An Amazing Place

You never know what might happen when you login to WoW.

Monday was supposed to be a non-WoW evening for me, but since I decided I was going to start working the Auction House a bit more seriously, I was on my bank alt in Silvermoon collecting data.  Well, if you count setting Auctioneer to scan and then going and doing some cleaning as "being on WoW", that is.

About a half an hour later I was back in front of the screen, moving a few things around via mail before logging off.  Right about then an L9 Paladin came wandering by, asking where the mailbox was.  The toon next to me started jumping up and down and pointing, then shook his head while the Paladin wandered away.

"Over here," I called, and when I didn't get a response, I started jumping up and down.  "It has a glowing diamond on top."

The Paladin reappeared.  "Thanks," she said.  "I've never used a mailbox before."

I told her she was welcome and went back to the AH to list a few items.

"Actually, I have one more question," she whispered me.  "How do I get a pet out?"

I gave her the instructions on where to find the Pets on her character screen, and I was rewarded with the sounds of the Corehound Pup nearby.

The Paladin didn't sound so impressed with the pup, and began peppering me with questions about pets.  After a few minutes of fielding her queries, I told her to wait a moment at the Bazaar while I went and got Quintalan.  I pulled out a couple of my whelps to show her, and explained how some of these pets are fairly rare and can cost a lot of gold on the Auction House.

"But yours are so pretty, and mine is, well...."

"Come on," I said, giving her some gold.  "There's a place here in Eversong where you can buy a dragonhawk pet."

I led her down to Fairbreeze Village --with a slight detour by the Farstrider encampment by mistake-- and up into the pet vendor there.

The dragonhawk hatchlings lazily flying around the tent was more what the Paladin was looking for, and she bought a pet or two.

Since I played a Paladin, we then worked on her attack rotation.  "I gave up on questing because I couldn't figure out what to do," she confessed.  I explained how the auras, blessings, and seals worked, and then explained about how to use a Judgement.  She practiced on a few dragonhawks and we chatted for a while.

If this sounds a lot like Rhii's entry in I Sheep Things about adopting a newbie, yeah, it's a lot like that.  It was pure serendipity, but it turned out to be a great chance to help someone start off playing the game without any pressure.  I had nothing going on, my wife was fine with me doing a good deed for the evening, and the Paladin was great to chat with.

I was lucky when I started playing WoW, because I had Soul and his wife to help me out.  Hell, I didn't even know how to work Voxli or Vent, much less WoW itself.  But paying it forward like this is not only rewarding, but it also means that this new player won't become discouraged by not being able to figure things out.  We can spend so much of our game time doing the things we like doing --whether it's raiding, questing, working the AH, running instances, doing oddball stuff--  that we forget what it is like to see the game through new eyes.  We like to share our passions with others, and seeing somebody get it with an 'aha!' moment is a wonderful feeling.

At the end of my evening, we ran over to Durotar so she could take the zep to Thunder Bluff.  I helped her set up some flight points and showed her how to work them by zipping back and forth from Org to Thunder Bluff.  I explained that while I like Eversong the best, the view from a windrider flying over Mulgore to Thunder Bluff is simply beautiful.  I was going to wait until she hearthed back to Silvermoon before I left, but she said she was going to wander around Thunder Bluff for a while.

"This place is amazing!" she said.

Ain't it?


(EtA:  I started this post Tuesday, but finished it Wednesday morning.  Corrected the improper date reference.)