The Girl's Guide to World of Warcraft: Part 1

Recently, Brandon told me he had a "very important question to ask" me when I got home from an evening out with a friend.  But it took me nearly 30 minutes of tickle torture, questioning, begging and pleading for him to finally tell me what it was he wanted to ask me: "will you play World of Warcraft with me?".  I laughed because that is not a "very important question" in my opinion, but I agreed to try.

Not because World of Warcraft (better known to the diehard fans as, WOW) was a game I had craved to play all my life, but instead to try and relate to and understand Brandon's games better.  Maybe if I played it with him I would see what the draw and obsession with these games is?  I won't leave you in suspense much longer... I'm no longer playing WOW.

My trial of the game lasted a day.  More like a couple hours.  It wasn't so terrible at first.  I got to pick out my own person and what they looked like, their skills etc., then I got to explore around the crazy part-medieval, part-fantasy world my character "Shion" was put in to. 
After an hour or so of accepting and completing quests, I looked at Brandon and asked him what else there was to do. 
I got a blank stare. 
He informed me this was what there was to do.
Oh. 
He also told me that to get any real achievements done in the game I should be spending anywhere between 3-6 hours of playtime. 
Oh.
I don't have the attention span for dedication to one activity for that long.  Even if the story was super exciting and entertaining, I still would probably only last an hour or two... on a day when I had nothing else scheduled.

So, WOW isn't a game I find enthralling or really even very exciting at all.  And I thought about all the other women out there who have to listen to Warcraft stories and watch their boyfriends, husbands, brothers and various other significant men in their lives, play this game for hours on end.  I felt I needed to create a Girl's Guide to World of Warcraft.  So here it is, the beginning of what will possibly be the first coherent understanding (for women) of the game they call WOW.

Species
When you begin playing WOW, you must first choose what species you'd like to play.  In regular games the choice would be obvious: human Italian plumber, human pirate, lime green big-nosed dinosaur...  However, WOW is a species of game all it's own.  You can choose over 8 different species to play in the game, from 2 different groups.

• Human- normal, like you and me, most popular
• Dwarf- small & robust, with resistance to injury being lower to the ground
• Night Elf- similar to a human, able to retreat quickly
• Gnome- nimble, short but can keep up with the taller species
• Draenei- a gift for healing, and more accurate fighter
• Worgen- once humans, they are now like super humans
• Orc- tough, with a natural instinct to befriend animals
• Undead- somewhat of a zombie, dead- but not dead, they consume corpses for power
• Tauren- a half cow type, with strength & endurance with resistance to poison
• Troll- similar to those rubber naked toys we played with as kids, but uglier can attack & cast spells quicker
• Blood Elf- have magical abilities, with a good defense system against the magic too
• Goblin- oversized hands and feet, with a rocket belt to jump forward faster

Each of these species has it's own pros and cons, abilities and strengths and you choose according to what you see as most important, while not forgetting what job you will give your character.  I know, right?  Job?  They couldn't just say if you are a Gnome you are a Hunter... but instead, they give you certain job options depending upon which species you choose.  (We'll cover the job portion in another post)  When choosing a species, keep in mind how cool you want to look and what you'll be doing as a profession in the game.  Brandon is a Goblin.  Really, I kind of just chose based on how awesome I could look.  I was a Dwarf.  And I was kick ass and cute!!  That's all that really mattered to me.