There are no new players of WoW ... or are there?

Tuesday, January 10, 2012
World of Warcraft has been out for over 7 years now.  And a good deal of the gamer population has played it at one point or another.  Sometimes it feels like everyone and their mother (and grandmother and sister and brother and grandfather and 3rd cousin twice removed) have played this game for a while, if not recently then in the 'distant WoW past, like 2005 or 2006.

However, this weekend, while my husband and I were leveling YET ANOTHER pair of toons, we came upon this elusive creature known as "The WoW Noob".  This player, while high level, had never really done any questing.  At level 84, they had about 700 quests completed.  Their reps, the ones you would have gotten from questing in the 0-60 zones and in Wrath, were nonexistent.  Yet, all the ones you can get or grind through dungeons?  Nice and high, mostly high honored or revered with a couple exalted-s.

We came across her (the toon was a female) in Uldum.  This toon is an scribe so I don't HAVE to go through Deepholm (again) and the husband didn't care much.  We decide that we'll go through the Ramkahen quest chain first and THEN do the Harrison Jones stuff.  We come across her, the first time, while trying to do the bugged out Pit of Scales quest.  A little while later, the husband gets a whisper from her asking for help.

He talks back and forth with her for a while and then she asks if she can join us.  I tell husband that I don't care and go afk to deal with housework.  When I come back, she's joined the group.  Now, she's leveling as a disc priest.  Which isn't impossible these days.  However, she honestly can't figure out how to do half the quests.  So, we would have her link the quest to us, and then we'd take her there and point at whatever needs to be done or kill whatever needed to die.

This was about the time we realized she didn't know how to quest.  At all.  She had leveled via the RDF and while knowing a lot about healing in dungeons, had no idea that you had to 1. read the quest text and 2. complete the quest as the text tells you.  We ended up catching her up in the quest chain and then walking her through the rest of the Ramkahen quest line.  Then we started the Harrison Jones stuff, where she had 'finished' it (she said).  She came along with us and couldn't figure out what we were doing.  Turns out she never picked up the goggles you get from the corpse on the ground.  So, we walked her through those too.

By the end, husband and I were both 84 and we had (all 3) finished Uldum.  It was really adorable.  She was a complete noob and it was refreshing to see the zone through her eyes.  At the end of the night, we had a new (nooby) friend and I promised her that we would look her up to go through Twilight Highlands.  I haven't told the husband THAT part of it yet.

However, I told my main's name (since I was on my death knight) and the husband told her his main as well (he was on his mage).  It was fun to quest with someone who did NOT know what to do.  It was like questing with my husband at the beginning of his WoW relationship.  "Yes husband, pick that up. NO DON'T DO THAT."  It turns out this will be her first 85 (kinda figured that) and she is nervous about JP and VP.  I just want to pinch her little cheeks!!

Have you ever come across a total noob?  Did you help them?  Make fun of them?  Were you that total noob?

3 comments:

  1. Khalior said...:

    Great post!
    I keep telling people that I've noticed a lot of new players coming into the game since the beginning of this expansion.
    I've talked with a few and they really feel like they are lost at times on what to do and the community is very unhelpful (especially /Trade).
    Taking the time to talk with new people and showing them the ropes is good! (It helps a lot with the perception some people have about the game, too.)

  1. Tzufit said...:

    I LOVE running across people like this and seeing how much wonder they still have for so much of what we take for granted. I think it's wonderful that you and your husband were really able to help this player and offer her people who she will (hopefully!) be comfortable asking questions again in the future. Just love these sorts of stories. :)

  1. Saif said...:

    That is adorable.

    I haven't run into a newbie in some time. Might have to do with the fact that I play on a Full server which I imagine Newbies would stay away from.

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.