Perpetual Newbie

So I’m convinced I’ll never actually be a good player. I’m the perpetual newbie. I can’t seem to ever get the hang of it.

Just yesterday this was brought to my attention again. My husband (BlueRageBar) and I were discussing respeccing my warlock for more damage in dungeons. I am probably the only DPS class to ever use dual specs—for 2, yes 2, DPS builds. One is for damage, and one is for not dying. See, when I first started playing, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. As opposed to now, when I only sort of have no idea what I’m doing. I knew I was a warlock and that…no, I knew I was a warlock. That’s about it. My first few hours of playing were so bad I’m almost ashamed to admit them. You have to understand, World of Warcraft is my first MMO EVAR.And that I’m really, really bad at action adventure games. There’s a reason the only computer games I owned were Tetris and Monopoly.

So I download the trial version of WoW. I pick my character. Now, I freely admit to being a girl. And to being a girl at times, if you get my drift. I had an issue. I had to play Horde, so I could play with my husband. But the Horde races were sougly. It was awful. The only race I actually liked didn’t have the option to play a Warlock. I ended up playing an undead Warlock. In retrospect, I should’ve picked an Orc. (Thankfully, two weeks later my brother offered me a copy of Burning Crusade and I was saved by the blood elves. That’s what hooked me on WoW—pretty elves).

So I’ve got this warlock. Ok, now what? Oh, hey, here’s a guy with a ! on his head. Maybe he knows something. Nope, but he knows someone who does. So I go talk to this other guy. First quest complete! This is where we run into trouble. This other guy wants me to go kill some stuff for him. Ok, I can do this.

Ok, seriously, how do I do this? Obviously, there has to be a way to kill stuff. so I run up to some guy and start stabbing at him. Except nothing’s happening. He’s just standing there looking at the crazy warlock waving a dagger in his face. So I hollered for my brother. “Hey, how do I attack something?” “Right click!” OHHHHHH. I can do that. I right-clicked on the…thing…I was supposed to be killing. Oh God it’s eating my face!!!!!! So, being the newbie that I am, I start frantically right-clicking hoping something will happen. Eventually, after I’ve developed arthritis in my middle finger, the thing drops dead. So I go after another one. Next thing I know I’m dead. I frantically search the screen for some evidence of what went wrong. Then, in the top left corner, I see it: my health bar. Which, not surprisingly, says 0. Mystery solved, I busy myself trying to figure out how to get alive again. Well, there’s only one option, so I click “Release.”

Ok, great, now where am I? I appear to be in some sort of graveyard. I suppose that makes sense, but now I have to go find my body. Since I haven’t figured out how to use the map yet, this is going to be a challenge. Somehow, I find my way back to my body and start killing more stuff. I’ve been going at it for a while when my brother looks in to see how I’m doing.

“Having fun?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t realize it would take this long to level! I’m only level 1!”

He stepped in to take a look at what I’m doing.

“Uh, you’re level 3.”

“I am????”

Then he points out my level indicator on my picture. Sure enough, there’s a 3 there. So I start killing stuff again, trying to reach level 4. It had been getting easier to kill stuff, but I just figured I’d finally learned how to use the dagger. I’m just flailing away, having a great time, and my brother asks me, “Why aren’t you using Shadowbolt?”

“I have a Shadowbolt!?!?!”

Yeah. I’m that good.