Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Dig It

Oh Archaeology, you are a cruel mistress.

I powered through archaeology last night. I had happily made it up to the 300 skill level and was working through Outlands dig sites. The only two race's sites that you will find in Outlands are Orc and Draenei, so it's pretty quick to get your fragments for completions. It's really quite amazing how much easier it is to collect piles of fragments when you are only splitting your fragments between two races instead of four. Honestly if you just wanted to power level Archaeology I might recommend staying in Outlands from 300 to 525 no matter what your long term goals are. You will get 5 skill points per common solve no matter if you've previously solved it or not.

I was disappointed in the appearance of dig sites though. The Orc race only has one rare, and there are only 10 unique artifacts each for Orc and Draenei. Supposedly the code has been tweaked a little bit so that you are more likely to find dig sites for the races that you still need to collect rares for, but that must be such a tiny chance that it really isn't worth mentioning. I had solved all of the Orc artifacts, but only 6 Draenei commons, and neither or the two rares. I still had 3-4 Orc dig sites at a time at points. That was frustrating, so once I was able to reach 450 I kind of threw in the towel. I did manage to get one of the Draenei rares, but there is still one out there that has eluded me.

My pre-Outlands stockpile included almost 200 each of Troll, Night Elf, and Dwarf fragments as well as enough keystones to choke a goat (14 Dwarf, 25 Night Elf, 36 Troll). A solving I did go, a solving I did go, hi-ho the dairy-o, a solving I did go. Among many common artifacts I did find a pretty, but currently useless to me, dress and a statue, but alas no staff, or trinket. It should go without saying that I didn't find Zin'rokh either.

So now it's back to flying around the giant continents of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor again. Only now I have stuff scattered in ever more places, yay! Oh wait, not yay. I mean something that's more like the opposite of that. On the other hand I will now have a chance to collect a very spiffy ring, so I'll try and focus on the bright side.

Still, it did not take me very long, play time wise, to level archaeology to 525. It is worth it, in my opinion, to wait until you have 310% flying speed and also to be in a guild with the Bountiful Bags perk. After all the gathering that I've done lately in archaeology I have a suspicion about bountiful bags. I think that the proc will only affect the number of key stones that you get in a dig, not the number of fragments. That is how it seemed to feel, and it makes a certain sort of sense. The fragments are considered a currency by the game, not like the keystones that are items you collect. Does anyone know for certain how bountiful bags affects archaeology?

No matter how it works I'm into the long slog portion of digging now. I can choose which continent to work on, and then fly, dig, fly to my heart's discontent. There's no way of telling how long it will take for me to find what I'm looking for, but you can be certain that I will keep you up to date. I wonder if I will "finish" before they update archeology? I can't just sit around and wait, but it does seem like I'll be missing out if I continue to work on it now. (Don't know what I'm talking about? Check out Ask the Devs #7) It sounds like there are a lot of good things in the pipes, but you never know when the changes will come.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

On Trolling and Trolls

The other night I finally convinced my husband to log on to the WoW and give the new/revamped Zuls a shot. He had of course done them into the ground back when they were relevant content, but he had only logged on for a matter of minutes since patch 4.1 went live so he had not done either in their current itteration.

Despite the fact that I have logged more hours recently he continues to out gear me, not by a lot, but by enough. He also just does better DPS. Whether that is from years playing the same class faithfully, or just because he kicks ass, doesn't matter. He always has and possibly always will continue to out DPS me for as long as we are both playing the game.

So the other night I get him to log and we hop in the random queue for Zul level heroics. I've still only successfully had one Zul'Aman run and it wasn't a successful timed run.  He had not even read the strats for any of the fights. It was quite the change for me to give him pertinent info, usually I'm getting the info from him. That part was kind of cool.

We had a mega geared death knight tank, and other than having an incredibly chatty mod that let us know every single ability that did or did not land, he was awesome. Then we had a healer and a mage that were hot to trot. They desperately wanted to complete a timed run and even the mage was shouting gogogo to the tank. I find that to be in terribly bad form. It's one thing for a healer to announce they have enough mana for pulls to continue, it's quite another for a DPS class to do everything short of actually start pulling groups themselves. Still, the DK seemed to be handling it okay, or at least he didn't complain in party chat about the two people cracking a whip on his ass that weren't even from his realm.

Things seemed to be going okay; we were downing bosses and not wiping, so I think that's a good run. As we leave the altar of the second boss and we're running down the ramp, I zone out of the instance. My first honest to goodness thought is that something has gone wrong or the tank has left the group and we all got booted for some reason. Then I realize my husband is confused, but not for the same reason I am, and he seems kind of mad. Turns out that I had been vote kicked. This has never happened before, it was a bit startling. I guess I thought maybe it would give you a message through the UI saying that you had been removed from the group by common consensus, not just poof you're out and feeling a little confused.

Watching my husband be pissed off for me was really sweet. I don't know that he has ever had much cause to "defend my honor" so to speak, but he took to it well. Of course the first thing he did was ask why I had been kicked. No one will even answer him until he keeps refusing to let them requeue. The group's first response was to try and kick him also, but of course they couldn't, so finally they had to answer him. The tank said that he had issued a vote kick because he kept getting whispers telling him to. I guess the healer/mage team (or trolls as we can call them) felt that my DPS wasn't high enough. So then my husband gets really mad because although my DPS wasn't top, it really wasn't that much worse than everyone else. And let's be fair here, someone always has to be at the bottom of the list. That's the nature of lists. If I had all the higher level gear and could pull higher DPS I wouldn't need to be queuing for the dungeon would I?

Sorry, I think I've gotten myself off topic a little bit.

Once the trolls see that he's not going to let go they try a new tactic. "Oh I'm sorry was he a friend of yours?" He informs them that actually "She is my wife" then the trolls realize their mistake, but they still seem to think that they can manage salvage the timed run and start asking the leader be passed to him so that he can reinvite me to the group. They are getting a little spaztastic and trying to get the tank to pass the lead and continue to pull at the same time. The tank finally has enough and tells them that if they wanted a timed run they should have gone with a guild group, and he leaves.

Once the tank leaves I give up on rejoining the group, because I don't want to wait through the queue again (we had a 35 minute wait to get a group the first time around). I go ahead and put the trolls on ignore. I honestly would have rejoined even after they kicked me, because I'm used to the game being full of dicks and I want new gear. The lead had been passed to one of the trolls so they give it to my husband and ask him to invite me back. He tells them that he can't because I have them on ignore, and all heck breaks loose. One of the trolls starts calling us both names saying you can't ignore cross-realm and I give my husband the obvious solution of ignoring him and telling him so in party chat. This leaves only the second troll to taunt him.

I can't believe where the last troll went. He/they got so spitting mad that they just could not contain the bile. They accused my husband of not knowing me at all. Then it was that we'd only ever talked on skype, and even that we'd probably met on World of Warcraft*, as if that would be a bad thing. I guess I should be impressed with how quickly the insults were coming, but maybe they were macro'd. My husband was considering a rebuttal when I reminded him not to feed the trolls. It's one thing to sit in the party and not let them continue, it's quite another to give them the satisfaction of learning anything more of our personal lives.

I finally convince my husband to log into WoW for the first time in a long while and all that happens is 35 minutes of archaeology boredom, and two more names on his ignore list. Thank you horrible troll puggers for making it just a little bit harder to convince him to log on next time.

What horrible (or awesome) pug experience have you had lately? How have your queue times been? We were logging on toward the end of the night so our queue may have been longer as a result, or it could be that the potential tanks have finished gearing up already and are tired of the dicks.

*For the record not only did we not meet on WoW, or online at all, I was the one that got him into the game.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Changes to Professions

There was a time when you needed to level your crafter up to 84 and complete a few introductory quests before you would have access to the highest level of patterns available in Cataclysm for a few of the crafting professions. With patch 4.1 that has changed, and now you can just waltz up to your local trainer and have access to those prized patterns. I don't think this is really a huge deal, and it really won't be affecting my play style at all.

The first thing to remember is that you cannot skill up past 450 until you've reached level 75. (I've hit this wall myself very recently.) So you will still have to level a character to 75 in order to get your skill level high enough to learn these. It's not like the "good old days" when you could have a true low level crafting alt. *drifts into happy memories of the level 1 disenchanting alts* So no matter how much of an auction house player someone wants to be they are going to have to spend time enough to get a character to 75, and really it's not that hard to go from there to 85 if you have half a mind to do it.

There's also the issue of the Chaos Orbs that you need for some recipes. Since Chaos Orbs are bind on pickup, at least for now, you are going to have to get that character up to level 85 and start running heroics. That's going to keep the casual crafter out of those markets.

For me I don't level a character in order to level a profession, I level a profession because I am leveling a character and it seems a waste not to. Since I would have gone through Twilight Highlands on my way to 85 anyway it just doesn't matter a whole lot. I'd say the only real change this has made for me is that I no longer have to take a portal to get to the patterns as I'm ready to buy them.

The change will save us all a few steps, and bring the crafting professions more in line with each other. They are still not equal in how to get your recipes, but this makes it closer. I'd say Inscription and Jewelcrafting are still far more difficult than the other professions when it comes to recipe collection. This is a move in the right direction though. It was kind of silly to penalize 4 of the craft markets with a higher leveling cap than the others.

What do you think? Is the change good or the right thing to do? Will it affect whether you choose to level a certain character to 85 or not?

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Still Digging

I've been building rest state on my death knight, because you can never level fast enough. While doing that I've been multitasking by catching up on some recorded television and working on Archaeology.

Archaeology is both easier and harder than I remember on my rogue. I've been keeping track of my solves as I go along, though I won't know until later if that data is worth looking at. I thought it would be easier to focus on fossils than it is turning out to be. I remember when I first started Archaeology on my rogue that all I got was fossils. Some of my first solves were the fossil rares. I just had way more fossil dig sites, and therefore more fossil fragments, than any of the other races.

This time around I'm getting troll, troll, troll. I'm around skill level 160 and I've solved a troll and fossil rare. I have 17 night elf key stones, 15 troll, and 9 dwarf. If I am on Kalimdor then I hit my night elf cap fairly quickly and also get tons of troll sites, while in Eastern Kingdoms all four of my digsites are frequently down in Stranglethorn and usually all of them are troll. In all I've solved 9 fossils, 5 troll, 2 night elf, and 2 dwarf.

I've been at this for a couple of days and it feels like I'm getting no where. I know that realistically I will have tons of solves queued up once I finish Outlands. I'll have almost 200 of 3 races fragments, as well as enough keystones to choke a goat. It's just slow going and I'm not sure if I have the will power to stick with my plan. I still have 140 points to go. If I did not get any more rares in that time it would be 28 more solves to get to Outlands, and I've only done 19 so far and 2 of those rares gave triple the skill up points.

I suppose there's nothing for it but to get back to digging. Thursday night it's back to leveling my death knight for a bit. Hopefully I have a good bit of rest state built up at this point.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Plan of Attack

Now that my warlock has maxed out level, and flying skill, I'm taking on Archaeology. There are some cool rewards to be had, one that I want on 2 characters, and a couple I've still never found but that I want, and I'm curious if I can go about it in a smarter way the second time around.

My first stop was to check out the Wiki on Archaeology. They list all the artifacts you can discover, and the skill level that you need to have before you can start to work on them. Here is a better looking list of the rewards you can find from Archaeology from Wowpedia. The skill level required looks to be more accurate, so I'd go by that one. This is important, because I had read that you have a greater chance to discover a rare before you've completed all the common artifacts for that particular race. I have no proof that this is true, but it certainly seems like it when I look at the rares I've managed to complete on my rogue, and the ones that I have yet to see.

The fallacy in that article was that there is a system in place that keeps you from getting a duplicate common until you have solved all the available commons. If it was ever true, it does not appear to be true any longer. I gathered fragments without solving any artifacts until my skill was at 50. This is the highest you can go just from gathering.

Since my main interests are an elven trinket that the wiki thinks can be found with 225 skill (I suspect it's actually 450, many of their skill requirements are listed incorrectly), as well as a dwarf staff and troll sword that can only be found with 450 skill, I had intended to skill up as much as possible without solving artifacts from those races. The problem is that until you reach a skill of 300 you only have 4 races you can solve from. Which means trying to maximize the amount of solves done within the fossil group (the only one I don't care about) without wasting too many gathered artifact pieces along the way to 300.

I kept track of my solves of Fossils as I went along, which is why I know some of the Wiki information is currently wrong. You get 5 skill points with each common solve, I listed my resulting skill level after each solve.
1. Shard of Wood - 55
2. Black Trilobite - 60
3. Beautiful Preserved Fern - 65
4. Beautiful Preserved Fern - 70
5. Shard of Petrified Wood - 75
6. Twisted Ammonite Shell - 80
7. Strange Velvet Worm - still in progress
You can see that I've already had several duplicates. I suppose it's possible that they have changed which commons are available for a certain skill level, but it seems unlikely that you would only have 3 available in the level 50-75 bracket.

I'm still going to try and save as many of my Troll, Elf, and Dwarf fragments as I can until my skill level is higher, if for no other reason than to have them available once I am done with Outlands. I am not going to let them go over the 200 mark though. I'm only at a skill level of 80 and I have about 140 each of those three races. If I get up to 190 fragments I'll be doing a solve to clear some breathing room.

Oh, and one more thing, getting multiple keystones from Bountiful Bags proccing is a beautiful thing. I'm not sure that there is a best way to go about Archaeology, but I'm giving it my best shot. What tips or tricks have you found useful as you level Archaeology? Are you crazy enough to do it on more than one toon?

Monday, May 2, 2011

Still Undecided

I still haven't settled into a new routine since 4.1 hit. I really don't know what I want to do with myself. There are too many great options, and I just don't get enough time to play.

I've managed a guild run of ZA on my rogue. That was a lot of fun, because I never ran it back in the day. It was my first time to see any of the fights and even though we had to attempt some of the fights more than once it was a blast. No rogue gear dropped, but a quest I picked up in the dungeon gave me a good upgrade for my thrown weapon. Still no ZG run. I've only tried once and the group just didn't know anything about the instance so it took a long time to get to the first boss and after a couple of wipes they gave up. I just haven't had time to try since then.

Currently I've been trying to find time to get into ZG or ZA groups, but between being sick and having my birthday party I just haven't had large chunks of log in time. When I only have about an hour to play I log on my death knight instead, since you get quite a bit done in an hour when you're leveling.

Of all craziness I've been thinking about busting through that final level on my warlock and then starting to work on archaeology with her. I've almost completed all the archaeology stuff on my rogue, so it really seems silly to do it on another character. What's tempting me is the fact that my horde guild has the Bountiful Bags perk and my alliance one doesn't. I'm tremendously curious to see if it impacts the enjoyment of archaeology. That and I have 2 casters so I'd like another trinket. Yes I know that I must have some sort of brain damage if I'm considering leveling archaeology again. I might have to wait until I can get the highest speed of flying on that character, it does make it more bearable.

Meanwhile I've got my death knight's tradeskills stuck. I can't progress further until she levels to 75, so I've been trying to make that a priority at this point. I just keep getting distracted by mining nodes. Must Have Shinies!

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Captain Placeholder

This post is brought to you by the Letter S. I am and have been sick. Sorry.

This post is also brought to you by patch 4.1

Normally I would at least draft out a post in advance, but with patch 4.1 I really wasn't sure what to talk about next. I'm surely going to check out ZA and ZG with my rogue, but after that I don't know. I may go right back to my little (currently level 71) death knight or I might not.

Anyway, back to my tea. Hopefully I'll feel better and have more to say soon.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Noblegarden 2011

I just can't get into this holiday. Actually I never really get into any of the holidays. I'm too lazy to try for the achievements, so once I do a little bit of stuff I run out of steam. Since Noblegarden is going on right now that's the one on my mind.

I started off with my rogue, cause I didn't really know what to expect with the whole egg thing. Despite playing WoW for years, I've never done this holiday before. I think I tend to have a lull in playing around this time every year, so I've always managed to miss it.

I ran around grabbing eggs and cracking them open. I got a bunch of flower dresses, twigs, flowers, and the bunny pet. A couple of eggs later I realized I didn't know why I was still looking for eggs, so I stopped. Today I hopped on with my mage because at least she needed polymorph bunny.

Well now that she learned the spell, and found the pet in an egg... I'm at a loss. I don't know if I should crack eggs to get all my characters the pet or not. I mean I love the little vanity pets, but I never remember to summon them, so does it really matter that I have them? I know I can get an extra pet for having a lot of pets, but the same question applies in which if I never summon them does it matter whether I have them or not?

I think maybe I'm done with this holiday, at least for now. I'd rather spend time trying to level my death knight. The real life holiday that caused my in-laws to descend upon my home has cut into my already limited play time. I reserve the right to change my mind, but I doubt I will. I have entirely too many characters to worry about holiday achievements.

What about you? Do you try and complete each holiday as it comes around? Are there quests involved that you do even though you no longer need to, just because you like them? If you have more than one character that you regularly play, do you try to get them all through the holiday or is that reserved for your main?

Shamelessly Stolen

Sometimes you see a topic being discussed and just want to piggy back onto it and in this case the Gold Capped article on Thursday goes nicely with my auction house post from Friday. Whether you are a new player, new to a faction, or just not well off there are tips there that you can make use of. While reading comments can be a scary proposition I suggest perusing the comments on this one, because you will find additional tips.

The main take away from the article is that if you aren't starting with a good amount of gold then you should probably start off picking up a gathering profession. I'm going to make my own recommendations based on my recent experience leveling new characters up on the horde side.

I was able to support leveling my own profession, buying my spells and glyphs as I leveled without any money other than what I looted from mobs, and gleaned from the auction house. My first professions were tailoring and enchanting. As I leveled my warlock I would disenchant greens I picked up if they weren't upgrades, and disenchanted my gear as I outgrew it. For the most part I didn't try to sell any early enchants because I couldn't afford the investment into parchments for something that might not sell. If I no longer needed a level of enchanting mat (or cloth) I would sell those on the auction house. I refused to return to my pack rat ways of stashing them in my bank for a just in case that never comes.

You will have to check the prices on your realm, but a good way to pick up a few extra silver might be to deal in strange dust. Especially when your disenchants are still netting you strange dust and you are regularly visiting your enchanting trainer you might find that you can turn a tidy profit by buying strange dust off the supply vendor and reselling it on the AH. My goblin was able to buy them for 6s each (usually 4 at a time) and they would sell for 90s on the AH. While that isn't mega gold, it is a handy amount of money at lower levels, and pretty much risk free. I don't find it to be worth my while any longer, but I did do it for a long time.

Once your character is approaching level 85 you shouldn't have a hard time getting money. Quests offer good money and any gear you vendor is added cash icing on that cake. But for really good profit margins I'd have to agree with Gold Capped that gathering and selling the materials people need for skilling up their own skills is a good way to go. Some of these older materials sell for as much or more than Cataclysm level mats, and there can be less competition for them.

As I level my death knight I've been mining and leveling jewelcrafting. I intend to make her an engineer too, so I've been saving materials to level that, which means I've had less leftovers than if I were going to continue being a miner into the forever. Once my jewelcrafting is up to 525 and I have the materials saved to get engineering to 525 I will make the switch. If I made a planning mistake, or things go poorly I may end up having to buy some materials, but between the money I've already made and the flow of money by level 85 I'm not concerned. I certainly won't go into debt trying to level it up the way I might if I didn't have these piles of bars and rocks filling up my bank.

Mining was extremely profitable in that it took hardly any time to gather piles and piles of ore, and they sold well on the auction house (except for iron) until I went to Outlands. I have seen a lot fewer nodes, I think just because the zones are so large, and I've seen more people in the zone with me. I'll let you know if anything changes once I make it to Northrend.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Auction House Rules

I've got to be honest with you. I played WoW for many years without really ever using the auction house. I of course had to occasionally purchase materials there that I was incapable or unwilling to farm, but I rarely sold anything. It seemed like every time I tried nothing would move. I felt like I was just wasting my time trying to price my materials and loading each auction only to have all the stuff come right back at me in the mail. I'd frequently just vendor perfectly sellable items because I just didn't want to deal with the hassle.

I am a convert now. I've even given my husband free license to mail my banker toon anything that is not complete grey vendor trash and I will auction it for him rather than see potential profits disappear into a vendor's pocket. Yes I even auction common items, those pieces you collect that have white text for their name. There's some real money to be had at times when someone out there really wants those eggs you found while leveling. I've even managed to sell some common items that don't know they are vendor trash.

I'm not hardcore though. I will only list something if I'm going to get more for it (after the AH's 5% cut) than I would have if I vendored it. I also only list certain things once or twice before giving up and collecting vendor money. If it's a mat for a tradeskill I'll hang onto it for a week or two and then start trying again more times than not, because there's always someone new out there leveling their skill that wants those goods.

The turning point was when I was reading WoW Insider and I kept reading about different auction mods. There was a Gold Capped article about Auctionator that caught my eye. Initially what caught my eye was the way that it handles browsing other peoples auctions when there is something you need to buy. If you haven't read that article I linked you should, you will see what I mean. Then one day I decided to try the sell tab. I didn't change any of the default settings; I just through my item in the sell window, changed the auction length and posted it. Within a day I decided to liquidate all the various junk I'd been sitting on "in case I needed it". I made thousands of gold. I was amazed. My husband was amazed.

I didn't do anything special though. All I did was decide to stop being a pack rat and sell my stuff. The built in auction house has gotten better over the years, but Auctionator really makes life easy for the casual auction house player. I'll tell you about my experiences with Tradeskill Master some other time, but for now I'll say if you just want to dump some things on the AH quick, and you aren't going to do any real volume, you should stick with Auctioneer.

These days I've got it set up to a default auction length, and my bank alt opens directly to the sell tab. I make sure that I run a full scan at least every day or two (if I can log in) so that I can watch trends on certain items. To make this browsing easier I've set Shopping Lists. Some lists are for the current crafting materials that I need, while others are for older materials or even gear upgrades. This addon can really do a lot for you, but it is so unobtrusive that if you just want to buy and sell items you can just do that, and do it easier.

I will concede that I am a bit of an addon junky.  I like sparkly new doodads, but I also don't like clutter and I don't like to bog down my system so I tend to install them for a bit then delete them when the shine has worn off. I have a feeling that like Deadly Boss Mods, Auctionator might be here to stay.

Despite the fact that I used the word rules in the title of this post, I actually don't have any rules for using the auction house. Sometimes I undercut by a tiny bit, other times I'll undercut a lot because I'm still making plenty of proft and I'd rather see my auctions get bought in 5 seconds. You can get all fancy and try to figure out what time of day might leave you with as little time to be undercut as possible, but I just list everything when I'm ready to log off for the night so I can wake up to a mailbox full of gold to spend. The only AH practice I have that might even approach being a rule is that I try not to list auctions on Monday night, because I hate losing multiple hours to server maintenance. I sometimes forget, but since most of my auctions are only 24 hours it really chaps my britches if I get up in the morning and realize that time in ticking away on auctions that no one can browse.

What auction tips or tricks are you willing to share? Is there an addon that you love to use in conjunction with your auction house dealings?

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Temptation

There has been a lot of discussion about the changes to the LFD tool coming with patch 4.1, but one has been a bit more controversial than any others. That's right, I'm going to talk about Call to Arms today.

First, what is Call to Arms?
In patch 4.1 we'll be introducing Dungeon Finder: Call to Arms, a new system intended to lower queue times. Call to Arms will automatically detect which class role is currently the least represented in the queue, and offer them additional rewards for entering the Dungeon Finder queue and completing a random level-85 Heroic dungeon.
Unless something changes a lot, then more times than not the Call to Arms is going to detect that the queue is short on tanks and possibly healers. Since Cata's launch I've always been standing around waiting on a tank though.

My initial reaction was negative. I couldn't put my finger on what bothered me about this change to the dungeon queue. I mean, I normally play DPS so I wouldn't be getting any sort of goody bag, but on the other hand I would possibly be able to get a LFD group together in under 45 minutes. If I want to play DPS and not just fly around picking flowers and digging in the dirt for fragments of some long lost treasure then I should be happy right?

I've read some great posts on the topic recently, and most of them seemed to have the same bad vibe I got from Call to Arms, they were just more eloquent. I'd link them, but I forgot to bookmark them and I'm having a bugger of a time trying to locate them now.


I know one of my concerns is that I'll end up with more half-wit jerks that are only queuing as tank because they get a goody bag. These will be people that don't even have a proper tank spec that are wearing DPS gear and expecting the rest of the group to "make it work". I've seen plenty of people doing this just to get into an insta-queue much less an insta-queue with perks. Worse yet they might queue as a tank and then try to make someone else do it for them.

Then there's Blizzard offering to pay you in ponies for tanking for a group of strangers. That part kind of sucks since it means you can't play with your friends and still take advantage. I mean, we can get a guild credit with only 3 people in the group being from the same guild, why can't we get tank credit if only 3 people in the group are strangers? I also don't like the fact that I have to choose between guild xp/rep and pretty ponies, but I suppose you can't have your pony and eat it too.

Which leads me to my whole reason for blogging on this topic. I've been bought. Yes, the Call to Arms is a large part of why I am currently leveling a Death Knight, and tanking with her. I was interested in trying out tanking again, but I was feeling gun shy with my warrior. I hadn't warrior tanked since Naxx, and was afraid of all the jerk pugs I've seen tearing me apart if tried to learn the job at 85. I'd toyed with the idea of leveling another warrior a little bit and tanking along the way, but then along comes Call to Arms. I believe we'll see patch 4.1 drop pretty soon, and if I'm going to take advantage of it I'll need to be level 85 and geared up for heroics. By the time the siren's call got to me I didn't have the time to level from 1 to 85, but I'm still a chicken on my warrior. (I usually luck into having the most wonderful sort of people in my pick up groups, but when they have been bad they have really been a kick in the balls kind of bad.)

Death Knights start off at level 55, that means I'm over half way to 85. It's also a class that I've never played before, so it feels a bit new. I think tanking with the Death Knight could give me the confidence to tank with my warrior. I would still need to learn my tanking abilities on her, but I'd have pulls and CC strategies down with my DK first. Also, I've always been a little jealous of my husband's death knight, it always seemed like a cool class to play.

So here I am, maybe 6 days before the patch, at a lowly level of 65. I've tanked a little bit and it's gone well. I'm trying to tank every few days so I don't start losing my nerve, but for the most part I'll be spending my time outside leveling. As a side note I'd like to mention Hellfire Ramparts. This is possibly the best training dungeon ever. If you want to try tanking, and haven't yet just go for it. This dungeon is incredibly short, there aren't too many patrols and packs aren't so big as to be scary for a newbie tank.

Have you thought about leveling a tanking class to see what's in this goody bag? Or do you have a tank you might dust off and put through it's paces again?

Monday, April 18, 2011

Altoholics Anonymous

It's not very anonymous to announce it here on a public blog is it? But I like the turn of phrase so I'm going to let it stand. I'm also too busy enjoying the nice weather and sunshine today to be overly concerned about it. Not to mention I just caught my son trying to drink the bubble solution so my attention is a little divided at the moment.

There are almost as many ways to play World of Warcraft as the number of players. How's that for an exaggeration? Sheer number wise I think it's inaccurate, but there are very many different styles of play. For instance my husband has leveled a few alts, though only has 2 characters that are level 85. He primarily plays one single character. It was the first character he ever made, and I guess he picked well because he has been faithful. I on the other hand have always tried to level multiple alts, even if there is one that is my focus in the end game I have several others at various levels.

Isuppose we should briefly discuss the definition of Alt. In World of Warcraft you can currently create 10 characters on a single server. Most people have one of those slots filled by a character that they play more than the others. Whether this is your favorite or your highest level, this character is usually referred to as being a Main; It being the character that you mainly play. All other characters, by this definition are alternatives to the main, and are commonly referred to as Alts.

I love reading about the different classes and trying to learn how to play most of them. There are a couple that I haven't managed to fall in love with, but leveling is so easy now that it's almost hard for me not to keep leveling new alts. Anyone who played back in Vanilla (before any of the expansions had been released) knows that leveling has never been faster, or less painless.

I have no idea at the moment which character should be considered my main. All 10 character slots are filled. One is a character that I created with my nephew that I only play with him. One is a sad little character who's only lot in life is to be a bank alt until the day she is deleted. There are a few that have leveled a bit and then stalled months ago. Then there are my 3 level 85 characters (alliance), one of which is geared up to enter raid content, and a level 84 (horde) that could be level 85 in one night if I tried. Meanwhile I've been playing a death knight any time that I have a little time to log on that has only made it to level 62 (also horde).

Part of my problem is that the guild I was in alliance side kind of died towards the end of the Wrath cycle, and although there was a brief rally with the onset of Cataclysm the core of the guild seems to have burnt themselves out and left a ragtag group of casual players without much of a guild logging on. Since I wasn't willing to raid 4 nights a week I never got to go much, and while the raiders were off raiding the guild was so quiet and lonely I made a little goblin warlock just to goof around and enjoy some new-old content. I managed to find a really friendly guild that let me join and now I find myself playing my horde characters more than my alliance ones.

My alliance rogue was my first character. My alliance warrior was my first character to make it to the end game in Vanilla, and I mostly played that character in BC. In Wrath I decided to level my mage, and that was my main. I loved burning it up with fire, but never played consistently enough to get to raid level. As I read about Cataclysm content I became intrigued with the changes that had already been made to rogues, as well as what was to come. I leveled my rogue up quickly from 50 to 80 and got into some Wrath heroics before Cata was released.

Up until my alliance guild faded I would have considered the rogue my main. I feel a bit rudderless at the moment. I suppose if it were free I would probably move my rogue to horde side and try to raid with it as my main. I do like my rogue a lot, but I find it depressing to log on and be the only one in the guild online. One of the first questions I get when talking to other WoW players is, "What's your main?" What do you say if you don't have one?

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Hello

Recently there have been times when I've been tempted to blog something about my World of Warcraft experiences, but I didn't really have any place to do so. Twitter has been a good stop gap but doesn't lend itself to longer thoughts, so here we are.

I'm afraid I don't have much in the way of expertise to lend to you. I suppose I will create a blog roll sometime to collect my sources for you. However, since I tend to flit from class to class I don't have many that I read regularly. I do think it's important if you are going to change classes back and forth in the end game that you do keep up to date with changes to the classes by reading from a couple of sources at least. Unless you are some sort of virtuoso you could probably use a little refresher if you haven't picked up a character in a while. When in doubt go kill a couple of mobs before jumping into a dungeon group, just to remind yourself where your keybindings are before subjecting anyone else to your possibly rusty play.

If you have any WoW related questions you can send them to thingwhatwows at gmail dot com.

Meanwhile, it's the weekend so I've got errands to run and of course I need to log in to WoW. See you later.