Tag: WoW

A few days into the WoW expansion now, and my priest is level 88. Leveling is MUCH slower than I’ve found it to be in previous expansions. I’m undecided if this is good or bad. Because content is quite streamlined it may be considered bad if you’ve got a lot of alts to level up. It’s also a bit annoying if you are a crafter because you can’t reach the main city until you hit level 87 and do a quest. You need that city to purchase crafting recipes. I always dislike these types of lock outs to crafter content.

Speaking of crafting it is MUCH easier to level the ‘main’ professions this time around. Sure, there is the level 87 for recipes restriction which is frustrating, but crafting itself is far easier. No volatiles to collect, being the major reason. Only requiring one bind on pickup item to purchase a single recipe that will take you from 575 to 600. I’ve reached 600 in both tailoring and enchanting with relative ease, and then also reached 600 in first aid (yes, I’m a completionist remember). I’ve still got the harder crafts to go (cooking and archaeology  plus all of my alts, but it’s not too bad so far.

You also can’t fly in the new zones until you reach level 90 and purchase the skill (2500 gold). It makes adventuring take longer and forces players to explore. The stories have been really interesting but I find that as I make my way through certain zones the quests go from being really neat and awesome to more of the same ‘kill X creature for Y NPC’ variety.

I will say that this expansion certainly rewards you with a lot of vanity clicky items! I have punching bags, spittoons, paint guns, and all sorts of other non purpose items that are now sitting in my bags waiting to be pulled out in the middle of a raid to distract players. That’s what they’re for, right?

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

I had big plans for when MoP released yesterday, but alas I ended up catching a nasty flu bug instead and spent most of my day sleeping in some sort of flu medication enhanced sleep. I did manage to get a bit of time in-game though, and I had a blast.

Of course I created a panda monk. I learned a few things. First of all, the ‘red’ pandas (female only) get tails. There’s a lot of debate over this because red pandas are more like raccoon’s than pandas – which is apparent by their very raccoon-like tail. That doesn’t bug me, I like the tail so of course that’s what I created. There were also a lot of complaints about how you can’t join a guild until you’re done because you don’t pick a faction. That means no guild bonuses. You are also unable to send / receive any mail (there are no mailboxes in the starter zone) until you pick a faction. More complaints ensued because that means you can’t mail yourself the lovely heirloom gear you’ve been collecting until after you leave (around level 11-12).

If you were not a fan of the wargen or goblin starter areas because of the length of time they took to complete, you should be pleasantly surprised at the length that the panda zone takes. I didn’t feel that it was too long, although it was a bit annoying because spawns have been sped up to accommodate the influx of players and that meant for a lot of me trying to out run giant gangs of creatures. No deaths, but some very close calls.

Once my panda was out of the starter (no spoilers here!) I decided to switch back to my ‘main’ priest, and start leveling her through the Jade Forest. The zone was incredibly packed with players, most of them standing with their giant mounts RIGHT on the NPC that I needed. I really enjoyed working my way through the quests so far. The stories are interesting, and the quests a lot of fun. If you’ve gotten to meet Sully and ‘Socks’ you will know what I mean. The attention to detail has been really nice and while there are a lot of ‘kill X mob and bring me back Y item’ quests there are also a lot of pure interesting and good fun moments throughout. The cut scenes are well done and I’m enjoying taking my time and listening to the story.

I also started working on my crafting a bit. In fact that was the very first thing I did when I logged in, train each of my professions so that when I did start crafting again I didn’t forget and get held back by the old skill cap. My bank is quickly filling up with food items because I forgot to clear out the old food items I had stored up. Whewps. Tailoring and enchanting are first on my list – cloth is plentiful, to say the least. I’ve been disenchanting all of the items I come across to gain enchanting materials, and have started stocking the guild bank up with enchanting scrolls.

I also spent some time doing pet battles – not many, yet. After all I have a LONG time to work through this content and I’m not in any rush. I started out with a snail companion and added a baby dragon to the mix, and have done a few battles, collected a few animals and added them to my personal collection. I think the difficulty of the fights has been tweaked slightly, as I found my second battle much more difficult than I did in beta. Still, no pets have died (yet) and it was cute.

The game certainly isn’t for everyone and I’ve heard a lot of negativity over things lately but I’m having fun and I’m not ashamed of it. There’s no reason why I can’t enjoy more than one game at a time, and I’m content having a variety to play. Each game scratches a different ‘itch’ and playing through new (to me) content is always exciting. The most important thing is (and always has been) having FUN while you play these games. WHAT the game is doesn’t matter.

As always, happy gaming!

At the time of this post it’s 3 days, 16 hours, 35 minutes, and 56 seconds until Mists of Pandaria release. I decided that I should probably try to get my druid to 85. I’ve had the character for a very long time, but I had four other level 85 characters, and for some reason just couldn’t manage to stick with the druid long enough to level her. I’d get distracted by something else on another character, achievements, crafting, etc.

Once I hit 85 it was time to gear her up. What was the point with MOP just around the corner? Well, it’s just a personal preference of mine. Something I enjoy doing, too. So I took the lazy players method. I geared her up (to begin with) with player-crafted PvP gear, ilevel 377. My trinkets were holding me back from queuing for raids, but I was able to get into the heroic twilight dungeons. I purchased ilevel 397 wrist and feet (they’re sold for justice, and can be traded) and a cheap ilevel 359 weapon. I leveled up as feral but switched to balance and restoration even though I had never played a druid in a group or in either of those specs before.

Twilight dungeons were fairly easy, I’ve done them numerous times before and even though I was at the absolute bottom of every parse, I knew it was 100% due to my gear. The dungeons are great for loot and even for the quests offered within the zone. After running each one once, I was able to boost my ilevel to 372, and get rid of the majority of my pvp gear. This means I can queue for raids now, which I’ll be doing later tonight. There’s no way I wanted to experience LFRaid at 1am on a Thursday night. Things should be much better on a Friday night. This I’ve learned the hard way.

That brings the totals of my characters to: 85 priest (discipline/shadow), 85 shaman (enhancement/restoration), 85 warlock (Affliction/Destruction), and 85 paladin (retribution/holy). The druid doesn’t have a craft yet, and I’ll probably try to max that out before too long, simply because it’s a pleasure to have one of everything.

Aside from that bit of excitement, the guild I run ‘Dragon Flight’ also managed to inch our way to level 10. This means we can now purchase the heirloom cloaks which is a pretty big deal for us. Without the weekly caps, and with a large increase in earned experience things have been moving along quite well. It wasn’t that long ago that we were level 5, and had been for quite some time. I have grand hopes of eventually making it to level 25, but 10 is a good solid start for a guild of only 3 people.

I’m excited about MOP. Everyone has their own personal opinions about the game of course, but it’s got a number of aspects that appeal to me, and it meshes well with the other games that I play. I hope everyone has an amazing weekend, and happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Pre 5.0.4 players in LFRaid would typically roll for gear whether they actually needed it or not, so long as they could roll need, they would. Blizzard changed how loot was handled, and instead of physically rolling need or greed on a piece, players would perform a hidden roll and 4 walk away with loot while the rest end up with bags of gold (25g). If I heard complaining before, that’s nothing compared to the complaining that arises now. See, players can’t trade any of the loot they win, so even if you end up with a piece that’s completely useless to you you’re stuck with it. You also don’t get to see what anyone else wins, so there’s very little talking going on at all. You get your bag of loot (or coin) and there’s no waiting around for someone to vote on pieces, that’s it, you’re done. Leave the dungeon and go on your way.

I’m torn about the change myself. I appreciate that people can’t randomly roll need but I think Blizzard may as well just set up a line and say here you go, here’s your loot. It’s just not fun. Perhaps if the items were tradeable, and if the raid could see who ended up with what, things wouldn’t feel so sterile.

What do you think of the new loot changes? Let me know in comments!

In my years of MMO gaming, I’ve seen a lot of changes. I’ve had to re-learn game mechanics time and time again, each new expansion, in multiple games. I’ve normally taken this with a grain of salt, after all we all learn to adjust and move on – but the latest WoW patch REALLY bugs me, on my shaman in specific.

Shaman used to drop down 4 totems at once, it was “their thing”. What they were known for. You would pick the totem that best fit the situation, and before you started healing or DPS you would place those totems. They could even act as markers, they were raid wide, and they were wonderful. 5.0.4 removed the majority of these totems. Instead of dropping four, you’ll probably only drop ONE constantly (as DPS), with a side order of another here and there. Instead of lasting 5 minutes, they last 10-40 seconds. Instead of having nice totem hotbars where you can make sets of totems to drop, you’ll need them all on your regular hotbars so that you can drop the right ones when you need them. What the totems themselves do has been changed. That nice +agi/str buff is gone. Sure, your flame / stone pets are still there but the class doesn’t FEEL the same, at all.

I spent a bit of time looking over my skills, saddened at how many they removed. They seem to have consolidated every class in some aspect. This is great for freeing up space on my hotbars, not so great for someone who spent a lot of time learning how to play the class to begin with.

I have poked my other characters to some degree. The priest plays pretty much the same except that I have switched over to two heal specs. There is a large difference between the holy and discipline specs now – the level 85 AoE heal all priests used to get is now restricted to holy only. It was annoying to try to heal in my discipline spec. It was also annoying to try to heal a 5 man dungeon in my holy spec. Dropping shadow was something I had been contemplating before the changes, so I don’t mind too much.

Speaking of raids. The new LFRaid loot changes are.. not fun. In fact the majority of players I’ve seen in game have been complaining about them. I told them if people didn’t constantly roll on things that they didn’t actually need, maybe this change wouldn’t have taken place. In other words, THIS is why we can’t have nice things. See, before the change people would just roll on whatever their class could equip, needed or not. Some times trades would go on, some times players would win double items from the same boss. In other words human nature took over and suddenly everyone became a pack of loot hungry mongrels. The new loot system auto distributes 4 pieces of gear to random raiders, and everyone else gets a bag of 25g. You don’t see who wins, and you can’t trade the loot. In other words, blizzard is very literally just handing you your loot and saying here you go. It makes for some very drab and boring raids, that’s for sure. No worries though, people have found other things in-raid to bicker and argue about since they can’t argue about the loot with one another.

Over all? I’m excited about MOP and the pet battles, and even leveling up. I’m not excited about any of my class changes, and the LFRaids are a bit annoying. I LOVE that my guild experience no longer has a cap and they’ve increased the amount of experience you earn for your guild. This has been a godsend to my small guild of 3 people. We’re closing in on level 7, and that’s something that took a few months in the past.

What are your thoughts of patch 5.0.4?

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.