From the depths I emerge victorious.

Today was the first day in a while that Udderwin was not around to assist me, so I had the option to continue questing without him. However, this would throw our quest chains out of sync. I would be on a different segment of a quest than him and would end up just repeating it anyway when he gets back. Instead, I decided to get geared up and run some dungeons for nice loot. There were now new dungeons available in the dungeon finder that I had not explored yet.

The Scarlet Monastery

Starting off, I was sent to the Scarlet Monastery located in the Tirisfal Glades just outside of the Undercity. There I was joined by a colorful band of Horde players to fight against the corrupt Scarlet Crusade organization, a religious institution that is dedicated to the eradication of the undead, but ironically was itself being manipulated by an undead-possessed leadership. After clearing the first hallway, one member of our group, Traumatik, accidentally pulled too large of a force to fight and he died. Three of the Scarlet Crusaders then turned their attention to me, causing my health to rapidly deplete. I thought this was going to quickly turn into a wipe, but then I surprised myself with some quick theatrics I cooked up to evade the attackers. I cast frost nova, sticking the three of them in the ground and then moved to a safe distance. However, this still did not hold them long enough, as they broke free and began to chase me down the hallway again. Then, as they began to close the distance, I cast blink and teleported behind them several feet, giving me even more time to distract them. Finally, the rest of my group had finished killing off the other crusaders and came to my aid, saving me from what I originally thought was a certain death.

Using Evocation in the Courtyard

Moving forward, we reached the monastery courtyard and had to battle our way through numerous spirits. I noticed that my mana was draining fairly quickly now that my spells were getting more expensive at these higher levels. I was beginning to make use of my evocation spell, which allows me to quickly regenerate over half of my mana while in the middle of combat.

Fending Off Spirits

We didn't run into any further issues throughout the remainder of the dungeon, so we quickly dispatched of the undead boss, the Bloodmage. I thanked the rest of my team for a job well done and immediately queued up for another dungeon.

Defeating the Bloodmage

I now found myself in the Stormwind Stockade, a prison system beneath the human capital city. It's a rather short dungeon mostly consisting of a few quick boss battles. We first took down Randolph Moloch followed by Lord Overheat with little effort.

Lord Overheat

Then we finished off with Hogger the gnoll, albeit with our hunter dying at the last second. Short but sweet, as I got myself a nice new pair of boots before queuing up for my next dungeon.

Hogger

The last dungeon I ran for the night was Blackfathom Deeps. This particular dungeon has some fun aspects to it, as there is some platforming involved that puts your jumping skills to the test, as well as some underwater segments.

Blackfathom Deeps

The first boss we encountered was the infamous turtle Ghamoo-Ra, which I immediately got a chuckle from again thinking about how Jessicaloveu had managed to tame him earlier and aggravate her entire team.

Ghamoo-Ra

The next boss was Gelihast, a murloc with a lot of body guards to take down. He was eliminated with little effort as well.

Gelihast

In a hidden corner underwater, we found Old Serra'kis, a fierce thresher beast. Killing him yielded a secret quest item that we could turn in for a reward.

Old Serra'kis

Finally we made our way to the last boss, Aku'mai, the three-headed hydra beast. Turns out he wasn't so tough either, or perhaps I was just lucky enough to be in very competent groups today. Either way, he was defeated on our first attempt. With Aku'mai slain, that was a total of three new dungeons conquered for the day and some fine loot acquired in the process. I returned to Orgrimmar and logged off for the remainder of the night.

Aku'mai

Now it's time to get philosophical! There's been a lot of people I've met over the course of these three weeks in World of Warcraft so far. In my first week, I met Thelinddra, Damglorand, Aer, Danomiral, and Megarronoz. In my second week, I met Jessicaloveu, Udderwin, Thundurr, Pyraena, and Obscurez. This week, I met Fleeseveonen, Didurmomhard, Betrayal, Tastyface, and Mircat. Some people have come and gone, and others I have stayed in contact with.

For the most part, I've observed that everyone generally shares the same goals in World of Warcraft. Primarily, what they hope to get out of it is a sense of reward and fun from seeing their characters level up and evolve. However, that is not to say they are without any deviation at all. As noted with my previous experiences, some people like Didurmomhard were looking for closer companionships and friends, as he in particular tried to ask me out before realizing that I was a guy. Jessicaloveu, Udderwin, and even I as well didn't mind taking the occasional break from leveling just to have conversations with people either, so some people are more focused on building relationships than others. For many of the people I encountered this week like Tastyface and Mircat, there wasn't much conversation with them as they were more concerned with running dungeons than taking time to converse with the team. As for me, I can be a fairly competitive player, so one of my greatest motivations for playing is getting stronger in order to defeat other players in battle.

Generally I've been viewed very positively among my peers. I would crack a lot of jokes in guild chat, and I kept in touch with some people like Damglorand and Jessicaloveu. Thundurr complimented me just for looking pretty, and Obscurez continued to tag along with Udderwin and I for some more dungeons together because he we were good at filling our team roles. Discerning opinions from my other party members while running dungeons however is another story. Randomly-assembled groups don't tend to talk as much, but the general sense of it I got was again mostly positive for me, as I filled my party role well in most instances and only got myself killed when the rest of my group had already fallen anyway. That was enough to rarely if ever receive any complaints, and as long as no one is talking bad about you in randomly-assembled dungeon groups, that's usually a good sign as that is the best you're often going to get. This isn't to say that I was completely without enemies though. I wasn't on the best of terms with Pyraena after I scolded her a bit for stealing a robe that she had no use for. Beyond that however, attitudes toward me largely ranged from neutral to very positive throughout my experience thus far.

As far as I've noticed about "newbies" in the game in contrast to experienced players, newcomers are treated as nicely as anyone else provided that they act respectfully as well. There is a certain extra amount of admiration received toward more seasoned players with more customized avatars though; even I found myself complimenting one Blood Elf who had a nice set of gear that she had customized to look really cool. Generally speaking though, there didn't seem to be any upper class / lower class divide among players in the community. As long as you're a member of the same faction, or especially a member of the same guild, players are willing to lend helpful hands and assist each other.

This concludes my analysis of World of Warcraft for this week. Next time I'll be commenting on Warcraft's in-game economy and how it affects the players' experience. Bye now!