What's going on here?

I didn't get to play at all yesterday. Sad. I do have a question though. What happened to the NPCs on the boats? I don't remember what patch it was, but one of the recent ones added NPCs to all the boats, and I assume zeppelins, although I didn't play my horde characters during that time. I had always thought they needed somebody on the boat, otherwise who is steering the thing? Not only that, but having a vendor on the boat was nice as well, even better being a tailor so you can buy all your threads and such and craft some items while you wait to get moving. So at this point I just want to know the reason why they took those out, or whether they even announced they were doing it or not, because I don't remember reading anything about it, I just one day noticed they weren't there anymore. I suppose zoning those NPCs between continents may have caused problems or lag or something, but hopefully if that's the case they will fix it and put them back in, if nothing else they at least make the boats seem less devoid of life. Anybody know what happened to them?

I'm also a little lost with what to do with my rogue. Right now he's just a bank mule, but he's the first character I leveled to 60 and the only one I've really done any end game content with, so I feel kinda bad abandoning him to be a bank mule (not sure why, he's a computer game character, but still). I think what I'm stuck on the most is how to spec him to make me want to play again. I was specced combat before, with a dagger in the main hand and sword in offhand, and I did a good amount of damage I thought, usually topped dps on 5-man instances, which is really all I was ever able to do with the crappy gear I had. Now I'm not really sure what to put points into, I haven't done much research on rogue talents, and the last time I had to respec was after TBC came out and I had no idea what I was doing. Back before the expansion we had to get into the subtlety tree to get to Improved Sap, which gave a 90% chance to use sap without breaking stealth, now you can just sap and not worry about it, so I don't even know if the subtlety tree is worth it. I mainly like to solo, and I've been seeing that combat swords is the way to go for maximum burst damage, since I won't be going up against many mobs where I need sustained dps, but how much different is combat daggers from swords? Not that my daggers are that good anyway, but I always liked backstab, and there are other skills that require daggers that seem like they'd be helpful. I guess I just would like some input on rogue skills and what kind of point distributions are good for leveling with the current talent trees. Damn, I need to respec my druid too...

Chaaarge!!!

Probably my favorite warrior ability, and the reason I love playing one, is Charge. I remember when I first started WoW and all I had was my little gnome rogue, and I would see the people playing warriors being able to get within a certain distance of a mob and then run up to them really fast, so fast it left a trail behind them, and it stuns the enemy for a couple seconds too. I always thought it was a cool ability, and while my rogue may have been able to stealth, I didn't think it really looked as cool as what a warrior could do. So now that I finally got around to starting up a warrior and got him up to a high enough level to learn charge I pretty much use it exclusively as my opening attack. Well maybe not if I want to pull something away because it is too close to other mobs, but I just love being able to close that distance so fast, slap on a stun, and even get some rage out of it.

Did I mention how much I dislike Mulgore? Alright, I can live with a zone being spread out, I mean I'm gonna be in the Barrens next so I better be able to deal with that. What gets to me is that the quest givers are so spread out too. You got the main town that you get a lot of the quests from, but then you have this wandering tauren walking along the road that you have find to get his quest, and then to turn it in. There's also this elder tauren or something that's in the middle of nowhere, and it sort of messes up my whole questing process. I like to quest in circuits, gather a bunch of quests, figure out which ones take me to which areas, and get them all done in one swoop with minimum travel time. Then, to make it worse, you have to deal with Thunder Bluff and turning in some of the quests there. One of them tells you where the NPC is by saying "on the highest plateau in Thunder Bluff," but I checked and the one I found him on is not the highest. Luckily I hit level 12 and I am done with Mulgore, so time to move on to the Barrens and all the loudmouth idiots that reside there.

Also hopped on my priest for a bit this morning before work. I was going to run my warrior to the barrens and get the flight paths, but the realm was down so I had to switch to my Ally realm which, despite being one of the first realms, still has no issues with population. Guess I got lucky. I went back to work on the Twilight Hammer quests, and actually finished one, but didn't have time to turn it in before I had to leave, oh well. I think I can finish Silithus up tonight if I put my mind to it, at least whats left that I want to do at this point, some of those quests just aren't worth the time it takes to do them. I guess that's what you get when you open a new zone without testing it, and since it doesn't matter so much anymore I don't think they're going to do anything about it at this point.

By the way, anybody notice the other zones in Azeroth that have boundaries but can't be accessed? I think the most prominent one is the zone where Mount Hyjal would be, in between Felwood and Azshara. There are a couple zones in the eastern continent that are like this too, although I'm not sure what would be in those, but you'd think since they have borders on the map they might plan on putting something there eventually. And that brings me to the Emerald Dream portals, or at least what seem to be leading to the Emerald Dream. There are world boss dragons guarding them now, but I'm thinking that unless WotLK is the last expansion they make, I think they'll be utilizing these portals as access points to new zones, and I would be excited to see this happen. I can't think of anywhere else that a new threat to Azeroth will come from, and I was always curious about what those portals lead to, so hopefully we will be able to see what is on the other side some day. I like to speculate on future developments in the game in case you haven't noticed.

Time to rage

No, I'm not pissed off, but I did start up my Tauren Warrior, he's level 9 now. See, I created characters ahead of time so I'd be sure to get the name I want, and a lot of the time I'm surprised at which names I try are already taken. My character names tend to be taken from books or TV shows or something, and I try to pick them so they fit in as a fantasy name, rather than some sort of screen name that you would use on a message board. Sure I don't play on a RP server, but seeing some Ally toon running around called 'Hordesux' is just annoying. Try being creative at least with your name.

Anyway, I was originally going to go with a troll warrior, mainly because I like trolls for some reason, maybe because of the WC2 axe throwers, those guys were awesome. Then I took a look at the racials and they suck for a warrior, pretty much the worst racials you could have as a warrior on the Horde side, maybe out of any race. So I went with a Tauren, with increased health and Warstomp I had no trouble picking him. I don't particularly like Mulgore all that much, too spread out and with a serious lack of roads so that to get anywhere you either have to fight endlessly on the way or you're stuck running from aggroed mobs the entire way which may or may not lose aggro once you actually get to where you're going. Now Durotar isn't much better, but at least when you finish there and start the Barrens (which I'm not looking forward to) you don't have a bunch of running to do before you get back to stuff your level. Oh well, I'll push through it and then start in on the Horde stuff that I've never done before. I plan on going with a Fury build at first, Dual Wield, and no idea what I'm gonna be doing for an end game build, but that really depends on if I actually get to that point with him or not. I've only ever made it to endgame content once, and then they raised the level cap and I got tired of that character. We'll see how it goes, but I like him so far, just bashing heads and not taking much damage in the process.

On the topic of racials, I can't help but notice that while all the classes have their racial abilities, priests are the only class that it makes such a big difference on. Sure the troll racials are crap for a warrior, but you can still do it with hardly any more trouble than with any other race. But the priest has not only the racials you start out with, but some of the skills you learn later on are based on race too. I didn't know this when I started my priest and I went night elf, later to learn that at the time it was probably the worst race to pick for a priest. Starshards was terrible as it was a channeled spell, I still never use Elune's Grace, and you have the dwarves with Fear Ward and undead with Devouring Plague, a bonus DOT. I wonder if Blizzard decided later on that they didn't like the race you pick to matter that much, because a few patches ago they changed those skills entirely, making Starshards basically a bonus DOT that was also free to cast, and making Fear Ward a skill usable by all priests. I think the point of this change was the even the playing field, giving all priests equal ability. Notice that none of the other classes are like this, and while they can't take away those skills at this point, they can change them so that us NE priests aren't so screwed by our lack of research into the subject. BTW, I started a priest for the sole purpose of getting Shadowform, and not really because I like the bonus it gives, but because it just looks so cool, especially when you're on your mount, but now she's probably one of my favorite toons to play, shadow priests are just awesome.

Once again I'm having trouble sticking to one character for any amount of time. Usually I play one until their rest XP runs out, but now I'm switching around way more often than that. It's just so much more fun to fly through all the low level quests, gaining levels like crazy, buying new skills ever half hour, than it is running around high level areas, being careful about when you pull a mob so as not to pull to many, always watching your back for pats, and being all around much more tedious. I did like the 5-man instances and the way the group dynamic worked, especially when you had people who knew what they were doing, but I think if I actually get to end game stuff I'll be more into the PVP, specifically the BG's because I think it makes the game feel more like the Warcraft RTS games, but instead you're one of the grunts rather than the one commanding them. I look forward to getting pwnd for a while until I get the hang of it and get better gear.

Out of the shadows

Yes, this post will be about my toons that specailize in somehow using darkness or something to cause you damage, but I won't ask how they do it, I just know it works.

I leveled my warlock to pretty close to 13 while finishing up Eversong Forest, and now I will be moving on to the Ghostlands. I'm not sure if I will be doing that right away or not though. I have always wanted to get a warlock to the high levels, but I just ran my mage through the same area and I don't know if I want to do it all again so soon. Not that the Ghostlands aren't fun, just that I could be doing something else. I do have a lot of fun on the lock though, and now that I have the voidwalker I can just send him at mobs and sit back and watch my DOTs do their work. With this toon I should have no problem soloing through the levels, even with elite quests and such. I'm not really sure what spec to go with right now. I know I want to go demonology once I hit 50 so I can try out the Fel Guard, but up until then I don't think that tree is all that great for leveling. I've been checking out the talents on the way up the other trees but I'm not that experienced with locks so I don't know which build would be better for leveling. I know I wouldn't mind having an instant cast Corruption spell, but I also like the bonuses from Improved Shadow Bolt, so at this point I'm kinda stuck. Any advice on this is welcome, but right now I'm leaning more towards the Affliction tree.

Well I decided to wait a bit on the lock and picked up my priest again as she's in the process of mopping up in Silithus before moving on to Outland. Did all the quests that send you into the tunnels with the bugs, did some of the Twilight Hammer quests, and a few other ones on top of that, which puts me about halfway to 62, and I haven't even stepped through the portal yet. I sorta thought once I hit 60 and the XP to level decrease no longer applied that sticking around in Azeroth wouldn't be viable, but while killing mobs doesn't give quite the same XP, it isn't that much slower because the quest XP is almost on par with Outland, not to mention the mobs are a lot weaker. I can't wait to see what she can do once I deck her out in new gear. My gear right now is ridiculously terrible, she's wearing a few pieces of level 38 gear, some from in the 40's and only a few from anywhere close to her level, so if she can tear down mobs this fast now I can only imagine what will happen when she gets those upgrades in Outland. I think tonight will be the last big push to finish up and then it's time to kill some demon orcs and other various Burning Legion bad guys.

Lock it up

Warlock that is. It's one of those classes I've always wanted to get up to a high level, and now with the felguard pet at the end of the demonology tree, I want to play one even more. Sure people call them overpowered, but thats exactly why it would be cool to play one, just to wreak havoc on everyone. Another thing that caught my eye is the ability to summon an infernal, which is cool by in it's own right, but then I was reading one of Ratshag's (Need More Rage) older posts about summoning an infernal in the middle of an lowbie Alliance town and just letting it go, and I thought that was an awesome idea. I assume when you summon one it would attack you first (not sure since I've never done it), but just let yourself die and then come back and watch it run around killing all the little lowbies for a while. I dunno, maybe it would get old after a few times, and it isn't the only reason I want to play a warlock, but I think it would be funny to do every so often when I'm bored.

So anyway, started my lock out in Eversong Forest, got to level 10 in about 3 hours and then called it a night. I've started warlocks before, but never got past about level 12 or so, not really sure why, but I'm interested in playing one up to the high levels, getting more pet options, and figuring out what skills they use to make everyone fear them in PVP. I still love the Blood Elf starting area and how they lay out all the quests so if you plan it out right you can do a circuit around a certain area and complete 3 or 4 quests at the same time without having to do too much running around. On my various other characters I noticed the older starting areas, while fairly well planned out, tended to have a similar layout, with one small area for about level 1-5, then the town that gave out all the quests up until about level 10-12, depending on how you go about them. Now that setup was fine as it was, but they tended to have quests that would send you all the way across the map, then when you complete it and turn it in, it would send you all the way across the map again for the follow up, and all that running could get annoying after a while. The new starting areas tend to have a town, plus 1 or 2 other places that give out quests close to where you need to go to complete the quest. This newer arrangement no doubt came from the fact that they increased the level cap and are now pushing to make leveling before Outlands faster, paired with the changes in patch 2.3 that changed the experience rate from level 20-60 and it will be a much faster push to get to Outland right from the get go.

I like the level progression, and while I tell myself it will be fun once I reach the level cap, I'm not sure how I will feel about it when I actually get there. I did it before when the cap was 60 and tried running some of the 5 man instances at the time, but I was getting bored looking for good groups, running the same instance over and over to get a certain piece of armor without any luck, all the stuff you do when you can't level up anymore. At the time I told myself it was because I was a rogue and they have trouble finding a PUG, plus the fact that my guild was raiding ZG and MC and it was hard to get a group together for the "lesser" instances because most of them didn't need anything from those places. Now I'm not really sure how it will be when I get there. I know there is a lot more stuff to do now, with many instances, daily quests, and all the PVP activities with the arenas and battlegrounds, so hopefully I will find something I like to do once I actually get there. I'm thinking I'll try my hand at some BG's and gather up some of those "welfare epics" people are talking about, but those might be the only kind of epics I have a chance of getting since I don't really have time to raid, I can't really justify giving priority to a videogame over other things. And if I still don't like it, I have enough toons to keep me busy for a long time, there's no way I will get all of them to the level cap, especially with it getting raised again so soon.

In other news, it's Friday and I am ready for the weekend, so I'm gonna leave it at that and I will be back next week with any news of what I do over the weekend, assuming I find free time to play.

Ding?

I hit 63 last night, or should I say dinged 63? Why do we even say 'ding' anyway? The sound the game makes when you level up isn't really a ding, at least not like the ding you hear at the beginning of a boxing match, or when you kick somebody in the nuts in a wrestling videogame (never understood why they added the 'ding' there either, but it makes it funny). I always wonder if people are actually hearing the ding in their head when it happens just because thats what everyone says when it happens. This brings me to another point about online chatting in general and the acronyms we have started using. When you read 'lol' do you actually imagine the other person laughing or do you literally read it as lol (not l-o-l, but lol), like it was actually a word rather than the acronym for 'laughing out loud'. I actually read it literally, which I always thought was strange, because while I know what it means, it doesn't register like that for me, and I always have trouble pronouncing 'lmfao', or 'rofl' for that matter, how the hell are you supposed to say those? And don't even get me started on all the acronyms for the different instances. I remember before the expansion and before I had gotten very far in the game I would run around the capital cities and see all the group announcements for instances like UBRS and thinking "wtf is ubers?" Same thing with LBRS (elbers) and the various other high end instances. Do other people do this? I know my friend looked at me weird when I told him that was out I read internet chat, but I can't be the only one, besides the people who don't actually know what those things stand for.

OK, so I 'dinged' 63 last night with my druid, but not until I got ganked right at pretty much the worst possible moment. So I was still tearing up some stuff in that cave, and while there are a few quests that send you there, pretty much everyone I saw went about their own business, not really bothering to kill opposing faction players. Then, when I'm about 1/2 a bar away from leveling this Tauren druid ambushes me from behind while I've trying to take down two mobs at once, so obviously I died, but druids in cat form, as with rogues, have a tendency to stick around in stealth and camp you, but since you can't see them you don't know whether they left or are just waiting. Well at that point I really wanted to be done with grinding, so I ran back to my corpse, took a little bathroom break just so if he was waiting for me he might get bored and move on, then came back and rezzed. Lucky for me he wasn't still around, but the point is it was going along so well, I was just about to level when that bastard had to come from behind and gank me. Within the time it took to run back to my corpse I probably would have leveled and been able to get out of there, which I think is the thing that gets to me the most. Oh well, I leveled, did a few quests and turned them in, and called it a night, so it was a successful session I guess.

This brings me to an awesome world PVP story, or at least what I thought was awesome at the time. I was on my rogue, my main and only character at the time, minding my own business in Arathi Highlands, just exploring basically because it was my first time there and I was only level 32 or 33, so this was probably only a few months after I started the game. All of a sudden this Tauren druid (seems to be a theme here) that runs up in travel form, transforms out, and proceeds to root me, then spams moonfire. Now that I've played a druid I know that probably wasn't the smartest tactic he could have used, but it was working on me, being pretty new to the game. So I had to think "I can't win this, I just have to figure out how to run away" and I since his moonfire was still ticking there was no point in using vanish because the next tick would break stealth anyway. Then I remembered my gnome racial Escape Artist, so I used that to free myself from the roots, then ran at the guy and gouged him. I thought about trying to take him out, but then decided I had no chance so I ran for it, used sprint and waited til I was out of sight range before using vanish and getting off the road and hiding in some bushes. Sure enough, I see him running to where he thought I was going, travel form of course since he was trying to catch up, and held my breath as he ran past on the road and just kept going. Didn't see him again after that, but I just remember how hard my heart was pounding from the rush that gave me, even more so because while I was still new to the game, I had been able to escape. I think that was the moment that made me glad I was on a PVP server.

Trudging through

I'm about 3 bars away from 63 with my druid now and I'm remembering why I hate grinding so much. I spent most of my time yesterday just grinding for a while because I really didn't have much time and most of the quests were going to take a while. I found a cave that had a loop in it where the mobs would all respawn as soon as I had completed the loop, pretty convenient, but still not really my idea of fun. Oh well, maybe this will save me the need to grind later on, I know I will be running into some tough quests and I don't want them to be beyond my level. I also earned a lot of money for all my work, as well as some nice greens that should sell on the AH, so I might get my epic ground mount sooner than I thought, although being 63 seems a little late still. I'm hoping my priest won't have to grind at all, and with the XP increase from 20-60 I shouldn't have to worry about any of my other toons grinding either, they should actually end up even more ahead of the curve than my priest is since she was level 50 when the patch came out.

I'm finding I like the setup of Outland a lot. The way the quests are organized really helps out in the progression of each zone. A lot of Azeroth quests tended to make you run all over the place, and unless you knew the quests ahead of time or had some sort of guide you were stuck with a lot of travelling time which really slowed down the leveling process. There were also those quests that made you travel halfway across the world, so without some planning ahead you end up wasting a lot of time travelling, but those quests tended to be lots of fun in the end so I would usually do them anyway. But Outland usually has quests all grouped together in a certain area, you go to that area, the things you have to kill also drop what you need to gather, and it's so nice to go back to town with about 5 quests to turn in then pick up a bunch more and head out to another area. I noticed this difference in the Draenei and Blood Elf starting zones as well, and I think all of my Horde characters will be going to the Ghostlands to level from 10-20, since the Barrens is just a big spread out mess and the Ghostlands has such better quest rewards. I assume they will keep this new quest progression design in the coming expansion as well, maybe even make it better, so I think I better start getting my higher level characters up to 70 before it hits so I can head out to Northrend with everyone else...after I start up my Death Knight that is.

I guess thats about it for now, I'm slowly progressing and will hopefully finish up the rest of Zangarmarsh tonight unless something else comes up, and if nothing else I will at least ding 63.

Claws of fury and future developments

I'm not really sure why, but for some reason I had been under the impression that my druid was underpowered for the zone he is in. I tore things up back in Azeroth so I could level to 62 before continuing on in Zangarmarsh because I thought I would have some trouble there, but now that I went back I am having no trouble at all. In fact, I have no problem making quick work of almost anything I come up against, and have even soloed an elite or two in order to finish some quests. I think the problem was I had read a couple leveling guides and both said you need to be at least 62 to start Zangarmarsh, which I took as it would be a huge struggle to get through it unless I were to level up, and since I hate grinding I decided to put that character on hold for a while to focus on my others. Well I picked him back up and I am remembering why I liked my druid so much. He pretty much has a way to deal with any situation. Killing normal mobs really only requires cat form, and the occasional heal in between fights. Going up against an elite I stick with bear form for its ridiculous armor and stamina gains, then if I start to get low on health I can shapeshift out, pop a heal or two and switch back. I think I will be sticking to leveling my druid until he runs out of his rested state, which I'm thinking will take a while, then maybe go back to my priest.

Now I want to turn to the future and what Blizzard, and MMO gaming in general, has in store for us. So far none of the MMO games have come close to WoW, but there are some new ones coming out that are looking pretty good. Age of Conan and Warhammer Online being the most anticipated, but I wonder how much competition they will provide. At this point, despite some of the new games perhaps having slightly better graphics and different gameplay, how many WoW players are actually going to switch over? I know I am interested in what the other games have to offer, but I don't really see myself actually making the switch. I will probably try out the games, use up the trial period or something, but after all the time I've put into WoW I don't see myself dropping it completely, I just don't think those games will be so much better that I will make that commitment. I have tried FFXI, City of Heroes, and I even tried out EQ2 and I can tell you that despite all the rave reviews I read from players of those games, it didn't come close to WoW in my opinion, I think EQ2 came the closest, but they all tended to require too much grouping to get anywhere. I think part of the reason is I am drawn to the Warcraft universe, not that I keep up with all the lore and such, but I was a huge fan of Warcraft 2, played through the entire campaign of Warcraft 3 within two weeks of its release, and while I was hesitant to buy a game that would have a monthly charge, I can now say I am happy I bought it.

Now on the subject of future Blizzard activities, I have a few speculations that I would like to share. Keep in mind these are just speculations and have no evidence to back them up, but this is sort of what I'm hoping for. We all know, despite how great a game it is, WoW will not be able to stick around forever. We will get expansions, patches, new content, but eventually Blizzard will move on to new projects and let the game run its course until people get tired of it, much like they did with Diablo 2, which went on for quite a while, and that game only had one expansion, so don't expect WoW to die off for a significant amount of time. We know Starcraft 2 will be released in the future, as will the new Wrath of the Lich King expansion, but what I'm wondering is what can they do past this expansion? Arthas is the big guy, the main boss, the end of the game, and at this point there is no lore to suggest there is anyone more powerful, so where will they go from there? Right now I'm thinking that since so few people read the books, they are probably going to have to create Warcraft 4 in order to get all players on the same page with the events, otherwise I see no way of advancing the plot. Sure they will add new content in the form of patches, but while further expansions have the potential for new classes or races, that won't appeal to the end game players, and they will get tired of running the same instances over and over again.

Another development I would be excited to hear about is something coming out of the Diablo universe. I loved Diable 2, and an MMO version of that would be awesome, and at this point it is the only game I can think of that could pull me away from WoW. They would have to leave the style of gameplay in though, because while WoW tends to have you face one mob at a time, a Diablo style game would have huge groups of enemies that die more quickly but will gang up on you in order to take you down. I always loved gathering a huge group of enemies with my amazon, throwing a few lightning javelins into them and watching them all fall. Obviously they couldn't make everything soloable as it was in Diablo, but I will let them figure out exactly how to make it all work. Seriously, a 3D and much expanded MMO version of Diablo 2 would be all I could ask for in an MMO game. There are theories out there about a Diablo MMO already being in production but until we have an official announcement from Blizzard I can't take those too seriously. Besides, why be competition for another of your own games? Although a Diablo MMO may appeal to a different crowd who want something a little less cartoony and more dark, but I don't see it happening until the number of WoW subscribers starts to die off significantly.

Anybody else have ideas of what that future holds? Or maybe even have some inside info? (although I suppose inside info would have to be kept secret if you're a Blizzard employee)

Looking ahead

As I'm sure most of you are, I'm pretty excited about the new expansion coming out, Wrath of the Lich King. There are a lot of details already on what to expect, Northrend seems to be sort of a Scandinavian-esque place, complete with viking-like people, and going back to a more earth-like landscape. While the last expansion had some cool new places to go, I'm glad we will once again be able to explore new areas that aren't so alien looking. This expansion also looks to explain some history in the Warcraft universe, such as the origins of the Dwarves, as well as the Nerubians, and I'm sure a lot of the quest lines will link back to other questions that were unanswered previously.

All of that aside, the number one reason I'm excited for the expansion is the new Death Knight class. Now I know there is no official word on how to go about unlocking this class, but at the moment it sounds like they have changed their original position of making a level 80 quest chain to unlock the class and gone with just having a character at a certain high level will open up the Death Knight to be made. Now I know this may seem to take away from the challenge of gaining access to the new hero class, but you have to understand that many people just don't have the time to get through to level 80 and then go through a quest chain just so they can unlock a new class that sets them back another 20 or so levels. I do think they need to have some sort of quest chain though, maybe something like the paladin and warlock epic mount quests that sends you to the old world dungeons (StratDK comes to mind) and gives some kind of background to how these Death Knights come to be.

Another thing I think people are worried about is if the Death Knight is so easy to unlock, there will be a huge amount of players starting one up as soon as the expansion comes out. Now I'm not saying this is wrong, but maybe it won't be as bad as we think. Those of us without the need to have multiple alts tend to focus on their main toon, and while I'm sure a lot of people will be interested to see what a new class can do, many others will be more drawn to the new continent of Northrend and what it has to offer, not to mention reaching the new level cap. This is also where a quest chain to unlock the class comes in, it would regulate the flow of people that are able to create a Death Knight, but if they were to make it a level 60 quest to go to the old world dungeons, then it's attainable by casual players, but will still take some effort on their part.

What I'm sure we're all still wondering is what kind of starting zone will we get for a Death Knight? Obviously they can't start in any of the normal starting zones, but it seems like they should have some kind of 'get to know your class' area before you set out into the world. Maybe something along the lines of being an instrument of the Scourge to breaking free and becoming a member of your respective faction. Actually I think it would be pretty cool to start out as a bad guy, hostile to both Horde and Alliance and forced to attack them at first, then somehow turning on your masters and defecting. I think it would make for a unique experience.

What do you think about these ideas? What ideas do you have? What are you looking forward to the most in the new expansion?

To gank or not to gank

I remember when I first started WoW and my friend (who had previously played EQ) told me going with a PVP server is the only way to go, said it was the only way to get the whole experience of the game. Now he hadn't actually played WoW before either, but since he had played another MMO I figured he knew enough for me to trust him on this. Luckily everyone else I knew that played were on a PVP server too, decision made.

I really enjoy the world PVP experience, running into the other faction and deciding whether or not to attack them, or worrying they will attack you if they are much higher level, and planning out your course of action should they decide to try to gank you. I learned very quickly to watch my back, and the best way of getting out of a sticky situation with each class. With my first character being a rogue I caught a little break with stealth, but with my other characters I have to be more creative, try to use trees, rocks, and buildings to hide myself. Funny thing is I usually assume that the other player can only see in front of his character, so when their back is turned I figure I can sneak around behind them without them seeing me, which is sort of silly because I watch my back all the time, so what makes me think they don't? Sometimes I'll see an enemy, try to act like I don't see them, or even stand there for a while to make them think I'm AFK to try to get them to attack me, just to turn around and blast the hell out of them.

The thing about world PVP is it's a love hate relationship. Sometimes you get someone around your level trying to gank you and you manage to pull off some brilliant moves to beat them, even though they got the jump on you, and you just have to think to yourself "either they really sucked or I am awesome." I usually choose "I am awesome."

Then there are the times when you're running around STV at level 37 trying to do some quests when a level 70 runs up and ganks you in one hit and then spits on you. Seriously? I think the spitting is unnecessary unless I did something other than stand there and let you kill me because it was a hopeless situation. Not only that, you show up back to your corpse to see another lowbie like yourself who got ganked too, by the same guy. Well that makes sense, but why is this guy camping you now? I don't mind the ganking so much, just make your rounds, kill all the lowbies, have some fun, but what's fun about camping corpses? I'm not gonna rez while I can see you standing there, and sitting around waiting for someone to rez isn't fun either. This situation is when I hate world PVP, and wish they could do something about corpse camping without taking too much away. Maybe unflag a player from PVP after they rez from getting ganked for 10 minutes or something, the no honor thing is nice, but doesn't really apply when they aren't worried about whether they get honor or not. I guess the exception to this rule would be when in enemy territory, can't have people going to the capitals and running around invulnerable after being killed. Just a thought, but I think that's a justifiable way to avoid corpse camping but keep the PVP spirit.

For now I'll just level up my toons and come back to lowbie areas to do some ganking of my own when I'm bored, but I don't think I'll ever be bored enough to corpse camp anyone 30 levels below me.

Into the Maw of Frustration

I decided to hop on my druid today, been a while since I played him and I wanted to have some feral fun. As I said before, I decided to head back to Azeroth in the hopes of getting him a little extra XP before continuing on in Outland. I decided to hit Silithus first since I had not completed too many quests there before and it would give me the most benefit. So I massacred a Twilight Cultist camp and stole their pages, spoke to some dwarves about a missing night elf girl, and reported back. Then I was told to find the girl, well fine, the bugs in the hives are no longer elite and shouldn't be too much trouble, so I headed down into the tunnels, snuck by most of the bugs in stealth, then cleared the room with the girl in it before going after her. I didn't really read the story too closely, but I guess she now follows Cthun, the boss at the end of AQ, so I had to kill her, no problem, just pounce on her then DPS her to death, and there ya go, all done.

Not quite. Once I got out of the tunnel I went to see the dwarves again, just to check up on them, and they each had quests for me...requiring me to go back in the tunnels again to collect bug brains and rub some glyphs. Well I had no trouble with the first two hives, only had to kill 5 or 6 bugs to get a brain, then stealthed to the glyphs, but the third hive (the one I had previously visited) had a little surprise waiting for me. I got the brain no problem, then get back to the room with the girl because it also had the glyph. Well I had no trouble last time, actually she went down pretty quick and I had expected her to put up more of a fight. Cleared the room again and went at it, but this time she decided to use her spells. I'm not really sure why, but the first time I fought her she just hit me back and I killed her no problem. This time she was fearing, healing herself, using DoT's, it was crazy. She was like a shadow priest/paladin hybrid or something. She had a lot of armor and health but she could also use Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Flay, Psychic Scream, and had the Blackout skill that stuns you sometimes when you get hit with shadow damage. On top of this, even with very little mana she would cast a healing spell that brought her back up to full health, it was ridiculous, I just could not kill her, we were at a standstill. The only way I could think of was to all out DPS her in cat form and hope to kill her before she healed, but I could never do it, even with a bunch of back to back crits. Now I was pretty much impossible to kill too, any time I got low on health I shifted out of cat form, popped a Rejuvenation and Renew, then go back to cat form, and the mana would replenish during the fight. I think I was fighting her for a good 5 minutes before the bugs started to respawn, then I had no chance, she feared me into one and then had both on me. Now this wouldn't have been a big problem, I figured I'd focus on the bug since it was weaker and get rid of it so I can focus on her again. No such luck, she heals the bugs too, so at this point I pretty much had no chance, I just couldn't DPS fast enough to beat her heals and cat form has no silencing or stun skills, how I wished for my rogue so I could Kick the crap out of her. I eventually died, then came back and cleared the room again. OK, I went through this process about 4 times and was just getting frustrated out of my mind, when I realized that clicking the glyph instantly popped up a dialogue box that would complete the quest, no time wiggling my hands in front of it, didn't matter if I was getting attacked while doing it, so I did that and ran, turned in the quests, leveled up to 62, then went back and paid my 5g bill for dying so many times. Now I'm gonna mop up in EPL before heading back to Zangarmarsh, hopefully I will be around halfway to level 63 by then.

Whew, that was long, but hopefully you get the idea, and I'm still not even sure what I did wrong. I could have used bear form so I had Bash to stun her if she tried to heal, but then my DPS wouldn't be enough to down her before she came back from stun and healed herself anyway while my Bash was still on cooldown. Staying in human form is out of the question, I'm not specced for anything to use that form in a fight. So if there are any feral druids reading this that know what to do in this situation I would love to hear it. She could fully heal herself with little enough mana that by the time I had her almost dead she had regenerated enough mana to cast a heal again, I just don't see any way to do it with the skills I had.

Creepy crawlies

That's right, I'm talking about Silithus and its assortment of spiders, scorpions and snakes, all supersized and wandering around a desolate desert landscape. It isn't the most soothing scenery, but then again, I plan on finishing it up right quick and getting the hell out of there. One cool thing is that a lot of the quests there that were elite before the patch aren't anymore, all those wasps and tunnelers and such in the hives are regular mobs, and I can solo the quests where I have to go in there, which I never did before so I'm sort of excited. There are actually a lot more quests there than I thought, and my priest may in fact be 62 before I'm done, or at least very close to it.

I can't wait to finish this up and head to Outland. Funny thing happened, I got made fun of by a level 10 for the gear I was wearing as I was getting off the boat in Darkshore. OK, so I haven't really done much gear hunting since I made myself the Shadoweave gear, because, well, that extra shadow damage really helps, and the increased armor of higher level gear doesn't help you out all that much when you're a clothy, besides the fact that the majority of my armor comes from Inner Fire. Well once I get to Outland and do the first few quests I should be geared up a lot better, but I didn't really see the point in spending time and effort getting slightly better gear that will be replaced soon. Sure I'm level 61 still wearing some level 38 gear, but I've had no trouble thus far using it, and with the better gear I will be getting I will be burning down mobs like nobody's business. I do need to catch up on my tailoring though, I have a lot of runecloth and not enough skill to make anything with it, not to mention all the enchanting mats I have. I just had to pick expensive professions.

You may have noticed that my Alliance characters have Armory links while the Horde characters don't. That's because all but one of my Horde characters are under level 10 and won't show up on Armory yet so there would be no use in providing the link anyway. Once I get a couple of them leveled I will update it, don't worry.

Too good to resist

So in my last post I said was going over to the Horde side for a while, and while that was my initial intent, once I got my mage to 20 I decided to let him rest up for a while before unleashing him again. I also can't resist playing my priest, especially since she's so close to Outland I can taste it. When I first started her it was to eventually become a main healer in groups, and at the time I didn't really know about the big difference in racial abilities with priests, so I started a night elf, if for no other reason than to appeal to the guys for some free help when I needed it. So I started trying to level with a holy build, and things were going pretty slow, by the time I got to around 25 I couldn't stand it anymore, I had to switch to shadow, and I am so glad I did. Shadow is awesome, I can take down single mobs with ease, two mobs aren't too much trouble, and adds don't usually bother me too much either, besides using up most of my mana. I also get a sweet shadow aura around myself in shadow form, and it extends to my mount too, just pure awesome.

Now I don't remember exactly when or which patch it was, but priests got an update that made my choice of a night elf not look so dumb anymore. When I first found out about the difference in racial abilities of priests I was sort of mad, the dwarves got Fear Ward, undead got Devouring Plague, and I was stuck with Starshards and Elune's Grace, not to mention I was already around level 40, which is too far along to start over. Well along comes this patch and pretty much makes my choice look genius. Now all priests have Fear Ward, and Starshards is not only free to cast now, but is no longer channeled, making it a free DoT spell. Right now my spell rotation is pretty simple: throw up a Power Word: Shield, Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Pain, Starshards, then wand to death, and they almost always end up dead before they even take down my shield, plus it doesn't even put a dent in my mana so I rarely have to stop to drink, which also saves me some inventory space.

My priest is now level 61 and finished with WPL/EPL quests, or at least the ones I wanted to do. Now I will be going to Silithus to mop up some quests there for some easy XP before finishing up Winterspring, then it's off to Outland to burn up some Helboars and Fel Orcs. One thing I'm thinking about doing is getting the epic tiger mount from Winterspring, but I'm not sure I want to go through that rep grind, the whole rep grinding aspect of the game is boring to me so I guess I might have to skip it and just buy a mount, of course I'm gonna need to gather enough money for that anyway so it might be a while. Actually none of my toons that are 60 and above have epic mounts, I was just never able to save up the money for it, and it's not like I spent it on random stuff, mostly new skills and repairs, but I guess I don't utilize the AH well enough but I will try to in the future to hopefully build up some cash and get everyone their mounts. I have no idea how I'm going to get enough money for flying mounts, but that probably won't be for a while.

Well it's Monday, and that means back to work, have a good week everyone.

Decisions, decisions...

As I'm sure is common with most of you with alts, I have come to the point where I'm having trouble deciding which one to play each time I sign on. Basically I don't really have a main just toons of each class at varying levels, and they each have their own appeal. I enjoy the variety, trying to mix it up, and learn the strengths and weaknesses of each class not by watching, but by actually playing them. Sometimes I'll be questing on one toon and see someone else use a strategy with another class that I might not have thought of, and next time I play my toon of that class I will try it out.

Now the dilemma I have isn't so much which class to play but it depends where they are in the game. I just got my priest to 60 and have yet to go to Outland. This is one thing I like about the new faster levelling from 20-60. I haven't even been to Silithus yet, still have a bunch of stuff in EPL to do, and some things to finish up in Winterfall before I move on, and may end up being 61 or even 62 before I enter Outlands. You may be thinking "why don't you just go now and forget about what you have left?" I thought about that, but I like to make things easy on myself. I figure if I start Outlands at a higher level, the quests will be easier for me, which means I will probably get through them faster, in turn getting me to 70 faster. Alright, maybe in the long run my extra time spent finishing up Azeroth doesn't really make things go faster overall, but I've learned from my mistake of heading to Outland at 58 with my druid and ending up in Zangarmarsh at 61 (which makes it very difficult for someone who doesn't want to grind), so I figure while the quests are there I might as well do them anyway and get the extra XP. Actually, I just had an idea, maybe I'll take my druid back at some point for the quests I skipped to try to get to 62 at least so I can take Zangarmarsh by storm. I think that could work, and I haven't been on my druid in a long time, I'll have to think about that.

Well that got me off topic. The real problem is that my shaman is level 49, and my hunter is 41, so basically if I play my shaman I will be repeating what my priest just did for the last 10 or so levels, in the same way if I play my hunter it will be going through the content my shammy just went through. And this is why I made an undead mage. I haven't done much Horde content over level 20 and my mage just finished up the Ghostlands (wanted to get the blue staff from the last quest there), so most content I do with him from now on will be new to me. I also like the mage so far, it's a different style of play, you can't just stand there and take hits so you have to vary between fire spells for high damage and ice spells to keep mobs out of melee range. I think this is my best option for the moment, and while I want to push to get my priest into Outland, I think taking a break from the Alliance side in general will make going back that much more appealing. That and I like to fully rest my toons before playing them again to get max XP, so thats at least 10 days.

Alliance are jerks!

No, I'm not an angry Horde player that hates all Alliance, I'm actually commenting on this from a standpoint of playing both sides. I've come to notice that while most servers have Alliance as the majority, I tend to be able to find help a lot more easily while playing on one of my Horde characters. Now I'm not saying the Allies won't help you out. I was in a pretty good guild on my first toon as I was working my way through the levels, had a bunch of 60s that would help you out of they weren't busy with something else, but I'm talking about finding a couple people in the area to kill that elite for a quest you all have.

Not too long ago I had my Draenei shaman in Stromgarde, you know, the place in Arathi that used to have a bunch of elite human mobs, but with patch 2.3 they are normal now. Anyway, I was soloing most of the guys, not too hard, but I took a look at the guy you have to kill at the top of the keep and realized not only would he be tough to solo, but he had adds with him. Well I worked on gathering some more badges for one of the other quests and lo and behold two more Allies show up, presumably to do the same quests, so looks like I'll get some help after all. I ask them if they're doing the quests...no answer. Ask them if I can join them...once again no answer. So I followed them around for a while, watched them do exactly what I was just doing, even followed them up the keep and watched them kill the main guy! Well I was pretty pissed. Wouldn't putting me in your group make it that much easier and faster? You're getting the quest done either way, why not get someone to else to make it go quicker? Well I waited for the mob to respawn and killed him before his adds respawned, so I still did it, but I still wasn't happy about what just happened. Then as I'm leaving I run by the same two guys, and one of them actually asks me where to find a certain mob for one of the other quests!!! WTF!?!? It's situations like this that made me decide to just stick to soloing. No worrying about people being douches.

So yesterday I was running around the Ghostlands with my new Undead mage and saw a couple guys questing in the same area. Alright, I'm gonna risk it and ask them if they are killing a certain elite I needed to kill, Kel'Gash I think, and at first he responds 'no', so figure OK, thats fine, I'll kill him in a few levels. About 20 seconds later the guy says, "oh yeah, actually I do have that quest" and proceeds to invite me to his group and we kill the guy easily. Gee, that almost never happens when I play one of my Alliance characters, I wonder why.

You play WoW like a girl!!!

But wait, how would playing WoW like a girl be any different than like a guy? Why would it be bad?

Well you didn't let me finish. I never said it was bad, but it most definitely is different. Now like most of you I started out with a character of my own gender, a male character, played through to 60 like that, started an alt, also male, and have managed to get him to 60 as well. Then one day my roommate says, "Why don't you make a female character and make the game easier on yourself? Most of those nerds playing the game are starving for attention from a female and will be more than willing to help you with anything you need." Funny thing is, not only did he turn out to be right, it was even easier to do than I thought it would be. I could go to pretty much any zone and ask for help and get about five group invites right off the bat, and they didn't even need to see my toon, just the fact that I had a female sounding name was enough. If you play a male character you know this never happens. Sometimes I even get hit on by Horde (through emotes) and it's nice to not get ganked every 5 minutes trying to quest in STV. And acting like a girl is so easy it's almost ridiculous, all you have to do is say "hehe" when you decide to type out your laughter. You can pretty much talk however you want, maybe flirt a little, but the "hehe" is key to making your femininity believable. Well my three remaining Alliance toons are females now, the priest just hit 60 last week, /cheer for idealized female character bodies!

Alright, I know it isn't the most honest thing to do, but at least I'm not one of those guys that makes a female toon just to go to the inns and hop up on the table and /dance with no clothes on...alright I've done that, but only a few times, don't judge me.

Hi everybody

Well after checking out a few other WoW blogs I decided to try my hand at it, I found them pretty entertaining as a fellow player and maybe I can do the same with mine. Now, if you're thinking this will just be another WoW blog that just documents my progress through the game...you might be right, I haven't really decided the format yet, but I will try to keep it as exciting as possible.

Let me give a little background about myself, at least as far as WoW playing is concerned. I started playing a few months after the game was released, I believe it was around March or April 2005, and it was fairly casual from the get go as I was juggling school and work at the time so free time was hard to come by. My friend and I bought the game at the same time with the intent of playing together through to level 60 and on to whatever came once you got there. My brother had been playing the game from launch along with one of his friends as well and said it was a lot of fun. Now my friend had played EQ whereas I had never played an MMO before so I was pretty relient on him for a while, although he had to learn a whole new game too. So I started an undead rogue on whatever server it assigned me and call him up and he says he started a dwarf pally. OK, so how do we meet up? Oh, we have to be on the same server? We have to be on the same side? Well I figured if that was the case I better call my brother and see what server he is on so we can all play together sometime, so he tells me to get on Gorgonnash on Alliance side. Awww, I wanted to be undead, but oh well, I guess I'll go with a gnome rogue (Deadbare) instead, as my friend remade his dwarf pally. Guess it's a good thing we didn't get far before switching servers.

So over the course of about a year and a half we managed to muddle through the levels, going pretty slow, getting every quest, checking out the instances we could get into, basically trying to see everying in the game rather than just shoot through to 60, we wanted the whole experience on the way there. I even stopped playing for almost 3 months at one point because it seemed to take forever, but I came back because I don't like leaving things unfinished. Then I find out there's an expansion coming out, and it's gonna raise the level cap, so I better get to 60 before then so I can get into the new content.

Well once I reached 60 along with my friend we went into the usual instances: Scholo, Strat, BRD, BRS, trying to upgrade our gear, but it was slow going because it's impossible to get into a PUG as a rogue, and I was getting bored again, which pushed me to start an alt. That was when I found out how I like to play. I guess I'm what they call an alt-o-holic, I want to try every class, I want to progress through the game differently, quest in different zones. I don't care too much about instances, partially because I don't have the time, my WoW sessions tend to be an hour at a time, and if something else comes up I don't hesitate to do that instead. At that point I decided to make a nightelf druid (Blackbare) on the same server, and have since made alts for pretty much every other class which I can pick and choose who to play. My friend has since lost interest, as has my brother, but I continue to solo through with my various characters, not caring much to group with anyone unless I have to, and I haven't gotten bored playing this way.

As I said, I'm not sure how the format of this blog will go yet, but I will try to update regularly as I get bored at work sometimes and our internet proxy blocks about 80% of the internet, including pretty much every page that can bypass a proxy. So until next time, keep WoWin'.