Not much

Nothing new today really. I was hoping the patch would be out, but they might be waiting until we get closer to the expansion before they do that.

From what I've heard, the patch will pretty much ruin raiding. Every class gets all these new talents to work with, but we don't really know how they all work yet. Plus it seems the stats we are all used to stacking may change for certain classes and it's going to take some time to adjust.

I'm not really sure how they PTR's are going, but I'm thinking this patch won't be released until a week or two before the expansion, giving everyone as much time as possible to do everything they want to do in TBC before everything is changed again.

Once the expansion comes out it won't seem like such a big deal. Everyone who is in end-game now will be on their way to 80, learning all their new talents on the way, and by the time the get into end-game content again they will have a good idea of how to play they character again.

I eagerly await this new patch, as I have some big plans on how I will redistribute talent points on my characters, but until then I will have to be patient. I'm sure on whatever date Blizzard has decided to release the patch, they have taken everything into account and will make the least people unhappy.

One down...

...one to go. Yeah, I managed to get my hunter to 60 this weekend, and managed to do it all on Kalimdor.

I guess I forgot how much grind questing takes place in Silithus. I fully expected the XP from the quests there wouldn't be enough to get me to 60, but since the drop rates are so bad on all of them, I had to kill a lot of stuff in the process. Oh how I hate trying to collect 10 Encrypted Twilight Text pages, and the fact that there are two quests that require you to do so; luckily I didn't even need to do the second one.

So now my hunter's quest log is almost empty, except the few quest I have to turn in on the other continent. I saved those for turn in after I hit 60 just to have a little extra XP going into Outland.

This leaves just my shaman that needs to be leveled to 60, and it's looking to be very doable before the expansion comes out. I may even have to add some new goals to my list, such as leveling some Hordies. I'm also going to have to pick up some new pets for my hunter when the new patch hits, or at least grab my new core hound if nothing else.

This brings me to my current dilemma, and that is who I should focus on leveling next. Out of all the Hordies, the mage is the furthest along, and I will probably go with him first, but rested XP bonus gets used up quickly at those levels, and I need a gameplan for who to switch to.

I have big plans for my warlock, but she will have to get to a higher level first, so she will be up next. That leaves me with a choice between the warrior and paladin. Both are pretty gear dependent, with the warrior being more so.

The problem I have with classes being so gear dependent is that I end up having trouble playing them. Warriors just can't survive without constantly upgrading their gear. They rely so much on their high damage mitigation that if you don't get new armor every couple levels you will start having a tough time surviving fights.

This is the main reason I left these classes until the end. I've played a warrior before, and I know they have a few class specific quests that gets you some good equipment upgrades, but they just take so long to complete. They have you running all over the world, grabbing items that have terrible drop rates, and by the time you finish it you are already a few levels above the item.

The pally, on the other hand, is a little more lenient in it's dependence for gear. With their healing abilities, plus being able to bubble, you can get away with more. For them it's more about the weapon, but the depend on it more than most other classes do. In my case I will be going Retribution, so a big, slow hitting two-hander is the way to go. I hope those are easy to come by.

Most of the reason I waited to level these guys until last was gear dependence for the warrior, and just the fact that I was told pally leveling is really boring. This won't stop me from doing it, but I will still save them for last.

I guess I should get my shammy to level 60 before I start worrying too much about all this, but hopefully she will be there sometime in the next couple weeks and I will get to move on to some new territory.

It ain't easy

Altoholism isn't something to laugh at folks. Sure, we may not be the absolute best players, but there is a big difference between playing one or two characters all the time and switching between 5 or more. In my case it's 9, soon to be 10, although the Hordies haven't been getting much love recently.

See, when you switch characters you may be switching to one you haven't played in a while. Maybe you had been working on one particular character for a while, or maybe you just switched to one that had been at the bottom of the rotation for a while. Either way, you will find yourself having to relearn to play that character all over again.

My most recent experience with this was on my hunter running around killing things in Silithus. I'm used to melee characters and just hacking away at things, then going back to town and repairing my equipment. It wasn't until I was in the middle of a fight and I had stopped shooting that I realized I was out of ammo.

Now if I regularly played a hunter and was in the habit of checking my ammo every time I was in town, this probably wouldn't have happened. Luckily the mob was almost dead and it didn't take long for my pet to finish it off, plus I was right next to town so a quick visit to the vendor solved my problem.

The point is, it's not always little things like forgetting to buy ammo, or runes of teleportation, etc. It's forgetting about skills that you don't use often, but then would have come in handy in that last fight, except that you didn't remember until after making the corpse run. Sure you get more experience with all the classes, but you it's no the same as if that was the only character you played.

I guess it's a trade-off. On the one hand you can be extremely good at playing your class of choice, but maybe not so knowledgeable about other classes. On the other hand you can have good knowledge of all the classes, but you probably won't be at the same skill level on them as the players that don't play alts.

Luckily for me, to solo through content you really don't need to know everything about your character. I find what works and stick with it, and then if something arises where a skill I forgot I had could have gotten me out of a bad situation, I file that away and hope I remember it later if it happens again.

I really don't think I could stick to this game if I had to only choose one class. In the beginning I was a rogue, and it was fun at first, but I started to get antsy about trying other classes. It's not that rogues aren't fun to play, but they can't throw fireballs, or tame pets, or turn into bears.

I had to try them out for myself, and while some may think it got out of hand, I think I'm where I want to be. I have one character of each class, half Alliance, half Horde. Some of them aren't as advanced as others, but I will just continue to work on them.

There is still a lot I want to do in this game, and some of it is specific to a certain class, but may require a certain skill or level to complete. So I will keep leveling everyone and hopefully accomplish those goals if I don't burn out first.

Oh, and soon I will have a bunch of achievements to do as well. They always find new ways of keeping people addicted.

To achieve or...

Oh achievements, how I love and despise you. Like many of the other altoholics out there, I'm a completionist, and while I may set fairly modest goals for myself, my overall goal is the same:

Do everything in the game.

Will I ever reach that goal? Nope, but I would if I could, and I'm going to try to come as close as I can. Of course that will probably end up being just a small fraction of what there is to do, but I'll still aim high.

So now they decide to put achievements in the game, and most players like me are complaining. No, not that we'll never get them all, we know that already. We're complaining about achievements that can only be accomplished in a limited amount of time, and then are no longer achievable.

So far this would include the 2008 Summer Olympics and Brewfest achievements, but I assume if they are going to stick with this method it will apply to other in-game holidays too.

Actually, since most of these holidays happen every year, they can still make achievements that have something to do with participating, but those achievements should be very generic and apply to that holiday every year.

In the case of the olympics, I think the little dragon pet is enough to show you participated, they really don't need an achievement to accompany that. If you want to show off, pull out your pet, you won't need to take up inventory space with them soon anyway so you can always have it around.

I guess I'm hoping they put a little more thought into whether or not to include achievement that can't be accomplished at a later date, mainly because every time I see that I wasn't able to do it and that I won't even have a chance at it I will be pissed off.

On the bright side, this will give me even more stuff to do. I usually make a point of exploring every zone, so the world traveler achievement should be pretty easy for me. I'm just wondering if you need to actually go everywhere, or just uncover the map. Sometimes it will tell you "discovered (insert area in zone here)" but it doesn't actually uncover any more of your map. Do we need these too or just the map filled in?

I guess we'll find out all the details when the achievements are actually implemented. For now I anticipate they will be a good addition to the game, even if some of the details are not to my liking.

Still no patch

It seems more and more like I'm the one of the few bloggers left that doesn't get a beta key. I'm wondering if maybe it's because the email address I use for my blog isn't the same as the one on my WoW account. Maybe they want to send me one but can't figure out my account name. Or maybe they're just mean and want me to suffer.

So in the meantime I'm patiently waiting for the patch, because at least then I get to try out the new skills and changes, even if Northrend and the Death Knight won't be available. We all thought they would put it out before Warhammer, but that didn't happen, and now it's been another week and still nothing. I'm getting anxious.

I'm a little sad that my hunter's cat will be nerfed so badly that there will be no reason to use her. Oh I'll keep her around just because she's been with me since the beginning, but with all the other pet skills overshadowing the fact that all a cat gets is prowl, I'll have to make a change.

Right now it's between the devilsaur and the core hound. I don't need a tanking pet, I need something that can deal damage, and these two seem to be made just for that. I remember first hearing devilsaurs could be tamed, and I knew I needed one. Then they said core hounds could also be tamed, and then came the dilemma, which one should I go with?

From what I've been hearing, devilsaurs sound like they do more damage overall, but how much more? Is it really that significant for someone who won't be raiding anytime soon? Probably not.

That leaves the question of which one looks cooler, because that is of course the only other factor I'm considering. Well, they both look cool, but in my opinion the core hound takes the cake on this one. Plus they get Lava Breath as a special ability, how sweet is that? So it looks like I will be going with a core hound.

Now, there are three different core hounds at this point, a red glowing one like what you see in MC, a green glowing one like Uvuros, and a white one like Omen (who appears in Moonglade during the Lunar Festival I believe).

Being a female character, and wanting to keep up the facade that I am actually a female (which I am not), I think I'll be going with the white one. I think that pretty much everyone else will have the others because they look sweet with their glowing neon colors, but I actually thought Omen would be a cool pet to have the first time I saw him.

Of course Lunar festival isn't going on right now, but there just so happens to be an Omen look-alike called the Kurken on Azuremyst Isle. Of course that means it will be low level, but with the new patch that won't matter as newly tamed pets will be automatically brought up to 5 levels below your character.

I managed to hop on my hunter again last night and finish up Winterspring, which got me halfway through level 57. I'm starting to wonder if she will hit 60 in Silithus, or if I will have to go somewhere else after to get there. With 2 1/2 levels still to go, I'm not sure the few quests in Silithus will be able to do it, but I guess I'll figure it out when I get there.

For now I'm happy with where I'm at and edging closer to my goal each time I play. I haven't even started thinking about what my goals will be when WotLK comes out, but I do know they will include a Death Knight.

Back and forth

Switched back over to the hunter again and working my way through Winterspring, after which I plan on heading over to Silithus to complete my trek to 60 with her.

When I first logged in I found her sitting in Southshore, which is where I park characters that will be questing in WPL since it's the closest inn. After thinking about it, I went up and did the first quest of clearing out skeletons and ghouls, but decided that since she was already at level 56 (close to 57) I'd just leter her get to 60 using Kalimdor zones. I figure between Winterspring and Silithus there should be plenty of XP.

On the way I also turned in some quests in Darnassus that I had been putting off, then made my way to Felwood and Moonglade to drop off some stray quests before heading to Winterspring. At this point I didn't have too much time for quests, but I did manage to kill Ursius (who isn't elite anymore) and finish off the Winterfall furbolg quests before I had to go to bed.

I think I stumbled across someone doing the Winterspring trainer quests. There was a level 70 priest that came into the fubolg village, massacred everything, and left, only to come back later and do the same thing. I only wish she had left me some stuff to kill, so I ended up spending most of my time there waiting for respawns.

I also had a run in with a Horde mage, and would have had no trouble with him, except that I was in the middle of killing the last furbolg I needed when he sheeped me from behind and proceeded to pyroblast me away. Can you use Bestial Wrath while you're sheeped? I think I could have taken him out since he just let my pet beat away on him, and the extra damage from BW would have done it.

He knew how to fight a hunter because he kept me close and just used all his instants on me. I did the corpse run back, and was all set to take him out before going to turn in the quest when the priest came back and melted his face. Oh well, I didn't feel like sticking around anymore because I was getting tired, so I went back to town and logged out.

I find it kinda funny when I think about how it would be different if I had decided to play on a PvE server. Actually, it really wouldn't be that much different, as far as my experience goes. Sure I wouldn't be constantly looking over my back, but for the most part I don't run into much of the opposing faction as it is.

Sure there are times when you get ganked and subsequently camped, but you learn how to avoid it as you go. You learn how to rez out of LoS and use trees and other obstacles as cover while you escape. The only players this doesn't work on is hunters because they will be tracking you, but other than that I don't have much trouble hiding from gankers.

You also learn how to find alternate methods of getting quests done. STV was notorious for ganking, but for all those Nesingwary quests that involve killing beasts, those beasts are usually found in multiple places. It's not a big deal to travel another 30 seconds to avoid the risk of being ganked. Sometimes you may have to move on to something else and come back later too, but even then you aren't wasting too much time.

Just the other day I was following two mages around. They were about my level, and usually when players see they have a 2 on 1 advantage they will attack. Well I was going the same direction as them, so I just stayed back and followed until they went past my destination, then finished my quest, and since they cleared the way I didn't have to fight anything either.

The only difference that I see as a negative coming from playing on a PvP server is that you may level slower because of the interruptions caused by world PvP. It's not really that significant most of the time, but it would make your overall leveling time slightly slower.

I don't see getting ganked as a negative, but learning experience. Usually whether you get ganked or not depends on whether you are paying attention or not. Sometimes it's unavoidable, but usually if you don't go picking a fight, you won't run into one either. I now have skills in PvP that many players won't get until they decide to try some BGs or Arena.

After leveling 3 characters past 60 and 2 more past 50 on a PvP server, I think I have become so used the world PvP that it isn't even an issue anymore, I just take it as part of the game, and I don't think I could play any other way now.

It's looking more and more like I will meet my goal of getting my hunter and shaman to 60 before the expansion with time to spare. If that happens I think it will be time to work on the Horde characters and see what they can do. I've never gotten a Horde character past 30, and I'm excited to see what the quests in the later zones are like when you're on the other side.

Day of rest?

More like day of WoW marathon. My entire Sunday was pretty much taken up by playing WoW. The gf was gone for the day because of family stuff that came up last minute, and since we had made originally made plans for that day I had already told my friends I would be busy. That meant I could spend all day playing WoW with football on in the background.

I got a lot done. And I mean a lot. I had previously made my way to Thorium Point and logged out so I would be ready to start questing in Searing Gorge. From previous visits I have gotten pretty familiar with that zone and know how to go about getting the quests done in the fastest way.

The only quest chain I messed this up on was the escort quest in the east where you get the guy almost to the gate, but he gets shot before you make it. I did this after going through the Dark Iron cave, so I ended up having to go in there like 3 times before finishing everything I needed to do. Luckily theres that hanging block you can drop onto from the surface, so it could have been worse.

I also decided to get the Key to the Searing Gorge. Sure it's not that necessary now since you can fly there, but I remember coming to that gate as a lowly level 12 gnome rogue just exploring in Loch Modan and wondering just what that gate was protecting me from. I even managed to sneak in next to a high level player and make my way through, but when I got to the other side I got scared and turned back.

So I finished up that zone, and headed off to turn in some quests in Darnassus, which sent me to Feralas. I wasn't really planning on going there, but my hearthstone was still set there so I figured I'd go ahead.

Once there I realized I hadn't done any of the quests in the north, killing yetis, saving the girl from harpies and charging the magic staff. So why not do them now? It didn't take long before I was making my way back to Feathermoon Stronghold and getting some easy XP.

I made my way to Tanaris to turn in some leftover quests that I had completed, then headed back over to the other continent. I decided the shaman would take that route to 60 rather than follow in the footsteps of my hunter and go to Un'Goro next.

This brought me to the Blasted Lands, and it was time to kill lots of beasts, and I mean lots. The drop rates for these quests are terrible, and most of them combine items, meaning I needed to keep track of not only how many of each item I needed for each quests, but how many I needed total so that I could just turn them in all at once.

Needless to say I counted wrong a few times and had to make my way back to the quest giver more than once. I finished eventually though, and all the fighting got me some good XP, so I guess I can't complain too much.

Towards the end I flew up to WPL, did the first quest there of killing the mobs in the nearby graveyard, but I'll save the next quests until I have a few more levels on me.

At the end of the day I had hit level 54, and I started the day at 50, so not bad considering all the time I spent flying around to turn in random quests. I also was close to using up my rested XP bonus, and that means it's time to switch characters again. I sure hope my hunter has her bonus filled back up again.


Anybody download the new patch yet? It's huge at over 800mb, but I know it's up to download early so we don't have to do it on patch day. I'm just wondering if anybody finished yet. Mine has been downloading for the past 4 days between my WoW playing and its only 25% done. Is anybody else going that slow or is it just me? It just seems like something is wrong if it's going that slow.

Trying to keep up

It's been slow going recently. I really want to try to stick to my goals, but the amount of free time I've been getting just seems to keep decreasing. It's not exactly a bad thing. I like to stay active, and being on two softball teams, plus an indoor soccer team that will be starting next month, I would consider that pretty active.

It's just not going to help my leveling much, and with multiple characters that I need to get up to par, it looks like a the goal I set, which seemed very realistic at the time, may in fact be beyond my reach.

Am I sad? Maybe a little, but I can be happy in the fact that I did get a character to 70 before the expansion, and that's really a bigger accomplishment for me.

I'm hearing confirmations all over the place that the leveling through Outland will be 30% faster, so it looks like my assumptions were correct. This is good for me because I have so many characters that will hopefully get there at some point.

I know there are people who don't like this faster leveling thing. They argue that it takes away from the accomplishment of making it to the top. Well maybe it goes faster, but it's still an accomplishment.

The main reason I think they implement this is to not discourage new players. It took so long to get to 60 when the game first came out, and while everyone who had made it that far just had the 60-70 grind to go, for a newcomer they would have 1-70, and that's really hard to do when you've read about how cool end game is and want to get there.

I know I would have probably gotten discouraged long ago if they hadn't done something about it. With all my alts, if it took the same amount of time to get to 60 as it did when I first started, there's no way I would have even bothered trying.

Actually, I probably would have quit. I have considered quitting a few times, but something always comes up.

I stopped for about 3 months when it was taking too long to get my first character to 60, but my friend eventually got me playing again.

I was going to quit last year because my alts were taking too long to progress, then they announced the leveling speed increase and I decided to keep going.

More recently I was going to quit from lack of time between WoW and all the Xbox360 and Wii games I had, but then all that stuff was stolen from my house and I turned back to WoW again.

I do want to play through to at least 60 as Horde though at some point. While the quests form neutral NPCs are the same, all the faction quests are different, and it's almost like having a fresh start at the game where you don't really know where everything is yet. I'm looking forward to it.

I don't know what the future holds as far as my WoW playing, but I am going to stick with it as long as I play enough that I think it's still worth paying $15 a month to keep going. Hopefully that will last long enough for me to accomplish everything I want to.

Link time

Aside from my regular reading of all the WoW blogs out there, I do some reading of other stuff WoW related as well. As I'm sure many of these reference sites will not be news to many of you, I am still going to link it for the benefit of anybody new to the game that wants to do some research.

Thottbot - It may not be the best WoW database site anymore, but it has been around since the beginning and I still find it useful enough that I haven't found the need to switch to Wowhead or Allakhazam, although those are both good sites too. Any of these sites are a searchable database of pretty much anything in WoW, from gear to quests to NPCs and where you can find them. No WoW player should go without it.

Wowwiki - I'm sure you've heard of Wikipedia, and this is the WoW version of it. Pretty much anything you'd want to know about the WoW universe, although not quite as detailed as the database sites, but still very useful.

Jame's Leveling Guides - There is one for both Horde and Alliance, and both are free online guides. Why would you buy one of those other guides when there are free ones available? If you want to level up fast and efficiently, check these out. They will streamline your leveling by telling you what quests to do, in what order, and how to do them to get the most experience in the least amount of time.

Curse.com - I use this site mainly for addons, one in particular being QuestHelper. Another good site for addons is Cosmos. Actually I use the Cosmos addons mainly, with QuestHelper being the only one I got from Curse, but many others have a difference of opinion about them. Either way, if you're looking for an addon, check out these sites and there is a very good chance you'll find exactly what you're looking for.

Web Comics:

Looking for Group - ...or LFG as we say in the game. This is the famous web comic with the warlock Richard. It doesn't exactly follow the lore or Warcraft, but it's amusing anyway and should keep you busy for a while.

Cru the Dwarf - One of my favorite comics, although not really for the kids, it has some adult themed material that will have you trying to stifle your laugh so your coworkers won't realize you're reading a web comic instead of working.

The Scout Report - I'm a little sad about this one. The author moved to a place with no internet connection and stopped, but you can still see his past work so check it out, maybe he'll move again and give us more.

Road to Blizzcon - Great comic of Doodlebug and Eustashius as they make their way to Blizzcon. Will they make it in time? It's hard to know, but the NPCs don't seem to be much help so far, besides the fact that every time they see Anaheim on a road sign they go the other direction towards whatever catches their attention at the moment.

Red vs. Blue - Started out as a machinima for Halo, which was great, but I have since stopped watching it. They got me coming back when they started doing a comic, which mainly revolves around the guys that work there and their antics, but also pokes fun at games every so often. It's a fun read, and has some WoW stuff in there every so often.

CTRL+Alt+Delete - It's been around for a while, and is a continuing story of two gamer roommates and their daily lives. This makes fun of games, gamers, and also has some WoW related stuff. He also recently started doing shorter comics, which he calls "Sillies" that don't follow the story but are more for some quick laughs, like what you read in the paper.

The Perry Bible Fellowship - Alright, this one isn't WoW related at all, but it's hilarious. I can't explain why, he's just so off the wall and clever. The humor is very subtle, so it's not for everyone, but if you like the Far Side or similar comics you really need to check this out.

Maybe this will give you an idea of what I do at work when I'm not actually working or writing blog posts.

Tearing it up

The shammy absolutely tore through some of the Hinterlands quests last night. It was nice seeing windfury proc like it's supposed to. Too bad everything I was fighting was more than 5 levels below me, so of course I'm hitting and critting like crazy.

Also been taking a look at what searches lead people to this blog. I'm finding the most common search is "wow wotlk raids". Obviously people are interested in what the raids are looking like in the new expansion, and while I'd love to tell you, I don't have a beta key either, so no luck here.

Another search I'm seeing pop up more often is something having to do with starting a new character. Either picking a class, or just starting out, I'm seeing quite a few searches and I just hope my past posts about this are helping you out. Take a look at the side menu and find Beginner Tips; all my suggestions about new characters can be found there.

Lastly I will reiterate something that lots of people are still confused about it seems. I saw one search that said "if I transfer a 70 after the expansion can I make a deathknight". As far as I can tell, the answer to this is yes. The requirement to create a death knight is having a character over level 55 on the account. It doesn't seem to matter how it got there, or even if it's on the same server, it just has to be on that account.

I remember when they were thinking of doing a quest line at level 80 to unlock death knights, and while many people welcomed that, there were obvious reasons they couldn't do this. Lots of people who play the game have enough trouble getting to level cap, and then making a quest line after that might be a little much, especially if it involved running instances for some of those quests.

Some people complained that this change would make it too easy, and that hero classes should be special and require hard work to open. I agree with this to a point, but I disagree with what most of these complainers think is an acceptable amount of work.

Death knights are a big piece of new content that everyone wants to try out. Blizzard couldn't possibly restrict so many users from making them, and considering how many players are very casual and wouldn't have time to get through all the requirements of a level 80 quest line it's a very significant amount. It's already hard enough for some casual players to make it to level 70 and enter Northrend, take away death knights from them as well and they probably wouldn't even bother buying the expansion.

So what Blizzard said is this: "We're going to start death knights at level 55, and if you can get another character to level 55 then you've already spent enough time playing to warrant letting you create a death knight."

Not only does this allow death knights to be created right from the start when the expansion is released for many players, but at least there is some work involved for people who want to make one. Sure, many people had done this work long ago, but just because you don't have to do anything extra now doesn't mean the work wasn't done.

It doesn't seem to be a big deal anymore as most people have accepted this decision, but it just reiterates the fact that while there is a lot of content in the end game, Blizzard will never stop making new things available to players who may not have as much time as others to play.

I'm glad they decided to go this route, not only because it means I will be able to create a death knight right off the bat, but because my plethora of alts will never have a dull moment.

I'm bursting!

Once again I didn't have any time to play yesterday, but after starting up the shammy again recently I'm not really sure how I feel about her. The class has been great to play previously, and I usually have no trouble taking down mobs, but recently it hasn't felt quite the same. She's specced all into enhancement for leveling, but I'm finding I may not like it as much as I used to.

What I'm really noticing is how much this spec depends on burst damage. If you don't get those big hits from windfury, and your short term buffs from crits, the fights really don't go well. Sometimes a mob goes down in a few swings with minimal damage to me, and sometimes I can barely see my remaining health at the end it's so low.

Melee classes depend on talents to make them better, but those talents are usually either passive boosts to damage, or skills you can use at the hit of a button. Shamans don't seem to work the same way. They do get talents that boost DPS, but it's based on whether you hit or not.

Windfury is chance on hit, the cheaper shocks talent is chance on hit. The faster attack speed and damage boost buff talents are both procced on crits, which you have even less chance of doing than hitting.

It's very frustrating when you see four attacks miss in a row, but it's even more frustrating to know that it probably cost you a windfury proc. I just don't think having the whole fight depend on talents that you essentially have no control over is a good mechanic.

This probably isn't as big a problem in the end game when your equipment has +hit modifiers to get you to the hit cap and only miss 1% of the time, not to mention there aren't too many raiding enhancement shammies. But as you level you don't really get anything with that stat, even though many of the mobs you fight can be 2 or 3 levels above you.

The saving grace is the fact that shamans can heal themselves. If it wasn't for this I don't think I could handle playing one. Being able to heal yourself in a fight when you can't get a proc to save your life is key when playing a shaman. The totems do help too, but not enough to equal things out.

This is sort of how I think playing my ret pally will be, but she's only level 10 right now so I haven't gotten to that point yet. From what my friend told me they have a similar problem because they use big two-handed weapons that are very slow, and missing a swing with one of those is a big deal with how much time there is between swings. Luckily they can heal too, and with plate armor they have more protection.

I know the hybrid classes are probably harder to balance because they aren't supposed to be as good at anything as a pure class is, but they still have a lot of work to do. Hopefully there are some big changes in the expansion that will make this a little better. I'm really excited about being able to summon spirit wolves.

The routine

As you may or may not have noticed, I'm usually a little late in my breaking news announcements, so late, in fact, that it is usually no longer breaking news. Like today, I could have surprised all of you with the news that the WotLK expansion will be released on November 13th. But of course, you've already read that somewhere else.

I blame my tardiness mainly on the fact that I live in California, meaning most of the rest of the country is awake and blogging before me. Not to mention how many bloggers are in Europe, it's a pretty popular game over there too from what I can tell.

My routine when I come into work and get on the computer is not to start work immediately. There are other priorities, such as my usual web comics and message boards that I have to check first. Then I go grab a bowl of cereal, that my company luckily provides, since I don't have time to eat before getting to work.

I also tend to read all the latest blog updates of everyone else that you see on my blogroll before I even start my post. Since I don't have access to most of the official WoW sites from work, I'm very limited on where I get my WoW related news and have to get it from other people.

So here I am writing this post, and not really having anything else to write about. I was out of town for the weekend and didn't get to play at all, so no updates as far as my in-game playing goes.

I guess the other problem is my gaming is not committed entirely to WoW at the moment. As you may remember, I am also making my way through the Warcraft II campaigns, and while those don't seem to take a lot of time, once I actually finish a level I am usually surprised at what the clock says.

I also just got Rock Band 2. I can't explain how much I love this game. I love rock music, I love videogames, and bringing them together like this is just genius. I had the first Rock Band, but it was stolen from my house in a burglary. Now I have it back, and it's even better. I'm not sure how this will affect my WoW playing, but it will obviously be negatively. The limiting factor is how tiring it is to play the drums, so that might help keep my play time on that game down.

On top of all that I will be starting a new workout routine, which I stated in a previous post, as soon as I get the equipment I need. That's going to take up an hour a day, and this time I want to stick with it and actually get into shape, unlike my three days a week or less that I was getting before. It won't be easy, but once I get into a routine I think I can keep it up. I won't forgive myself if I let this desk job I ended up with make me fat. Sitting and playing WoW doesn't help me out there either, but this routine should counteract that.

Hopefully I will have more to talk about tomorrow, I just haven't had time to think about any topics, but even now I have some ideas of things that I will probably discuss coming up this week. Happy Monday everybody, don't work too hard.

Pulling out the stops

Critical QQ already did a post about the new PvE to PvP transfer restrictions being lifted, you can read it here. I fully agree with this post, and want to add my own two cents as well.

He states that said transfer players will not have the skills to play on a PvP server and therefore would be outmatched by the players that leveled there. This is true, but they also will not know the etiquette that goes along with a PvP server.

Camping? Harrassment? While these seem funny to most gankers, it's really not a good idea. See, while you may be in a low level zone with your max level character ganking players for fun, thinking there is no one around that can stop you, there are opposing faction players with their max level characters doing the same. As soon as the call goes out that a lowbie needs help, all those players are going to come to the rescue, and if you camped that person, they are going to camp you tenfold.

This is the same reason why players tend not to kill each other while questing. You quickly learn that people have friends, and you are taking a risk by killing that lone player, because he probably has some level 70 buddies he can call that would be happy to pass the time by killing you over and over. It's a delicate balance, and those players that don't understand it will end up being miserable on a PvP server.

Last night I was finishing up Tanaris on my shaman when all of a sudden I got ganked by a hunter. OK, graveyard wasn't too far away, so I made the corpse run and continued on my way, no big deal. As I'm continuing toward my destination it happens again, same guy. Alright, I'm not happy about it, but it took him long enough to kill me again that I don't think he as camping, just patrolling an area and I happened to still be in it.

So I flip him off (I actually stick my middle finger up and show it to the screen, hoping somehow he will see it) as I usually do with gankers, and continue on. I had my mind made up that if it happened again I would call for backup. That is, until I saw in general chat that a few players were doing that already, I guess they had gotten fed up before me. A few minutes later I see that he had been neutralized.

That's just how things work on a PvP server, and for those of us that leveled on one it's a normal occurance that we're used to. But those who want to transfer to one from a PvE server just so they can have fun ganking? They're gonna have a whole lot of learning to do, and might find it's just not as fun as they thought it would be.


Yes, I did manage to play yesterday, and finished what I wanted to in Tanaris. Next up is the Hinterlands, which I have usually done by now, but haven't yet with my shammy for some reason, then I will move on to the Searing Gorge. I'm still optimistic that I will get my hunter and shammy to level 60 before the expansion hits.

Limited time

Looks like this week just isn't my week for playing games much. Actually I expect to have even less time in the future. I guess I don't talk too much about what I do outside of WoW, but since I don't have any news on that right now maybe I can give a little insight into myself.

Like most people I do the whole 40 hour work week thing, get weekends off and such. I also try to stay fairly active. I work out about 3 days a week on average, although it varies from week to week. Soon I will be starting a new work out program, and it will probably take up even more time.

If anyone is curious, it's the P90-X program, a twelve week program that you do daily, and it's supposed to be one of the best out there. It's also supposed to be one of the most strenuous, pretty much keeping you moving non-stop, so we'll see how far I get, but at least I can get some workout ideas from it if nothing else.

I also play adult softball, and not just on one team, but next week will start the season for a second team for me, so that's two nights a week I will be busy with that. Not to mention my girlfriend plays indoor soccer one night a week and I attend those games.

Then the weekend comes and I'm not to the point where I can stand sitting around all weekend. I need to get out and do something, and while I can usually squeeze in a little time in the mornings, I try to fill most of the day with other activities unless there is really nothing going on.

Do I think it's too much? Not really. I suppose if I was trying to get into raiding it might be, but I can't justify letting games take priority over other activities. I won't tell my softball team that I can't play because I'm in the middle of an instance, I'll just tell the group I have to go, and usually they will have been warned of my leaving early beforehand anyway to give them a chance to pass on me if they didn't want to deal with that.

I think my way of thinking has to do mainly with who my friends are. I used to hang out with gamers, but I have sort of grown apart from them and the people I hang out with now rarely play videogames and don't understand a lifestyle that revolves around gaming.

Unless it's work, I'm sick, or there's a girl involved, there's really no acceptable reason I could give them, especially not a game like WoW. They just don't understand how videogames could take priority over real life, and I often find myself agreeing with them on that.

Of course I like to sit down in front of the computer for a WoW marathon every once in a while if there is absolutely nothing else to do, but if someone were to call me with something to do I would log off and be out the door in a heartbeat. Most of the time I don't even bother logging out at the inn, even if my hearthstone is up, because the run back to where I was when I log in next time would be too much.

I'm young enough right now that, like myself, most of my friends are still unmarried, and I think that's a big part of the reason for this. Once they are all busy with their own families I will probably have more free time than I know what to do with, but for now I have to use my free time wisely, and if that means videogames take a back seat to real life, then that's what's gonna happen.

Still battling it out

Despite my lack of updating yesterday, I managed to get more hits than usual. Maybe I shouldn't update so often, then again, what else would I do to pass the time at work?

If you take a look at the comment on my last post, somebody actually wants to advertise on my site. It's a site that sells MMO items and accounts for money, so I won't be taking them up on the offer, but it's nice to know I might be getting enough hits to warrant advertising.

I'm still using my free time to play Warcraft II rather than WoW. I'm not sure if I'm burnt out or just bitter about not getting a beta key. I don't feel burnt out, but I also don't feel bitter. Maybe my need for variety in WoW has transformed into a need for variety in Warcraft gaming in general.

I do want to stick to my goal of getting my hunter and shammy to 60 before the expansion hits, and since I'm chugging along through Warcraft II, I might still be able to make it happen. I had thought Spore would keep me occupied, but after reading about all the DRM issues and the fact that it apparently installs some kind of malware on your system, I'm thinking I'll pass on it.

The nice thing about WoW, and about Blizzard's games in general, is they already figured out how to keep people from pirating, or at least how to keep those pirates from clogging up their servers. Because the games tend to focus more on the online aspects (WoW is all online), they really don't care if you install the game on another system, they just only want one particular CD-key online at a time.

I'm not really sure why other companies can't figure this out. Apparently Spore can only be installed 3 times total, no matter if you reinstall it on the same machine or not. I know when my hard drive crashed I had to reinstall everything, and I assume I will be getting a new computer in a year or two and need to do it all again. Kind of stupid to not be able to install a game because I upgraded my system.

When I first got Warcraft III it was a pirated version (I know, I'm bad). Sure the campaign was cool, but after finishing that I wanted to play online. Well guess what? I couldn't. See, with the system checking your CD-key every time you log into the servers, when a pirated version tries to go online, chances are one of the hundreds of other people with the same pirated copy is already on and you can't log in.

It's really a very simple, yet almost fullproof way to ensure people can't pirate your game. I suppose with the older games that didn't have online capabilities it was a big issue, but most games now are made mainly, if not completely, to be played online, meaning people won't bother pirating it if they can't play it online.

Being limited to 3 installs and then having to jump through a bunch of hoops in order to convince them that you are, in fact, installing the game legally just seems silly.

I actually find that whenever I decide to download a hacked copy of a game (which isn't very often), it's because I want to try it out, and without that pirated copy I wouldn't have bothered with it. Not only that, but this sometimes leads me to buy the game if I like it enough. I know this isn't how everybody thinks, but they are losing money on me by doing this.

I guess this post ended up turning into a rant about greedy game developers. The funny thing is that there are already pirated copies of Spore out there with the DRM removed, meaning they didn't really deter anything, although I'm sure you can't play those copies online. They really should have stuck with the system that has been proven to work. Nobody complains about Blizzard's CD-key system.

Kickin' it old school

Raise your hand if you had played any of the previous Warcraft games before you played WoW.

I remember getting Warcraft II not long after it came out and running it on my DOS PC. It's funny watching people who have never used DOS before try to figure it out. Sure I don't know all the commands, but I at least know how to get to the files I'm looking for.

Anyway, I managed to get my hands on a copy of Warcraft II: Battle.net edition this past week from eBay for $10. Now I had already finished both campaigns in the original game, but in the past I had never gotten the expansion. Now I'm making my way through the Orc expansion campaign, and while I'm not exactly up to par with my skill level before, I'm getting the hang of it and it's pretty fun.

Part of the reason I decided to play was to get a look back at those names we hear over and over, but who are long dead in the WoW world. I really miss some of those old games and how they sculpted my tastes in videogames.

In the past I was all about RTS games, but currently they have become way more complicated and I think I need to catch up. Warcraft II was simple, yet required strategy because you basically can produce the same units as your oppenent and have to figure out how to beat them.

So I think between leveling my WoW characters, when I don't have much time to play I'm going to be working my way through the Warcraft II expansion campaigns, then maybe I'll move on to Warcraft III, which I did beat but also never got the expansion for. I'm also thinking of getting into some Command & Conquer action, the original Red Alert was one of my favorites.

Moving on to WoW... WotLK Hunters can now tame CORE HOUNDS!?!? Are you serious? This is awesome news, and while I'm sure every BM hunter out there will have on, they look so cool that it really doesn't matter, I'll be getting one as soon as I can, especially since my cat will pretty much suck compared to the other options. I think they only ones available are either in MC (red) or Uvuros/Spawn of Uvuros (green). Still, maybe there will be a blue one in Northrend somewhere, who knows?

I didn't manage to play my shammy much, just got a few quests done, but I think part of the reason she was parked in the first place was because I had so much traveling to do before being ready to move on to more questing. After Tanaris I have more traveling to do if I'm going to stick with my alternate route to 60 so I don't end up going through the same stuff as my hunter.

It was already tough finding gaming time, but now with my new found passion for old RTS games, as well as Rock Band 2 coming out soon, and I also want to check out Spore, I might be having a little trouble getting the hunter and shammy up to 60 before WotLK, although with the core hounds now available to tame that could all change.

Hard to focus

Everyone is concentrating on the new expansion, even though we still have a few months to go. Beta testers are talking about the new content, those of us unlucky enough to not get a beta key are speculating about new content. It's getting out of hand.

I guess that's what happens when an expansion is announced more than a year before its release. At least with new games we don't know what we're missing yet, but with an expansion we already know the gameplay, so changes to that are very exciting.

I've actually not only made my speculations, with more to come, but I've pretty much based all of my goals around the expansion and when it will be released.

Why did I push my druid to 70? To be able to see Northrend right off the bat. Why am I pushing my shaman and hunter to 60? To take advantage of any accelerated leveling from 60-70 they may implement. That's right, I'm basing some of my goals on my own speculations, which may or may not even happen.

I had decided on creating a death knight as soon as they announced that it would be the new hero class, and I haven't changed my mind. For someone who loves to switch between different classes, there's no way I'm not anxious to play a brand new one, especially one that sounds so cool.

Reading a lot of other blogs I'm seeing the same pattern as well. Everyone is either getting ready for WotLK or is in the beta and pretty much only plays that now.

I was going to start in on my shaman yesterday, but decided that with the limited time I had to play it might be better to get some profession leveling done. I managed to get quite a few levels out of leatherworking on my druid with all the materials I collected on my hunter, and I think by the time she enters Outland she will have collected enough leather for him to get over the 300 mark.

What I'm trying to figure out is the best way to get tailoring to 300. I only have a few levels left, and almost enough cloth, but all the recipes that are orange to me require items that I can't just simply buy at a vendor. The bigger problem is the stuff is either not really expensive on the AH or is just not there. After some research, it doesn't look like farming the stuff is the best answer either as the drop rates are horrible. Is there some dropped recipe I should look for that will help me out with this?

I also took some time to figure out where my shaman's progress is, and I think I have a gameplan for how she will go about getting to level 60. If I get time to play this weekend I will see how this plan works out.

WotLK raids

I don't raid, or pretend to know much about it, but I do know that the way raids are set up now, most people don't get to see all the dungeons. This does two things, it frustrates people who can't commit as much time as others to the game and thus never get to see that content, but it also makes a lot of work for those people that can to progress through that content. Very few people have made it through BT, let alone Sunwell.

With the new raids having an option of being 10- or 25-man, how is that going to change things?

The good part is that it opens up the types of dungeons that were previously too much for the casual players to handle, and giving that choice makes the hardcore raiders happy because they still get that challenge, and better gear out of it.

The question is: Will there be a negative impact? Will making progression through those raids easier make them less appealing?

I know the hardcore people will still be running the 25-mans for the gear and the glory, but for casual players it's more about seeing the content. Once that content becomes more easily accessible through 10-mans will we keep going back?

If we take down Arthas in a 10-man, who cares about a 25-man? Maybe he drops better gear, but the guild drama of getting raids that big together is much more work.

It really all depends on how the raid progression is set up, and how long it takes to progress from one dungeon to another. If they put in too few, we will finish and get bored of doing the same thing over and over. Too many and we will get frustrated at not being able to get anywhere.

Blizzard is usually pretty good about catering to what the majority of people want, and I'm pretty sure they'll get it right, and as we've seen previously they can still choose to add more later one (ZA, Sunwell).

It will be interesting to see what they do, but it's a little different adding instances after Arthas, they'll need some pretty good lore to get people to go along with that.

Caught up

I knew it would happen, just sort of hoped it wouldn't be so soon. I caught up with my rested XP bonus on my hunter. I have always had a rule ever since starting my first alt that I would switch to a different character every time I got out of the blue, and while sometimes I'll finish that one quest first, I never keep playing long enough for it to matter much.

What I did manage to do was make it to level 56 first, which means I went up 5 levels in a couple weeks, not bad. To recap, I finished what I had left of Tanaris, went through Un'Goro, did the few quests available in Azshara, made my way thorugh Felwood and am now sitting pretty in the Western Plaguelands, ready to start it up again. Actually I better find an inn to stay at so I can get back to it sooner.

On to my next character in line, and that's the shaman. I'm not sure exactly where she's at, but I'm thinking there are a few quests in Feralas I need to do before she's ready to continue on. What I'm looking forward to is going about her progress very differently than with the hunter.

If you notice my questing listed above, you may see that there are a lot of zones that were left out, which wasn't done because I don't enjoy those zones, but just that I outleveled them and won't need to visit them before being ready for Outland. What I plan for my shaman is to pretty much go the opposite route of my hunter. She will go to places such as the Blasted Lands, Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes and make her way through the levels that way.

Leveling exactly the same on each character would get boring, especially since the shaman is only starting a couple levels behind where my hunter started from. Many of these quests I can do in my sleep now, and while of course I've already been to the other places listed, it's been a while and will be a change of pace from what I've just seen.

Other progress to make is my crafting skills. My hunter has slowly been supplying my druid with rugged leather and he may have enough to level his leatherworking to the point where he can use knothide leather. In the process, I have also managed to collect a pretty good amount of runecloth, and with my priest at 295 tailoring already, she's in a good position to go over the 300 mark and started crafting with netherweave.

I've been stuck on both of these professions for a while now, and while there are some of you out there that change professions every week and have no problem getting to max level, I am trying to be self sufficient and use my leveling characters to supply as much as they can.

After seeing how many more useful craftable items were introduced in the last expansion as compared to what we had at level 60, I'm hoping they will continue that trend and provide us with some very good craftable armor in WotLK.

Before TBC we had nothing that even compared to epic quality craftables. Now, with items such as the Frozen Shadoweave set and the Planar Edge, there are really some raid viable gear we can make. I'm hoping that with the next expansion there will be craftable gear on par with this stuff for every class to give us some more ways to get geared up.

If you read this blog, you probably know that I don't raid or do much of any end-game stuff, but I do like to think about what other people would enjoy as well.

Right now the clothies have some great craftable gear, and while they are only three piece sets, it's enough to gear them out for a good amount of raid progression. Now how much this helps you really depends on where your guild is in their progression. If they are just starting out it may not matter much since nobody has much gear and the raids are made for that.

On the other hand, say you join a guild full of friends so you can play alongside them, but they are much further down the line. It's hard to convince them to go back and gear you up, but how else will you get there? With a few craftable items that can bring you more up to speed you will be able to get there on your own, and while still not totally caught up, it's enough that you will be able to make your contribution.

I'm sure with the success of the current craftable gear we will be seeing more of it in the future. Obviously it isn't meant to replace raiding to gear up, but enough so that those few slots won't need to be filled right away and you won't be left behind.

I know I wish we had some decent craftable gear like this for pre-TBC raids. I never had a chance to go on any of those because of my lack of gear. So after a bunch of frustrating PUG runs where the drops never seemed to go my way, and watching my guild progress through, ZG, MC, and BWL in guild chat, I sort of gave up.

If there had been some craftable items to farm for I probably would have stuck with it, at least then I knew I would get there eventually instead of relying on random drops in instances that more often than not I couldn't even get a decent group to run.

I guess I sort of got off topic, but the point is I'm hoping that crafted gear becomes available for every class and spec in the upcoming expansion so we have a way to catch up to our guilds without making them run us through lower content to gear us up. For us casual players that would be very nice.

The power of choice

I used to be all about efficiency in leveling, and I still try to be as much as I can, but now I'm going about it in a different way and I'm not sure if I like it better or not.

For a while I was using some free online leveling guides to help me level more quickly. They tell you which quests to get and what order to do them in so that you spend the least time running back and forth. It was pretty convenient for a while, but it got to the point where I wasn't really playing anymore, just going through the motions and alt+tabbing out of the game to check the next step.

When I first started playing I had no add-ons, no guides, just me and the quest log, and while my progress was pretty slow, it was also really fun exploring and figuring out where to go to accomplish each quests. Sure there were those few quests along the way that really didn't make sense unless I looked them up, but for the most part the explanation the game gave was plenty for me.

The main reason I started reading guides was because I was lost as to what zones to visit later in the game. My rogue had the hardest time leveling, and after he got to 60 I found that there were multiple zones he could have leveled in that I had never gone to, mainly because I didn't even know they were worth going to.

So after much searching I finally found a guide that didn't require you to pay for it. At first I was just using it as a reference for where to go next, but not much more than that. As time went on I started following the guide more closely, doing the quests in the same order, until eventually I was going step by step and it started to feel more like a chore than a game.

At that point I realized I had found a great resource, but was using it in a way that pretty much was ruining the game for me. I found that what I really wanted was a way to map out the quests and then I could choose how to do them. After some research I came across some quest add-ons that would display where objectives are on your map and keep track of your quest progress.

This may seem very similar to just reading a guide, but going from a step by step guide to just having marks on your map is not the same at all. Now I choose which quests to do, and how to do them. Sure the exploration part may not be the same as going with no help at all, but I'm a little past the point where the exploration part is what makes the game fun. Plus, I still have to figure out how to do the quests, I just don't have to figure out where to go for them.

The biggest benefit for me is that I can look at the map, see where the objectives for multiple quests are, and decide the best way to go about doing them. Maybe somewhere down the line I'll have to go back to the same place a few more times, and maybe it won't be the most efficient way and the guide would have told me that, but that's what keeps things interesting.

As I make my way through the game with multiple characters I'm finding that while the exploration part has lost its novelty, I don't miss the wandering aimlessly part at all. Or when the drop rate for a quest item is so bad that you're not sure you're even killing the right mob. The benefits the quest add-on provides far outweigh what it may take away from the game, and after you've been playing long enough you won't miss those annoying parts at all.

As always, the point of a game is that it is fun, so anything that would take away from that fun isn't worth using. In this case, reading a leveling guide was more like work than having fun playing WoW, but using a quest add-on that still left the choices up to me has brought back that fun.

Add-ons and guides are great references, but relying on them too much can sometimes make the game monotonous and boring, and if that starts to be the case you may want to give up on efficiency and make the game fun again, otherwise you might burn out.