WoW Week 1

Today we take the much anticipated plunge into World of Warcraft. This will be our first journey into Azeroth, as part of the Alliance. Today is about getting our bearings.

You have several tasks to complete during this first adventure. Firstly, you must all begin to explore your environment. Be careful about wandering off the beaten path of trails and roads, You will encounter many dangers lying in wait if you do. You will need to complete your first few quests which will aid you in gaining experience points and levelling up, as well has help you to build up your inventory.

Your homework job for this week will be to read the first chapter of your chosen graphic novel.
When you do so, you must think about ways in which the story you are reading is similar to different elements of World of Warcraft. You will then need to write a short journal entry in this blog, of 1-2 paragraphs which discuss these similarities.

Watch out for grammar and punctuation difficulties!

It might help you to think about Lore, characters, settings, quests, language  both in the book and in the game. I look forward to reading your first journal entry. We will begin next week's quest in-world. Check back next week for a glimpse of what is in store.

Week 6: Lore

Read: To Russia with Gloves and Trouble and Strife

Wow: Search out different non-player characters in WoW. Try to find out as much as you can about each one. Can you find any of these ones?

Blog: Read through the descriptions of some of the most important non-player characters in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Think about what you have learned about the characters in the novel. Plan and write a short (1-2 paragraph) lore description for one of the main characters in Arctic Incident.

Our First Meetup

We held our first meeting of the WoW club this afternoon. What can I say? Kids pick these things up so quickly. Before I knew it they were 3 levels above me, riding phoenixes, questing and learning to get around. We decided to keep everyone in the Alliance, which means a few of us, myself included had to create a new character, as our first characters belonged to the Horde.  We are very lucky in that our systems manager Mr. Montes is a bit of a  WoW expert, having played extensively over the years. The kids were thrilled to have him introduce the game to them and take their many questions. By the time we got out to the computers the energy was really crackling. The bell rang at 3:00 and no one moved to go home, myself included. Most of us continued playing until just before 4:00.

We didn't begin the readings or the reflections this week. The readings will begin after the Christmas holidays, the reflections start next week in this blog. So what did we learn?

The students began learning about WoW lore. They learned how to move and communicate in-world. They learned to accept and complete quests and began working together in order to meet their objectives.

Next week we will blog about our experiences so far, take part in some more quests and then prepare to reconvene in January.  I don't for a minute think the kids will leave it at that. I can imagine that most of them will continue playing over the next couple of weeks. I can only hope to try to keep up with them when we return.  I know they will have a lot to show me in the new year.

I am including a copy of the letter with live links here for any of our parents who need one, in order to explore further. I will be posting a video in the blog later on, which explains how to set up parental controls for those who plan on downloading the trial version at home.