Help the n00bs!

Mr. BBB brought up a good discussion on his blog the other day about mid-level content and since I have a very bad habit of playing various alts, it is very relevent to me. When I first started WoW it was about 3 months after the initial release, and while there were many people who had reached level 60 already, the majority of players who were still on their way up, and a lot more just starting the game like I was. This made for a great social experience while still at low levels. Lots of players looking for groups to knock out hard quests, run through the low level instances, or just to get things done faster.

Jump ahead a few years and the level distribution of players has changed drastically. A very high percentage of players have at least one level 70, many have more than one, and the game seems to focus on the end game and getting other players there quickly. Now I don't mind being able to level faster and all, especially with my limited playing time, but by making the end game so much more appealing than anything else, it is very hard for new leveling players to get the experience many of us veterans got when we first started playing.

One of my favorite moments in the game was on my first character, a gnome rogue, in Redridge Mountains. I was obviously very new to the game still, but I was starting to understand my class and the role a rogue plays. If you've been through that zone you know the last few quests send you to a tower full of elite orcs and you are supposed to kill a couple of their leaders, one right outside and one at the top. I was lucky enough to find a group of four others around my level and we headed out.

The mobs outside were spread out and pretty easy to pick off one at a time, then we came to the first boss mob. He had three guards, and I knew it was gonna be tough, but our mage knew how to play. He kept one sheeped for the entire fight while we burned down the rest, a pretty impressive display for a bunch of new players. Heading up the tower was a challenge as well since all the mobs were runners, but while we had some adds show up a few times, we managed to make it to the top. Using the same strategy as the first boss, we took down the second and his three guards, and once again had almost no trouble at all. It was a great experience to see that kind of teamwork take place, and while at the time I thought was pretty normal, I have since come to realize that PUGs don't turn out that way often.

After leveling a few alts through the same area, I can say that I never had the same experience. After taking way to much time to pull together a group on my first alt, we managed to fail miserably and ended up resorting to calling over a 60 to run us through it, which does not give you that feeling of accomplishment. With other alts I made I didn't even bother doing it if finding a group took more than a few minutes. It seemed that everyone had a level capped friend that would just run them through it, but I can't imagine how new players feel with those quests sitting in the quest logs but being unable to get them done because they don't know anybody yet and everyone else is getting help from their high level buddies.

I'm not really sure how BBB's idea would work out, making a new faction with a lower level cap might be a little extreme, but we need something in the game to make staying at a lower level more appealing so new players can get that experience of comradery and teamwork early on. Sure we have twinks and all, but those players stop leveling at a certain point, which doesn't really help questing players out much.

I would suggest a modification to the idea. I do like the go back in time to thwart the Black Dragonflight, but maybe make those instances open to everyone once they reach a certain level and for whatever level they happen to be it will be reduced accordingly. Say once you reach level 25 you can do the "Return of Van Cleef" instance (see this post), and any characters over level 28 will be reduced to level 28 and given generic weapons and armor that corresponds with their class for that level. There would have to be a way to hide your actual level when looking for groups for these instances as most high level players will be biased against grouping with the lowbies.

If certain quests for these instances were made available at various levels with good rewards it would keep a steady flow of players looking to put groups together for them, and faction rewards or some other sort of incentive would keep players going back. The new players would get a taste of how to run an instance while still at a low level. They would learn their class, how to use it, and when they got to the high level stuff they would be prepared.

Well that's my two cents towards that idea. If something like that was added to the game I can tell you that I would be all for it as long as it adds something to the low end content to create a way for low level players, who may never even reach the level cap, to experience everything that made those levels so much fun for those of us that have been around since the beginning. What do you think?

Feeling nostalgic

I finally made it to level 68 last night and got my new flight form. Being able to fly around is awesome. If there is a cave full of mobs between me and where I need to go I can just fly over it instead, no need to run through and worry about aggroing a bunch of stuff. I managed to get a lot of quests done yesterday, and I think now I'm almost ready to leave BEM and head to another zone, although I'm not sure which one to go to. I guess I'll figure it out when it comes to that point, but for now I have at least a couple more playing sessions before I'm ready to move on.

Actually, what I really want to talk about today is how much I miss the early content. Right now all my alliance characters are past a bunch of my favorite early zones and I'm sort of feeling sad about the fact that I won't be doing those quest lines that I love so much anymore. See, I used to play the game with iTunes running in the background. I never really liked the game music much, but my computer could handle both at the same time with no problem. After doing this for a while, and usually having the same albums running over and over since I was too lazy to alt+tab out and change it, I started to associate certain music with certain zones. Now that I have my laptop I usually play in front of the TV with the game sound turned off so I can hear the TV and I don't bother with putting music on.

Then today I was on my way to work, had my headphones on during the train ride and was listening to an album that I used to listen to while playing WoW. All of a sudden I got this longing feeling and wanted to go back to Ashenvale and roam the forest. I really enjoyed that zone and the whole feel of it, like a magical forest out of a fantasy book. Obviously I can't play now because I'm at work, and with my new goals I've set I still have to make my way to 70 before I can switch it up, but it just makes you realize how much of an effect this game can make on you and just how much thought the game designers put into. It certainly takes a lot for a game to make you feel emotions like that.

I do have a bunch of horde characters that will get the chance to make their way through most of those zones, but the quests are entirely different and I just don't think it will feel the same. One good thing is I will still get to quest in those zones, and the different quests will bring a little variety to my game, but it still saddens me that with all the time I split between my current characters, I will probably never get to level an alliance character through those zones again. Maybe the early horde quests will be just as memorable, and since I have 4 of them to level up it should be plenty to keep me sustained. That's the best I can hope for at this point I think.

New info (to me)

After recieving some new info yesterday from Mama Druid, I have learned that one death knight can be created per server provided you have a character over level 55 on your account, regardless if it is on the same server or not. This changes everything as my previous plan was based on getting a horde character to 55 in order to create my new death knight, but now that is no longer a requirement so I think I can rethink my goals. As I am nearing level 68 with my druid I am getting closer to completing my main goal of getting him to 70 before the expansion. Assuming he gets there with time to spare, I will need to shift my focus to another task, and with so little time before WotLK is released I don't think going after end game gear is the smart thing to do as it will be obselete soon. I have two other characters at level 60 or above who I haven't played in a while, but I am anticipating a change to leveling from 60-70 coming soon and would rather wait for that before I start leveling them again. That still leaves me with a few options, but I think I have a good idea what I want to do.

Right now my remaining two alliance characters are in their 50's, my hunter and shaman, and being so close to the level 60 mark I think I want to try to get them there, or as close as I can, before the expansion hits and I shift my focus to playing a death knight for a while. The good thing about this plan is it doesn't really put any pressure on me. I might be able to get one of them to 60, but probably not both, and I know that, so there is nothing to be disappointed about and I can stick to just having fun. Another plus is I have a lot of fun playing both these classes. The hunter is like easy mode, just send the pet in and take out the bad guys from a distance, and I love seeing my shaman's windfury proc and throw up a bunch of big numbers, all while the mob's health is plummeting. I expect I will make it to level 70 on my druid in the next couple weeks, and I will be looking forward to not only progressing my other characters further into the game, but with the level they're at they are in the perfect position to supply my priest with all the runecloth she needs to get her over the 300 tailoring mark and start using her massive supply of netherweave that she's been recieving from my druid all this time. Thing are starting to look up for my team.

Keeping with the trend of expansion info, and I'm sure most of you know this already anyway, but I want to talk a little about hunter changes that I'm really excited about. First is the many new pets we will be able to tame. I think it's awesome that they are expanding our choices as far as what pets we can have. I just saw a screenshot from the beta on BRK's blog of a hunter with a devilsaur pet. How awesome is that? I'm gonna have to start thinking about what pet I want, or if I will stick with my cat. I also can't wait to see how the pet talents turn out. They are really making an effort to have every pet be useful. For so long there were only a few types of pets that had the right stats and skills that made them better than others, but now I'm hoping each pet will have it's own advantages and disadvantages that don't necessarily make one better than the other, just able to get the job done in a different way.

One hunter change I'm not sure about is the auto-leveling any pet you tame to be 5 levels below your character's. Yes, I realize that all those hunters out there that are gonna be looking to get devilsaurs and other cool pets that are well below their level won't like the idea of having to level them up, but hunters like their pets to be unique, and having a pet that is different from everyone else because you took the time to get a low level pet that nobody else has and level it up just shows the effort you've put in and makes it that much better when other players ask where you got it. It won't be as impressive to have a level 70 turtle or gorilla when you only have to level it up 5 levels to catch up to you. The thing that keeps me from saying it's a bad idea altogether is that there will be so many different pets out there, and apparently beastmasters will have even more choices with their talent to be able to tame "exotic" pets, whatever those are. I think we will be seeing a great variety of pets, much different than just everyone having a different looking cat like we have now, but players having different types in general. We may even get pets whose different talents complement each other in raid groups and find hunters in guilds speccing their pets differently to recieve maximum benefits for the raid. I can't wait to see what happens. Petopia will be going haywire on release day with all the new pets we can get.

Change of plans

I decided to change my goals that I want to reach before the new expansion is released. The first goal of getting my druid to 70 still remains, and is top priority right now, but while I could easily make a death knight on my alliance server when the expansion comes out, I am really set on making him undead, which will most likely mean I need a level 55 character on my horde server. This poses a problem in that I don't have a level 55 character on my horde server. What I do have is a level 50 mage, but she's the product of one of my old roommate's time of playing on my account before he got his own. Now after having moved out more than a year ago, and the fact that he didn't bother to transfer the character to his new account, I think it's safe to say he doesn't care about her anymore and wouldn't mind me leveling her a little to get my death knight. The thing is, I have a slight problem with it, but I still want my undead death knight.

This is where the change in goals comes in. I had originally set my next goal (after getting the druid to 70) of getting my priest, who is level 63 right now, as far toward 70 as she can get before the expansion is released. I don't see any reason why the druid won't be 70 well before WotLK, and with it coming so soon it doesn't seem like I should bother trying to get him a bunch of gear that will be obselete soon anyway. Getting the priest to 70 is a stretch, and probably wouldn't have happened anyway, so I just figured I'd get her through as much as I could. Now I'm starting to think it wouldn't make sense for the death knight to be open on any server if you have a character over level 55 on just one server. Knowing how Blizz works, I don't think they'd want you to be able to create a new character at a higher level than any of the other characters on your server, so death knight creation will probably be limited to only those servers that you have another high level character on. I decided instead to put my priest leveling on hold and work on making my undead death knight available to me as soon as the expansion is released.

What I ended up deciding is to get one of my horde characters up to level 55 before the expansion. With the faster leveling from 20-60 I don't see this goal being all that unrealistic, but don't worry, I have a backup plan. When my druid hits 70 I will make the switch to my horde server and start leveling my mage, who is close to level 30 now. It's a little bit of a stretch, but I will try to get him to 55. Now that we pretty much know the release date of WotLK I can make a good estimation of whether I will meet my goal in time. If it gets to be a month before the release of the expansion and it looks like I won't be able to make the deadline, I will switch to the level 50 mage and level her up to 55 instead, which should be no problem to do in a month. I would really rather use my own characters, but creating a death knight overrides all else, and I will break my own rules to get him.

One other reason that I have decided against leveling the priest is that there is a good chance we will see faster leveling from 60-70 soon, maybe not right when the expansion is released, but I have so many other characters to level right now that if we get faster leveling in that range it would be better for me to wait until that happens. It's going to be interesting to see what the expansion will hold when it is finally released, but reading all the reports from the beta testers it sounds like it will be awesome. It might actually be a good thing I don't have a beta key or I'd probably never meet any of my goals.

Silly Quests

One thing I enjoy about WoW is that it's made for everyone. Being set in a land with so much violence and danger they could have given it a very serious feel, but instead they decided to add that element of fun to it that keeps me coming back. It isn't always obvious either, just some of the NPC names are funny, and when they pair it up with the profession they give those NPCs it makes it even better. I wonder who decided to name the new bag selling NPC Haris Pilton, or who came up with an idea for a quest where you have to kill animals so a dog can eat them, then search through his poo for an item, not to mention the debuff it gives you.

I ran into this yesterday while killing ogres in BEM. First I had a quest to drop beer on the ground to lure an ogre over and get him drunk, pretty simple, but also more fun than just killing ogres one by one. Then I met a caged NPC in the camp and she gave me a quest sort of along the same lines. I needed to get her gear back, but two named ogres were holding them, each in his own tent. I found the first one, but in standing right next to him were two elite ogre guards, and theres no way I'm gonna take them all out by myself. I check the quest again to see if maybe I missed the fact that it was a group quest, but no, there was clearly no '(Group)' listed next to name of the quest. I was confused for a while, and decided to just keep getting ogres drunk and then killing them.

Later I went back because I knew there had to be something more to this quest, so I pulled the two non-elites in the tent and killed them, luckily this didn't aggro any of the other mobs. Then I moused over the guards to make sure they were actually elite. They were, but I noticed something, they were called SOBER guards, meaning they didn't drink. Hmmm, I had started with 10 uses on the beer I was carrying, but only needed to get 5 ogres drunk for my quest, there must be a reason to have so many more than I needed, so I got as close to the mob I needed to kill as I could, set down the beer, and backed away. Sure enough, he came bounding over the fire pit in the middle of the room to drink, and thats when I slapped him with a moonfire, switched to cat form and tore him down, all while the guards just stood there oblivious. Repeated this process for the other named ogre and returned the equipment to the nice lady. She then had a similar quest which had me killing another named ogre, maybe a little tougher than the other two, but still a pull with beer kinda guy, and I turned that one in too. Unfortunately the next quest she gave me actually was a group quest, so I left that one alone and finished up my other quests before heading back to turn them in.

It's quests like these that make this game fun and keep me coming back. They like to make you think a little, not just go out and mindlessly kill stuff, and the hints they give you to help you complete the quests can be humorous. Sometimes the hints don't seem so obvious at first, but if you're given a quest with elites involved but it isn't actually specified as a group quest there must be some way around fighting them.

Now I'm trying to figure out what to do next in this zone. After returning to Sylvanaar and turning in all the quests I had, nobody else there needed anything from me. There must be more than that to this zone, I only gained about half a level since I got there, so I guess I'm gonna have to do some scouting and figure out where the next set of citizens in need are.

Professional practice

Choosing the right profession in this game is tough, especially when you first start out. It isn't easy to know how your choice will affect you later on in the game, but the big thing to remember is that it isn't a big deal if you find out you chose the wrong profession. Changing professions isn't hard, and when you get to a high level and have a mount and good amount of money you can switch to a new profession and level it up pretty quickly. There are many high end players that switch professions and are able to make their way halfway to the top in one day. So while it is important to think about what to choose, don't dwell too much on it, this game is supposed to be fun after all.

First off, you want to pick up all the secondary professions. These include first-aid, fishing, and cooking. Now the latter two may sound boring, but when you get up to a high level they will be very important in being able to supply yourself with food that will give you extra buffs, and if you're raiding you will be expected to have these when you show up. First-aid is a must have in that every humanoid mob has a very good chance to drop some kind of cloth, usually more than one, so it's easy to level up and very convenient to be able to heal yourself, especially if your class doesn't have any healing abilities.

Gathering professions do not produce anything that can be used directly, but they do provide materials that other professions need to be able to produce their items. The best way to emphasize this would be to list the gathering profession followed by the crafting profession that it would go along with.

Skinning: goes mainly with leatherworking, but tailors use leather in boot recipes as well, as well as some engineering recipes.

Herbalism: goes mainly with alchemy, other crafts don't use herbs much

Mining: goes mainly with blacksmithing, engineering, and jewelcrafting, while other professions use the materials occasionally.

Crafting professions provide a product that can be used by characters to make themselves better, be it armor, weapons, potions, rings, enchants, or other items that provide an increas in stats. These professions give you something to sell to people, sometimes at a very high price, and can make you rich if you know what is in high demand. Some classes benefit more from certain professions than others, and I will try to keep that in mind in this list as well.

Alchemy: produces potions and flasks, providing the character with temporary buffs to certain stats. These are in high demand for raiders as they are usually required to have their own when they start the raid. These benefits any class.

Blacksmithing: creates mail armor for lower levels, but mainly for production of heavy weapons and plate armor. This profession provides the most benefit to warriors, paladins, and will soon to death knights.

Enchanting: disenchants magical items such as armor, weapons, rings and other equipables and turns them into reagents to use to enchant other equipables. It can also produce wands at the lower levels, but doesn't seem to keep with this trend as you get to the higher levels for some reason, maybe because wands only become useful for their stats later on. This is probably the most stand alone profession there is as it provides itself with materials. Enchants can benefit any class and are highly sought after in end-game content.

Engineering: mainly creates special devices for use by players such as a revival device, repair bot, and even flying mounts. Besides those choices, this profession also has recipes for guns and scopes that can be used on ranged weapons to increase your ranged damage as well as a few cloth head armor that can turn out to be pretty good for some classes. Any class can benefit from this, especially hunters, but most of the items are more for novelty than practical use.

Jewelcrafting: at first this profession allows creation of rings and necklaces that can be equipped to provide stats for players. Later on is where it shows its true colors as you can create gems that can be equipped in slots on certain armor and provide boosts to the stats of that armor. These are very important in end-game content as it provides the character with an edge over others that don't have gems equipped and can be used to customize gear for maximum potential.

Leatherworking: mostly used for the creation of leather armor, but has some recipes for mail armor as well. High level recipes allow the creation of armor kits, much like enchants, that boost the stats of a piece of armor. Also produces drums that will boost party stats for a limited amount of time when used, though with the current changes in the upcoming expansion it may become less desireable as you will only be able to have one drum buff at a time. This profession mostly benefits druids and rogues, but also hunters and shamans to an extent.

Tailoring: all you clothies out there, this profession is for you. This profession creates cloth armor for those spell casting cloth-wearers out there, and at the high levels you can make some armor that will last you a long time into raid progression before you find an upgrade. As I stated with first-aid, cloth drops off of all humanoid mobs, which you kill a lot of through the levels, and is the main ingredient for this profession as well, which makes it similar to enchanting in that it does not require to gathering profession to get materials. This profession mainly benefits priests, mages, and warlocks.

You get two primary professions at a time, and there are many combinations you can go with, but for the most part you will want to professions that complement each other. Most people go with a gathering profession and a crafting profession, some examples are:

mining/blacksmithing, herbalism/alchemy, skinning/leatherworking

There are also those who will pick gathering professions for both and sell what the collect on the AH to make as much money as they can. This seems to work pretty well as most of the time it is very hard to collect everything you need to level up your crafting profession on your own, so many people turn to the AH for materials.

You can also try two crafting professions, but while this is nice to have at high levels, it isn't easy to level them as you level your character. One combination that does work well is enchanting/tailoring, as neither uses materials from a gathering profession as a main focus for its recipes. I wouldn't recommend pairing up any other two crafting professions unless you plan on spending a lot of money buying your materials on the AH.

The choice is ultimately up to you, and there is no wrong way to go, but many players will recommend starting out as dual gathering until you reach the top as you tend to make the most money that way, then you can switch to a crafting profession and with all the money you should have you can buy the materials to level it up until you can make the items you want. I won't tell you what to do, just what to avoid give suggestions so you can get started so you can make an informed decision.

Ogres everywhere

Time for an update on my progress through Outland on my way to 70. I did a couple guide posts last week and totally forgot to mention that I hit level 67 and over the weekend I made my way to about a third of the way to 68. I'm getting pretty excited at this point because as a druid I will be getting flight form soon and I have never gotten to fly in in this game so I'm really looking forward to it. I pretty much finished up my work in Nagrand, although I wasn't able to do most of the elite quests there, but that isn't to say I didn't try. After all the worrying about looking for group members in general chat, I tried it several times throughout my play time and the response was not what I expected. Actually I expected some sort of response at least, but I got nothing at all, and It got pretty frustrating. I know there are a bunch of 70's running around that zone farming for motes, and there have to be some others leveling and in need of help on those quests as well. In the end I didn't think it was worth my time to stick around and wait for help, so once every quest there said '(Group)' next to it I headed up north to Blade's Edge Mountains.

BEM is interesting in that it's not really how I pictured it would be. I was sort of imagining it to be a desolate mountain landscape, with very little plant life, and lots of hostile beasts. Well I guess it isn't a total disappointment, there are a lot of hostile beasts, but coming out of the cave and finding a grove of trees and grass threw me off a little. I got used to it though and got down to business. First order of work was to kill off some big cats that the night elves were worried about, so I got rid of them, then made my way to an Arakkoa camp and stole a bunch of their feathers before using their own magic circle to create a glowing bird which I took back to the elves for them to check out. Then they told me about some wolves that were threatening, so I headed out west across a big bridge that didn't look man-made, but I don't think rocks naturally form like that. Oh well, it held up, and I killed some wolves, taking their tails as proof, and finall made my way to their den mother and had to kill her too. Making my way down the hill I stopped off to kill a bunch of ogres, actually 30 of them, stole a bunch of their beer, and gathered some crystals from their mine before heading back to turn in all those quests.

It's really looking like Outland is ogre central. Somehow they have taken over a lot of the higher level zones and are very threatening to Alliance and Horde. Is it just me or were they on the Horde side for a while before? Maybe Blizz just couldn't think of a way to make a female ogre, although they managed it with orcs and trolls. Luckily ogres are pretty easy to take out, it was their dogs I was worried about, roaming around the camps with that little circle above their heads meaning they could see stealthed people. I really had to be on my toes in there since I usually sneak around in stealth form, but this time I had to be extra careful. Next time I will be heading back to the ogre camps to kill more, just in a different area, how original.

On the topic of playable races, I can understand why Blizz didn't make ogres playable. They are too big, hard to make females, and would probably be very limited in the available classes. There are, however, other humanoids that could be implemented as playable characters, it would just take some imagination to come up with how to do it. Most of the humanoid races are enemies of both Horde and Alliance, but there are those few among them that don't attack on sight, and those are the ones that we could potentially side with one or the other. For this reason they could add those races into the game as neutral races. Since the other humanoids tend to be enemies of each other as well they could not just make another faction and lump them together, it wouldn't make much sense and they can't just have huge cities pop up randomly to accommodate them. The solution would be that the player would somehow have a way to choose which faction to side with.

The easiest way to choose sides would be to choose during character creation, but another way would be to somehow use reputation, similar to the way we choose between the Aldor and the Scryers. This would give the player a way to change factions if they want to, to defect to the other side, maybe through a quest line that you can choose to do that would have you work as a double agent for the other side. Now that would add a new dimension to the game as you run the risk of being exposed by other players if you announce in general chat that you are doing one of the quests or if they catch you trying to do one of the quests. I suppose the problem here is that they couldn't justify making this defection available to races such as humans or orcs who would not change sides and Blizz does not seem to be the type to make certain content available only to some players. I also don't know how this would work with PvP servers where all your characters have to be the same faction and I'm sure there are many other problems that could arise, but it is an interesting idea that would add some more depth to the game that we haven't seen before. Or maybe it's just a dumb idea that would never work, I only just thought of it while writing this and I'm already finding lots of problems that would arise with it. What do you think?

New characters pt. 3

So you're starting to get a good handle on what this game is all about, going through all the quests, killing lots of enemies and learning how to use your character. Then you hit level 10 and notice another menu button pop up that wasn't there before and it's flashing at you. You click on it and a menu comes up that with 3 tabs, each one with a tree of buttons that are connected to each other somehow, and hovering the cursor over each button gives you a description of some sort of new skill and they all seem to help you out. These are your talents, and from now on you will get one point per level to spend on them. That means when you get to level 70 you will have accumulated 61 points, which isn't nearly enough to fill all those spots, so you're gonna have to pick and choose where you spend them carefully.

Talents define your character. As you make your way further into the game you will hear the terms feral druid and resto druid, holy pally and ret pally, and these terms define not only the class but the talent build as well. A feral druid is specced mainly in the feral tree while the resto druid utilizes more of the restoration tree. The skills and abilities are split up into 3 talent trees for each class, and each tree boosts a different aspect of what that class can do. In the beginning you won't notice any big changes to your character, but as you get to the more powerful talents the benefits become very obvious. Talents are very important to how you play your character so you will want to be thinking about what aspects of your character you like and from there figure out which talent tree corresponds to that.

The rest of this post is purely how I like to play and may not exactly be your preference, but being a mainly solo player who likes to quest and level up, I always choose the talent tree that will make this go as quickly as possible. The best way to go about it is to figure out which tree will result in your damage output increasing. As you are levelling up you should be more concerned about how fast you can kill an enemy and less about how long it takes them to kill you, because killing enemies quickly means you are advancing that much faster through the game. This means you are looking for the talent builds that will maximize your DPS (damage per second) and don't generally help you out in areas like healing or defense. In some cases a class will have talent trees that all boost DPS, and in this case your style of play will depict which talen tree you want to use. From the research I have done I will list the talent trees each class has and what aspect of the character they will buff. This is by no means official, but is how I have come to understand things and may help you figure outwhat talents to go after.

Druid:
Balance - offensive spells
Feral - melee (DPS for cat, tanking for bear)
Restoration - healing

Hunter:
Beast Mastery - hunter pet
Marksmanship - ranged DPS
Survival - traps and other support skills

Mage:
Arcane - arcane spells (high burst, low mana sustainability)
Fire - fire spells (not so high burst, better mana sustainability)
Frost - frost spells (lower burst, high mana sustainability and survivability)

Paladin:
Holy - healing
Retribution - melee DPS
Protection - tanking

Priest:
Discipline - support, damage reduction
Holy - healing
Shadow - spell DPS

Rogue:
Assassination - poisons and sustained DPS
Combat - burst damage
Subtlety - stealth and "trickery" skills

Shaman:
Elemental - spell DPS
Enhancement - melee DPS
Restoration - healing

Warlock:
Affliction - DoT (damage over time) spells
Demonology - summoned warlock pets (demons)
Destruction - burst damage spells

Warrior:
Arms - two-handed weapon DPS
Fury - dual wielding DPS
Protection - tanking

Once you have decided on a talent tree you like it's time to figure out which talents you are going to put points into. I won't go into detail on this, but there are many other guides and blogs out there that do, so now that you've narrowed it down there should be a lot less research to go through to find the info you want. Just make sure the guides are up to date with the current patch as some talents change with new patches and an outdated guide can really mess things up for you. You will find many talent builds that come from the same tree, some for raiding, some for PVP, and it's up to you to figure out which build is going to benefit you the most. Once you find the build you want you are going to want to distribute your points as you level in a way that when you hit the level cap you will have that build.

Now you should be continuing on through the game and should be very comfortable with your character, although there is still a lot left to learn, but the overwhelming part should be over so have fun making your way through the levels and learning about all this game has to offer. Good luck!

New characters pt. 2

I totally forgot to continue my guide (sort of) about starting a new character until I couldn't think of anything to write today and remembered, so that will be my topic for the day. More specifically we will talk about what to do once you've created your character and are logging in for the first time. For many people this game can be a little overwhelming at first, especially if you've never played an MMO before, but remember that it's just a game, and so many people that are probably not nearly as smart as you are making it to level 70.

Depending on which race you picked you will start in a certain starting area, but they are base on the same principals for the most part. This first little area will be your stomping ground until you are level 5 or 6, then you get to venture out into the world. What you want to do is look for the guys with the big yellow '!' marks over their heads, those are the guys you want to talk to and they will give you quests to do which, once completed, will reward you with items, money, and experience points. You will usually hit level 2 by the time you complete your first quest and then you will start seeing more quest givers pop up around the area, they were just waiting until you got a little stronger before they asked you to do anything. One of them will also give you a quest to talk to your class trainer, the NPC that will teach you your skills as you gain levels (side note: new skills are available at every even numbered level until you hit level 60, then every level from then on). Remember where you found this person as you will need to head back to him as you gain levels to get more powerful skills until you leave the area, then you will usually be going to a major city to look for them.

Right now you want to talk to every quest giver and try to do the quests together in one run, rather than going back and forth one at a time. Figure out where you need to go for each one and then do them in the order that will take the least time and then turn them in all at once. You also want to loot every corpse you kill, take all the items, and equip any weapons or armor you can, especially if it is an upgrade to what you are already wearing. You will also be receiving these items as rewards from quest givers. There are also merchants around that have armor and weapons, but while they may be better than what you currently have, it is a waste of money in the long run and you will be needing that money to pay for your new skill training. You will, however, need to talk to these guys to have them repair your equipment, and you should repair every time you are in town just to make sure your stuff never breaks. Also you can sell useless items to any vendor to make some money. Check out this post for info on whether you should sell or keep a certain item.

Once you have done all the quests here (and make sure you don't miss any) you should be at least level 5, sometimes level 6, and then you are ready to head out. You should be given a quest that sends you to the inn at the next town, and usually a quest from someone on the way to deliver something there as well, pretty easy since all you have to do is run there and talk to somebody. Once you get to the inn and turn in those quests you will want to talk to the innkeeper and bind your hearthstone there, this means when you use your hearthstone you will be teleported back to that inn, which really comes in handy when you want to turn in a quest back in town but are all the way across the map, but it can only be used once every hour so try to plan out when to use it for maximum time saving.

This first town will also have your first profession trainers, and you will want to be thinking about what kind or professions you want to pick based on your class and what exactly you want to do with this character. I will go over some of that stuff in a future post. You don't have to pick anything yet, but getting a head start never hurts and you want to start leveling up that profession as soon as possible. Now you just want to find every quest and get it done. This starting area almost always sends you in the right direction and there isn't too much exploring for lone quest givers as you will usually stumble upon them during other quests, but you want to explore the whole map as uncovering new areas will get you some experience points, and you will be leveling up that much faster.

Thats pretty much it for starting out. Most of the game is getting quests, killing things, and then completing those quests. You want to mainly focus on learning your class skills and how to use them to their fullest potential. Any time you get a brand new skill you want to think about how it can be used and whether it would be worth it to add to your normal fighting routine or not. Class specific blogs are probably some of the best places to find out about stuff like that, and when you get to the higher levels it will be a lot more important so you want to make sure to practice it on the way up so you are ahead of the curve when you get there. I'll try to come up with some tips on professions and talents in a future post, but that should get through the first 10-12 levels before you will need to be thinking about anything more.

I work well in groups

I used to group up with my friend a lot on my first character, making our way through the various quests together, and it was fun and a lot easier than trying to go it alone. He quit a while ago, but I stuck with it and have been pretty much a solo player ever since, occasionally finding a group for those elite quests you run into every so often. It's not really that I don't enjoy the help I get from having that second player there, I just don't usually focus fully on the game when I'm playing. I have other distractions going on at the same time with the TV on, food cooking, other stuff that slows my progress already. Now I don't mind playing like that if I'm the one causing the slowdown, but I've grouped with those types of players that seem to be in the same situation before and being on the other side of that isn't fun.

Here's why I have a problem with it. You're going along and getting some quests done when another player sees you doing the same thing as him and offers to group up, so you agree thinking it will be a piece of cake and go a lot faster than doing it on your own. Little do you know this guy is easily distracted, loves to tell you "brb" a lot, and even if he doesn't you find yourself fighting mobs with no help at all because he's not paying his full attention to the game. It goes a little faster than if you had done it on your own, but not by much, and you're getting half the XP for each kill, not to mention all the hard work you're putting into it is benefitting him, who isn't even doing anything half the time.

When I played a lot, was in a guild, and actually gave my full attention to the game, these types of players really frustrated me. Here I was giving this guy free XP, a finished quest that he didn't even work for, and I'm progressing slower along my XP bar because of it. Now that I'm in the opposite situation, I normally will warn players when they group with me that this might happen, and normally they won't mind much, but there are a few that decide to solo instead and I really don't blame them. If I was selfish I would group with anyone I could and use them to get stuff done while I just give the game 25% of my attention, but I know how it is to be on the other side and I don't want to detract from the fun everyone else is having just because I'm not as committed as they are.

Having said all that, I have had more luck finding people to knock out tough quests with. They seemed to have the same take on the game as me and only looked for groups if it was something they couldn't do solo. There are more than a few elite mobs that need killing in Outland for quests, and since the rewards are pretty good there are a lot of people that want to do them. Usually I will try them out solo to see if it can be done, and even if I die the first time I can tell whether I would even have a chance if I gave it another shot. I wasn't having much luck with one such elite mob, but when I went back there was another player there, probably contemplating how to take the thing out solo. I told him I was doing the same quest and we should do it together, to which he agreed and we proceeded to kill the thing without much trouble. After killing the thing we thanked each other and parted ways, and thats the way I wanted it. I wasn't looking for a partner to run around with, just help with that one mob and then back to soloing, and it seemed he wanted the same thing so it worked out perfectly. I always find it awkward when they ask afterwards if I want to continue on together, and usually I just tell them I have to log out after turning in the quest, which I most of the time I don't, but telling someone you don't want to stay in their group just makes you sound like you used them, which I suppose is the case, but I think if they knew what staying in a group with me would mean for them I think they'd understand.

This same situation has popped up a few more times along the way as well, and lucky for me it's turning out the same way most of the time. I have a bunch of other elite quests I need to get out of the way, and it's looking like I might actually try out the LFG channel to see if I can find some players to take them out and then continue on our separate ways. I've had some bad experiences searching for groups that way, but once you get to Outland it seems you're much more likely to find competent players that won't waste your time getting the quest done and moving on.

Lucky for Azeroth

The Burning Legion has no clue about war tactics. As I make my way through Outland I'm finding out just how dumb these guys are. I mean, they set up their forge camps on the very edge of the map and then wonder why they are having so much trouble gaining any ground. In Hellfire Peninsula they're up on a cliff that you can't even get to unless you fly up, and sure they have a few cannons up there, but they're too busy fending off players on quests to destroy them to take any shots at the Horde or Alliance bases, but at least they can cause some damage. Now that I've made my way to Nagrand I'm finding myself wondering what they were thinking when they set up their bases. They have them set up on the far side of the map, right on the edge, some of them you can't even get to unless you fly, and they think they're gonna cause any kind of damage. I didn't even know they had a presence in that zone until I flew over them on a borrowed dragon, and even then I can't help but wonder what kind of threat those camps actually pose. Relying on power in numbers can only get you so far, and I think the Burning Legion is gonna have to figure that out before they have any chance of taking Azeroth from its inhabitants.

It's funny how you can get drawn into a game like WoW and actually care about how things turn out. There are times when I end up with an old quest on my list that I really don't need to bother with, but I feel bad letting down the guy that gave me the quest. I told him I would do it, and now he's waiting for me to come back after completing it. At that point I have to remind myself how many other people have done that same quest and that someone else will do it again if I don't. Besides that, having played through the Warcraft RTS games, I know a good deal about the lore, or at least as much as you can get from those games without reading any of the litarature that has come out of them. I got to play as Arthas, both as a human and undead. I got to tell Illidan what to do and he mowed down those infernals like they were nothing. This game probably has the most dependency on its storyline than almost any other game out there, and while that is a great way to keep fans coming back and actually caring, I think they're going to have more and more trouble in the future.

Right now we are eagerly awaiting the next expansion, and I do believe it will be better than the last as they now know even better what the players want. The problem is the game is still going strong, and other MMO games aren't really causing it to lose much of its fan base, but with Arthas being the evil at the top of the food chain, where will they go when players start asking for a new expansion? They will have to come up with new lore, a new, more powerful evil, and much more. Up until this point the main story has come from Warcraft 3, but after this expansion they will have to make some stuff up to keep it going. I had been hoping they were going to come out with Warcraft 4 to begin the new story, but with Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 on the way I find it hard to believe they are very far in that process yet, or if they even have it planned.

Given the popularity of the game they have to keep it going somehow, so I will be interested to see what direction they will take if they make another expansion after WotLK.

Still hunting

Nagrand sure has a lot of quests. I think I'm making good progress and keeping my travel time to a minimum so far, but I keep finding myself running back and forth a lot, but not for quests as much as just to sell all the items I keep picking up. A lot of the time I'll run out of bag space in the middle of a quest and have to choose which items to keep and which to leave, and this decision is based solely on which items are going to get me the most money at a vendor. Right now I just have to sort of guess at which items will sell best, and I know there are add-ons out htere that can tell you the vendor price for items you pick up, but there are some rules of thumb you can follow in case you don't have anything like that.

I pretty much keep any armor, weapon, or other equippable item as those can usually get you a good amount of money, even if each one takes up its own bag space. The easiest of these to keep are the gray items as you just sell them to vendors, and whether you sell any greens to a vendor is up to you and whether you want to make a trip to the AH, or whether it's even worth the trip given the stats the item has. Most of the time I just vendor this stuff assuming most people are like me and aren't going to bother checking the AH for upgrades until they hit 70, but if you get something with a good set of stats it might be worth your time. Anything blue or purple I keep, and if it will benefit one of my alts I will send it to them, if not I put it on the AH and it will almost always sell for a good amount. It seems people like the color of items more than whether they are actually that good, and you can play this to your advantage.

Next up are your cloths, leather, and other items that can be used in different professions. I keep all cloth and leather since I have both a tailor and leatherworker in my arsenal, but it's a good idea to keep the stuff to sell on the AH anyway because you will get way more for it that way. Other recipe items are really up to you and whether they will get you anything on the AH. If you know an item is needed for a high demand recipe then by all means keep it, but just because it's a recipe item doesn't mean somebody will want it as it could be for a recipe that nobody bothers making. Sometimes I keep these, but most of the time I will drop them if it will make space for something better.

There are other items that you run into in Outland that will increase your reputation with certain factions and these can be turned in to the guys with blue question marks over their heads. I pretty much keep all of these and turn them in whenever I have a chance. If you don't care about reputation then you want to keep these anyway because many other people do care, and you can put them on the AH for a pretty decent profit as they will be willing to pay in exchange for not having to farm the stuff themselves.

Last up what I will call 'junk' items. These are the gray items that nobody can use for anything, but sometimes you can sell them to vendors for a good amount of money. I pretty much base whether or not to keep these on how many of them are in a stack. If I have one stack of 13 of a certain item and a stack of 2 of another, I will drop the stack of 2 to make room for something better. Sure they may not sell for exactly the same per item, but they are usually pretty close if they come from the same zone so it's a pretty safe bet.

Making money isn't exactly my strength in this game, but if you don't want to be going back and forth to the AH all the time to maximize your profits you can still make decent money at vendors if you know what to keep.

On the prowl

These Nesingwary hunting quests are killing me. I could understand 10, 15, or maybe even 20 mobs to kill to complete each one, but 30 is just asking too much. Not to mention everyone else stuck on these quests are crowding up the area and killing all the mobs too, making it even more difficult to find enough to kill. One good thing about this whole situation is how much leather I'm getting out of it. The crappy thing is that my leatherworking skill isn't high enough to use any of it. Hmmm. I guess I'm gonna have to do something about that pretty soon because my bags are getting full, and I really don't want to have to buy more bag slots at the bank to make more room in there. I'm really gonna have to start thinking about where I'm going with my leatherworking because right now I have no clue as to what would be the best route for a feral druid. What I'm really hoping is to be able to buy materials to level my skill, then sell all the items I make for more than the materials cost, but I think that might be a pipe dream. From what I've heard you end up putting more money into a profession to level it than what you make from it until you hit the high levels, and even then you don't make much unless you have a rare recipe that people need.

My next highest level character, my priest, who is level 63 at the moment and will be starting Zangarmarsh soon, is levelling tailoring and enchanting at the same time. I know, it's pretty much the easiest way to never have any money, ever, but it seemed like such a good idea when I first started her and I am stubbornly sticking with it now. The good thing is that as my druid goes along levelling he picks up a lot of cloth, and I mean a lot. I cleared out his netherweave yesterday and mailed it all to my priest, then half an hour later I had 3 more stacks to send her, and I don't even know how that happened because it seemed like I was only killing beasts. For now she's still stuck on runecloth (which I also send her a lot of), but soon she will be moving on to netherweave and should be flying through the levels like crazy, at least for a good portion of time. Another plus is that with two more up and coming characters in their 50's it just means more cloth to come.

My shaman probably has my least favorite profession so far and that would be jewelcrafting. I don't really even know what I don't like about it, but I'm finding it very hard to level, especially since they made levelling mining take so much longer. It used to be if a node was orange you would gain a level every time you mined it, up to 4 times per node sometimes, but now you level once per node and it's making the process take forever, I don't think I can even mine gold yet, and she's in her 50's. My hunter should be making me money like crazy from what I've heard. She went dual gathering with skinning and herbalism, but for some reason I made sure to keep her skinning up to speed, but her herbalism is way behind and in order to catch up I'm gonna have to farm some lower level zones. At this point I really don't want to put the effort into it, but I know when I get to Outland with her and start finding those moneymaking herbs to pick I'm gonna want to be able to get them.

I think these professions are part of what led to my altism. With my lack of friends in the game I really need to be as self proficient as I can so I figured my alts better all have different professions to make sure I can support myself for most craftable items. Notice how I don't have anybody blacksmithing on the Alliance server. I also don't have any characters that can wear plate on my Alliance server because I even planned that out too. The nice thing that I didn't plan but still worked out well is when death knights (also plate wearers) become available I will have a slot open on my Horde server for him to make it 5 characters per side and have all the characters that will benefit from blacksmithing on one server. What I'm not sure of yet is whether I will be able to make a death knight on that server as I have no characters over 55 yet on there, but I do have some on my other server. The way Blizzard has worded it makes it seem like you can make a death knight if you have a character over 55 on any server, but I guess we'll wait and see if that loophole works or not. Anyone out there know the specifics about that? Luckily if I do need a 55 character on the same server I have my old roommate's level 50 BElf Mage on my Horde server that I can quickly level to 55 if I need to. Looks like things will manage to work themselves out.

Realistic goals

Over my time of playing WoW I've learned a valuable lesson, and that is to keep your goals realistic in this game, because it's not worth getting frustrated over something you have no control over. The thing is, your goals for what you want to accomplish in this game depend mainly on your personal playstyle. In order to keep the hardcore gamers satisfied, the game has been made to be huge, much bigger than most casual gamers need, and because of that it isn't realistic to expect to see everything the game has to offer as a casual gamer.

When I first started playing I was excited about it and wanted to explore everywhere and do everything. I had never played an MMORPG before, but I had played the normal RPG games like Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Legend of Zelda (not really an RPG but it has the elements) and such, in which you could make it through the game relatively quickly by skipping the optional stuff, or take your time and explore everything, but it still didn't take too long until the only thing left to do was play through the game again. This was my impression of how this game would be, although I knew there was stuff to do at the end, I never expected the depth the game would have just on your way to getting to the level cap, let alone how much more opens up for you when you get there.

I remember first starting out as a gnome rogue and my friend as a dwarf paladin, in the middle of the snow, being told to go kill some wolves, which we gladly did and continued on to make our way through Dun Morogh, although looking back it seems like it took forever. We made a sort of competition out of levelling, although I was usually behind, but when we finally made it to level 60 I realized I had been playing the game for over a year already and had just made it to the level cap. Not only that but they had already announced the first expansion and the increase in the level cap and I was starting to realize just how little of this game I would probably ever see. By the time the expansion came out the only end game instances I had seen were Scholo, Strat and BRD, and with everyone racing to 70 I had little hope of seeing more than that.

Around the same time I had also grown bored of my first character and was in the process of levelling up my first alt, and realizing that I had a different perspective of what I wanted to accomplish in the game. Running instances was boring and tedious to me, and while I enjoyed some of them when I was able to get a good group together, I found that didn't happen often enough for me to stick with it. My playtime was erratic and my guild decided to go into hardcore raiding and I proceded to leave and continue on without them. I still to this day do not accept guild invites because I find them more of a distraction than a help. I was starting to realize the thing I like most about the game is the levelling process, working my way through quests, and becoming familiar with all the classes the game has to offer. Sure it would be cool to be at the highest level, have all the best equipment be able to lay the smack down on everything in my path, but the process of getting to that point just doesn't appeal to me, nor do I have the time to accomplish it.

At this point my main goal is to get a character to the level cap before the expansion hits, and if I decide to upgrade his gear at that point it will be through BG's and nothing else. I don't feel like joining a guild again because then I feel obligated to play rather than playing whenever I feel like it, which pretty much means I won't be raiding or doing arenas. In the future I plan on setting fairly small goals for myself, such as getting one character to a certain level, then switching to another and getting him to a certain level as well. In the long run my goal is to get each character to the level cap, but while this may be an unrealistic goal for me, the smaller goals along the way keep me motivated as each goal I meet is a small victory and will also provide to structure to my playing so I can stay on track.

Don't set your standards too high in this game, keep your expectations realistic and cater to your own playstyle, don't let others dictate to you how you should play. This game is meant to be enjoyable and the way you play it is up to you, so make sure to find the way that is the most fun to you and do it no matter what others may think, it's your $15 a month, just be sure not to take away from the fun of others in the process, they pay just as much as you do.

Out of order

One part of WoW I get annoyed about is being sent back to the same place multiple times to complete various quests. I really try to pick up all the quests and if there is more than one quest in the same area I can get them all done at the same time rather than going back and forth. This doesn't always work out though when you are on a quest chain that keeps sending you back in, or if you have a wandering quest NPC that you didn't happen to find the first time you were in town.

If you were wondering, this happened to me yesterday. I had logged out the night before next to a camp of ogres because they dropped a quest item I needed but I didn't have time to finish it before. It took forever to finish the quest, the drop rate was horrible, but I finally collected all the items I needed and made my way back to town to turn it in and sell all the items I had filling up my bags to make more room. After finishing up my business there, I still had some time to play, so I headed over to another enemy camp and killed a bunch of mobs, then their leader to complete another quest, which didn't take too long this time because all I had to do was kill a certain number of them. Now it was time to log out, so I went back to town, turned in the quests I had completed when I notice an exclamation point on my minimap that's moving. I thought I had gotten all the quests here, but I guess this little guy somehow evaded me the first few times I looked around, so I walked on up to him and checked out what he had to say. He tells me I need to kill some ogres, and not just any ogres, but the exact same ones I had been killing not too long before. I wouldn't have minded so much except that the drop rate was so bad on the other quest that I probably could have done this new quest times over in the process and wouldn't have to head back there next time. Oh well, I guess I'm just gonna have to suck it up and get it out of the way.

While I may not be happy about that particular turn of events, I do find that TBC really cut down on stuff like that and I'm glad they did that. I can think of many times in the Azeroth quests on the way to 60 that you run into the problem of going back and forth a bunch of times to finish quest lines. The main one that sticks out in my mind is the Kurzen quest line in STV. Man was that an annoying quest line, and while they nerfed Kurzen in one of the latest patches, it still gives me a headache every time I come upon that area and know that I'm gonna have to run back and forth there at least 3 times. I really think the original idea was to keep people playing, making things take longer than they needed to but keeping you busy enough that you didn't realize you could be making progress a lot faster if you weren't doing all the running around. I won't say it was a bad idea, but I do think it made some people frustrated with the game, and I would expect that lots of casual players just gave up after a while. Now it seems they've figured out how to provide a wider variety of quests with TBC to get us through levels faster, and for casual players that's a plus.

I actually think this change came about due to the success of endgame content before the expansion, and the fact that they had a lot more ways to keep people interested, even if they couldn't level up any higher. The original release of the game seems to be sort of a test to find out how the majority of players will play the game and I think the expansions will cater to them mostly, but keep others interested too in various ways. Once they found out that players who hit the level cap would continue playing they focused their efforts on expanding what they could do at that point. The main focus seems to be the hardcore raiders, and I base this on just how much content there is that involves instances and raids. I can count the number of battlegrounds and arenas combined on two hands, but I don't think I can count the number of new instances with both hands and feet, let alone the old world instances that many people still run in the process of levelling. The complexity has also gone way up it seems when it comes to boss fights, and with the reduction from 40 man to 25 man raids they have made it easier for guilds to get groups into the instances, but no easier for them to get through. Pair that up with all the reputation rewards and the number of various factions there are, as well as flying mounts that are only available at 70 and you have a lot of stuff for everyone to do even if they hit the level cap.

It's a little discouraging that I'll probably never see most of that content, but the fact that I haven't even made it to level 70 yet with a character keeps me coming back so I can keep pushing forward. I'm hoping with WotLK they will continue to improve on their content, and with what they have done so far I'm almost certain they will be able to improve the game even further.

Searches

Since I didn't get to play yesterday and therefore have no updates, I'm going to focus on some of the searches I'm seeing that lead people to this little blog I have here and see if I can answer some of the questions these people may have, so here we go:

"vista computer has stopped recognizing mouse" - Doesn't look like this one is about WoW exactly, but it is about a problem I have had before and I think it was due to one of the Windows updates. If you just used a plug and play mouse that you let Vista install automatically it might not work anymore, so get out the software CD that came with the mouse or download the driver from the website of the company that made the mouse install it, that should solve the problem.

"i hate vista" - Me too, but we're stuck with it now that Microsoft took XP off the market, hopefully future updates and service packs will help.

"is there any difference in gender when choosing a class wow" - Nope, gender has no effect, it's all about equality.

"can you play wow with a touchpad and no mouse" - Sure, I know people that do, but if you're going to be doing anything other than casually soloing you probably shouldn't as it's very slow and clumsy compared to what you can do with a mouse.

"wow train emote" - just type /train and your character will make train sounds and pump his arm like he's blowing the train whistle.

"wow quest helper addon" - It's called just that, Quest Helper, and can be found at curse.com

"wow drop rates" - I get this one a lot, and I have to say I have absolutely no idea what drop rates are like for items. I would suggest going on thottbot, wowhead, allakhazam or any other WoW database site, they usually list drop rates associated with each item, although it's usually based on data collected from other players through addons and such rather than straight from Blizzard, but with how many players provide the data it should be pretty accurate.

Those are the semi-interesting ones I get, and the "i hate vista" search tends to pop up way more than any other, although I'm not sure what they're actually searching for, maybe justification for their hatred. I hope this answers some questions for these people and any other questions can be thrown my way if you want and I will try my best to answer them.

Moving along

I was pretty busy over the holiday weekend, hence the lack of updating, but I did get my new laptop hard drive in the mail on Thursday and proceeded to replace the old one with it. It wasn't as easy as the tech guy made it sound, and I probably did twice as much work as was actually needed, but after about half an hour I had it replaced and put back together, ready to install Vista and get going. Now this means I've set up two computers from scratch in the past week, and this last one made me remember just how much I hate trying to remember every little thing I need to tweak in order to get it back to how I like it. Installing the operating system is the easy part, it's getting all the settings back that takes time, and I still don't have it back to how it was. I'm missing about 15 websites on my favorites list that I can't remember for the life of me, I can't remember what I did to my video settings to make it show up correctly on my TV, but right now the TV display cuts off the edges even though it displays fine on the laptop screen. I sorta gave up on the details and stuck with just getting WoW installed and patched up to date, and even that took forever again. At least this time I was prepared for it and downloaded a bunch of the patches from other websites while installing the first update to save me time, but I ended up with barely any playtime that night after it was all said and done.

On a more positive note, I had plenty of time to play over the weekend, with my gf being a bridesmaid in a wedding she was busy all day Saturday with the rehearsal, and had to get ready very early on Sunday, which left a good chunk of the day for me to play before going to the wedding. I didn't hold back either. I finally got my epic land mount and the difference in speed was apparent right off the bat. I am outrunning all the mobs, not really worrying about them catching up to me anymore, and travel time is cut nearly in half. I also finished up Terokkar Forest, although I left out most of the group quests after finding out I couldn't solo them, and moved on to Nagrand. Now I thought the forest was cool, but I find the plains of Nagrand to be awesome. It's like being in the Barrens again, except with people that actually know how to play this time. Right when I entered I went straight to the Alliance outpost and picked up all the quests and the flight path, then headed up to see what Nesingwary had in store for me.

I think I mentioned in an earlier post how much I was looking forward to the Nesingwary quests because it reminded my of STV, my favorite zone, but I wasn't prepared for this. Now the killing 3 different mobs is still the same, but this time they upped it to 30 of each. Oh man, that's gonna take forever, and as much as I hate grinding, I'm gonna do it. I did manage to get the first set out of the way before moving on to other quests, and with the respawn rates going fairly quickly and not too many other players to compete with, I didn't have too much trouble finding enough mobs to kill. I also managed to bounce up to a nest in a tree and attempt to steal some eggs for a goblin, then the owner of the nest came down and I killed her with some help from another druid who I gladly healed while he tanked her. They've really made it very easy to keep your gear upgraded as you go through the levels with the quest rewards as compared to before the expansion, and while I know I won't have anything near good enough to do anything other than solo when I hit 70, I don't really need it for anything other than that until that point anyway.

Oh, I almost forgot, I'm now level 66, only 4 more to go and if the next expansion does come out on November 3 I should have plenty of time after hitting 70 with my druid to level up some of my other characters as well. This whole setting goals for yourself thing is really working wonders, and exploring new content hasn't stopped being fun.

More updates

I had planned on getting at least a little bit of play time yesterday after work, but once again the patches managed to screw me over. I ended up starting up the game, only to find there were still more patches I needed to install. I'm not really sure how the game determines which patches you're missing, but it seems like it should just install the latest one and that would bring you up to the current version. As it is, I had to download 3 more patches to catch up to the current patch, which took a while, and by they time they were actually done I only had about 10 minutes of play time before other activities took me away. I guess I shouldn't complain too much about it, and next time I'll get the patches off other sites rather than through the Blizzard downloader, which always seems to go extra slow. Any good suggestions on reliable sites to get the current patches from?

In my tiny bit of time playing I manage to finish one quest with my druid. I disguised myself as an orc and ran into a base crawling with bad guys. I found out after reading some comments about the quest that one of the guys in the base can see through the disguise, which in turn makes you lose the disguise right in the middle of the base to be killed by all the other mobs. This was after having this happen 3 times, but the next time I avoided him and managed to talk to all the NPCs I needed to, but in the middle of talking to the last one I got jumped by a level 70 Tauren warrior, which caused me to lose my disguise somehow. That was pretty annoying, and I fled the base, sure I was going to be slaughtered, but I wanted to get out so I wouldn't have to rez in the middle of a bunch of mobs. I hit travel form and booked it, and the Tauren followed me on foot for a while, charging me whenever he could, but for whatever reason he never got a hamstring on me and I was always able to pull away. I watched in my rear view mirror as he started to mount up, so I quickly ran behind a tree, switched to kitty form, and stealthed while changing directions. He came bounding down the road on his mount and I was sure he came close enough to see me, but moving that fast puts you out of range again quick and I think by the time he realized he had seen me in stealth I had moved away from that spot. He ran around for a bit looking for me, but ultimately gave up and ran off. I do love fooling the opposing faction and playing those little games of hide and seek, especially when they're 6 levels above you and just end up looking stupid for chasing you so far.

I ended up finishing the quest, then started in on the follow up which basically had me go back in the base and kill the mobs I was just impersonating. I killed a few, but had other stuff I had to attend to so I logged out before finishing it up. I've found that I don't care so much about logging out in an inn because I have so much rested experience with this character, and it takes so long to catch up to that at such a high level, that I really don't see myself ever running out before hitting 70, even if I never log out a the inn again. I think it's mainly due to my lack of play time, meaning only getting 1x the rate is plenty to keep me filled up because whatever experience I get in one session will ultimately be refilled by the time I get to play again anyway. I also don't like running back to where I was last time because I decided to go back to the inn to log out. In this case I was in the middle of the zone, but if I wanted to get my rested bonus I would have to run back up to Shattrath, which isn't that far, but when I log back in I have to run back to where I was to continue the quest. Doesn't really make much sense when I can save myself that run the next time I get on by just logging out right there and I can easily pick up where I left off last time. I wouldn't recommend this strategy at low levels though, even when you don't have a mount because that rested XP runs out fast and you want to have it for as long as you can.

I should hopefully get a lot of time to play tonight, with the gf going to a bachelorette party I have nothing to distract me, although with the day off tomorrow I could find myself out with friends as well. Oh and my replacement hard drive should be coming today, so I think I will be back in action with much better graphics soon enough. Have a happy 4th of July everybody!

Takes forever

I decided I didn't want to wait for my new hard drive to show up, so I started installing WoW on my old computer, which I haven't used in almost a year and has been in boxes since I moved. But I took it out and set it up the other day and decided it would be a good idea to have a backup computer with WoW on it. This gave me the chance to find out how long it takes to install the game from scratch. My older computer isn't really that slow, at least as far as reading the CDs and all, but with 4 disks for the game, plus another 4 for the expansion, it really adds up. Oh I almost forgot, I also had to update it to the current patch, I think that took the longest of all, but I'm not really sure because I started the update and went to bed to let it install overnight.

The good thing is that I ended up having company over last night so I wouldn't have been able to play anyway, but I could still get up to change the disks every so often while they were there so I wasn't really losing out on any playing time due to the long installation and finished it up during a time when the computer wasn't going to be in use for anything else anyway. I supposed I get to go through all this again when I get my new hard drive for my laptop, but at least now if my laptop decides to crash again I will be able to play in low quality on my desktop during the downtime.

I'm sort of curious to see how different the game looks when I have to put it on the low resolution, minimum graphic settings of my desktop. The funny thing is, my graphics card is a pretty good one, but the monitor tops out at a very low resolution so while I could turn up the settings and still run smoothly, I have to run the game at a lower setting anyway. It was pretty annoying when I found that out, but I guess thats why I got that particular monitor so cheap, and now that I have a laptop I see no reason to bother getting a better monitor. I remember the first time going back to my old computer after having the new one for a while just to see the difference and finding it unacceptable in comparison, but since it's the only thing I have at the moment I'm just gonna have to deal with it. This whole experience really makes me want one of those new iMacs.