Free MMORPG: How a Computer Game Becomes Deadly Serious by Emile van Veen

show her that he was paying attention, he said, “Just like your Killermage is in Mulgore to help my Gunslinger.”
    “Exactly, and Mulgore is a level one to ten zone!”
    “So what does this mean?”
    She held her hands up in the air to show her incomprehension. “I don’t know. But we’re going to see what they’re doing!”
    She clicked on one of the many icons surrounding the screen and Killermage started to cast a spell: Teleport: Ogrimmar . Bolts of light appeared at her fingertips.
    A few seconds later she materialized at another location, on top of some wooden platform. Killermage summoned her mount and jumped off the platform onto the path below. She galloped down the path. Suddenly she veered to the right and jumped right on top of the roof of a house built on the ledge below the path. This was definitely not the official way down. They hopped to another roof and again to another. One final jump brought them on the ground.
    There were a lot of other players around, Robert guessed there must be hundreds. Rebecca charged right through them on her horse and rode straight into a building. Briefly, Robert glimpsed the sign on the outside of the building, which read Bank of Ogrimmar . Inside, she dismounted and walked up to one of the men standing there. She clicked on him, and a window opened. It held a lot of slots, and to the bottom was a row of purple bags. She opened a few of them, searching for something. After a few tries she found what she was looking for, some bottle. She took it before Robert could read what it was.
    She ran outside and mounted again, turning sharply around. In a gallop they skirted around the huge bank building, following a road that veered rather steeply upward. She charged into another building consisting solely of a spiral staircase. Halfway up, she dismounted, apparently automatically. A few seconds later they arrived at the top. Robert saw they were on a tower, higher than all the other buildings around. Killermage headed straight for the character standing on the edge of the platform. His tag read Doras, Wind Rider Master . A new window opened, showing a spider web of flight routes and destinations. Without hesitation, Rebecca selected one, a puff of dust appeared, and a split second later they were on the back of a huge winged animal carrying them upward and away at incredible speed.
    Robert was watching all this in awe. “Wow, this is amazing!” They had now left the city behind and were floating down a river. “Where are we going?”
    “Splintertree Post,” she answered, opening the Friends Window again. They saw that all the members of The Hammer of Grimstone were still listed as being in Ashenvale. “Splintertree Post is the central flight path in Ashenvale.”
    “Will it be easy to find them?”
    She shook her head emphatically. “No, not at all. Ashenvale is, in fact, a huge forest, with all kinds of secluded areas that are way off the roads. I can’t think of many zones that are worse for trying to find someone.”
    Now they were descending toward a small settlement. When they landed, Rebecca opened her bag and clicked on the bottle she had retrieved from the bank earlier. Next she summoned her horse and they charged out of Splintertree Post.
    “I just drank an Elixir of Detect Undead,” she explained. “Because it’s so hard to find someone out here, we need another way to scan the woods for them. Two of their members are Undead, so they’re going to show up on the tracking screen.”
    “Is this like the Track Beasts ability my hunter has?” Robert asked.
    She gave him a wide smile. “Good, you’re learning fast! Yes, it is, but hunters are the only class with the ability to track all kinds of races. Other classes have to rely on elixirs, but there are only elixirs for tracking a few races. Hunters can learn to track literarily everything.”
     
     
    ***
     
     
    They had been at it for over two hours today, for the fifth day in a row. Drimm thought it