This is a log of the things I did during my participation of the World of Warcraft 7-Day Stress Test (which was later extended to roughly 12 days). On my blog they appeared in reverse order, but here I edited them around a bit so you can read the entire log from top-to-bottom and it'll read in chronological order.
Well, enough with the introduction and onto the log... ENJOY!
Saturday, September 4, 2004
Today (or yesterday rather, just by a few hours) marked the 2nd day of the World of Warcraft (WoW) 7-Day Stress Test that I am fortunate enough to be a part of. I wanted to keep a log of everything I did since I started, but I missed doing it the first day, and now the 2nd day is over and I have yet to write it. So, I'll just post now what I have accomplished the in the past 2 days.
Day 1:
Finally got the confirmation e-mail to create my account around 3:45pm. I quickly signed up and logged in. I logged into the Aman'Thul server and created a Dwarf Hunter. So much happened that day that I can't even remember ANYTHING. I do know that I managed to get up to level 8 and I played until around 3:30am (stopping for roughly an hour and a half to eat dinner and cut the grass).
Day 2
I started off poised to get to level 10 so I could learn the Tame Animal skill and get a pet. I grouped with Perrone and this other guy and we traveled a WHOLE LOT. I even got to ride on a gryphon! That was the coolest thing I could have ever done in this game. I'll post some screenshots soon. After completing a whole bunch of quests, and even joining a guild (The Seven Day Ownage) I finally made it to level 10. The first animal that I tamed was a level 7 Boar, I named him Koivu. I abandoned him quite quickly because I saw a higher level boar that I wanted instead. After taming that boar (a level 9 I think), I leveled another time and then tamed a level 10 spider. I named him Anid, he's my favorite pet so far. I actually get pissed off when other animals kill him and oh boy do they suffer! I'm almost a level 12 now and I've got enough quests queued up to easily take me to level 13 by tomorrow. In the middle of all this playing there was a 2 hour "Stress the Stress Test" event where they shutdown 6 servers (mine included) to make everyone play on the other 6 servers to see what type of a load they could take. So I had to create a new character. I chose a Night Elf Druid. In those 2 hours I was able to get him up to level 5. I think I started playing today around 2pm because I had to cut the grass and because I woke up rediculously late... and I just finished playing now around 2:30am with the requisite breaks for dinner and snacks.
Crazy Bugs
I have only run into one rediculous bug so far in this now almost 24 hours of playing. It happens when fighting Boars. First I send Anid over to attack the boar, then I shoot it with my rifle from far away so it can't hurt me (an awesome way to reduce on the need for bandages and healing potions). After a while the boar realises that I'm dealing it more damage than Anid is so it comes after me. Now, boars have this POWER attack where they charge at you. Well, sometimes the boar runs at me but doesn't stop and just keeps running. This would be fine, except the game thinks the boar stopped so it starts dealing me damage. This is where the bug is. Because the boar is still running so I can't hit it with neither my rifle nor my axe/dagger (depending which I'm using at the time). So while the game is hitting me I can't hit back to kill the boar and stop the pain. After a while the boar will run back and I can kill it; but not after it deals me some major damage or kills Anid or myself.
Well, thats all for now. I'll try to remember to post after each session. And I'll try not to be too long with those screenshots.
Saturday, September 4, 2004
I took a bit of a break from playing today to eat dinner (that is KEY to surviving a MMORPG) and watch the Canada-Russia hockey game. Now the server is acting up and I can't log in, so I had some time to prepare the images I took the past two days.
Me sleeping by a leopard me and Balbazak (Perrone) just killed
Me and Balbazak (Bal for short) standing at the top of a cliff... this was the first screenshot I ever took
Me and Bal flying over a city
Me on the back of a gryphon
Me flying over Dun Morogh
More of the previous
Flying into Ironforge
Front view of flying on a gryphon
Kneeling at the gates of Dun Morogh, what incredible craftsmanship!
Me running with Koivu
Me, Anid and the Stablemaster
Sleeping by some dead Wendigos
Bal and Myself with my trusty rifle (Hunter's Boomstick)
More sleeping after a hard day's work
Today's session wasn't too eventful. I put Anid away for a bit and tamed myself a huge black bear that I named Winnie. I also bought a new rifle, appropriatly named The Hunter's Boomstick! I'm never going to get rid of it. I also leveled a few times today, and so did Winnie. On my trip back to Ironforge (the homeland of the Dwarves) I learned a whole bunch of new leather patterns for making armor. I am now totally self sufficient with regards to armour. I haven't bought a single piece ever, I only need to purchase weapons. Well, I'm going to stop now and go see if I can log back in...
22:59
Sunday, September 5, 2004
Well, I managed to log back in after the server funkyness. I got a request to take a few screenshots of specific items. I've also got a cool image of Winnie growling at someone else's pet.
When I got back on the server I met up with Balbazak and he gave me a new two-handed axe that he had forged. It bound to me immediatly and he explained that he only makes "Loyal Steel". We finished a mutual quest and then did some exploring. Along the way I was skinning a whole bunch of animals and for the first time I got "medium leather" as opposed to the 'light leather' I have become accustomed to. I still don't have any plans that require it though. This session ended with the two of us fishing on the docks, that was pretty fun and I got tons of fish that I'm sure Winnie will enjoy eating. Once we were done fishing the server went wonky again... which brings us to why I'm here. I could have easily kept playing until 3am, but you can't always get what you want.
Now time for more screenies (I left these ones a bit larger than the last):
Me and Bal gone fishin'
Character Sheet: Self-Made Belt (if you notice, I'm a ghost in this picture)
Character Sheet: Hunter's Boomstick
A bunch of people in Thelsamar
A picture of Winnie (left - the bear) growling at someone else's pet wolf
Me reviving Winnie after he died
If anyone wants fullsize versions of those images just e-mail me.
So, with regards to that first image where I am a ghost: The death system in WoW is, as far as I know, completely unique. When you die you spawn at the nearest cemetary as a ghost. You then have the option to run back to your corpse and revive OR talk to the crypt master and he'll respawn you on the spot but you will lose some experience points. So, what you see there is me racing back to my corpse.
Until my next World of Warcraft rampage...
Adieu!
2:09
Sunday, September 5, 2004
Today's session was a non-event. I finally managed to get on at around 3:30 and only got in 2 hours worth before the servers went wonky again. They are apparently having some database performance issues. So I wasn't able to level at all, but I did spend alot of time hunting and skinning to get enough leather to max out my leatherworking skill. And I was finally able to learn this new pattern for some kick-ass 'Fine Leather Gloves'. I then made my way back to Ironforge and spent all my skill points learning a bunch of new trade skills. I can make dynamite now!
Well, hopefully the servers will be back online soon so I can get my fix. I'm also going to start going to sleep early now because school is about to start this week! The summer is over already, how time flies.
One last note: This document is getting quite large, as you can see the scroll bar handle has gotten very small, so I think this means I should start a new page OR get my act together and finish my new site! Either or it probably will happen next week once the World of Warcraft Stress Test is over with and I've settled into some kind of routine with school.
22:25
Monday, September 6, 2004
Well, only 2 days left in the stess test, but today was definitly the best. I don't know if anything will be able to top it. It started out pretty bland... I was doing some noob (newbie/new player) quests in the human city to get some easy experience. I then made my way back to the dwarven lands to meet up with Balbazak and the rest of our party (at the time consisted of a dwarven priest namde Keamen. First me and Bal grouped with some other pretty strong players and we killed this huge bear for a quest. We then made our ways over to this area with these HUGE monsters. I'm not sure what they were called, but they are almost the equivalent of a man nearly four times the size of Andre the Giant. We met up with another group while there and our two parties worked together to completely destroy every monster in that area, and empty out their cave. I have some screenshots I may post later on. I can't really explain how much fun it was, but it was intense.
Then a low point in the day came when I was finishing up a quest and needed to find food to feed my pet. I then made my way back to the building that I got the quest from to collect my reward when the guy told me that I didn't have all the materials that he asked for. I looked in my backpack and noticed that all the crocolisk (crocodile-like animals) meat was missing... I then realised that I had fed them to my pet (which is now a level 16 buzzard named Moulay). So now I'm trying to collect more meat but the servers went down again. sheesh... you should NEVER be able to eat quest items. I guess thats why its still in beta.
20:04
Tuesday, September 7, 2004
The test has almost come to a close. Just one more day until its all over, and I'm going to miss most or all of it because of the start of the new school year.
I played a whole bunch today on 3 different characters:
Character 1: Grimlar, Dwarven Hunter
I started off today with my dwarven hunter character that I created on the very first day of the stress test. I leveled him up to level 17 while visiting a Night Elf city. I messed around with my skills to try making some new leather armour before putting him to rest.
I got one last chance to kill some ogres with Keamen a friend that me and Balbazak (Perrone) met while playing the game.
Character 2: Grog, Orcish Shaman
I created Grog early in the day and discovered how much fun it was to be a spell caster. I also got to try out the Horde-only class for a bit. I really enjoyed playing this character, and in the 2 or so hours that I did play I got him up to level 6.
It was around the end of leveling Grog that Perrone logged on and created himself an orc character.
I left him to do some stuff on his own when I stumbled upon a BOAT! So I rode it over to some human town where I was immediatly killed by more really tough pirates.
Character 3: Altar, Undead Warlock
This character was also very fun. The warlocks have the ability to summon an imp. This imp is maybe the COOLEST character you could ever have with you. He yells at you to work harder when you are fighting beasts, and has a kick-ass fireball spell that completely OWNES anything you fight.
This leads me to now, where there has been some severe lag on the server and most recently its really bugged out to the point where monsters will NOT spawn anymore. So there is nothing to do except run arount looking at the scenery... which is also bugged. No more world animations. I'm almost hoping they extend the stress test so we can screw things up even more!
I've got more screenshots to post but I'm going to wait until the stress test is over and just post all the new ones at once. Its kind of weird to think that I've been SO busy these last 6 days that I actually found time to post, whereas when I've got nothing to do I completely neglect the website.
So, school starts tomorrow... and I received an e-mail from the computer science lab that I now have access to the Ariel Lab, which is the Senior Lab... the SENIOR LAB!!! Wow, I feel like I'm getting old, 3rd year university already.
I also wanted to make a short note on another thing that has had a large impact on my life as of late. I started listening to a band called Metric, and since I've started listening to them I haven't been able to stop. For maybe 2 or 3 straight weeks now all I listen to is their music when I'm on my computer, Emily Haines' voice is so... I can't think of the word, intoxicating maybe? I just can't get it out of my head, that voice! And the tunes are very catchy too. The whole while that I've been playing World of Warcraft I've been playing and REPLAYING their songs in my head, especially Wet Blanket.
Well, thats all for today. There might not be another update for a couple days now that the stress test is pretty much over. I'll try to get back into a normal update schedule and post those screenshots soon.
Adieu!!
My, how time flies...
22:29
Wednesday, September 8, 2004
Well, I just got word that the stress test has been extended until SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!!! So that means I can be an addict all over again. And its perfect because Fable comes out on tuesday (you can find a link for it in an earlier post) so I'll never have NOTHING to do!!! This is awesome, well gotta go.
it beckons me
22:16
Thursday, September 9, 2004
I missed yesterday's log, so I thought I'd throw it in for today before I start playing on this glorious 8th day of testing!
The whole day was taken up by school, but I managed to log in after the hockey game (woot, Canada win 5-0!!!). I had to re-learn some trade skills that I deleted because I THOUGHT that I wouldn't be playing anymore. After that I completed an awesome quest to stop these jerks from blowing up the dam outside of Thelsamar. I leveled once and was also able to increase my animal skinning tradeskill.
That was about it, I finished around 1am and made a slight modification to vealonabun.com. I had been thinking about NOT renewing that domain name when my 1 year runs out, but that might create a problem of continuity for some people (Evil Steve for one) as well as my game programming side-project. Plus if I actually build the site I'll not want to lose the name. But I guess these decisions will have to be made in January/February when they are up for renewal.
18:42
Thursday, September 9, 2004
Not much to say really because nothing has happened... I was able to log onto the servers for about 10-15 minutes. I was able to skin a few boars and get some new leather patterns and then the servers went offline, and have been offline since. So I've had plenty of time to organize my recent screenshots... behold:
Our 2 parties emerging from the Mo'grosh cave
Me doing a handstand
BUG: Using an axe like a rifle
BUG: Using a rifle like an axe
BUG: Trying to beat a Mo'Grosh over the head with a rifle
Me and Balbazak dancing with some stripped down humans
Me looking all serious with my new bad-ass (and apparently rare) shoulderpads
Me, Bal and Keamen with my pet buzzard Polly flying above @ the dam
My orc character meeting Warchief Thrall, he was very pleased
My undead character ROCKIN' it out!
21:57