I want my D3 BETA!

OK Blizzard, I still have yet to figure out your process for selection for beta keys. If it's completely random then I can't really have any complaints, but it does seem that there are certain people out there who receive a beta key just by asking. I'm talking about bloggers, shoutcasters, etc. Sure I'm not a regular blogger, but I feel there should be some sort of reward for being a loyal Blizzard gamer.

I'm sure many people have played a lot of Blizzard games, but lets just go over my past with them. I started out with Warcraft II, never played the first one, but I played that game endlessly, beat both campaigns, and lots of skirmishes both on a LAN and computers. Pretty much the same can be said of Starcraft. I got into that one a little late, say a year after release, but nevertheless, that would make it 11 years ago. Fast forward to Diablo II, and I'd say I played that game more than Warcraft II and Starcraft combined, and not by a small margin. I leveled at least 3 characters over 80, and did countless hours of loot runs. Warcraft III comes next, and yes I of course played through the campaign, plenty of online play, just never made it through the campaign.

So that brings us to WoW. Do I really need to tell you how much I've played this game? I have a blog about it! I've been playing since about 4 months after it was released, I don't even want to think about how much the monthly fees add up to, but I'd like to think I've invested more money in Blizzard than the majority of people out there. Just think, I have leveled 6 characters past level 80, 2 more past 70, and yet 2 more past 60. That's at least one of each class over level 60.

Starcraft II, I haven't done much online play yet, but I played through the campaign and a lot of Nexus Wars.

So, should I receive a beta key for Diablo III? That's up to Blizzard to decide I suppose, but I'd like to think they at least look through current Battle.net accounts and have some sort of selection process other than just picking randomly. I have all those games registered on Battle.net, so it's not like Blizzard is clueless about me owning them. Hell, I've lost my Starcraft disc two or three times and had to replace it each time.

Come on Blizz, let me get a beta key.

It's been a long time

Yeah nobody reads this, but I want to go ahead and do this anyway. New expansion? Well maybe not so new anymore, but new enough!

I didn't know they could make the quest progressions better after Wrath, but they managed to do it again. I love how the quests flow, how some just pop up and don't make you return to the questgiver to turn it in. It's great! Not only in the new zones, but in the new quests they replaced in the low level zones.

Thousand Needles is awesome, I played through it a few times on both factions, I'm a big fan of the new underwater element they added to the game. Which brings me to Vashj'ir. Not sure if it's my favorite new zone, because Hyjal just brings me back to Warcraft 3 and the memories of playing through it the first time. I had such a hard time with that level.

I have a few new characters to comment on. I made a Worgen warrior, and got him up to level 60 pretty quick. It took like 8 months to get my first character that high in vanilla WoW, but this guy went ridiculously fast. My druid is 85, first there of course, with the paladin behind him at 84.

Oh, I've been soloing Heroic Underbog randomly with my hunter at level 82 in an attempt to become exalted with Cenarion Expedition and get the hippogryph mount. It's monotonous, but it'll be worth it. I got the Wintersaber mount with my priest too, that one went pretty quick once I upgraded her flying skill. That one has been in the works for a while, so I was pretty happy to get there.

Hmm, shaman at 82, got my DK to 80 somehow, he was really easy to solo with, almost like the pally, but can't heal himself. Warlock at 74 or 75, she's the one I'm working on right now until I get out of her rested XP range. I went destruction for leveling and I'm excited for chaos bolt. I first went with a warlock for a felguard, but I gotta see this chaos bolt in action before I change specs. I'll have that felguard later.

Rogue is still 70, he probably won't budge for a while, and the mage brings up the rear, at, umm, something around 50, but I can't remember. He'll be the next project. The whole water elemental as a pet thing really helps for soloing, mages were pretty rough before, almost as bad as rogues.

Ok, that's enough for now, I might update a every now and then though. Who am I even talking to, nobody reads this!

Rogues, my only weakness

As you may or may not know, my very first character was a rogue. He was the first to reach level 60 in vanilla WoW, and I even started doing some instances before the first expansion was released, then I pretty much gave up on him to play a druid and priest, and eventually others.

The thing about rogues that I have trouble with is their lack of healing, especially with their low armor value and the fact that they are pretty much melee only. This results in fairly slow leveling in comparison with most other classes, who tend to either have a healing spell they can use, or stick to attacking from range and don't take much damage. Warriors are the exception, but they have much better armor to mitigate damage.

Why am I bringing this up? Because I have started leveling my rogue again. Getting to endgame content on four other characters has shown me the new stuff rogues have gotten since I left mine behind, and I want to check out what I've been missing. I also am getting a little bored with endgame stuff and need something else to do for a while.

The transition is a little different than normal for me. I think it's a combination of just how long it's been since I played a rogue, and the fact that my main is a feral cat druid with very similar controls.

So far things are going well, but I need to level my first aid skill to keep downtime to a minimum. Other than that I'm finding it to be much less of a grind than before. I'm not sure if I chose better talents or if rogues are just better now than they used to be, but where I was usually resting every two battles I can fight many more in a row now.

So for now it looks like I will be working on my rogue. I think I will shoot for getting him to level 70, then I will probably need a break from him, but I want to get through Outland at least before it comes to that.

My main goal at this point is to get epic flying for my priest. She's been at level 80 for so long and still flies around like slow poke. That's why I'm back to questing again. It seems to be the fastest way to earn money for me at this point.

80s Madness

A couple weeks ago I went on a binge and leveled up my shaman all the way to 80. It seems to get faster and faster with each successive character, but I'm not planning on doing too much leveling in the near future. Surprised? I was too, but I have other things to focus on.

First off, I have no idea what I want to do with Keldreth, my hunter. At first I was going to use her to farm Heroic Underbog in an attempt to become exalted with Cenarion Expedition and buy the hipporgryph mount. Only problem is her gear isn't good enough to for her to be able to solo the instance, so there goes that idea. For now she's on hold.

Blackbare will continue to be my main, running Heroics with my friends and guildmates to gear up. I've gotten some pretty lucky drops, and he's well on his way to having all purples. That's about all I use him for at the moment, but I will have to quest through Ice Crown eventually, even if it's only to get money from the quests.

Vonari is a little different. She will be running BG's and just be my PvP character for now. I have geared her up in a few instances, but I'm thinking she will just stick to getting most of her gear through PvP.

Avialle gets to be my guinea pig at gearing up on my own. I've been running normal dungeons with her for gear, and now she can queue for most of the heroics as well. I'm gearing her up strictly on my own, without guild help, just to see if I can do it without getting too frustrated with PuG's. It hasn't been bad so far, this new cross-server LFG tool really works well.

As for all the lower level characters, I probably won't be using them much for a while. Now that the endgame stuff doesn't require such long playing sessions to get anywhere, and the fact that I have 4 characters that are at that level, I think I will stick to playing them the majority of the time. Probably better to save the others for Cataclysm anyway.

Bigger and Better

Well it finally happened, I got a new computer, and for the first time in my life it's a Mac. Actually it's a little overwhelming. The screen is huge, it runs super smooth, and even though it's a Mac, I can still run Windows on it as well if I want, so I can still load up any of my old games if I want.

A new computer with a huge screen also means WoW looks amazing. I can bump up all the video settings with no lag whatsoever, and I'm pretty sure I don't have to worry about any graphics card conflicts or anything like that while I'm in the middle of a game.

On to the progress update. I have been leveling my shaman almost exclusively, only playing other characters when my friends are running instances and such. She's level 75 right now, and is just finishing up in Dragonblight, which puts her on track to hit 80 sometime in the next couple weeks depending on how much time I get to play.

I don't know why, but I'm really liking the shaman and the huge burst damage she gets with her enhancement build. Sometimes it's a little ridiculous. One swing of the mace and the enemy just lost half it's HP. Other times nothing procs and I'm stuck in a drawn out battle. Kinda interesting how that works.

I actually think that maybe the shaman could be my BG character. The burst damage, combined with spirit wolves to add a little damage while healing me, and my summonable elementals make it seem like a pretty good choice for a little PvP. It will take some practice though, I still get ganked all the time.

On a side note, Blackbare is getting much better geared. I've gotten lucky on some drops in various instances and he's slowly but surely getting there. He also managed to reach exalted with Sons of Hodir and is now able to get my shoulder enchants for me. They increased the rep gain on each turn in, so it doesn't take nearly as long as it used to. I think I was exalted in a couple weeks.

Not much else to update on right now. The pally has gained a few levels, but still in her 20s so not much to talk about there. For now I will concentrate on getting Avialle to 80 and then figure out what I want to do from there.

Classic!

That's right everybody, Blackbare is now a Classic Dungeonmaster!

Alright, maybe for a level 80 it isn't the most difficult task to complete, but before going for the achievement I had only been to maybe half of the instances the original game had to offer, but now I have seen them all, and I think I can understand why people are so drawn to it.

My first character I got to level 60 was my rogue, and this was before the first expansion, so I had a chance to run a few of the end game instances. My experience with it wasn't too great. Being a rogue it was very difficult to find a group, as there was never a shortage of DPS characters needing groups.

Now I get to see them in sort of a different light. Sure I can blow through them really quick on my own, but trying to think about what it would be like for a group of level 60's trying to make their way through one of those instances makes it very interesting.

I'm able to skip so many mobs, the loot doesn't matter, and the bosses go down easily for me. An instance like BRD was just so big, I can't imagine working my way through it at that level. I really can see why instances have become more and more streamlined starting with the first expansion. They were big and epic before, but just took too much time for me to want to run through them constantly.

Next up, time to get my hunter ready to solo Heroic Underbog, or get a better attempt in at least. She'll be questing in the Storm Peaks first, then moving on to Icecrown if her turtle pet hasn't hit 80 by then. The new patch just decreased the amount of experience for a pet to gain a level too, so this should go more quickly than it was.

Besides that, I plan on taking my druid to the new Heroic instances with my guild, and hopefully get some crazy gear out of it. Blackbare has really become my instance guy, and the funny part is that since we have such a good tank in the guild that leads us through, I end up running everything in cat form as DPS. Not really what I expected his role to be, but hopefully I can eventually get an off-spec set and go boomkin as my dual spec. Oh that would be sweet. I wouldn't mind trying healing either at some point.

Retro WoW

So in the process of going for the Classic Dungeon Master achievement, I also joined my guild and a few others for a run of Blackwing Lair. It was quite the experience, and now I know that I would have never been able to raid in vanilla WoW.

The group itself wasn't bad. We had some well geared people who knew the instance, and the rest were just along for the ride. The first hickup we had was attunement. Sure you don't have to be attuned anymore, but without it you have to run through UBRS to get in. We decided to just become attuned.

Well we eventually did it, but only after I got stuck along with two others at one part behind a gate that apparently doesn't open after the boss is killed. So we had to get summoned back and run back through the instance. One player even fell into the lava in Blackrock Mountain and we pretty much left him to catch up with us.

So we're all attuned and make our way into BWL. This is quite the instance. Lots of different mechanics for the boss fights. With 11 level 80s we didn't really have much trouble with the fights, it was the other players we had problems with.

One of them pretty much singlehandedly held up the party for a good half hour or more as he had died in the instance, released (after we told him not to), and came back, only to be killed by respawns from the first boss' room. When we went back to rez him his body was nowhere to be found, and so he had to run back again.

This wouldn't be so bad, except that he didn't get attuned somehow, so the run back wasn't just to the beginning of BWL, but to UBRS, and then you have to run through that to the entrance to BWL. It was quite the ordeal, and all I could do was sit there and wish we hadn't waited for him.

It got me thinking about the 40-man raids people used to do at level 60, and the horror stories I heard about them. With all the troubles we had with just one person out of 11, I don't know how the 40-man groups ever made it. Sure if it was all in the guild you probably are all on the same page, but even then there are hold ups, and after this weekend I really don't think I'd have the patience for stuff like that.

In the end we got through it, but it took an hour and a half, and I went into it expecting to spend less than an hour. At least I can cross that off the list of old world content I want to see that I never got the chance to before.

Next up: finish the last few dungeons for the Classic Dungeonmaster achievement. I tried BRD with my friend this weekend as well, but we got lost, as neither of us has done it before, so I think we might have to use a walkthrough. We're n00bs...