I'm starting to get the hang of WOW. By “getting the hang of WOW” I mean that I progress through it at maybe one half the rate Jay does, which is pretty good. I believe I started playing Guoljin on Friday night, which means I've had five days to play him, and he's now level 21. Not only that, but he's nicely outfitted in gear, has a couple gold pieces, healing potions in his safe deposit box, and his Fishing, Cooking and Enchanting skills are coming along nicely.
Fishing is pretty stupid, but I finally gave it a focused try, and found it to be fairly rewarding insofar as it gave me a little self imposed mini-quest to run around collecting cooking recipes for fish I was catching, which in turn allows me to boost my Cooking skill. Might seem trivial, but I want to get to a point where I can make Thistle Tea, which is a very useful tool for Rogues, as it instantly replenishes their Energy, even in combat. I have the quest to get the Thistle Tea recipe, but it's still a couple levels beyond me, so I have time to fish, cook, and get skilled up. Speaking of skills, Guoljin is also moving along in Enchanting. For a long time now, I've been saving every item I get my hands on, and disenchanting it. As a result I had a safe deposit box full of Strange Dust and Magical Essences. I'd heard that it's possible to just keep enchanting the same item over and over, so I took an old piece of chest armor, and started enchanting it. I had about 40 units of Strange Dust, I burned through about 30 of them, got myself skilled up, and learned some new enchants. I had been clinging onto the same piece of chest armor for some time because it had a +15 hp enchantment on it, and I was pleased to find that with my improved Enchanting skills, I was able to put a +15 hp enchant on my new piece of chest armor.
Also of note is that I made my first and second PvP kills, both of which were totally lame and dubious, but they were kills nonetheless, and I wasn't harmed in the process. In the first one, I spotted a L26 Paladin (Albus?) running out of Ratchet, being chased by higher level friendlies. Since I had nothing to lose, I ran after him, used my Sprint to catch him, and backstabbed him to death while he ran. One on one, I'm sure he would have dominated me, but it's fairly pleasing to kill a guy 6 levels above you under any circumstance, especially considering that I probably did the majority of the damage he took, with repeated Backstabs. Later on, while running through the Crossroads, I spot the same Paladin, right in the middle of town, dancing. People were smacking him, it was pretty confusing, and I just sorta attacked him as a reflex, and he died. I have no idea how he got into the middle of the town, why he was dancing, what any of it meant, but I killed him anyway. Fun, but pointless. In both cases I checked the combat logs, and it looked like I landed the killing blow, but I don't think I got any XP for it. Sorta a mystery how PvP works, but when Guoljin is a little higher level, he'll have to learn. I hope they implement a system like DAoC's Battlegrounds, where you can be reasonably sure that the enemies you're facing are close to your level, and you can gain special rewards for doing well.