Monday, February 6, 2012

Leveling Θ: Origins

I've wanted a max level warrior since before Wrath of the Lich King came out. My first real attempt at a warrior was an undead warrior which I mainly leveled solo. He's currently level 60, and was roughly that level before Wrath was released. At the time I envisioned him becoming my main character, since I thought warriors were so cool. So after Blizzcon 2007, when I still mainly played Horde characters, I put my murloc costume on my Horde server with him. Little did I know that I would eventually come to not play horde characters, and that I would hardly ever play characters on that server.

I've spent so many years without my beloved murloc costume because it's been trapped there. I've missed it so much. It's for that reason that I started to level Θ. I started her because I wanted a character that I could transfer off the server to bring the murloc costume to where I'm starting to play these days. She would need to be an Alliance character, so that I wouldn't have to pay for a race change. I made her a warrior, because I've always wanted a max-level warrior.

The name came from my love for Greek letters which itself came from my love for mathematics. The proper spelling of it, 'Theta', was already taken, so I used a phonetically similar misspelling. At first, the choice of the name was somewhat random, but it would soon prove to be very appropriate. I'd never use a Greek letter such as α ('alpha'), Ω ('omega'), or π ('pi) for names since they're too well known. It seems like a mathematically appropriate name for a warrior since 'Θ' is often used to represent angles, and warriors often find themselves concerned with angles.

Since you can't transfer low-level characters, I had to start leveling Θ. To Elwynn forest I went. Since I spent so much time focusing on my high-level Alliance characters before I stopped playing, I hadn't actually spent any time going through all the low-level content after it had been revised. I was quite pleased with the changes to the human starting area and quickly moved on to the Goldshire questing area.

Since I hadn't any high-level characters on this server, I didn't have access to any heirlooms for Θ. I suppose you could say that I was playing au naturale. It's just as well, I'd like to experience as much content as possible, not blow through it. As I was questing at around level 6 or 7, I was sent to the kobold cave in southern Elwynn. I'm a miner/blacksmith, so when questing in a cave I have to get every node that appears, because they're so hard to find elsewhere.

Those kobolds were monsters. They would just pull in groups of 3 or 4 and decimite my tiny lowbie-warrior self. I died 7 times in that cave trying to get all the ore out of it. I dinged more than once in there. I had to resort to pulling with my gray-quality bow to stay safe, and even that was no guarantee. I generally consider myself to be pretty good at this game, and I, as Θ, was humbled in that cave that day.

Finally having cleared the cave of it's precious minerals, I ran back to town. On the way there I killed a spider, and from its corpse I drew a strong one-handed axe. I equipped the axe immediately because, despite being one-handed, it was far better than my two-handed sword I was using, and when I returned to town I purchased the finest shield available to complement it. Then the name Θ seemed to fit, as it resembles a circular shield one might use. My next quest took me to kill murlocs. The murlocs, true to their tendencies, attacked me in a group of four. Between my new axe, shield, and Victory Rush I brought them all down. So when level 10 came around and I had to choose a spec, my choice was made for me. I would level as Θ, a protection warrior, the shield of Elwynn.