Building up the stable

I decided to go out and get myself a couple new pets for my hunter to use. I pretty much planned it out in the beginning that I was going to get three different pets: one DPS, one tank, and one all purpose. Up until this point I have been using a cat (which fulfills the DPS role), the one I grabbed from Eversong in the beginning, but now I have reached the level I needed to get the other pets I wanted. Both of these guys were found in the Hinterlands, one a turtle and one a wolf. The turtle I got from the coast on the east and he is colored a dark reddish orange with a black shell, while the wolf I picked up from in front of one of the troll temples and he is all black. The only reason I picked these specific mobs to tame was their coloring as that's really all that you should be looking for in a pet once you've decided what type you want.

To decide what type I wanted I looked at the skills each type could use and depending on the situation in which the pet will be used I decided on a pet that had the right skills for the job. As a tank I think the turtle is the best choice as pure damage reduction, with the Shell Shield ability they can learn it makes him the perfect tank if you could care less about DPS. As far as the wolf, I think the Furious Howl ability makes him a good choice just for a pet I can bring out when I want a change but don't want to sacrifice too much in DPS or tanking ability. The only bad thing about these particular pets is they don't have these type specific skills when you first tame them, I'm going to have to tame different turtles and wolves right off the bat in order to teach them the skills I want them to have for their purposes. I don't mind this too much though, as I had a pretty easy time learning my new skills last time. I think the most time consuming part will be getting their loyalty level up to the top, since it pretty much only depends on how long you keep your pet happy. Either way, the only other factor in my choice was what the pet was going to look like. For that I just checked out the available colorings of pets you could get and picked the ones I liked best. I'm sort of glad they changed pets in the respect that any pet of the same type at the same level and the same skills will have the same stats, this means that once you decide you want to get a wolf you can get any wolf you want and he will be just as good a choice as any other wolf. They used to vary attack speed between pets and have special pets that were rare and were a little different than others, but they have since changed this, and although it makes some of the rarer pets seem a little less prestigious, I like that I can choose the look of my pet without worrying about sacrificing its stats.

The black wolf is really my second choice out of the wolves, but since my first choice is that ghost wolf that needs to be tamed in less than 8 seconds, I think I'm going to just be happy with this one. I don't think that wolf is able to be tamed anymore anyway, seems like they changed that in a patch, but let everyone who had already tamed one keep it. Does anybody know any differently? If this pet is still tameable but just ridiculously hard to get I would like to know since I might try for it at some point when I can get the items to boost my haste enough.

I'm also not sure if I should respec my cat. Right now he has the the highest level of Natural Armor and Great Stamina that he can get with the points he has left after bite and claw are maxed out and he also has prowl and cobra reflexes. I never use prowl unless I want to hide from somebody, which doesn't happen often, it's just too slow watching the cat sneak up on the enemy and the bonus it gives on the first attack doesn't really seem worth it. I'm thinking of giving him dash instead, as I think it would come in handy more often. I also am not sure if I need both claw and bite on this pet, as it seems redundant to have both of these on at the same time. I think I would like to keep claw and get rid of bite, since claw not only costs less focus, but also doesn't have the 10 second cooldown that bite has. This would also open up some more pet talent points to be used elsewhere. Any other hunters out there that can give me some insight on what sort of skills a cat should have? For that matter I'll take suggestions on what I should be shooting for on my wolf and turtle as well, since I have a good idea of what I want, but maybe someone out there will open my eyes to something I hadn't though of before. I welcome any suggestions you might have.

I don't have ADD

But every time I read someone's blog that plays a certain class, it gets me excited about playing that class. I don't know, I just started BRK's blog from the beginning and it really makes me want to get on my hunter and stick some mobs with my arrows, but then I read about Mabd's mage and I want to hop on mine and burn some baddies to the ground. I even considered bringing my rogue out of retirement after reading Doomilias, but I'm still hesitant on that, he needs to respec and I'm saving money any way I can to buy mounts for everybody, so for now he's my bank mule...at level 60.

I played a little yesterday on my hunter, not much though as I had a bunch of errands to run after work that I had been putting off for a long time so they really built up. I think they've changed the drop rates on quest items you have to gather, because I remember doing some of these quests on other characters before and they seem to drop the stuff way faster now, although I'm sure goretusk livers are still impossible to come by over in Westfall (has to be one of the worst quests in the game). Anyway, it was a nice surprise when a quest that used to take 50 kills ended up taking less than 25.

I really wish the game was still new to me, and while I may be way more of a n00b than a lot of players out there, I miss that feeling of exploring new places, learning new things about this World of Warcraft. I remember being on my first character, took me two weeks to get to level 15 and I was running around aimlessly in Loch Modan killing boars when I stumbled upon the entrance to the Badlands. Oh man, I ran in thinking this would be the next place I was going to be questing, and then saw the dwarves digging holes by Uldaman and couldn't even see what level they were. Holy crap, this must be way beyond my level, and if it takes me this long to get to level 15, when am I ever going to be up to the level of killing those guys? I think I even ran close enough to one to aggro him, thinking maybe I couldn't see his level because of the distance, but nope, he ran at me and one shotted me before I had a chance to run. Then on my second character I decided to stay on the eastern continent as long as I could, going through Darkshore and Ashenvale rather than through what I had already done before. I was all about uncovering everything on the map, so I ran around discovering all the areas so they would fill in. I finally came upon the area in Ashenvale near the portal in the northeastern corner and was thoroughly surprised to see a bunch of elite dragons walking around, obviously way above my level, but I had to uncover it, so I ran in trying to stay out of aggro range, uncovered the area, then tried to jet out as fast as I could. On my way out I managed to grab aggro somehow and got hit in the back with a spell that hit for 3 times more damage than I had health, but I had uncovered that piece of the map and that was an accomplishment.

Now that I've been playing for the better part of 3 years, I think I've lost that spark of going new places, seeing new things, and being amazed at just how massive that world is. Sure I haven't been everywhere, far from it. I've only gotten as far as Zangarmarsh in Outland, I haven't been inside any of the old raid instances, or any of the BC instances at all, but I'm more concerned with the world, not instances, I don't usually have time for those as I can't commit to play for long enough to finish one in one sitting. I suppose my plethora of alts doesn't really help my cause, as it results in me seeing the same places and quests over and over again, which I think playing Horde alts will help me out with. Sure it's the same world, but besides the quests from the neutral towns, the Horde quests will give some new flavor to the game. I suppose I could also spend some time exploring Outland, but the significantly slower rate of leveling is sort of discouraging me, I like to go through a level or two each time I play. Luckily I still have fun though, and if you aren't playing it for fun then maybe you shouldn't be playing.

Anime time

Wanted to get a post in on another of what my girlfriend considers my "nerd activities" (WoW is obviously one). That would be anime, and while I may not speak or understand much Japanese, I am still able to watch the current shows that air in Japan by way of fansubs. Here are some shows you should check out, in no particular order (except the top ones are probably ones I like more as they are the ones I think of first):

One Piece
Naruto
Bleach
Rurouni Kenshin
Full Metal Alchemist
Hunter X Hunter
Cowboy Bebop
Berserk
GunGrave
Trigun
Samurai Champloo
Hellsing
Record of Lodoss War
Azumanga Daioh
Yakitate! Japan
FLCL
Dragonball Z (don't hate me for this, it's the reason I started watching anime in the first place so I had to include it)

And movies:

Princess Mononoke
Spirited Away
Grave of the Fireflies
Akira
Ghost in the Shell
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust
Castle in the Sky
Howl's Moving Castle
Ninja Scroll

So that's to get you started, maybe if you want to get into anime and don't know where to start, or if you haven't seen one of these you should check it out. If you like what you see and want some more suggestions let me know and I can do a follow up post with some other good anime that I only left out because it isn't at the top of my list and it would make this post way too huge.

Kitty knows some new tricks

Maybe I should take back my rant on pet skill training and how hunters have to go tame other beasts in order to teach new skills to their other pets. Yesterday was training day for my kitty, and he had four new skill levels I needed to teach him, which meant four beasts I had to tame and then fight alongside to learn the new skill levels. Lucky for me I was in Dustwallow Marsh, which has lots of crocs, and each different kind had one of the skills I needed to learn so I stabled my cat and went out hunting for some crocs.

If you've ever played a hunter, you remember that first pet you tamed, you know, when you set out to find a really cool pet for yourself, picking and choosing from the various options you had available to you, depending on what area you were in, and it had to be something your level, so that narrowed down your options too. Maybe you have a pet in mind already, but maybe it's above your level so you just grab something else to hold you over, or maybe you have the perfect pet picked out and it's already attainable. Either way you have no traps, nothing to distract them with, just a skill called Tame Beast that will hopefully make this particulary beast your loyal companion. I decided to grab a fairly rare pet, at least for somebody playing Alliance. I ran over to the Blood Elf starting zone to grab a low level Springpaw Lynx. This is the only place to find this particular cat, as it does have older cousins that live in Outland, but they have a different coloring, and I think the highest level for them is 7 or 8, so you either get one at a low level or don't bother because it would take too long to level up. I made the trek through the Plaguelands, dying a bunch of times on the way due to my ridiculously large aggro radius, but I finally made it and hunted one down. It was pretty funny watching all the little Hordies avoid me, even though I was only level 12 and they probably could have taken me out with a little help if they wanted to. I had finally found my target and went about taming him, letting him beat on me while I channeled the spell, and then he was mine. Now many hunters make this trip to get a Dragonhawk at a low level, since you can't get another until Outland, but while I decided on a pretty common pet, a cat, I wanted one that would stand out.

Now that I have more skills at my disposal, when I want to tame something I can just throw down a freezing trap and draw them over to it, usually they don't even get one attack at me before I win them over, so it's pretty different from those first few times where you had to make sure you weren't going to die before taming them. Either way, I made some comments about learning new pet skills in the past, and I'm not sure if they changed it or I just got lucky, but for each one of those crocs that I tamed I learned the skill I needed on the first mob I sent them to fight, sometimes on the first use of the skill. I think it might also have to do with the skill giving me the most trouble in the past being prowl, which isn't a combat skill so I just spammed it when I was trying to learn it, and it has a cooldown. Needless to say, I was able to get all the skills I needed fairly easily and then I made my way down to Tanaris, running since I hadn't gotten the flight path yet. Served up some justice to those Wastewander hooligans, then ran through Thousand Needles all the way to Feralas to grab the flight paths there. On the way west through Feralas I stumbled upon a Grimtotem camp with some caged little blue dragons. Luckily there were a couple Night Elves on the ledge overlooking the camp that wanted me to save those little blue dragons, so I cleared out some of those Tauren bastards and freed the little guys. Then I get a follow up to kill more Taurens. Well, I had already cleared the whole camp, but alright I guess, so I waited for more to magically appear and then killed them too. After laying waste to the camp and being rewarded for it I made my way the rest of the way to the beach and swam over to the island to pick up the flight path before calling it quits.

I'm not really sure how much of a difference those new pet skill ranks made, but I think I did notice my enemies going down a lot faster than they used to. I guess it's worth it to make sure your skills are up to speed or you will be doing more work when you don't need to. Oh and my hunter is level 46 now, the levels just seem to come and go so much faster now, although I might be comparing to my characters that are in Outland so of course it will be faster.

Back in business

Sort of anyway. I was able to get some play time in this weekend between snowboarding, Easter, and helping my gf pack, besides many other things. I finished up the rest of STV in one sitting, which was almost half the zone, and it felt good to be able to solo all the quests there. Two of my favorite zones are done on my Alliance characters now, which makes me a little sad. I will probably never get to go through Duskwood again, but luckily STV is a zone that Horde get to quest in as well, and I'm looking forward to seeing these zones from a different perspective. I think the only zones I've done with both factions so far are Ashenvale and Stonetalon, so that was interesting, but those zones still tended to keep you separated from the other faction for the most part, with no neutral towns like Booty Bay or Gadgetzan to mix it up.

I supposed less ganking issues would arise in town if there were no neutral towns, but the guards usually keep that to a minimum. This didn't stop a certain level 70 Blood Elf hunter from causing some trouble for me and a couple other Alliance people trying to hop on the boat from Booty Bay to Ratchet. This guy would wait on the dock until right before the boat left and then kill all Alliance on it, and since he's over 20 levels above us it didn't take him very long. Now the run back isn't too long, but the issue is that even if the boat is leaving, if he shoots you dead before you are out of range, you rez in the graveyard and have to wait for the next boat. The guy must have been having a great time doing this because we were there for about 3 boats before we were finally able to get one, and that wasn't because he let us, it was because I came up with a solution. So since my body was on the dock right next to the boat I could rez on the boat, and I also knew that he wanted to stay in Booty Bay so if the boat started to leave he would get off. I waited until the boat started leaving, then before getting out of range of my body I rezzed. Worked like a charm, and while it wasted about 15 minutes of my time, which was pretty annoying, I at least figured out how to deal with that situation if it were to ever come up again.

Well after getting to Ratchet I flew over to Dustwallow to turn in a quest and then logged out. I don't have the flight path to Tanaris yet, so I'm gonna have to run there, but there are some skill ranks I need to get for my pet anyway and three of them are in Dustwallow, so next time I'm on that will be priority number one. It's sort of annoying the way you have to tame something to learn its skill and teach it to your own pet, especially when sometimes it takes forever to learn the skill. It took me so long to learn prowl, but it was a skill I really wanted to teach my cat so I did it. I think a better way would be to learn it by attacking the beast that uses the skill. Maybe a 'study beast' skill instead of taming that gives you a chance to learn that beast's skills, similar to taming in that while using the skill the beast is beating on you so you have to make sure you'll live long enough to finish before you die. They could also just make give you the skills when you tame that certain beast rather than learning them after having them use that skill enough times. Maybe because of the ease of being a hunter they had to make some part of leveling up tedious so it wasn't so unfair to other classes. Either way, it's on to the desert for me to kill some hooligans and pirates.

Zoning out

One of the things that I think is very well done in WoW is the variety of zones you play through while leveling up. It isn't just that there are different climates and creatures, or that each zone has its own history that you learn about as you quest there and a lot of it coincides with Warcraft history in general which is cool if you've played the other games. No, it's more how you can change your progression through the game just based on what zones you choose to go through. I mean seriously, if each time you started a new character you had to play through the game the same way as you did before, why would you bother to do it? We require more variety than just playing through the game as a different class or race, we need to do the whole thing differently. Luckily the game is set up like this, with two or three different zones for each level bracket. Not only that, but beginners probably don't know about the options they have, but the game makes up for that by having quests that send you between zones, allowing you to explore new areas and maybe find out you'd rather be questing in Ashenvale than in Redridge. I know each alt I have runs through the game differently, just to add some variety. Besides, if they only had one zone per level bracket then every zone would end up like STV, gankfest galore.

Alright, I don't hate every aspect of STV, actually, it's one of my favorite zones. No, I don't go around with one of my high level characters and gank n00bs left and right, I just like the variety of quests and just how much there is to do in just this one zone. It's almost like two zones actually, with the northern area and the Nesingwary quests being for slightly lower levels, then progressing south as you get to higher levels and do more quests for Booty Bay. I also like Un'Goro Crater and its prehistoric feel, with dinosaurs, volcanoes, and you always have to watch your back for those wandering devilsaurs that always seem to sneak up on you, even though they are huge. My favorite zone though, is Duskwood. I'm not really sure why, but while the zone gives me the creeps, and the run from Darkshire to Raven Hill sucks when you don't have a mount, I still like the way many of the quests coincide with each other and tell stories in the process. I always do the Morbent Fel and Stalvan quest lines, even though they send you all over the world and take a lot of time to complete, just because they are really cool story lines and make me feel like I've accomplished something more than just completing a quest. I'm gonna miss that place, as all my Alliance alts are past that point now and Horde don't quest there.

Now as far as zones I hate, I would have to say STV again. Wait, didn't I just say it's one of my favorite zones? Don't worry, I did, but playing on a PVP server has taught me to love the PVE aspect of STV but hate the PVP aspect, mainly the massive amounts of ganking that goes on there. While most zones in the game can be bypassed in favor of other zones of the same level, STV is pretty much required if you use questing as your primary means of leveling. Sure you could go to Desolace or Hillsbrad, but those zones are slightly limited in the number of quests you can do, so STV is the place to be for pretty much everyone in that span of levels, plus the high level ganking bastards that have nothing better to do. Other zones that I don't particularly like are Azshara and Stonetalon. Azshara is just the middle of nowhere and gets boring real fast, and Stonetalon seems like it's only a viable zone for Horde. I did Stonetalon while leveling my druid it I hated it, of course that was before Stonetalon Peak had a flight path or innkeeper, but it's still pretty much on the opposite side of the map from every quest they give you. And the number one crappy zone would be...Desolace. As mentioned before, you can go there instead of STV, but it sucks, and as the name implies, is very desolate. I think Ratshag described it best as a "bunghole", which is pretty much dead on, I just can't think of a better word for it.

Don't be racist

Yes, I'm talking about WoW races, more specifically the cultures they are based on. Ever notice how different races talk and what they believe? So let's introduce each race and what culture they are loosely based on.

Human - Well I suppose this is an easy one to start out with. The humans are your generic knights in shining armor with castles and little towns, being threatened by the outlaws (Defias), and with a young boy as the king. I guess you could compare this to a King Arthur type of culture, standing for justice and chivalry before all else.

Orc - These guys are loud, obnoxious, mean, strong, and violent. Their entire culture is based on a survival of the fittest mindset, with the strongest fighters at the top of the food chain, and honor being important over all else. To compare them to a historical human culture they would probably be the barbarians that roamed Europe in the times of the Roman Empire, or maybe the Mongolians led by Genghis Khan. For the nerds out there, I would more closely relate the orcs to the Klingons from Star Trek.

Dwarves - This one is pretty obvious. The dwarves like to drink lots of beer and live life to the fullest without worrying about what tomorrow will bring. And guess what, they have accents that give it away. These guys are based on the Irish, and thats pretty much all I have to say about them.

Trolls - Look out for these crazy guys, there's no telling what they're gonna do. Another pretty obvious race, what with the witchdoctors and voodoo, and you can even grab one of their crazy masks to wear if you manage to find one. And once again they have accents, which gives away their Jamaican roots.

Night Elves - Well let's see, they are a culture that coexists with nature, most prominently with trees, and guess what, one of the classes you can play as with one is the culture they are based on. No, not hunters, they would relate to the druids of ancient Celtic society, although those druids were never able to shapeshift. I would call them more of a cult than an actual culture, or you can just call them hippies, your choice.

Tauren - Not unlike the Night Elves, the Tauren also appreciate nature, although it isn't quite the same for them. Their homeland is comprised of vast plains with they make sure never to waste resources. The shamanistic aspect of the culture is also very obvious, and if you actually play a Horde shaman you know they give you something special to consume in order to induce your visions and talk to the spirits (what I wouldn't give to smoke some of that stuff before I log on). If you haven't guessed by now, I'll tell you that they share qualities with the Native Americans...that is, before the Europeans came over, but they have aspects of the native people of Greenland and northern Scandinavia as well.

Gnomes - This is a little bit of a stretch, but follow along anyway. With their superior knowledge of anything mechanical, it's hard to find a culture that we can base these guys on, as I don't think any culture is lacking in dumb people, but I have yet to find a gnome NPC that had trouble explaining how a gyrocoptor works, even though most of it was way over my head. I suppose these guys are just nerds, plain and simple, but if anybody else has a better description I would love to hear it.

Undead - You may be thinking it is pretty obvious that they are undead and it's as simple as that, but let's look a little deeper, shall we? I would say the Scourge is more based on your traditional undead, mindless zombie types that come to mind when we think of undead. The Forsaken on the other hand have towns and culture, even though it's a little scary. I would compare these guys to Europe in the Dark Ages, with their depressing little towns and the constant struggle to survive it seems like a pretty close match.

Draenei - Another race that isn't so easy to figure out, but a little discussion might help. They travelled to a new planet to escape what had become of their old one, and now that they are here they are taking on the burden of worldly affairs that they don't necessarily have a direct responsibility for. Who does this remind you of? If you were thinking Americans you would be correct, and who better to represent us than blue-skinned space goats? Oh well.

Blood Elves - Last but not least, the race with magical brooms endlessly cleaning their floors. Their buildings are of an interesting architecture and they seem to have the most brightly decorated capital city out of anyone. Their mystic culture and inability to fully trust the rest of their Horde allies leads me to believe they are a sort of mixture of Middle Eastern cultures, sort of like Arabian Nights, but surrounded by grass instead of sand.

These are all my interpretations and are in no way official, but they seem to be pretty accurate for the most part. What do you think?

Slight change of pace

Didn't get to play WoW yesterday so that kinda bummed me out, that's usually my cure for the crappiness that is the end of the weekend and the start of a new work week. Well this week a few friends wanted to hang out so we got some Smash Bros action on the Wii (Pikachu is the best!). Ever since the original for N64 I have loved that game, Gamecube version was awesome, and the new one has yet to disappoint me, controls are still as simple as ever so anyone can have fun playing, but to be good you can't just button mash so you don't just win by chance. We usually play Rock Band, probably the best game to play as a group (I play the drums), but since I just got Smash Bros last week we had to try it out.

Anyway, this blog is about WoW, so lets get back to that. First off, Kinless responded to my post about the timeless dilemma of how to manage your GF and WoW time (well maybe not timeless, but you know what I mean). I think I may have a chance in the future of getting her to play alongside me, just have to do a little convincing first. See, the main problem is she thinks RPG means Final Fantasy game, which I found out she can't stand playing, and while they are similar in that you level up and get better stats and equipment, the kind of experience the game gives you is not nearly the same. She also just finished college and is looking for a job, so I think I won't bring it up until she has a steady income established first (to pay for it if she likes it), but the good thing is she isn't opposed to videogames, she loves the Halo games, and even played Warcraft 3 a bit so she's at least familiar with it. For now I'll manage the same as I have been, but at some point I will innocently suggest she create a character and check out why I like to play so often, then I'll let the addictive aspect of the game take over and hope she gets hooked, I know I got my first level up and there was no turning back from that point on. Running around that little starting zone trying to figure out what the heck I was doing, I think it took 2 weeks for me to get to level 10 on my first character, but it was so much fun running around fighting bad guys, doing quests, and just exploring the huge world they created for us to play in. I think anyone who hasn't played before might have a hard time grasping why we keep going back to this game, but if any of them were to try it out there is a very good chance they would get hooked as I have.

On a side note, one of the friends that I had over yesterday was the guy that originally got me started playing WoW. We went and bought it at the same time a few months after it was released, made characters on the same server, and played all the way up to 60, not always together, but we tried to group up when we were both on at the same time. Then he quit playing right after the expansion came out and most recently has become hooked on Call of Duty 4, I'd rather he came back to WoW though. Well he asked me to show him my characters, since when he quit I had my level 60 rogue and my druid was still in his 30's, with no other characters yet. So now my rogue is still 60, which he thought was funny, but when he saw that my druid was 63, along with a 63 priest and my hunter and shammy in their 40's I think he was blown away. I think he's one of only a few friends of mine that know the dedication it takes just to get to that point, not to mention the people that have multiple characters at 70, so it was nice to be able to show off a little. I guess I have two people I need to convince to play now, one to start up and one to pick up where he left off.

Virtual pets

I think my brother said it the best when explaining to me how hunter pets work in the game. He said it's pretty much like having one of those virtual pets games that used to be popular, you know, the little electronic game that kids carry around on a keychain that you have to feed and teach tricks to and all that. I never actually had one, but I knew people who did, and made fun of them for it, probably one of the dumber fads that I witnessed.

Well I checked out Petopia to see about skills my pet needs to upgrade, and it turns out she's two levels behind on bite and claw, and she doesn't have enough points to learn the next level or great stamina or natural armor. I sorta didn't pay attention to skill upgrades for a while, mostly because of the hassle of going out and taming various mobs to learn them. Luckily 3 of the 4 mobs I need to find to learn the two bite and claw ranks are in the same zone, so that hopefully shouldn't take too long, although I seem to remember it taking a while last time I did it. I had no trouble taming the pet, but learning the skill from them took a while, and while it hasn't been proven, I still feed the pet until they are happy in hopes that it will help me learn the skill from them faster. I'm not sure I even need to bother learning rank 5 if I'm going straight to rank 6, does anyone know if pet skill ranks can be skipped? I'll get them both anyway I suppose, I like completeness even if it's unnecessary.

These hunter pets can be a bit of a drag sometimes, always having to make sure they're fed and happy, and then the time that goes into learning skills for them as they level up. I'm not even sure what I'd do if there were no sites to help me find the mobs I need to tame to learn the right skills, using the hunter ability to check beast skills would take forever. Now that I think about it, hunters have it the worst when it comes to bag space, always having to keep a bunch of meat on hand to feed the pet, not to mention your ammo, meaning you're carrying around an ammo bag that, while it may have empty spaces from time to time, you can't put anything but ammo in it, essentially giving you one less bag, and with the increase to ranged attack speed they give you, it's really not an option to just use a regular bag for ammo. Now I know warlocks have this problem too with soulstones, and you can buy soulstone bags for those that leaves you in the same situation, but they don't have to also carry around food for their minions.

On the topic of bags, I find it's a good idea to carry around the item specific bags when your character has a gathering profession. Right now my enchanter has an enchanting bag and my herbalist has an herb bag. I find myself running out of bag space very often with gathering professions, and while you may not be able to use the bag to store anything else, they are much cheaper for more slots and will probably be full most of the time anyway so there's a good chance you wouldn't be leaving any open slots unused. I need to look into getting bags for all my characters with gathering professions, it really helped my enchanter out, even though her enchanting bag is always full and one of the other bags usually has a bunch of enchanting mats in it too, but those extra slots mean my regular bags have that many more slots available to carry other stuff without spending a bunch of money for a normal bag with lots of slots. It's one of the little things in the game that I think was well thought out.

Separation or integration?

As I've been reading through other WoW blogs I noticed that there are a lot of couples that play together and I want to figure out what brought that about. Right now I try to plan my WoW time around everything else, girlfriend included, so pretty much whenever we're together I'm not playing. This makes it pretty hard to find any substantial amount of play time unless she's busy with something else, but I've been managing because most weeknights she was busy. Well all that is about to change in a couple weeks and while it's a good thing in that I will see her more often, I'd still like to be able to play as much as I was able to before. I'm not really sure if convincing her to play would work because she considers whenever I play WoW my "nerd time", which doesn't really make it sound like she's interested, besides the fact that I don't think she'd want to pay the monthly fee.

So how do you with significant others that don't play WoW schedule your play time? Do you do like me and play only while they're not around, or are you able to compromise some play time and they find something else to do while you play? I think I'm gonna have to come up with some kind of compromise because otherwise I will effectively get no play time. Were any of you in the same situation and actually got them to play with you? She does play videogames, just more FPS than anything, but it is obviously addicting, and I think if I can get her to give it a try she may find out she likes it. Wish me luck with that.

In other news, I did get a little play time in yesterday, and managed to get quite a bit more done in Dustwallow. I raided a Grimtotem camp, freeing prisoners and releasing raptors. Killed a named Murloc and took his sword, captured some more raptors (guess they weren't free for too long, but they'll be treated better than they were by the Grimtotems), and killed the gargoyle that was haunting Witch Hill. Then I investigated the Shady Rest Inn, luckily the badge you find there has a question mark over it now, that thing was so hard to find before. Didn't get that much XP because most of the quests were pretty low level (still green, but just barely), but I got to check out content they added in there on the last patch and I only wish it had been there when I was leveling up my first couple characters to get me through those levels.

Stuck in the swamp

Swamps are sorta depressing. Maybe it's just the fact that I've been questing in the swamp for the past couple days now, went from Swamp of Sorrows to Dustwallow Marsh and I'm still working on clearing out all the quests there. I figure I better do all the quests here as this is my lowest level Alliance character which means she will be the last I ever have at this point in the game unless they decide to create any new classes that start at level 1, but at this point I think any new classes will be hero classes and start at a higher level. I think some of these Dustwallow quests are old ones that were here before patch 2.3, but most of them seem to be new.

The new Defias quests seem like they would be pretty cool if they led somewhere like they did in Westfall, but you basically end up flying over an island with a lot of high level elite dragons and such and that's about it. This is where adding new mid-level content to the game would come in handy. Sure we killed Van Cleef, but that was 20 levels ago, why not give us another Defias instance, since obviously VC answers to someone more powerful. I'm not saying we need another instance, just a way to wrap things up, but maybe they are planning that in future expansions. Doesn't seem like the Defias leader would be in Northrend, but if there are more expansions after that they have plenty of storylines they've left unanswered so far, I just view these mid-level storylines as trivial compared to the threat of Arthas and Illidan, so I would assume if they were to clear them up they would add it in as more mid-level content.

I was reading some suggestions for future expansions for the game and came across someone who had a good idea in theory, but it would be very hard to implement. They suggested to create more factions for the Burning Legion and the Scourge, which would mean 4 factions fighting eachother. Maybe some people are getting tired of just having Alliance and Horde, and while Horde are meant to be more "evil" I would say they aren't really the big bad guys they used to be anymore. This idea intrigued me though, and I think there was mention of actually having different classes with these factions, something different from what the current factions have now. While I like that I can play a shaman on the Alliance side, I think the idea of having classes that only one faction can have is a good idea. It makes you play differently in groups, introduces alt players to the different content of the other faction, and I think extends the life of the game because of these things.

Now making the Legion and the Scourge factions would be a huge undertaking, since they would have to add low level zones, main cities, lots of mid-level content, basically double the size the game is now, in order to make them comparable to what the Alliance and Horde have currently. Now this is where faction specific classes come in, because the Legion and Scourge are so different from the others they probably shouldn't have exactly the same classes. They would have classes that fit the same roles, but are different. Necromancers can take the place of warlocks with summonable pets and lots of DOT's, while shadowmages can be similar to mages, but maybe with shadow spells replacing ice among other differences. This would have been a perfect way to introduce the death knight as the anti paladin, but too late now. Assassins instead of rogues, some kind of evil shapeshifter as a druid-like class, not sure what to do about every class, but these are just off the top of my head. If they were to take the effort to make such a huge expansion it would extend the life of the game by a huge amount. It would pretty much be adding a whole new game, of course they might want to save that idea for WoW2. I'm still excited to hear if we will get Diablo 3, that would probably replace WoW for me.

Giant sea monster?

I was sort of counterproductive yesterday. I went over to Arathi with my hunter and did the Stromgarde quests, which I hadn't been able to before, but now they aren't elite. Those quests actually went pretty quickly, the whole having a pet thing helps me out a lot in those fights with a bunch of mobs that are close together, so I mowed through them all for the most part. After completing those quests I headed over to find the giant and kill him, then to the Circle of Inner Binding, summoned that giant and took the follow up quest. Then I went and killed some ogres and grabbed the wand from one of them, to stop him from learning to use magic I guess. Went back and turned all those in, then headed to Ironforge to learn my new skills (since I'm 42 now) and turn in another quest. The next quest in the chain from the giant sends you to the Badlands, and while it would be cool to continue that quest line, I really don't think I want to spend the time and effort on it, so I dropped that quest.

From Ironforge I headed over to Menethil and hopped a boat to Theramore. As I got there I saw a huge sea monster attacking the harbor. Now I may not have spent a lot of time in Theramore, but I thought I would at least know about a sea monster attack, apparently not, or is this a fairly new event? I looked up the monster's name and found the quest that starts out the chain to bring him out, and while it's 6 levels below me, I wanted to do it anyway, just seems like a cool quest. This is where counterproductive comes in. See, this quest is not really going to help me out at all in my leveling as it is so far below my level and won't get me much XP, but sometimes you just find something you can't pass up. Anyway, I did the first parts of the quest, the next one makes you travel to the other side of the zone, so I'm going to do that part as I complete the quests for Mudsprocket. All these quests are optional to me at this point. Originally, Dustwallow would have been a zone I skipped over completely, and I have the capacity to finish up STV and move on to Tanaris already, but most of the quests here are green to me and I figure it's an easy boost in XP that will just make those later zones that much easier.

So I had planned my hunter to be a money maker and made her a leatherworker and herbalist, but I just kept forgetting to gather herbs, so while my leatherworking is up to my level, my herbalism is still in the apprentice stages, which is pretty sad and not helping me make money. I'm thinking of dropping leatherworking and picking up alchemy instead, but I'm not sure it would be a good idea at this point. I want to make money, and gathering skills are the best way to do that for me, I just need to level up my herbalism so I can collect herbs as I continue through the levels. Then I need to start putting up some auctions rather than just selling to vendors. It gets so annoying running out of bag space, and a lot of the time I don't want to make the trip to the AH, but I still need to buy my hunter a mount and my 3 characters above 60 their epic riding skills and mounts. This is gonna take a while.

Ranged pwnage

Took a trip to the Swamp of Sorrows yesterday with my hunter to do the quests there. Not that much to do, but it gets you some XP and I managed to get to level 42 by just completing those quests, plus got a good amount more on the way to 43. The escort quest in that place sucks to solo, even for my hunter. If you don't clear out some of the mobs before you start the quest the guy you escort ends up aggroing 4 or 5 mobs, 2 of them are warlock types with imp minions, so that just adds to how much damage he takes, so there's no chance of taking them out before they burn him down. So I decided to clear them out ahead of time. I guess I'm a little rusty on my hunter skills, and I'm not used to having feign death, because I died a couple times when I really didn't need to. I think another problem is what I talked about last post with my lack of a good ranged weapon. Right now I'm using a gun I picked up as a quest reward, and it did well for a while, but I'm pretty sure it's way below my level now because my damage does not seem to be up to par with what level I am. Other than that I had no problem mopping up the quests in just a little over an hour before RL stuff called my attention elsewhere.

I suppose another problem with having a bunch of alts is that if you leave one alone for a while you have to relearn the class, or at least it takes a bit to remember the strategies and skill rotations you used before. So not only do you sit there for a bit trying to figure out exactly what you were doing last time you played that particular character, once you actually figure it out you and head off to do it, you have to spend more time muddling through fights before you remember how to play the class again. Of course it's not like it takes that long, you get the hang of the basics after a few fights, but you forget about all the skills you have that you don't use in the average fight.

For every class I'm sure we all have skill rotations for battle that we use in different situations, and while it obviously varies with each class, the idea tends to be the same for the most part. I have a rotation of skills I use against one mob which basically tries to conserve mana as much as possible to reduce downtime between mobs. Then I have ways of dealing with two mobs, which includes trying to dish out as much damage as possible and kill one, and hope I have enough health to kill the next otherwise I run, but pets make this much easier. I don't go up against more than two on my own usually, except with a hunter or warlock where my pet can take the damage. There are also the panic skills, the ones you use when you know you get critted on like every hit, or a patrol of mobs shows up and joins in, something that makes you think (or say out loud) "Oh crap!" For most classes this pretty much involves running away and using skills to keep yourself alive until you get out of aggro range. For rogues and hunters you have vanish and feign death, those classes have it easy. But for shamans you have stoneclaw and earthbind totems to slow down attackers plus ghost wolf for while some druids spec nature's grasp for occasions such as this and have travel form, many others have some kind of fear, like warlocks, priests, and warriors, and priests also have a bubble spell, as do the paladins, while mages have frost nova and blink. Guess I went a little overboard on that explanation, but the point is these situations are not the only ones you run into. What happens when you group with someone, fight in PVP, or maybe you have a different strategy against casters or ranged mobs, and for melee fighters it might be better to pull a mob with a ranged weapon than run up and start wailing away on it, so then you might switch it up a little.

Relearning your class might not be as straightforward as just killing a few things to remember this stuff, but it makes things fresh again if you haven't played that particular character for a while, and that's how I like to play. I like the progression of leveling and going through the quests, and even though it might not be the most efficient way of getting a character to the level cap or getting all the best gear, I don't really mind because I find each class fun in its own way so I will continue with all my alts and slowly but surely proceed through the levels with them.

Stop...Hunter time!

I have decided to pick up my hunter again and give the priest a little break. I finished up Hellfire Peninsula on the priest, at least all but the elite quests, and she's over halfway to 64, so I think that's a pretty good time for her to get a little rest. So after what quests I had left in Hellfire, which turned out to be pretty easy to solo (I love when they give you an item to turn an elite mob into non elite), I turned in the quests and then logged off. I logged onto my hunter, and I thought I had a good idea of where I was at point with her, but apparently I was a little off. Thats one problem with having a bunch of alts, you lose track of what you were doing last time you played one if it's been a while. So I log on thinking I'm gonna be heading to the Badlands, but I see a bunch of Uldaman quests in my log, most of them having Badlands quests that lead up to them, so apparently I've already been there and done all those. I'm not really sure if I've been to Swamp of Sorrows yet, but my STV quests are slightly higher level than me right now, so I think I will check it out and see if I can gain another level or two somewhere else before going back there. Also, with the addition of these new Dustwallow Marsh quests, it should be pretty easy to level up a couple times and then come back to STV and finish it up, especially for a hunter.

I think I may have mentioned before, but while my hunter is a Night Elf, she has a ghostclaw lynx from Eversong Forest, the Blood Elf starting area. I took the long trip over there at level 12 and grabbed one, since it's the only place you can get one with those colors and I thought it would be cool for an Alliance hunter to have one, but I also wanted her to level up with me, so I died a bunch of times, but I finally made it and she's done very well for me. I named her Lynxia. At some point I want to get a black wolf as well, but I think the lowest level one of those is 47 or 48, so I have a few levels to go. I'm not sure if there's any point in having two pets until I get to the end game though, I've been hearing it's impossible to keep two pets up to your level, so I may wait on that. I supposed I should also get a tank pet, probably a turtle since they not only have the stats for it, but one of their skills is specifically for tanking and it would be nice to have that option available for certain situations. So between those three pets I think I'd be set, with the DPS pet that I currently have with my cat, the balanced pet in the wolf, and the tank pet in the turtle.

One other thing about leveling a hunter is I don't have much experience with gear on them, especially weapons. While pretty much every other class upgrades melee weapons regularly, it seems the more important weapon for a hunter is their ranged weapon, so I have been trying to keep up on that, but I'm not used to being on the lookout for a good upgrade to my gun or bow. So far I have really only upgraded when I saw a better one drop or got a quest reward, but with all my high level characters on the same server, it might be a good idea to just farm for one in an instance that will last her for a while. I also want to pick up some pieces of mail armor, since she's still wearing a bunch of leather right now as she's only level 41 and hasn't had a chance to replace her old armor yet. I was thinking of grabbing the set from Scarlet Monastery, or some of it at least, I wasn't sure if some of the pieces were still BOP, or what stats it gives since I can't get on any of the database sites from work, but I can't think of any other armor that would be so easy to farm for to help out a character at this level, although there might be some better stuff in Uldaman now that I think about it, I'll have to look that up. I'm a little excited about running with my hunter again, she was always fun to play and while it tends to make questing a little less of a challenge, I can push myself to take on greater challenges to make up for it so it's still rewarding when you succeed. Plus being able to take on same level elite mobs is awesome.

Shizz work

Probably one of the funniest quests in the game, where you have to follow around a fel hound and kill boars so it will eat and take a crap, which you then proceed to search until you find a key, plus it gives you a bad smelling debuff. Did this quest yesterday, along with all the quests that little goblin at the Thrallmar mine gives you, plus I did one of the elite quests and got a sweet trinket, so now I have like 5 trinkets that I like, but only can equip 2, so I don't know if I should bank the others or just disenchant them. Some of them are good in certain situations, like the stopwatch that makes you run faster for a short time, but it's something I rarely use so I'm not sure it's worth it to keep the thing. I know once it goes in the bank I probably won't ever equip it again, but I'm thinking that for BG's or something it might be a good thing to keep around once I hit the level cap. I guess I'll hang onto it just in case, whatever it disenchants into probably won't help my enchanting skill at this point anyway.

For the elite quest I joined a 5 man group to kill Arazzius the Cruel, I think that was his name, and I healed for our little group. Had two druids, a warlock, and a hunter, and my priest, which is shadow by the way. Well one of the druids tanked in bear form, the other went cat form, and pretty much went to town on the guy. He has a summon infernal spell, and happened to summon some just as I healed our tank, so I get aggro and spend the rest of the fight running around in circles and putting on my bubble when I can because no one pulls them off me. Luckily once he dies his infernals die too, so I got the quest completed and headed back to turn it in. There are still a few more elite quests that I need to do there, and looking at the rewards they would be worth it to me to get them done, so I guess I'll have to stray from my normal soloing and group up again for those, seems to be a lot of people willing to help out there though, unlike in Azeroth, which is why I thought it was good they made all those mobs non-elite. Sure it was a big accomplishment way back when, but there aren't many people left in the lower levels anymore, and the ones that are there are people on alts that are trying to solo through and level as fast as possible, so why have all those quests when no one can finish them? It still takes a very dedicated person to make it to Outland, let alone get to 70, so while some people may complain about the change making the accomplishment seem diminished, well, they're technically right, but it helps to not discourage new players since they can catch up with a reasonable amount of play time, and helps people with alts (like me) not get bored with content we've done a bunch of times before. I know I like the addition of Dustwallow Marsh quests, giving something a little different, and during some levels where it was really hard to find any significant amount of quests to help you level through it and continue on. The new non-elites also add some extra flavor, as most of the time I would have to skip them all, but now I can do them on my own and see some stuff I never got around to seeing before.

Yes, I really think Blizzard is doing a good job so far in the direction they are taking the game, making it more viable for casual players or players that just don't care much for the end game and just like the joy they get from leveling. I love doing quests and actually finding ones where you care about the story behind it and follow along. I'm sorta bummed that I've gotten all my Alliance characters past level 40, there were a bunch of quests I liked in the 20-40 range on the Alliance side and I probably won't ever get to do them again. On the other hand, I get to take some Horde characters through the levels (never got past level 30 on Horde before) and see a view from the other side, so maybe it will be a better experience. The thing I'm looking forward to the most in the future is new classes, since at this point I don't see them adding any new races with the lack of lore to support it, unless they were to make some sort of third faction, but that seems less likely. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Groupie time

So I was running around Outland with my priest last night, trying take beads from the Mag'Har orcs, when I see a troll hunter running around the place. Looks like the Horde players are friendly with these guys, and the guy decides that with all these enemies around, I'll be easy to gank. Well, he was right. I saw his pet stealth and knew he we be on me in a few seconds, so I threw up my bubble and went after the hunter. Now do hunters have a dispelling shot or something? I never played mine far enough to get it if they do, but this guy somehow took out my bubble in one hit, and that thing is supposed to absorb like 1300 damage, so I can't figure out how he did it. His pet was also immune to fear, so that didn't help me out, and I died pretty quickly. I just don't know how to PVP with my priest, don't really know which spells to use, and it doesn't help that he attacked me right when I finished killing off a couple mobs so I was mostly out of mana. Well I'll practice PVP when I get around to it, right now leveling is my main concern. I did get all the beads I need, and that Draenei dude was pretty pissed that I had been sent to do that, but hey, if you're gonna give me some XP and a reward I'll do whatever you want me to do.

Then I went over to kill some demons and blobs, pretty straightforward, but there happened to be abour 4 Horde players running around the same area, probably doing the same thing, but these guys left me alone for some reason. Sometimes I /wave to them or something, but I just went about my business, they went about theirs, and everyone was happy. As I'm doing this I get a tell from some guy to help him with a quest in here. Sure, I'm doing quests here too, must be the same one. Nope. It's the follow up to one I'm doing, so I group and kill more stuff until I'm done, then make him wait there while I turn it in and come back so we can complete the quest together. I don't know, it could have easily been soloed, so I could care less if we were grouped or not, but he didn't seem to know how to summon the mob we had to kill, so I decided just to help him since I had done the quest before. Pretty easy, and quick, and then I turned it in before logging, didn't feel like staying on anymore. Not the most exciting day, but I did level up my tailoring some more, gotta get to 300 so I can start making stuff with all this netherweave I've been getting.

I think I'm getting close to being done with Hellfire Peninsula, and almost caught up to my druid, I wonder what I will decide to do when that happens. I don't know how I'm gonna get all the elite quests done here, but they have some really good rewards and I don't want to pass them up. Looks like I'll have to find a group and see about knocking them out all at once, shouldn't be too hard with a couple people. Maybe once I finish that I'll dust off my hunter and see what she can do, or maybe my shaman can farm some runecloth for me while she quests. Either way I've got lots of options waiting for me.

Who would have thought

I never thought I would be this dedicated to a game when I started out, then again, I had never really played an MMORPG before WoW, so I really didn't know what to expect. I started the game out on a pretty crappy system. Sure I had a 128mb Radeon video card, but I also only had 384mb of RAM and my processor was a 1.5 GHz AMD, so needless to say, the first time I got into Ironforge I thought something was terribly wrong. I thought my processor was just too slow to handle the game, even after I had put all the video settings to pretty low quality, did I mention the max resolution on my monitor was 800x600? For a long time I played the game like that, dreading the trip to IF because of the massive lag I would get, and I finally told my friend, who was playing with me at the time, about what was going on and that I wanted to upgrade my computer without spending too much money. He tells me to get more RAM, probably the cheapest way to go about it, and went on to explain to me how much it helped him when he had the same problem. I guess I was under the impression that it was mostly the processor, but a few days later I took out the stick of 128 and popped in a stick of 512 next to the 256 and basically doubled the RAM I had, strolled on over to IF and lo and behold, lag was down considerably, almost down to none. I was so happy. How had I not spent the 60 bucks to do this before now? Such an easy upgrade and since I was used to bad quality video at this point anyway, I was happy to play in that mode as long as I didn't have to deal with the lag that my lack of RAM had been providing. Well now I've upgraded to a sweet laptop with some high end hardware, so I run it in widescreen mode with all the high end video stuff turned on and it runs smooth as silk, but I played to 60 on two characters before that upgrade, and never thought I'd still be playing 3 years after I got the game.

I guess the only other games I've ever played with this much enthusiasm were Diablo II and Chrono Trigger. D2 was flat out awesome, and I of course had one character of each class, and managed to get most of them to a fairly high level before burning out on it. I would love to see an amazon type character in WoW, expert with throwing weapons and polearms, maybe add some javelins to the game, but I guess they would have to figure out a way to make lore for that first. Problem with D2 was there was really no end game content, once you beat the game on Hell difficulty the only thing left to do was collect gear, and then people made bot programs and it got way too out of control for me. By the time they introduced the uber bosses I had already quit and since they deleted your characters after 3 months of inactivity, I really didn't want to start it up again, but I had a good run. Chrono Trigger is probably my favorite game ever, and while I've probably spent more total hours on WoW, it's only because I managed to do pretty much everything in Chrono Trigger. I don't remember how many game endings there were, but there were a bunch, and I managed to get every one of them, plus gathered the best gear for everyone, which meant playing through the game multiple times as you could only get one of those items each time through, but could carry your characters over in a New Game +, which started the game over but with your old characters. I also played pretty much all the games in the Final Fantasy series, including getting an NES emulator and playing translated versions of the games that had only been released in Japan until recently. I suppose it just makes sense that my RPG addiction would carry over to the massive online versions, and my tendency to want to beat games completely, without shortcuts, just adds to why I've stuck with it this long, besides the fact that there is so much content that I still haven't seen, but I intend to see it before I quit.

Back to what I've been up to. I did some more Outland stuff, but forgot to buy that Nethergarde Bitter the dwarf wants in Hellfire Peninsula before I headed over there, so had to run one of my other characters over there and send it to my priest, along with some rune cloth, to save time so I could get the follow up he gives. I was going to give the priest a break, but I have so much rest XP that I want to use up first, though that may take a while yet. Killed some bird men and birds, then some ravagers, then stonescythes, turned in some quests, and called it a night. It really seemed to take longer than it should have to finish those quests, but I might not have been paying attention the entire time with the TV being on and all.

Those crazy vendors

Still hanging out in Outland, but I went back for a bit to learn my new level 62 skills, turns out I only get one, but I guess thats how it goes. I also flew over to Winterspring to see about getting that Runecloth Bag pattern, but the NPC that sells it just didn't want me to have it I guess. I decided to do some item trading between my other characters, sent a bunch of cloth and items to disenchant to my priest, came back and she still wasn't selling it. I did learn how to make Mooncloth though, and also got an enchanting recipe, so I guess it wasn't a total loss, but I really want to make bags. The only recipe I have for runecloth that is guaranteed to level my skill up and that also doesn't require a bunch of other materials uses 6 bolts to make, thats 30 runecloth apiece, and my skill is only at 280, so I have 20 more levels to go before I can use all the netherweave cloth I've been getting.

I'm finding Outland to be a breeze so far, and I can probably attribute a lot of that to the fact that I waited to head out there, but I also think part of it is the power of the shadow priest. I mean for the most part I can throw up my Power Word: Shield and the mob is usually down before it gets through, and I know it isn't the fastest way to kill a mob, but I use my wand a lot, and in doing this I rarely run out of health or mana so I almost never have downtime between fights. I remember Hellfire Peninsula taking forever on my druid, and I barely even started it on my rogue, but at the pace I'm going now I'll be caught up to my druid in no time. I'm even thinking about picking up my shaman again, since she's just about to the point where she will be picking up lots of runecloth, so I can level her up and in the process I will be farming some cloth for my priest to get her tailoring up to speed. Too bad I think I sold most of the netherweave my druid picked up along the way, guess I'll have some gathering to do for that.

I also need to pick up my hunter again at some point, she's been neglected for way too long, ever since I heard the pet AI was bugged when they changed it so they try to get behind the target, but I assume that's fixed now, and I had lots of fun with that character, especially since I took the time at the beginning to get my lynx pet that can only be found in the blood elf starting area. Yeah, running through EPL as a level 12 wasn't that fun, but I eventually made it, got my pet, and now I get a bunch of comments on it all the time. I also want to pick up a wolf pet at some point, but from what I've heard with changes to leveling between 20-60, it's not practical to try to level two pets at once, so I guess I'll wait on getting a second pet. If you checked out her armory profile and are wondering what the hell is up with her spec, I originally went MM because I liked the skills I would be getting, but then I realized after reading some sites that I wanted to go BM instead, but instead of respeccing I just put my points into the BM tree from that point on and this is where I've ended up. It actually works out pretty good for me so far, but I guess we'll see what happens at the higher levels. For now I have no trouble taking out mobs.

Don't even get me started on my Horde characters, they'll get their chance, I just haven't decided when yet.

Priest in Outland

I finally finished up Azeroth with my priest and head on to Outland. One thing I'm mad at myself for though is I forgot to get the pattern for Mooncloth Bag from the guy in Winterspring while I was there. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but my priest is a tailor and enchanter, so I wanted to to be able to make so bags and make some money from leveling up tailoring. I guess it isn't all bad though because I can just disenchant the other stuff I'm making which helps me level up enchanting at the same time. I also sold a bunch of my old enchanting mats once I actually check the AH and found out how much they sell for. I still had a bunch of mats that get used in the very first enchants you get and it was all taking up room in my bag. I'm not sure why I still even had them either, it's not like they were going to help me level up enchanting anymore, but I was luckily able to get rid of a bunch of them and make some money in the process.

I'm finding the combination of tailoring/enchanting to be some of my favorites, second would be leatherworking/skinning, and if you can afford to keep them up to speed with your character you can help yourself out quite a bit. In the mid 40's I made myself most of the Shadoweave set and a few Dreamweave items to boost my spell damage and pretty much kept it on until now since I never got anything else that added more to my shadow spell damage and I could really care less about how much armor they gave me. Now I'm getting all the Outland upgrades from quests and a couple drops and they are ridiculously better, as I'm sure you all know already, and I'm finding that my maximum health and mana have both shot up considerably due to the greatly increased stats on the armor, as well as much more spell damage, and not just shadow damage this time so if I was ever to be asked to heal an instance I should be able to hold my own, at least before the high end ones.

On a side note, ever since the expansion came out I've always wanted to get to 70 and get my attunements for the old world end game content and go through them with a group of a bunch of other 70s. Sure it wouldn't be quite the same, and I'm sure would be much easier than it was before, but I never got to see most of that content as I hit 60 only a few months before the expansion and was never able to get geared up enough to go to places like MC or AQ. I mean I was only able to do Scholo and Strat with any consistency, and even then I never got the drops I wanted. The only time I tried LBRS I had a terrible PUG and I don't even remember making it a boss in there so I feel like I'm missing out on something that, while the rewards won't be that great like they were before, I can see some cool content that I never really experienced and that everyone just bypasses now that it's outdated.

It would be pretty cool if they gave the old raid instances some upgrades, like make heroic versions of them that are 25-man level 70 raid instances, and put in some better drops, and maybe even just make heroic versions of every instance to be on par for a level 70 that gets bored and wants to run an old dungeon with a PUG for fun. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to scale up all the mobs change the drops, although Blizzard is probably more interested in creating new content at this point than going back and changing old content for us players that never got to see it. I seem to remember back when I was farming SM with my rogue to get some stuff for my priest that I would see the option to make it heroic pop up when I entered, not that it actually worked, but at the time I wished it did, as well as making a heroic version of every instance in the game that scales with whatever the level cap happens to be at the time. How cool would it be to run Deadmines again with your 70 and have it not only be tough with a 5-man group, but give you some good drops as well? Or what about a 25-man level 70 version of MC? I also think those legendary weapons need an upgrade as well, that big mace you get from Ragnaros looked awesome, and it seems like a legendary weapon should be relevant to a character at the highest level, although they'd have to make a different version that you get only from the heroic instance since I'm sure most of the people who got it before the expansion still have it in the bank.

Just some ideas to think about.