Recap of TBC and Gitr’s First Impressions

I had a blast last night, unlike I have had in-game in many many moons. When I got home, I made sure I had enough HD space on the game drive and made a backup copy of all my 2.0.1 patches on up, just in case the upgrade overwrote them. It doesn’t, by the way. I installed the latest drivers for my nVidia card after reading in the manual at work (I really didn’t want to be there after I picked up the game) that if the game ever locks up or restarts that you should update your drivers. It worked like a charm. No lockups for the first time in a month!

I got the 2.0.3 to 2.0.5 patch, which was only a 2MB download and got in-game. I quickly created Bloodr on Burning Legion and jumped ship to go play Gitr on Kargath. I ran through the portal and was presented with a huge staircase leading down to a gigantic ?? level monstrosity at the bottom of the stairs. Instead of trying to kick his butt, I went to the left to turn in my quest that I picked up outside the portal, accepted a new quest from the Flightmaster, and hopped on a grif to Honor Hold.

Once I landed, I made my way around following little golden dots on my minimap to get and complete little quests around the hold. I went to train up my Herbalism, but it costs 10g, and all of my expired auction mail was deleted. I have no inventory and no money. That downright sucks. I can start from scratch any time, especially when the drops are so valuable, though.

I picked up a quest that took me to the East of the hold and required slaying some demons in the Path of Agony. It took me a little while to get into the flow of playing a warrior again. I quickly discovered 2 things: you only get one healing potion to increase health AND my friggin’ bubble was gone!! I can’t fight without a bubble any more! After about 30 minutes of fighting, I got my warrior legs back and had quite a fight at one point.

I initated battle with an Infernal Warbringer of level 58 power, and just as that was ending, I got in the aggro radius of a 58 Flamewalker Imp and his two 57 Heckling Fel Sprites. I had to pop a potion and fear them to bandage up because, as I was starting to bandage, a 59 Dreadcaller walked by and picked a fight. I tripped Retaliation on his butt and slayed him with 4% health left. I’m glad no one walked in on me while I was fighting or my concentration would have been shattered. I was quite proud of that fight. I turned in the quest and had these reward options.

Evidence of the Burning Legion are everywhere. There’s broken down machinery, toppled guard towers, vast scars in the landscape, and demonic elements tainting the ground and shooting out like geysers. The sky is like that of being an atmosphere-free land, with planets and particles everywhere.

Last night, I got on to play Bloodr for an hour before going to bed. American Idol and wife time kept me away quite willingly. I said I’d be in bed by midnight, so I got cracking on leveling my new Blood Elf Mage. I have never taken a mage past level 16 because of the difficulty I had keeping mobs off me. Now that I’ve played Deadr so long, I think I can play more squishies.

I loaded up on quests and started running around the starting area. The landscape is like no other in the world, as plants float around, fountains and paved areas abound, and the grass is so, so green. I got to level 5 and headed for the city to get a tradeskill. Silvermoon City is unrivaled in beauty and awe. Words fail me to to descibe the ornate decorations and architecture.

I passed Prince Sunstrider’s statue on the way outside the city to pick up my skinning training. It evoked memories of my first time entering Ironforge on my first day of playing Grimr. Beautiful. Inside, I picked up jewelcrafting because Deadr is a miner and can help along in that quite easily. Hank sent me two very nice jewelcrafting items last night and I happily equipped them. I would link them up, but they are not showing up in my RPG profile. My slots are mysteriously empty where I equipped them.

I will be very torn for a while on whether to level Deadr to 60 to play with my guild in TBC content or keep playing Gitr because he already has access. It’s really hard to keep plugging away in WP/EP/Silithus when there is new content to play.

How were your first day impressions?