Fun and destruction in Westfall

29th September 2009 – 5.17 pm

Why wait for a cataclysm? The plan for the Bastards to visit our first instance may not be realised, gaining a couple of levels and forming the guild taking longer than expected, but that's okay. Instead we create our own version of the next World of Warcraft expansion by irrevocably changing the landscape of Westfall. Once an idyllic farming countryside, a blight falls on the land as a new Dead Scar is created, our group slaughtering any living thing in our path. The very earth is turned inside-out in our wake, any resource of worth stripped from the landscape to leave only a blackened and desolate trail.

Unlike the original, and lesser, Dead Scar in Ghostlands, the new Westfall Dead Scar doesn't follow a straight course. The line of devastation is a series of mathematical curves determined by vastly complex formulae, that somewhat implausibly happens to coincide with every mineral deposit in the region. I manage to mine my first few loads of tin ore, but in my accustomed vigour to extract as much as possible I may have dug too deeply in a couple of places. But if you see a Balrog in Westfall it's not entirely my fault, as I'm fairly sure our herbalist pulled some mageroyal out of the ground bringing too much of the root up with it.

When we reach Sentinel Hill, the Alliance camp in Westfall, a blood elf paladin probably thinks he is griefing us by killing all the NPCs. In reality, he simply solves our problem of how to kill allied NPCs as part of our rampage. With nothing left living in Sentinel Hill—except the blood elf, if you can call that 'living'—we move out. We are thirsty for gnoll blood after the Hogger gore of last week, hunting them down to get more trophy paws. After butchering several camps I ask if everyone has enough gnoll paws for now. 'All your gnoll paws are belong to me!' calls out Livya, causing a silence to fall across the continent so heavily that not even tumbleweeds intrude on our expressionless bodies. '...yes, I do', she continues. Oh, good. Onwards! There are murlocs to kill on the shore.

Murlocs are vicious little creatures that must be one of the most hated mobs in the game. Gathered around starter areas, they are seen early and often. Their waddling gait and aquatic nature bely an impressive ability to sprint that is used either to attack you whenever your back is turned, or run away when injured to get reinforcements. On seeing that some of them have trained sand crawlers, Vulzerda spits out, 'this one is both a murloc and a hunter, is there anything more hateful?' and we spur ourselves on to making it safe to go back in the water. But, as we should have learnt from the emperor, hate leads to suffering. Our suffering in this case. Trying to restore nature's balance to a group or two of murlocs whilst our healer is picking flowers or drinking to regain mana, or something equally pointless, turns out to be a bad idea. But corpse runs are more fun as a group.

Leaving the murlocs behind for now, we seek to correct the Defias Brotherhood's irritating presence in Westfall. The Brotherhood are annoying if only because the pillager mages amongst them have the same dubious taste in fashion as our warlock. As I survey our continuing killing spree I spy a spellcaster about to throw some magic damage. I rush to clobber her with my copper mallet of two-handed pounding, but the weapon refuses to swing. My target turns out to be Livya, in the same green garb as the pillagers, although I still don't see why I couldn't attack. Meanwhile, Vulzerda is collapsed behind me on the grassy dirt, clutching a pillager to her bosom, crying. 'Nooooo! I can't believe we've lost Livya to the Defias scum! She was so young! Why did... oh, you're over there.' All our confusion is thankfully rectified when the warlock switches from wearing a green dress to a red one.

The big news of the evening's fun and laughter is the creation of our guild. We need ten people willing to be initially aligned with whatever stupid name we choose, and there are only four of us. We're going to need help. The initial attempt at getting anyone to sign the guild creation charter is not terribly successful, although that is mostly because NPCs apparently aren't able to do so. I didn't know, but it explains their unresponsive attitude.

We try again to get signatures after leaving what was once Westfall, this time asking arbitrary weirdos in Stormwind but, after one miserable failure, taking care to avoid the hardcore RP weirdos. By some miracle of compassion we manage to get the required signatures and are able to register our guild name. Sadly, 'Bastards' is not available as a guild name. Neither is 'Looking for Solid Dwarf', for some perverse reason. Our chosen name, once registered, has some people doubting its longevity. I don't see the problem myself.

The newly formed Filesystem Checkwits pose for the obligatory evening-ending screen grab, a mixed bag of 14th and 15th level destructive and incompetent players begging for notoriety.

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