The Joys of Exploration

[Walkiry]

Greetings fellow lurkers!

To honour a long-standing tradition of the Longue, I'll start my WoW lurking career with an epic tale of bravery about my accomplishments as I explore the lavish landscape I've been offered.

There are many ways I could have "subtitled" this thread, but I think the 'litefied "n00b" word is an accurate description of it. I'll come to this later.

After many many quests and much enemy slaying and poking, testing the ground rules for damage, protection and aggro (is there a better word for that? I actually dislike the term "aggro", but can't think of a better way to describe it) in the game, my exploring brain demanded attention and I set forth to set the itching on my virtual feet to rest. My Dark Elf Rogue, having explored only Teldrassil and residing nowadays at the Darkshore, longued for more.

Far south was the Ashenvale Forest, not much of an adventure getting there when there's a road leading straight to and through its heart, and being a contested zone I was still wary of it. To the North there was nothing but impassable mountains.

Or maybe not?

Swimming in this game is fun after all, so I decided to follow the coastline and swim along it to see where the winds would take me.

The first stop was to admire some excellent Sea Monsters, way higher than my level but yellow, meaning I could play with them at my leisure. Joy.

This little expedition also yielded a submerged crate with a staff on it, almost 6 silver pieces at the merchant. Lovely.

Undeterred I kept travelling North, until the shore turned gently to a mostly East direction. At this point I was way North. Finally what I had been expecting happened.

The only sensible thing to do at that point would be to go back West, since there was nothing there. No monsters, no NPCs (or PCs for the matter), not even fish (as I got the familiar message about the lack of fish in the water when I tried my luck).

So, I turned East and went on with my swimming of course. I had time to contemplate my sins during that lonely travel, and checking all the slopes I came accross that seemed to be less steep than the rest, with no luck about getting off the coastline and into the mainland (WoW's geography is rather, eh, "unique" about mountain placement).

This went on for a while. Strangely enough, as soon as I left that Moonglade beach the game kept telling me I was in the Darkshore. Pressing "M" for the map was most useless, as I was way out of the DS local map.

Eventually I came accross more shallow waters, and I was informed I had reached Azshara. Great stuff, looking at the map I could see that there were no mountains along the coast, maybe I could get to a more interesting place.

And there was fish there to boot. Thanks to the lures I got from my previous fishing quest I had soon a few full bags of fish. Level 25 and 35 fishes too, I was overjoyed.

After the fishing I decided to move on. Only, there was a little surprise waiting for me. I wasn't too worried though, I had only to jump to the (narrow) beach and I'd be safe from sea-dwellers and their kin.

Of course, I realized soon that pure sea-dwellers were not the only danger.

These little vicious buggers can walk on the ground as well as along the bottom of the sea. Due to my restricted movement range I aggroed one when I shouldn't have (my stealth proved mostly useless :) ), and the not totally unexpected happened. Ah well.

So, after I resurrected (with penalties), I decided to cheat a little bit and see what the fastest way out would be. This map seemed to indicate a griffon route at the far south (as well as the known road connection to the Forest). Since everything was way WAY above my head, I took off to that place in what I though was the fastest way, straight south and to the sea.

Bad idea. I did reach the coast though.

So, while I was scouting with my spirit I realized the south shore was totally blocked by tall mountains, and that I'd have to go around at ground level if I wanted to reach that ride or that road.

Joyful :)

Hey, it's not that I dislike stealthy going around enemies instead of fighting them, but I didn't have enough tools to do that properly. So, scouting to see where the enemies were and the best way to avoid them was done with my spirit (when possible), and after deciding the route I hauled ass through it with my sprinting escape power and resting in any safe spot I found to let it recharge and try to come up with the route for the next "leg". Suffice to say that it didn't always work, but it did work better than I though, as you can see by the results.

At the end point of the path I followed (as you can see in the map), I went to a different graveyard after dying, one very close to where that map mark at worldofwar.net said I could grab a ride. I resurrected with a penalty at it.

Oh, did I mention that I had done the same at the graveyard in the Darkshore before setting off to trample around the continent? As of that moment ALL my equipment was red and unuseable. Oopsie :)

Anyway, there was a road in front of me, and after following it carefully I came accross what seemed to be an Alliance banner with a watchtower. Great! All this was done first as a spirit, then I went there by foot, confident that I had found my way out.

"Hello?!"

Nothing but the echo of my own voice could be heard inside of the deserted cave.

Well, crap.

Despair beginning to settle, I set forth towards the Ashenvale Forest. Luckily the road made the travel swifter, and I wasn't unhappy about the exploring xp I had collected either. But it was starting to get late and I was tired too.

My first encounter in the Forest? Judge by yourself! Luckily he had nothing on the nasties I had been avoiding earlier, and although he seemed eager to slowly patrol the road I wanted to travel, he wasn't hard to avoid.

The biggest danger was, of course, my own dumb self trying to explore enemy territory in a contested zone with no armour or weapons in tow. Almost, I still had throwing knives.

I made steady progress. At one point I came right in front of a couple of Horde players (levels 16 and 14 respectively, travelling together). I wasn't even stealthed when it happened, but seems like I managed to make a narrow escape, as they turned around and went on their merry way.

I finally reached Astranaar; battered and bruised I collected myself, repaired my equipment and items, sold my fish (which sold for a disappointing 4 copper coins a piece), and cleared my inventory. I set forth to Darkshore again, to finish my quests there, making a stop here and there to see the what the forest had to offer in the form of adventure.

But before I brought my adventure to an end, just before entering the Darkshore, I though I should better go back to an inn to log out there, so that my character can be rested when I log in again. Of course, I was pretty tired and didn't feel like walking all the way there to r*CLICK*

...

That click was my long term memory storage kicking in, retrieving this comic.

You could almost hear the wheels turning.

F11, I opened my "foods" bag.

I looked inside.

And if you listened very carefully, you could just hear the penny drop.

Sitting there, with a hint of a smug grin, was my own Stone.

I right clicked on it. I'm sure I could hear it sniggering as my Rogue performed the cast animation.

Mission accomplished, back at the inn!!

And, to go back to my opening statement, I could have added a different subtitle to this thread, such as "Don't let the trees distract you from the forest", or a simple "K.I.S.S., Keep It Simple Stupid!". But, to my taste, the one I used really fits me better.

I'm such a n00b! :lol:

Oh, and I have to take more screenshots :)

[Alram]

Hi there.
Actually your post brings to my mind what might be my big gripe about the game.

The only reward for exploration is to get killed.

You don't find treasure. You don't find Easter eggs. You don't find clever or funny or interesting things. You just get killed. The makers of WoW missed out on a great opportunity here--the thrill of discovery, the fun of exploration. Instead you get killed. There really is limited opportunity to interact with the environment. Exploration is really discouraged or should I say not rewarded.

BTW, none of the links in your post work for me.

[Walkiry]

BTW, none of the links in your post work for me.
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Ah, that's not too unusual, no-ip.org is used to track changing IPs (typical from DSL or dialup, in my case a DSL line), so when the IP changes it sometimes takes a little bit to propagate, depending on ISPs and such :)

Try again in a bit and it should work fine.

[Tal]

Hi there.
Actually your post brings to my mind what might be my big gripe about the game. 

The only reward for exploration is to get killed.

You don't find treasure.  You don't find Easter eggs.  You don't find clever or funny or interesting things. You just get killed.  The makers of WoW missed out on a great opportunity here--the thrill of discovery, the fun of exploration. Instead you get killed. There really is limited opportunity to interact with the environment.  Exploration is really discouraged or should I say not rewarded.

BTW, none of the links in your post work for me.
[right][snapback]68084[/snapback][/right]

:blink: I've had great fun exploring in World of Warcraft. Though I do admit to being level appropriate for the areas I was in. The historian in me loves to come around a bend in the road to find a destroyed Orc catapult. Or a memorial to a night elf hero in the wilds. Or a statue to Lothar in the Steppes. To know anything about the history of the world of Azeroth is to be constantly amazed by how much of it was put into the world of warcraft. :)

P.S. Sharanna has found treasure in the exploring. A chest on the island off Booty Bay yielded the plate helm she wears today. :)

[Raziel]

I have made it to the gate to Hyjal. Alive.

Unfortunately the gate is closed. But when you're dead, you can pass through it. I explored Hyjal for a while when dead, but given the lack of any map (it just shows you the continent view) and the doubtless dodgy nature, I made sure I ressed on the correct side of the closed door and hearthed out of there.

Hyjal is a green instance portal. Deep in the middle of Hyjal is a giant stone snake-mouth thing (very much like Razorfen downs) that is blocked off by bars. Through the bars I could see a second green instance portal, telling me that Hyjal has a raid within a raid.

[kandrathe]

I have made it to the gate to Hyjal.  Alive.

Unfortunately the gate is closed.  But when you're dead, you can pass through it.  I explored Hyjal for a while when dead, but given the lack of any map (it just shows you the continent view) and the doubtless dodgy nature, I made sure I ressed on the correct side of the closed door and hearthed out of there.

Hyjal is a green instance portal.  Deep in the middle of Hyjal is a giant stone snake-mouth thing (very much like Razorfen downs) that is blocked off by bars.  Through the bars I could see a second green instance portal, telling me that Hyjal has a raid within a raid.
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At lvl 10 my nightelf took a wrong turn looking to get to IronForge and ended up at the Ruins of Eldarath. I was wondering why I had to sneak past the Orc outriders. :)

[Drasca]

This is my newbie moment :)