Day 1 - The Importance of Experience

Installed correctly, no hurricanes on the horizon, wife and kids safely tucked into bed, time to wow it up.

Log on, all characters have gear so no hacking was involved, so far that 6 bucks on an authenticator is working.

I decided to go into Mists of Pandaria “raw”, no add-ons, I wanted the uncut, unprotected experience...how dumb was that. Much like “Blackthought Does Vegas 2001" going in “raw” turned out nothing like I’d planned and the experience left me burning.

First and foremost I knew I was going to want to buy something from the AH, sitting on 30k gold so I didn’t want to fumble my way through my first bg with less than optimal gear. Well the normal interface for the AH still blows. Auctionator is a must.

Second the action bars still suck, Bartender is still my goto.

Zygor’s is a must. I forgot how silly wandering around aimlessly was. I know some people like the experience of not knowing wtf to do but seriously I have better things to do with my time than search a jungle for lost people when Zygor can tell me right where to go.

Which brings us to the title of today’s lesson. Experience is important.

“No shyt blackthought,” is what you might be telling yourself…and you’d be right. So let me explained what happened.

I log in and get a breadcrumb quest to lead me to the new zone and all the bears (a panda is a bear afterall) and such. Away I go. I complete the first couple of quests, get a green axe and some gold. MY BG que pops, I go and do that. Good game, it ends. Back to questing.

I finish up a handful of quests and have my first dungeon queue. I take care of that by killing off some drunken bunnies (more on this later this week). I finish up the quest, get some lootz, back I go to questing. I handle about a dozen more quests and I get curious about how close I am to level 86….where’s my exp bar?

“…shyt, no exp bar, did they change things?” Was the first thought that ran through my mind, “Ahhhh” I says, “bartender hides it by default.”

Well turns out bartender does not hide it by default. NO that’s not it. Where is the experience bar…?

Turns out I’d been playing the last 2 hours with my experience turned off. :(

Well lesson learned and on that note a couple of ground rules  on getting started again

Rule# 1. …MAKE SURE YOU’RE EXPERIENCE IS TURNED ON!!!!!

That is all.

Thought I’d share that:)

More to come, getting the write up down for my first impressions of the new World of Warcraft , the horrors of not remembering much of anything AND coming into a WHOLE NEW GAME.

Turns out things have changed, so much in regards to skills, specs, glyphs and the like that I really feel like I’m playing a different game.

What a difference a year makes. Stay tuned…