{"id":2164,"date":"2012-10-08T09:46:35","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T16:46:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/?p=2164"},"modified":"2012-10-08T09:46:35","modified_gmt":"2012-10-08T16:46:35","slug":"a-wow-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/2012\/10\/a-wow-weekend.html","title":{"rendered":"A WoW Weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This was our weekend to play around with World of Warcraft a bit, as a couple.<\/p>\n

Margie’s key impression: “It’s Disney LotRO.”<\/p>\n

Which has a lot of truth to it, except, of course, that given the order of release one should instead characterize LotRO as “Tolkien WoW”. \u00a0That said, there are a lot of similarities between the two games in terms of engine and screen layout and mechanics and all. The art style in LotRO is a lot more realistic, and the Tolkien-based storyline lends a bit of panache to the proceedings, but …<\/p>\n

(Margie is suggesting I give LotRO another try.)<\/p>\n

So Les and I leveling up characters to 15 in two decent-length sessions were one thing. When Margie and I tried it, we ran into immediate problems with limits on Starter Edition (F2P) accounts. The main problem being: Starter Edition characters can’t initiate groups. So if you have two Starter Edition people playing, they have to play as solo characters running around together. Which makes mission completion more lengthy and complex, and creates real problems when you (virtually) turn around and you can see where the other person is.<\/p>\n

Only the fact that we were in the same room made it feel viable.<\/p>\n

I’m sure Blizzard has good reasons for the restrictions, given the attacks and hacks and exploits that Black Hats have had, but it did make it more difficult.<\/p>\n

Also, we have problems in Panderia, with both of us phased separately on the same server, making it even less viable for us to play together.<\/p>\n

That led to a decision Friday evening to go ahead and upgrade my account to a paid subscription — $20 gets the Battle Pack with a couple of expansions in it (handwaves specifics), and a month of play. With that, I could take on the “mentor” role that Les did for me, and we figured at a minimum we’d get $20 of entertainment for the two of us.<\/p>\n

Well, one fly in the ointment. Blizzard \/ Battle.net immediately charges your card, but doesn’t <\/em>immediately make you a subscribed member. They claim it can take up to 72 hours to validate that you aren’t an Evil Spammer or Despicable Gold Farmer or something.<\/p>\n

So we spent Saturday and Sunday doing awkward paired solos, running a pair of humans up to 8 or 9, and then a pair of night elves up to 11. \u00a0It was only on late Sunday night that I was able to invite Margie to a team (though some of the other features had kicked in before then).<\/p>\n

Net-net, I had a good time, and I think (glances her way) that Margie did, too. \u00a0The starter realms seem to be fairly linear in their quest paths, but it seems there is plenty to do after getting out from that. \u00a0The biggest problem I see if<\/em> we move forward is figuring out which of the very kind guild offers we’ve received from various friends to take advantage of.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, now that I’m a paying player, I’ve been able to formally invite Margie in (using a different email addy), which means that I can take advantage of those “recruitment bonuses” that Blizzard is offering. Which means rerolling the toons Margie was already playing, but that’s just a weekend’s worth.<\/p>\n

So, for the moment, WoW seems to be on the play list. \u00a0Still other games out there we want to try, however.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was our weekend to play around with World of Warcraft a bit, as a couple. Margie’s key impression: “It’s Disney LotRO.” Which has a lot of truth to it, except, of course, that given the order of release one should instead characterize LotRO as “Tolkien WoW”. \u00a0That said, there are a lot of similarities … Continue reading “A WoW Weekend”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,16,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gameplay","category-mmo","category-world-of-warcraft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2164"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2166,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164\/revisions\/2166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}