Tag: WoW

As always I bounce between games, and my adventures have taken me over to World of Warcraft this time. Things are a little different then last time I played back in April with both developers and players preparing for the release of 4.3 (slated for November, I believe). My priest had been 85 for some time, but of course (as with all of the games I play) I have a handful of alts. The warlock was closest at level 84 and I decided I should probably try to reach 85 sooner or later. Preferably sooner. I queued for some dungeons and at 84 it took a bit to get in as dps, but as soon as I hit 85 the queues went much faster. Not only that but the dungeon runs themselves went MUCH smoother then I ever remember them going when I was doing them previously. Out of the 8 runs I did I only recall one wipe, and there were no rude comments from anyone. Weird!

The warlock doesn’t have enough of a score yet to do heroics, but the priest does. I noticed that justice point purchased boots and wrist pieces are now BoE instead of BoP, allowing players to purchase and sell them on the broker or AH. I also started the new chain of quests that introduces the Firelands, and received a very nice cloak that was a huge upgrade for the warlock. I don’t really know too much about this place, but the lore seemed pretty neat (and mushy, aw, Horde love).

My other alts include:

• 78 dwarf shaman
• 63 human paladin
• 10 gnome rogue

I had both a druid and a warrior around the 40s but I decided to delete them (no real reason, it’s just something I do to ‘clean up’ and will probably remake one day. You can find me on battle.net as morrow.stephane.l@gmail.com if you’d like to add me, I play alliance on the Argent Dawn server. I can’t say how long I’ll play (especially since I’m still playing Rift too) but for now the change is relaxing.

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

The paladin is 61 (closing in on 62) and experience has slowed down some what. At least as much as experience ever slows down in WoW when you’re wearing heirloom gear for experience bonuses. Being this level means a few (wonderful) things for me. First of all, I can finally fly. This makes questing and harvesting SO much easier. I am now in Outlands, exploring (once more) Hellfire Peninsula, but I’m on the alliance side for the first time and so things are at least a little different. Ok not so different that I can’t tell the exact horde counterpart, but different enough. I’ve still been tanking for pick up groups, and they’ve gone slightly better then the pre-60 dungeons. I disliked 55+ so much that I avoided doing dungeons all together and decided to quest my way to Outlands. It was simple, and quick. I think it was even faster then if I had of queued. I’ve tanked Hellfire Ramparts twice now, and both times the group moved smoothly, with only one (or two) mage deaths (ahem, Detch) from adds. The only down side I’ve really found with the paladin is that because my cool downs tend to be a little lengthly, it can some times be difficult to catch adds if I’m not expecting them. See, the problem is that everyone else has their AoE’s going off, and then more mobs add to the bunch, while those AoE’s go off – meaning that I barely have time to taunt or take aggro myself before the mobs are on someone else. When this happens I do my best to pull them off, but if my own AoE’s happen to be down for a moment it can get a bit hairy. I’m working on timing things better, and I know it will come with experience.

On the plus side most groups now have been patient enough to let me handle pulling, which is a huge relief. I was beginning to think that every single PUG in WoW was a hopeless cause, and I’m always eager to be proven wrong. Now that I’m 60+ I’ve slowed things down, prepared to take my time and enjoy my character while learning how to play her properly.

Although I’ll want to level up past 65 sooner rather then later, because my crafting (and harvesting) are capped at 375 until then. I’ve taken up alchemy and herbalism, the herbs come in handy for my inscription character (shaman). I had worked inscription to the cap once before but then (foolishly) dropped it for mining. After thinking about it I decided I really did want to keep inscription, and picked it back up. I’ve also maxed out my jewel crafting on the shaman, who is 78, and I’ve been busy doing dailies on her so she can purchase recipes and cut more gems.

Thanks to a generous gift from a friend I’m also sitting at 72 pets on my ‘main’ (the 85 priest) only three pets away from an achievement I’ve been after for quite some time. When I don’t feel like doing dungeons or interacting with a lot of other people I tend to work on these achievements – it’s not player housing, but it fills in the blanks just nicely.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

How on earth is my warrior tanking in THOSE?! Good grief!

Last night was.. interesting, to say the least. I received a random tell from a random player that I’ve never seen or heard of before (and I believe they logged off right after, so I couldn’t comment further). The tell consisted of nothing more then ‘Wow, when did your AC (air conditioning) break, because you’re looking hotter than hell!” – thanks strange weird person. I am typically of two minds when I receive these sorts of tells in game (and I have a few times now). First of all, they have no idea if I am really a female or a male, or my age. So I tend to reply to them in one of a few ways:

• I pretend I’m male, and answer with “Thanks, my wife thinks I’m a pretty hot guy too!”
• Pretend I’m a lot older then I am. “Thanks, my grandchildren never mention that their Nana is hot!”
• Simply let them know I’m not available or interested in whatever conversation it is they think they’re starting. “Thanks! My husband thinks so too.”

Honestly, why you would send some stranger those sorts of tells to begin with is beyond me. So that was the beginning of my interesting evening. On the plus side, my warrior did manage to inch her way to level 40. The entire time I’ve been leveling up (so far) I’ve done it through tanking random pick up groups. There’s a few reasons for this but my main one is that I’ll never actually learn to tank if I don’t spend a significant portion of my time actually tanking. Plus instances are fairly quick to queue as a tank (understatement, they’re instant, always). I am now into the level range that I don’t exactly enjoy, and a large portion of that is because I simply don’t know my way around the dungeons. Dire Maul (a portion of it at least) was on my list of zones last night, and there’s backtracking that always annoys me. Mauradon is another zone that I don’t know my way around that well although it’s been split into sections and it’s not quite as bad as it once was. If I don’t feel confident in my knowledge of the zones, it’s more difficult for me to tank.

Lets not forget the fact that everyone still thinks they’re invincible and tend to do all the pulling for me. I do my best to regain aggro and so far I don’t think I’m horrible at it, but I only have so many methods of doing this. I also only have one AoE (thunderclap) which means that holding aggro on groups of mobs when everyone is trying to do as much dps as they can possibly do (and not assisting) is becoming more and more of an issue. My job is to hold all of the mobs, and when I can’t do my job I get frustrated. I’ve also decided I really dislike ranged mobs. And I dislike melee characters, because it’s difficult for me to target the mobs that have pulled off to other players that I need to regain. Actually the entire targeting method that WoW uses is difficult for me to maneuver, which is probably why everyone ends up targeting random_mob_101 instead of the mob that I’m actually on. With all these complaints you may think why wouldn’t I simple give up on tanking all together – but I’m determined. Everyone that I know claims that WoW is the easiest game in the world to play, that it is a game for children. I wonder if any of them have played a tank to 85 before, because there’s really nothing easy about it. It’s a challenge, and that’s why I’ll stick with it.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

I’ve been trying to max out my weekly cap of guild experience on my 85 priest, which is not exactly difficult to do when you actually work on it, but the fact that I’m always drifting off to alts seems to hinder me (a lot). I feel a little bad for people who are not level 80+ because working on guild faction is incredibly slow and boring for lower levels. You barely gain any experience unless you have a higher level helping you out – as an example my 85 priest has purchased the tabard that increases your gains by 50% and by the end of next week I’ll be able to purchase the 100% bonus tabard as well as the heirloom helm and cloak which I can then pass down to my alts. I’m very excited about this, heirloom takes out the need for me to actually purchase / loot any gear (aside from a few slots) for the duration of my leveling, and it’s some really nice gear.

The warrior is almost level 32, I didn’t play her much yesterday as I was concentrating on completing that guild faction with the priest. Dragon Flight (Alliance guild that I run on Argent Dawn) completed their 7th (and final for this week) guild run which ended up being Gnomeregan (again). This time the instance went flawlessly – except two members dropped right at the beginning. Before we had even started. Well, that’s not true. See, one hunter (I’m so sorry to pick at this class but it just ended up being them) jumped down to the bottom floor with the oozes while the group was making their way to the first named down the hallway. Upstairs. See, this is why it’s important to follow the tank, because they may not complete the zone in the same method that you’re used to and they may take a different rout. Before we got going I asked the group if they wanted to complete the entire zone, or if they wanted to skip portions of it by jumping. Guild mates decided it would be best if we simply completed the zone without any mario brother jumping competitions, and I agreed. I think the zone took about the same amount of time to complete, we had no deaths, everyone leveled a few times and it was a really nice comfortable run. I want more dungeons like that one.

I’m eager to continue leveling the warrior, but I want to work on obtaining guild faction for heirloom gear too. Hopefully I can reach my new weekly cap today, and then I can play the warrior this weekend. We’ll just have to see I suppose!

Surprisingly enough I’ve been having a lot of fun this time around in WoW. I do miss my housing (sigh) and I look forward to SOE coming back up (when ever that will be) but I’m not longing for the games as much as I thought I would be. I do still have an active subscription to Rift, but for some reason the game just doesn’t appeal to me. I think that it’s because I find it difficult to find ‘stuff to do’ when I’m not questing and slaughtering mobs. In WoW I have taken to working on archeology, which is a great waste of time and it keeps me in game. I have so many different characters to play, and the world is incredibly vast with so many dungeons that I rarely end up doing the exact same thing on any of my characters.

In the end so long as players are having fun it doesn’t matter what game they are playing. You should absolutely enjoy whatever you choose to do with that spare time that comes between real life responsibilities and sleep. I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend, and don’t think too hard about the fact that today is Friday the 13th!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.