A Girl and Her Fish #WoW #WorldOfWarcraft
stargrace 
I had big plans for when MoP released yesterday, but alas I ended up catching a nasty flu bug instead and spent most of my day sleeping in some sort of flu medication enhanced sleep. I did manage to get a bit of time in-game though, and I had a blast.
Of course I created a panda monk. I learned a few things. First of all, the ‘red’ pandas (female only) get tails. There’s a lot of debate over this because red pandas are more like raccoon’s than pandas – which is apparent by their very raccoon-like tail. That doesn’t bug me, I like the tail so of course that’s what I created. There were also a lot of complaints about how you can’t join a guild until you’re done because you don’t pick a faction. That means no guild bonuses. You are also unable to send / receive any mail (there are no mailboxes in the starter zone) until you pick a faction. More complaints ensued because that means you can’t mail yourself the lovely heirloom gear you’ve been collecting until after you leave (around level 11-12).
If you were not a fan of the wargen or goblin starter areas because of the length of time they took to complete, you should be pleasantly surprised at the length that the panda zone takes. I didn’t feel that it was too long, although it was a bit annoying because spawns have been sped up to accommodate the influx of players and that meant for a lot of me trying to out run giant gangs of creatures. No deaths, but some very close calls.
Once my panda was out of the starter (no spoilers here!) I decided to switch back to my ‘main’ priest, and start leveling her through the Jade Forest. The zone was incredibly packed with players, most of them standing with their giant mounts RIGHT on the NPC that I needed. I really enjoyed working my way through the quests so far. The stories are interesting, and the quests a lot of fun. If you’ve gotten to meet Sully and ‘Socks’ you will know what I mean. The attention to detail has been really nice and while there are a lot of ‘kill X mob and bring me back Y item’ quests there are also a lot of pure interesting and good fun moments throughout. The cut scenes are well done and I’m enjoying taking my time and listening to the story.
I also started working on my crafting a bit. In fact that was the very first thing I did when I logged in, train each of my professions so that when I did start crafting again I didn’t forget and get held back by the old skill cap. My bank is quickly filling up with food items because I forgot to clear out the old food items I had stored up. Whewps. Tailoring and enchanting are first on my list – cloth is plentiful, to say the least. I’ve been disenchanting all of the items I come across to gain enchanting materials, and have started stocking the guild bank up with enchanting scrolls.
I also spent some time doing pet battles – not many, yet. After all I have a LONG time to work through this content and I’m not in any rush. I started out with a snail companion and added a baby dragon to the mix, and have done a few battles, collected a few animals and added them to my personal collection. I think the difficulty of the fights has been tweaked slightly, as I found my second battle much more difficult than I did in beta. Still, no pets have died (yet) and it was cute.
The game certainly isn’t for everyone and I’ve heard a lot of negativity over things lately but I’m having fun and I’m not ashamed of it. There’s no reason why I can’t enjoy more than one game at a time, and I’m content having a variety to play. Each game scratches a different ‘itch’ and playing through new (to me) content is always exciting. The most important thing is (and always has been) having FUN while you play these games. WHAT the game is doesn’t matter.
As always, happy gaming!