still be stuck at level 1.
And check out those fashionable shoulder pads! And here I thought that 80's clothing was never going to make a comeback. If I see a Troll in legwarmers, I'm going to get really worried though.

While helping my raiding partner mine pearls the other day, I had to laugh - it reminded me of the Daffy Duck cartoon where he jumps inside an oyster, wraps himself around the pearl and cries "I'm RICH! I'm WEALTHY! I'm a happy millionaire!" Mining pearls takes awhile, with all those giant crabs and underwater beasties to defeat. Thankfully, we both had water-breathing spells so that we wouldn't drown. Yes, even the Undead can die from drowning.

Death is a common problem in PVP servers. Not only do you have the NPC monsters trying to kill you, but other players can gank you as well. Thankfully, there's no real punishment for dying, except than sometimes you have to run a great distance from the graveyard to your body so that your ghost can reanimate your corpse.

On that note, it's time to resurrect and kill some spiders or something.