I have a friend who’s in the early stages of writing his own MMORPG. I don’t know if it’ll ever come to anything, but there’s one thing I’ve been quite forceful in telling him, as he works on his design.

There must be dragons.

For me, there is something magical about battling those huge, mythical creatures. In Everquest one of the first raids I ever went on was one to kill Lady Vox. The feeling when our Guild bested her for the first time was wonderful. Raiding was very different in those days. We had to co-ordinate buffing by bringing several higher-level characters along. Once each group was buffed, they’d log out, and connect to the chat server, then when everyone was buffed the call would go out in chat to relog, and we’d be on a strict timer to kill the dragon. And if you were above level 52 you would get ported out of her lair as soon as she was engaged, and yes, we did kill the foolish Wizard who had levelled to 53 back down to level 52 so he could join in!

In World of Warcraft the first dragon I encountered was Onyxia. Again, this was one of the first raid encounters I ever experienced in WoW, and it really convinced me that WoW was going to be a long-term game for me. First of all, the quest to gain access to her lair was long and complex, and thoroughly enjoyable. Then the actual encounter – the mechanics, the different stages, the joy of working with a large group of friends to learn the encounter and finally to beat it was something I really enjoyed.

So when Blizzard updated the Onyxia encounter, and the Officers of my Guild set a date for an encounter, I dusted off my raiding head, and signed up. We got enough raiders signed up to attempt the 25-man version of the encounter, which, whilst not as large as the 40-man original, still felt large And it took us a few tries to learn the encounter, especially as most of my guildies had not seen the original version, but by the end of the evening we had a dead dragon on our hands

And I’m happy to report that the Onyxia encounter is still my favourite encounter in WoW. It’s been updated for level 80s, with some added complexity, but the fundamental mechanics remain the same. And standing in the huge cavern, watching Onyxia take a Deep Breath and fly from one side to the other, breathing fire, made me feel small and vulnerable. And it was magical.

Yes… There must be dragons

I love the scenery. I have explored both starting areas – Borean Tundra and the Howling Fjord. I love how different they both feel. I love the way Blizzard have adapted things that were problems in the Burning Crusade – giving two starter areas with lots of quest hubs means that on the whole people are pretty spread out, and everything is playable, even though some competition for some content can be a challenge at times.

I’ve run through Utgarde Keep a couple of times, and I hope this is a sign of things to come – a nice, short dungeon, not too much trash, we completed it in an hour or less. Some interesting boss fights. It seemed pretty easy for well-geared level 70s.

I recommend everyone make a Death Knight and play through their initial quest line. It’s great. The phasing of the world is smooth and seamless, and there are glimpses of the new siege weapon interface (taking over a cannon to shoot hundreds of soldiers on the beach for example). The storytelling is great, and I think they do a really good job of introducing the class. I have yet to suss out how best to play my Death Knight – at the moment I’m still just frantically mashing buttons for each fight, but it seems to make stuff dead

I’m loving the fact that new content has rejuvenated my husband’s enjoyment of the game – he now can’t wait for us to log in in the evening and quest together. I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way for a Resto druid to level is duoing with a Warlock. Although I don’t feel quite as fragile as I did when levelling 60-70 – the changes to spell power have helped with that I think.

On the whole the launch was very smooth from my point of view. The EU servers did not experience the extended downtime that the US servers suffered from. Game delivered my Collector’s Edition the day before the release, and when I installed it I was delighted to see that it used the same patch files that I had already downloaded for the standard game – another learning point from TBC perhaps? I was all installed and ready to go when I got home from work on the evening of the 12th, and so when whisperings went around the server that Northrend content was opening up early (about 8pm UK time), I was poised and ready to go. I got my Frosty, created my Death Knight, and got a couple of hours questing in with my husband before bedtime.

As far as downsides go, there have been queues on my server – the longest being 30 minutes or so – which I have never seen before. I’m sure this is a sign of the popularity of the expansion, and Blizzard have another huge success on their hands. By last night the queue was down to 10 minutes or so – it’s inconvenient but I can live with it.

The only other downside I’ve seen is that there seems to be the same trend with quest rewards as in TBC – there’s no caster leather! All the quests seem to reward with caster cloth or melee leather. Where’s the Resto/Moonkin love? In TBC I didn’t replace any of my pre-TBC resto gear until about level 68 I think – I was hoping for something a little earlier in Wrath. It’s not that much of a big deal at the moment, as I’m in Tier 4/Badge gear, which should last me very well.

But those are two very minor niggles, and on the whole I’m an extremely happy Druid (with slight Death Knight tendancies!)

I created a gnome Mage and Warlock pair to level together. I am lucky enough to have 2 computers on my desk, so I two-boxed them. I used Synergy to be able to control both PCs from one keyboard and mouse, and I set up my Logitech G15 keyboard so that both characters’ key spells were on easily accessible hotkeys. The G15Buttons UI mod made that really easy.

The triple xp is only available for the first three months, so my plan was to use that time to level the pair up to 60. I also had a level 22 rogue at the time of starting, and planned to use my “grant a level” levels to bring her up to 52.

Well, my three months ran out on Saturday. And whilst I knew Saturday was the day, I didn’t realise it would be quite early on Saturday. I had just managed to collect all the Green Hills of Stranglethorn pages to do all the hand ins for the Mage and Warlock, and suddenly realised that the “summon friend” option had disappeared from my right click menu. Boo!

So I didn’t quite hit my target, but I didn’t do too badly. The Mage and Warlock are now each level 44, and my Rogue is 43. With the Wrath release imminent I dount I’ll be doing much with my alts over the next months or so at least, but they’re there when I’m ready to come back to them. I realised whilst levelling that I really don’t like two-boxing. It’s fine when you’re just running around, but when you get that unexpected add, and have to react quickly, I just can’t do it. So I’m looking forward to soloing each class up to the higher levels. It’ll also help me to learn more about playing each class.

I’m sure this was a great marketing ploy to get people buying more accounts. As I don’t want to get suckered into paying for another account on an ongoing basis, I have transferred the Mage back onto my main account and cancelled the RAF one. And I still have a free character slot for my Death Knight.