OK, I'm in.
Wow, those elf ears look stupid in the intro video. The purpose of an ear is to reflect sound toward the eardrum. Those vertical fleshpoles couldn't serve that purpose. The artists for this game aren't concerned with plausible realism, just like the game artists I remember knowing. It annoyed me then. This game is off the a poor start.
When I put the game client into windowed mode to come type this note, I find it has screwed up my mouse tracking for the rest of my system. That had at the very least better go away once I quit the game. Also, why does it block Cmd-tab? That would be the easiest way to switch between game and text editor. I'm sure some noble purpose was served by expending the extra programming effort to remove that option for me.
I love the gray-haired lesbian dwarf in a red silk dress that is the default (random?) character. I almost want to just play her and not explore the options. Could I really do much better than that? …Oh wait, I can't switch her to Horde, and I'm supposed to make a Horde character to team with friends. Apparently politics are biologically determined in this world. Goodbye Kris, I hardly knew you.
There isn't enough info to choose a race/class combo without just guessing. So Blood Elves are good at Enchanting—what's that? Is it casting spells, creating items, both, neither? Will I be screwed if I choose a Blood Elf Priest, or does Enchanting help with D&D divine magic too, or does it not even matter that much? In real roleplaying, I'd be all over the Mage because he can solve problems creatively and have the most geeky fun, but in this game, I hear mages are just artillery, which sounds as boring as playing a Fighter. Hunter sounds really good since I prefer ranged and I like pets. But Trolls get the matching racial bonus of enhanced bow damage, and trolls look ugly and live in ugly architecture. I assume I'd spend a lot of time in Troll areas that don't seem cool, and I want the world to seem cool. I'm not playing this game to be social after all.
I can't even click on Goblin—I grudgingly understand that, despite having their monthly-fee-cake, Blizzard wants to eat periodic purchase-price-cake too and I therefore cannot play a Goblin, but I'd like to at least see what they can do. I'm not likely to buy it if I can't even see it, am I?
Whatever—I'll take Blood Elf Hunter because I like the race's architecture and I want a pet. And I saw their super gay dance move at Gencon when Burning Crusade was released and wonder if I can hotkey it. Which, now that I recall it, pretty much just determined my name as well. It's the name of the Blood Elf character that Blizzard made for their public demo, which was…
Fuck. That. "You have been disconnected from the server." What, was I taking too long picking a character? Is that not part of the game? I'm sorry, I must have been having the wrong kind of unsanctioned fun. Pardon me. Oh, and you don't remember my password? We're going to have a problem here. All my passwords are too long to remember and live in my keychain. You know, Blizzard, that secure system-wide facility for storing passwords? On my secure computer, where I already have a password on my screensaver and an encrypted boot disk because I'm not an idiot? Keychain, use it, I am not even kidding. Quitting client and Googling ways to force it to autofill my password.
Done. Made an Applescript to launch WoW for me. Now my password is on disk in cleartext, and I don't give a shit. Screw you, Blizzard. You want security, you need to allow me to use my system's built-in security features. You are not a unique snowflake who deserves a special exception to all my usual secure password management practices. Oh look, I logged back in and it forgot all the choices I made when I was not creating my character quickly enough to please our overlords at Blizzard. Grrr. Taking a breather because the point of this was supposed to be fun, not pissed-offedness. Partly I'm too sensitive to this password BS because Apple does it too with their app stores, and it's honestly the only reason I still jailbreak my iDevices, just to autofill the goddamn passwords. It's a touchy issue.
Ahhh, I'm back. Created my guy. Tried logging in. Wanted to switch the my text editor to comment on how silly the double-permometer loading screen design was, but it disallowed the key command to minimize from fullscreen. Cmd-tab was already gone, so I had to force quit the app to regain control of my system. There goes all my regained composure. Whoever wrote this app, I want to find him and punch him in the balls. It's aggressively and smugly anti-user. Go back to Windows where that shit is tolerated.
I'm in, again. Blood Elf architecture is cheesy and impractical after all. And what, I thought I get to choose my pet. Apparently not—if I get to name him, it'll be "Bastard" or "Regret" or "Store Brand" or something.
WASD doesn't work right. I suppose I'll get used to it. But although walking/stopping is instantaneous, turning only happens after a delay. Is that a bug? Surely no one would design that on purpose.
Ugh, my disappointingly not-self-chosen dragonhawk is constantly flapping in my (the player's) face and blocking my view. I feel the same urge-to-swat rising within me that I get when a mosquito is buzzing my head. I may have to kill it. Select pet, click "Arcane Shot", and it get "I need a target". I just gave you a target.
The text in the contextual menus is way too small and also not properly antialiased. Come on, text is easy to get right.
Oh God, its flapping noise is getting annoying too. I may have picked the wrong class.
Not sure why half my bottom-row icons are on a glowing background, but the little pagination arrows for that half, to page to extra slots presumably, look like a UI disaster. I'm not looking forward to having to use those in battle.
Now, as I type, it sounds like a growling semi truck is driving by in the other window. WTF? A dragon maybe? Whatever it was, I missed it. Just the hellish tattoo of flapping again (thanks, Ed Poe). And there's a sea green glowing orb lying on the ground in front of me, but I have no idea what it is and can't seem to interact with it.
I shot a cat. Mrowr. But I can't loot it. Haven't I heard this game is all about the looting? And get out of my face, you stupid dragonhawk. I'd love to find the command to tell it to stay put, so I could leave it. Also, you'd think the other cats would be scared of me now, but they keep walking right through me.
Killed a Manawyrm and it dropped another sea green sphere which I still can't pick up. I guess it's mana and my mana's full. Hey, it's another dude killing stuff. Get out of my singleplayer experience, intruder. He's ignoring the green spheres as well.
There are tons of interesting magic doodads lying around by the big green crystal, and I can't interact with any of them, even the ones with a blue highlight glow that look like they're selected. If I have to find the right quests before I can even interact around the world, that's going to make exploration a lot less efficient. I want to pick a book off that revolving book staircase thing and read it. Some background, i.e. a reason to give a crap about this world, would do me some good right now. All I know is what I see, and it's candy-colored fairy tale architecture covered in obnoxious orange flapping wings.
Killed a Springpaw Cub. Really having trouble with this nonstandard WASD setup. I cannot move sideways at all, really? And I don't have separate look and move directions? That's a throwback to before the invention of mouselook / double thumbsticks, and it sucks. This is basically tank controls. I kind of hate it.
The character info popup isn't draggable. It should be; it looks like a palette interface so it should act like one. Hmm, my Warder's Vest isn't really a vest. And come to think of it, I wonder if I have unlimited bow ammo? OK, killing a Springbow Lynx gets me two tattered pelts. What's the "take all" key? No clue. Also, three more Springbow Lynxes just walked right over the corpse of their denmate. Clearly, these are some pretty socially apathetic animals. They probably all deserve to die. Die, lynxes, die.
I guess a Sunstrider Guardian is friendly? Targeting him and clicking my arrow button says, "I don't have a target". Liar. I thought green text would refer to whether I could take the guy, not friendliness.
This is honestly really boring. I'm yawning. Probably all the writing has slowed it too much. I should probably take a break, come back, and play again without any typing. Trying to quit, Cmd-Q has been overridden. Sigh. WTF. But at least I just discovered how to walk sideways.
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