World of Warcraft is just a beast. Last night I was playing Nafuolt, who is now level 26, and was starting to feel a little bogged down. None of his quests were particularly alluring to me, and there was nothing specific I wanted to accomplish with him. When we managed to get a good group together in an instance dungeon, a good opportunity for fun and loot, Hussain went insane and got us all killed, causing the group to desert en mass. Hussain also lured me out into some ridiculous section of the world where my character was subsequently eaten by massive crocolisks and spiders and yet more misery ensued. Despite all this, I still gave Hussain 75 silver pieces to pay for his training, because he can't seem to save any money. All in all, Hussain is gay.
But WOW overcomes. Since Hussain was busy leatherworking and moping about his Kerry-like performance in the Stormwind Stockade instance dungeon, I decided to go check out my L4 Troll Rogue, Malguont. Immediately WOW asserted its dominance over faggotry, and reminded me why I've been playing it constantly for weeks now. Rogues are fun to play. They're especially fun to play after you've been playing one character, pretty much exclusively, for a couple weeks. Nafuolt is a Warrior, which is really fairly similar to a Rogue in the sense that they're both offense oriented classes with a focus on melee weapons. The classes end up playing quite differently, which is a lot of fun.
A Warrior builds up “rage” as he fights, allowing him to do his special attacks. Rogues, on the other hand, have “power” and “combo points.” Their default state is to have full power, and their different special attacks all cost power to use, which is a more traditional mechanic than that of the Warrior. Less traditional is that some of the Rogue's attacks build up combo points, the more of which you have, the harder your finishing attacks hit. The idea of combos is very important to playing a Rogue, as you want to sequence your special attacks in such a way that they have the most effect. Comparitively, Warriors are a bit more reactive. I've found that the best tactic is to Charge in (a special attack that generates rage), Rend (a wounding damage-over-time attack), and then basically respond to the enemy. Shield Bash to interrupt spells, Overpower when he dodges, Heroic Strike to get a little extra damage. Rogues are much more proactive. They sneak up on their enemy and ambush them. While a Warrior gains rage both for giving and taking damage (and thus doesn't entirely mind getting hit), Rogues aim to kill their enemy before he can even attack. The key to doing this successfully, is combinations. For example, one sequence I found to work well, was to pick out a target, inch up until I was just inside range of my throwing axes (trolls are great with thrown weapons), and start unloading. If I throw, back up, throw, back up, throw, I found I could get off three axes at most enemies before they reached me. At this point, I would hit them with Sinister Strike (mildly buffed attack that also adds a combo point), then Gouge them (another combo point, and they're stunned for 4 seconds), then walk around behind them and Backstab (another combo point, and extra damage). This then sets up a finishing move, the only one I have used is Eviscerate, which just does a lot of damage, more if you have more combo points. In some cases, this sequence was enough to kill an enemy pretty much before they can hit back. Other times, not so much, but always effective.
I still need to learn how to use Rogue stealth a bit more. So far I've mostly focused on direct combat, no sneaking around. After a few more newb quests, I'll be off to Ogrimmar, which is the Horde's great capital (I believe), and should be off to a good start. This gives some indication of how Jay goes through levels so fast. I think it probably took several days for Nafuolt to reach level 10, and it took weeks for me to figure out how important capital cities (and Auction Houses) are, but Malguont is L10 in less than a day's play, and on his way to the capital. My only regret is that Darkspear (Malguont's server) seems pretty sparsely populated with players as compared to Kel'Thuzad, which ostensibly will reduce lag, but also means there's fewer people to group with, fewer people to buy and sell with, fewer enemies to PvP against, etc. etc. We shall see if the Auction House has the same power on a less densely populated server... I sure hope so...
Check this out: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-rogue&t=14610&p=1&tmp=1#post14610
For all the playing I do, there's still people who are ten times more into it.