Ding! 92

Note: I'm not sure when 91 dinged. I'll try to find that somewhere.

Okay, it's been over a year since I've played with Jal, but it's ding time again. After some hoodlums convinced me that we needed to play a bit over Christmas break, I paid for a month of access so that our noob accounts (level 20 and under) could have at least one character in them able to create a party. It was an enjoyable weekend or two or three... We finished up Blackfathom Deeps, which was fun.

So, as long as I have a month of over 20 access, it was time to get Jal moving again. Somehow, I started out in Ashran, but eventually made my way to Elodor Fields.

I'll admit that I went back and forth a bit on whether I wanted to stay in Warlords. The questlines just weren't grabbing me. I spent a little time back in Pandaria, but only just enough to learn that the XP was crummy at level 91, and to really continue following the plot, I was going to have to run dungeons. I don't mind dungeons, but I really prefer PvE when I don't have hours to invest at a single sit-down. And I don't enjoy incredibly easy PvE, so back to WoD I went.

The off-spec is dead. Long live the off-spec.

I may have also been put off on how much easier balance druiding seems to have gotten. We have one heal spell, and, as far as I can tell, only one attack in cat form that awards combo points, and no finishing moves that'll use them up. (As I write this and read why, I'm guessing I picked the wrong affinity talent. I must have picked Guardian for some strange reason. That was a mistake...)

I'll agree with the OP here; no matter what Marodriss says in the reply, it's not easier to off-spec now. Before, I'd often drop into heal mode when a group or raid went crap, and, without changing spec, be able to off-heal reasonably well even if the main healer went down. Once, I even went into bear mode when a PUG lost its tank and we'd waited too long for a new one to show up. Surprisingly, with some amazing healing, we made it through about half of Lost City of the Tol'vir with a four-person group with an off-spec bear tank before a "real" tank showed up.

And no more Eclipse Bar is better?

Balance Druids suffered from having their gameplay focus around watching a UI bar. Eclipse has been replaced by an Astral Power resource, and the Legion gameplay is to keep up powerful DoTs, generate Astral Power, and spend it on either Starsurge or Starfall.

I don't know. How is Astral Power any less UI bar centric? I'm just staring at the icon for Starsurge. And hasn't healing always been a UI-watching game? I know it was when I secondary spec'd resto.

This new setup is not more fun. But more on that in another post.

What's important is this... DING!

I've got a few more Dings! to log from my month of wagon falling, which I'll fill in ASAPish. Finishing up level 91 wasn't great. I did eventually warm up to Warlords, but at this point, the PvE remained too easy, the NPCs weren't really growing on me yet, and the garrison mini-game seemed a timesink rather than a well-integrated portion of the game proper.

Ding! 90

Looks like I missed another Ding! somewhere. Maybe I'm only catching even numbered Dings now. (EDIT: Found the pic & posted it.)

So I sort of fell off the wagon again. Blizzard sent me another free seven day, won't you please come home, Bill Bailey emails, so I bit last week. I popped out in the wall tower with Shado-Master Chong, and he told me to go the the Townlong Steppes. I checked the map, noticed that the quickest way was to take a cat-fall down the wall, did that, mounted up, discovered the Upper Sumprushes, and...

Bam, I'm 90. That was exciting.

The worst part? There's not much else to do. Jal's 90, so the starting quest rewards from Warlords are probably going to be stronger than anything I'd quest my way to in Mists. So I guess Jal's done.

I'll post later about changes to the druid (I did play through a few more quests just to see what was up) and the game in general, but I was surprised how much stuff having an active "Mists"/warchest level account lets you do now in free-to-play. Two biggies:

1. You can play up to 20th level characters for free on any account now, so I could've been playing my low level alts on my main account all this time
2. You can play as a monk on free to play accounts

I think the only thing the free seven days really buys me is the ability to play as a death knight (or any other character over 20, obviously, but that's the only class that's blocked in free-to-play now). So, um, all right then.

Ding! 89

I'm blogging to you from the future... I found the 89 ding picture from July 2014 and posted it August 5th, 2015. So if you wondered why you didn't see this before, well, you didn't. ;^) Looks like I was whacking Blackmane Mercenaries.

I do remember having some fun doing this, but was really bothered by how fake the boundaries between the village and the raiders was, but the story wasn't horrible, relative to normal quest arcs.

But then it just devolved into another extended, "Kill the trolls" questline, and we all know how that makes Jal feel.

Sorry, Jal.

Ding! 88 [sic]

Hrm. Strange. I don't have a ding for 87. I'll have to see if I can't turn that up.

I was going to wait until I dinged again to post and had something more useful to say about my return to Azeroth, but after bbr's timely comment on my last post, I figured a quick Ding! is better than no post at all. Note that I'm backdating to the time of the ding, as I normally do.

bbr asks, "How active are you of late?" Ha.  Not at all. In fact, I think it's time to admit that WoW has reached the same stage that my Ultima Online play reached, well, well over six years ago. I'm a tourist. That's it.

I'd read a bit about the new expansion that's coming soon, fondly remembered Lorewalker Cho, and figured I'd shell out for another month to ding 90. Not sure if I'll make it, though I'm spitting distance away from 89 now.

About all I've noticed is that there are lots more "store" buttons. Other than that, uninspired play. I mean, the sights are nice, and it's enjoyable, but still no real engagement. I still want the same stuff I always ask for -- weave back in older areas. Recognize things Jal did when he was younger. I mean, my achievements for the Old World are essentially at 0%. You'd think I played WotLK more than any other, and that's hardly the case. Give me credit for obsolete quests. He's an old timer, and should be recognized for it.

Give me quests for items that seem important. I want achievable, soloable epics. They can be as low-powered as you want, but I want to have something fun to work for, some story that doesn't require raiding.

I don't know. The game feels the same. The same buffalo-like creatures roam the wild. Vultures of a new color are flapping around. Highborne ghost equivalents are haunting some new temple, still screaming at me. Second verse, same as the first, just with better textures.

And good heavens the game is too easy to solo. I'm just putting in the time, doing the quests, dying when I pull too large a group out of extreme boredom.

So, again, still fun, but I'm a tourist. That's all at this point.

Ding! 86

Long time, no ding.  Nearly two years and five months since Jalindrine's gone up a level!  Wow.  I've been playing this game too long.  Heck, this blog is over six years old, and it started when Jal was already level 62 and over two years old himself.  I've been playing over eight years?  Sheesh.

Moving along...  ;^D

I fell into some after-work time this week and finally feel off of the wagon.  I received the collector's edition of Mists as a gift months ago, so I figured I'd finally put in my unlock code, slap down my $15, and play for a few hours rather than grift more under 20 free time.

It's been fun.  I'm starting to re-realize why I liked this game so much.  Even though it's still been pretty grindy, I've enjoyed soloing and running a few old Cat instances.  Justice points have appreciated quite a bit since last I played, so it's a no-brainer to run a Cat regular dungeon once a day, where my rust isn't a big hindrance.  When you're with some 84s who haven't gotten to Mists, even poorly managed DPS is insanely good.

There's still lots of folks dropping from LFG groups as soon as you hit the instance, however, much like there was shortly before I signed Jal off last time.  I don't get it.  If you want a specific instance, queue just for that instance.  If you want the daily bonus, what about the Lost City (the zone I hit today) isn't to like? It's fast, and you're quickly in the points.  Even so, we had our tank drop the second we got in.

I mean, I guess I do get it, but it's sad there are so many virtual-life flakes.  Maybe there are just a few instances you don't want, and you think you want to get in asap figuring one of those won't come up (though with the number of drops I see almost before your free round of buffs, that's probably not it).  Or you'd kinda like to instance, but you decide you've got something more important to do (watch TV, finish your quest, whatever) when your number's called.  But goodness, bad manners.  ;^)

So we sat around for a while.  I was tempted to get back to leveling and rejoin LFG.  It's great to have healz, as that's half the limiting reagents, and we all obviously didn't want to get in the back of the LFG line, but we sat around for probably a good five minutes before we figured we'd give Jal a shot off-tanking a four-person group.

Enjoyably, it worked!  If you bring up that image, above, original size, you can see another dps say, "if we can get past the general, you're hired."  And though I ended up going panzerkin mid-way through the General (wait, what?  The first panzerkin appearance since BC?!!), we did make it through that first sub-boss.  Luckily, a tank joined us at the end of or immediately after we took the General down, and we quickly finished the instance.  And yes, I did roar the loose mob in the picture back shortly after hitting PrtScn.  Ooops.

Now look, being able to tank a regular Cat instance is not impressive.  I'm a 85+ level, partially Mists-geared druid running a Cat regular, but with good healz, it was no problem.  Shoot, you could probably throw a well-equipped squishy in and do what I did.  But it was fun.  I even remembered how to swipe and roar mobs who lose threat back to me.

At some point, I need to learn another spec and become competent at it.  I keep thinking that should be resto, but it seemed like tanks were becoming pretty scarce too at the end of my last run.

Anyhow, there you go.  Pandaria's okay.  It helped to have taken a six-month break, I'm sure, as when I took my free ten days of Mist back in December, I really didn't play too much at all.  The typical expansion inflation has happened, and it's hard to think they aren't going to re-calibrate experience points at some point.  Really, 8.7 million for level 86?  Getting a little ludicrous.

I have noticed that the level took a while.  I played two good sessions before leveling, even though patch 5.3 apparently made each level 33% quicker to achieve (how do they do that?  Is 8.7 XPs only 2/3rds of what folks used to get, or are mobs, etc, worth 33% more?  Guessing the former -- wow, 13 million?!!  It's time to take off a few zeroes).  The expansion has given me a pretty good bit of soloing so far, and the level design is less stodgy and slapped together than, say, Vashj'ir felt.  Though, admittedly, Lorewalker Cho is probably the only really memorable character yet.  Well, him, Sully, Gizmo and Socks.

Poor Socks.  Oh, that might be a small spoiler.

I may try a monk later, and do want to get back to my Death Knight in Outland a little, but we'll see how long my latest Azeroth visit lasts.  I'll probably cancel now and ride out the month rather than "accidentally" let it renew, which has been known to happen.

Fun to be back, even if I'm ultimately just visiting.

Ding! Sandy's 13 [Rogue OT]

Absolutely zero to report from 12 to 13. Less than half an hour of play. Lots of DPS. Recuperate seems an interesting skill, but I haven't started theorycrafting to see how best to use it.

The only bit of note in this 27 minutes of play is that I'm becoming ever more conscious of how quickly she'll be 20, how I'd probably rather be playing Jalyndrine the Death Knight if I'm going to be alting, and that I think it's time to start re-learning what I have to do to get flaming treants.

Sandy is 12/You're wearing that where? [Rogue OT]

Welp, Sandy's 12. Big ding. Lots of dying. I'm going after too many oranges, lulled into thinking she can take them with her insane DPS. Only problem? Where Jal could turn travel form and run, Sandy is toast when she aggros more than one mob. Man, I miss my travel form.

Played:


In other news, Sandy both got her first green -- a Gypsy Tunic of the Monkeyand has the first bit of gear I'm embarrassed to have her wear.


Spinks had a short and popular thread on some MMO she was playing with female models looking ready for the stripping pole, and it's not much different here. Was also showing emotes to a smaller someone who asked to see Sandy talk, and "No. No. I won't do that. ...But my sister will!" was impossible to explain. Next time I won't go further than /silly, /chicken, and /train. Look, the blood elf zones were cool to look at, and I'm glad I played them, but 1.) There's no way any self-respecting guy can play a blood elf guy and 2.) There's no way any self-respecting feminist can play a blood elf woman. It's sexual dimorphism at its worst with a heaping of solid misogyny. Though now six episodes into the second season of Game of Thrones, I know WoW's not alone in the fantasy misogynist department.


You can say that's not too bad, but if this lady was asking you for directions, your reaction would be...? Seriously, shouldn't the default have her with a grey-level cloak/tabard on? If you want to be cartoonishly lewd, fine, but why is it the implicitly encouraged default?

Rogue Ding 11

Back-dating this one to the date Sandy dinged.

Welp, in the interest of completeness, Sandy dinged a few weeks ago to hit 11. I picked the Combat tree, and so far, so good. The DPS these guys can do is incredible. I'm not sure how close I would get with cat form at 11, but I'm mowing guys down so quickly I barely have to heal up before I'm after the next "kill x of y" mob. That's not all bad. In fact, I've come to enjoy the x of y quests a little more recently as Sandy's started cutting through them like butter.



(I know, it's the worst Paint hack ever, but I couldn't stand Sarah staring at me like that.)

Though I still think the leveling is a little too easy, and though I'd much rather be playing Jal, I have to admit playing a rogue is a lot more fun at this point than it was before. Before, I was sort of going through the paces, checking out the blood elf starting zone and enjoying the eye candy. Now, I have moments of, "Hey, going rogue is a lot of fun."

Folks that have read this blog off and on for a few years know that my favorite part of being a balance druid, now that I can't pretend to tank any more, is when things get out of hand and I'm forced to off-heal. The rogue seems to offer a much different approach to gaming. I enjoy DPSing as balance, but the rotation mastery has, in my experience, been a little too methodical. I'm sure there are rotations for rogues that I'd need to learn at end game too, but just the melee factor makes me wonder if it wouldn't be a little more fun.

I mean, as a boomkin, I'm just shifting from one target to another and spamming wrath/moonfire/starfire/etc etc. It's not quite like healing, which feels a little bit more like a mini-game (watch the life meters! Watch the debuff icons! Healz healz healz!), but there are still times, particularly in my flirtation with raiding, that make balance feel a little disconnected from the game. You're almost playing a bit trip version of WoW rather than engaging with a true Multi-User Shared Hallucination. The fantasy, in-the-story feel breaks down considerably. I think there's at least a chance that rogue dps promotes a more connected game experience, if only because you're forced to move next to your next target before whacking it.

I did enjoy soloing Lord Roccor in cat form, but this is a different ball of wax completely.

In other news, sheesh, stop opening the Pandaria beta to more schmoes! I mean, honestly, by the time I get to it, everyone else is going to be freakin' masters. If you don't beta test, you're hamstrung in the worst way when new expansions are released. I complain about this enough that you'd think it was a stump speech, but the overly broad beta test really does bother me. Heck, folks in my blog roll are already getting our rotation for Mists down. That really kills much of the fun of the expansions for me.

Finally, I've recently been getting the Jal itch back. Pretty sure I'll reactivate for a month -- at least long enough to grab my flaming treants before Mists comes. There's something about that armor bonus that's highly motivating. Part of me wants to spend the month finally getting my, what, 14 or 15 year-old Ultima Online character's music skill to 100% first, but I'll probably skip poor Thopas again to get Jal his shoulders.

Ding! Rogue 10, and a whole new set of talent trees

Welp, Sandy's the big ONE-OH. So the Recruit-a-Friend bonus has me thinking about WoW enough that I'm slumming with an under 20 toon on free play while I try to figure out if it's worth $30 to come back for a couple of months -- and worth the hours of my time I'll almost certainly, um, donate to the game.

Playing freeplay without looking up any pals first really is pretty lonely. There's no real social aspect at all. I saw a guy jumping in a fire today and /chuckled. I think that's the most "interaction" Sandy's had since she left the starting zone. Not really Blizzard's best pitch, if you ask me. How can you know you like WoW if F2P is essentially a one-player game?

I'd briefly considered firing up Star Trek Online, but IGN's fairly negative review talked me out of it. Spinks can't stop talking about The Old Republic, which is free this weekend. I might give that a roll briefly. I'd like to try Look For Raid, as it would seem to pitch in perfectly with the sort of soloer player I am, one who isn't quite up for the regular rigors of a raiding guild, and, well, one who still wants him some FLAMING TREANTS, you know? But it's not quite enough to trick me into resubbing.



Oh well. I'm not sure how much more Sandy I can take. With level 10, she's threatening to go from a pretty relaxing break full of "smackdown x of y" and "gear-click 8 z's" to something I have to research/theorycraft, if only a little, to really enjoy. I really don't want to learn the difference between Assassination, Combat, and Subtlety, though I'll probably google it a bit as soon as I hit "publish post". /sigh (Yep, did it sure enough.)

I really miss the way I played Jalindrine. I started him up expecting to delete him once I knew I'd "screwed up". Took the randomly generated name. Picked druid because I played elves in AD&D and it sounded like a good way to try out a few playstyles. Chose balance because it seemed to most closely match the playstyle I'd already adopted. Theorycrafting came later, well, just because that's what it took to go from soloing to pitching in with PUGs. But I'm not sure each of those milestones is possible to "luck" into a second time. The first run with Jal was one of discovery. Every alt is repetition.

That said, I'm still looking forward to the pandas. Inner peace, you know?

Ding! 85

And it's happened. I'm finally 85. And it seems appropriate I dinged while turning in Wildhammer reputation quests, as I'll be running that for quite a while.

Continuing the thread from my last few posts, I quickly picked up Aessina-Blessed Gloves (actually did that at 84; they req 85 to equip) and the Mantle of Wild Feathers, which is the Alliance version of Spaulders of the Endless Plains.

Though that bags me the steps Completed step [Shoulder] of achievement [Cataclysmically Superior]. - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 and Completed step [Hands] of achievement [Cataclysmically Superior]. - Tuesday, February 15, 2011, the bonuses are really pretty minor.



Once socketed, it'll be a little better, but still, minor gains. This ain't no tiered armor. ;^D

I started looking at Leatherworking guides like this one to see what it'd take to get to get to the Chestguard of Nature's Fury. I've been vulturing leather like crazy. There have been a few spots where, especially closer to Cat's release, people were smacking mobs and leaving corpses to skin like mad. But even then I've only got about 180 savage leathers and 21 dragonscales. I hate to cheap out, but with 5k gold in the bank, I'll at least take a glance at the AH today.

Also worth noting:
Oasis Bracers BoE drop, Lost City of the Tol'Vir

Shifting Perspectives at WoW Insider said these are BoE. WoWhead lists these as BoP and the comments seem to support that. Shifting seems to have gotten that wrong, so I'll need to 1.) Check the AH to double-check and 2.) Start looking for new bracers.

I think I'll keep running Wildhammer and start checking out Tol Barad. There are apparently a few good places to skin there as part of dailies.

And finally, of all the things I did during 84...

BEST! WEDDING! EVAR! *Hic*

Ding! 2 (for the guild!)

It finally happened. We really only have one active guild member at this point, and that's not me. I think I'm the second most active. The guild is sort of the end of a spinoff from my original guild, which split after getting serious, over-recruiting, and having the proverbial Guild Implosion (c) 2005.

It'll be nice to have a bonus 5% experience for the last half of 84, but the guild leader has already hit 85 (twice?!) so it's a little too late for him to get too excited. I feel kinda badly I put us over the edge into 2 while he wasn't on. I wonder if we all would see the Ding! on our screen. I'd imagine so... that'd be neat.

If I get geared enough to raid, I'll probably take my main to a new guild (the guild leader already did the same, so I'm not too worried that'll be a problem!). The folks in the guild are good, fun folk, but I don't see more than two on regularly any more.

Still, level 2! Woohoo!

I might also mention, since the pic is of the fishing daily in SW, that I finally bagged a Weather-beaten fishing hat, which Jal is wearing in the pic. Guess I won't feel badly about not making it to STV on Sundays any more.

And yes, I still need to clean my bags.

Ding! 84

I was only in Uldum for about an hour, but dinged while I was there. I'm not sure where my /played shot is, but I'll dig one up once the maintenance is done (I'm backfilling this post almost a month after dinging, I'm afraid).

The Uldum quests were a lot more fun than Vash'jr, but I quickly went Wildhammer, which I just recently finished.

Ding! 83

Hyjal was the right choice. That said, I feel the narrative skews too far to favor your importance. I mean, come on, when there are so many people farming mobs, I can't very well honestly think the mountain's mine or that I personally turned the tide for the World Tree. If it were written so that I'm doing something helpful, but not singular, and if the quests were written in a way so that, say, every twenty schmoes had some variation on the same quest (so that it felt let we were working together), that'd reduce the barrier to suspending my disbelief. Jal's not the most important guy in Azeroth. I'm comfortable with knowing that.

Other quick comments:

Deepholm, so far, is fairly enjoyable.

Dailies were waaaaay overcamped today.

Leveling to 83 seemed to take much longer than to 82. Not sure why.

Finished up Sirana Iceshriek while flying around doing Dalaran dailies (I decided I wanted the chef hat). That was nice closure. It also happened to give me 100 Storm Peak quests, so there's another achievement.

Ah, yes, if you want to know the difference between the Rippling Ooze Chestguard versus the slightly less powerful Tunic of Soaring Safety, I've got a great screengrab. I can't recall who said that the new practice in Cat of provided matched quest armor was a good thing, but I disagree. The before/after pic, below, should help show you why (sorry for the darkness).


See the difference? STARK.

Who cares? Where's the reward? Where's the individuality? I can barely tell I've upgraded anything... we go from rust-er to grey-er. Wow. Helmet's the same deal. I think I've gone through three staves that look exactly the same.

I liked mismatched. I liked the drinking hat. ;^)

With the new leather armor specialization that killed the clothkin combined with this cruddy quest armor upgrades, I'm really unimpressed with the quest gear. Spend a little time creating the models next time, okay?

Waited 20-25 minutes in LFG to hit a random Cat dungeon. Got a bad group. Some Leeeeeeroy got us wiped before the fifth even had time to show up. Note to self: Yes, when you see part of an instance's cleared and lots of people running, you're probably joining a group that has no idea what's going on.

For this, I got to wait another 10 minutes before I could even LFG again. I know Blizzard's looking to change LFG to make sure you get in with people who know what's going on, not just folks appropriately geared, but for tonight, I got the short stick. /sigh

EDIT: Meant to include a /played.


One must always come clean in the midst of an addiction.

Ding! 82

Requisite /played output:


Quick notes:
I've spent too much time going back and forth between Hyjal and Vashj'ir trying to decide where to level. Waaaay too much time. I like the story in Hyjal better, but thought I enjoyed the visuals with Vashj'ir. But after the quest line named after Stones songs (and perhaps they're covers of someone else? -- and note that I love the Stones; it's just the lack of imagination), I finally quit Vashj'ir and decided I'd run Hyjal to its finish. The seahorse combined with the stupid air cave and tired quests was too much.

A MacBook 2.26 GHz is approximately equal in hardware performance as my new tower with the old GeForce 8500 GT.

/timetest from SW to IF on Fair with the tower gave me:
Low: 7.1652
Max: 477.241
Avg: 47.169

with High:
Low: 2.438
Max: 210.373
Avg: 18.675

I'll post MacBook numbers later, but for now it's hosting the trial account for Recruit a Friend. Not sure if that'd be apples to apples.

Right now, I'm gaming with Fair settings on the tower with draw distance (the only thing that really affects gameplay -- Can I see the mobs/sparkly collectable?) set to Ultra. I think that's a fair enough compromise. Man, I'm tired of seeing GeForce GTS 450 give-aways on WoW Insider. I want a better card.

Ah yes, two links to share on the hardware front.

1. Great review of all cards at each price "point" (I hate that term, price point. I understand it, but isn't "point" enough for casual use?)
2. Great guest post on WoW Insider talking about upgrading your box to get ready to play. Heck, it even covers if your computer is stuck on AGP.
3. Compare that super-useful post to this commercial for Nvidia masquerading as a hardware post at WoW Insider. ;^)

If I was buying today, I think I'm down to either the...
MSI R5770 Hawk Radeon HD 5770 1GB ($150 after rebate)
or the...
MSI N460GTX CYCLONE 1GD5/OC GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB for $210

... depending on how serious I want to get about graphics. Honestly, the 5770 feels a little like a tide-me-over card, so I think I'll keep using my 8500 GT until I puke and then hit the GTX 460 (or whatever's the best deal with those specs when I finally give in). Still, $50 is a lot of Steam games on sale!

Back to notes:

Recruit-a-Friend levels you much too quickly. It's also crappy if you immediately quest together. The intro-to-your-class quests in Shadowglen, at least, cannot be accessed by a non-elf. I tried making a warrior gnome, thinking I would have access to the elven warrior trainer quests. No luck. You get two early, then no more quests until you take the road south out of Shadowglen, leaving the elf at level 7 and me at 5. Stuff's picked back up now that we're out of Shadowglen, though. Minor complaint.

Also annoyed with the inability to trade with a trial account. I completely understand why, but we've got one well geared twink with as much gold as she can carry and one poor gnome sap who barely has cash to train, much less overgear himself. Would it really have killed Blizzard to allow you to carry, oh, 20s from some benefactor, with your trial? We're already leveling like it's going out of style. I don't know that a few pieces of level-appropriate gear would be a serious issue.

I think that's about it. I feel like I'm leveling too quickly in Cat as well. I haven't had much time to play, especially with the new recruit a friend diversion, but when I do, I'm leveling pretty quickly, especially considering that I'm still running dailies and taking time to run /timetest, etc.

Ding! 81

Welp, even a part-timer levels up pretty quickly in Cat. I'm on 81, though I saw worgen druids at 81 before I dinged, which is just painful to think about. I've been running with Jal off and on since, what, March 2005? Sheesh. And somebody else had caught up with all I've done in about 32 hours. It's painful seeing how quickly your virtual work is made obsolete.

So far, the game is fine, but painfully more of the same as before. Kill X of Y then report back to (x,y). Read backstory if you really want, wash, rinse, repeat. Five years in, Blizzard could be figuring out better ways to tell stories. The full motion video (though rendered in-game) continues to be used a bit (see below), but overall the game mechanics simply haven't changed enough.



Now just as BC wowed me with its scenery, both Hyjal and Vashj'ir are visually impressive. I was planning on upgrading my PC's hardware to get a decent GTA IV experience already and look forward to seeing the improvement for WoW. I'm saving Vashj'ir until I have better gear before playing much more. That said, all the crabs sitting around have gotten me about 50 points of skinning in no time flat.

The new level feedback is both neat and n00bish.



Yes, I realize I have a new talent point. Yes, I know I should check a trainer for new skills. Got it. Still, it's an extra layer of professionalism that makes the game feel a little more polished, even if Cindermaul requires a logout, cache deletion, and restart to clear and going back to grab Finkle's Skinner causes a hard lock.

Sheesh, okay! I've still got 400 in front of me in Proudmoore. Sign off already! Good thing half the server lives in Aussieland -- or is it morning there already?

"Ding": GS 3500+

Saturday I managed to run a normal & a Heroic LK instance, which put me over 50 EoT. I bagged the Malfurion's Cover of Conquest to get rid of my last green. The chestpiece at the same cost, iirc, was tempting, but I settled on the headpiece. My meta gem isn't proc'ing because right now it's the only gemmed piece I've got, but I filled it in with something awfully cheap anyway to get the +9 spellpower bonus. Coincidental that I bagged the Coil of Missing Gems shortly before. Also coincidental that Chromie would score me another green (from a quest, no less) that quickly made it into the rotation, pushing out a blue.

Other instance drop upgrades include the Sash of Blood Removal and Papa's New Bag, which, though only a 20 slotter, was an upgrade for one of my bag slots. I'd just planned to hit up the AH for a bag earlier in the day, and this saved me a gold or two.

My only complaint? Why does the Cover look so, um, dorky?



Most fun thing to happen over the weekend was a PUG to the Trial of Champions, which I usually dislike because of the unimaginative routine. Joust joust joust, DPS DPS, look away from light of radiance or whatever it is, DPS.

In this case, our healer DC'd after the jousting, and we started waiting for LFG to kick in. Healers, natch, are in some demand, and just as I sent in a, "It's been a while since I healed, but I'd be happy to give it a go," another group member said, "Jal, want to try and heal?" The tank was suspicious ("There's lots of healing in here," or some such), but we went through. I can't heal for spit -- mostly kept up lifebloom, rejuv, and the occasional regrowth when things got ugly (and HT when things got really ugly) -- but I wasn't even mana challenged four-manning into the black knight. We almost had him down when our LFG priest appeared. A few Wraths later, we were done. I'm not sure the priest knew what happened, but he did start healing the right folk as soon as he appeared, which was professional and impressive, and allowed me to shift into 'kin and cut loose.

I'm pretty sure I should've learned Nourish or whatever it is at some point, but the lesson remains that a good DPS can easily heal through normal Trial of Champions. And I mean easily.

I debated running heroics until I had enough EoT to buy another piece, but instead started going after Kirin Tor rep for the head enchant, after searching and finding out player enchanters can't make head enchants like they can't make ones shoulders (or at least not spellpower ones; no reason to waste good borean leather for 18 STA when the Kirin Tor have much better stuff). Was upset to see that daily dungeons are a thing of the past, eliminating one easy route to Kirin Tor rep. Now we have weekly raids. I'm not sure that at 3500 GS I'm ready for 10 man raids; I simply have no idea. I seem to be consistently bringing in the highest DPS on PUGs now, however, when I'm not boneheadedly throwing Wraths at guys who are immune (nexus? /sigh). I may have to add recount to the addon list now, though I try to keep addons out as a rule. I did buy a tabard from the Kirin Tor to "champion" them in a run through Hall of Lightening for rep, which I'll probably do with some regularity for a while, since I know that instance fairly well. Also kept running the cooking quests (which I'd been doing with some regularity just for fun) and did my first Dalaran fishing quest to make my way to revered with the Kirin Tor. Great whale statue.

Also got major (?) spellpower on the Blood Boil Lancet, expecting it to last longer than the last time I enchanted a weapon. Also caught a Phaelia's Vestments of the Sprouting Seed on the AH for just under 2k, which was just enough for me not to buy, even with the context. Resto4life was a very good blog (he said uncontroversially).

Which brings me to my last quandary: Do I spend my 4200g on fast flying finally, or put that into mats to leatherwork my way to more cash, or spend on gear to make runs a little easier and the GS a little higher? I believe the artisan flying will be the most good for the longest, but I'm hardly flying much now. I'd go with gear, but the chance of accidentally scoring a replacement in a run is so high, I could make myself go mad. The right answer might be that it takes money to make money, but I really don't want to have to waste the time finding out the most efficient way to score dough through LW. Decisions, decisions.

In other news, the new armory additions are interesting. I should see if I can get Jal's RSS feed to show up on the blog.

Ding! 80

Well, I'm done. Leveled out. Been running the Sons of Hodir/Storm Peaks quests, and have waded through the solo portion of the giant Whatever it takes 40+ quests-long quest line. Not a bad run, overall, but Thor and Loki -- ur, I'm sorry, Thorim and Loken -- haven't really made me feel all that involved. What do I remember about the quests? Not a whole lot. Mostly that Thorim looked really bored on his throne, and that some Sons of Hodir daily quest names have pitifully unimaginative double entendres. Still, nice to see a plot arc continued in a quest line longer than two or three quests, and just interesting enough to be memorable.

The exciting part, of course, is that I can quit leveling and concentrate on gearing up and moving slowly towards raiding. Time to stop grabbing whatever the quest rewards are and actually pursue whatever gives me the best gear. And I don't think my lack of swift flight form will be such a pain now. Danged spell costs with the new level brought me back from nearly 1k gold to under 800. Man, I sound codgery.

So I'm not sure what comes next. I'll keep running Hodir rep to get the enchant, and will follow some combination of WoW.com and Laser Chicken's best balance gear lists for pre-raiding 80s. Then I'll run dungeons for gear, and try a few PUG raids, I suppose. Then hopefully I'll start raiding proper after finding a decent raiding guild. Lots of guilds are recruiting, it seems, but many are pre-80 chars, which seems strange. I've got two guildies doing the level-a-friend XP bonus thing, and have gotten from 40 to 60 in about the time I've gone from 78-80. Seems a few people are doing something similar and forming toon guilds to house them.

I'm rambling. Yay, 80. It's kinda like the NBA playoffs; I'm ready for the second season/game of WoW now.

Ding! 79

Absolutely nothing exciting to report. Took about two weeks off, which is the reason for the delay in dings. Also been working overtime a good deal, which has eaten into the WoW time.

I guess the quest line in Storm Peaks where you turn into a frozen Amazon are interesting, if not particularly fun. Endless enjoyment trying to remember to go into moonkin form when you don't look any different once you've switched thanks to the disguise. I am neutral with Sons of Hodir now. The frozen "fossil" area is a neat touch. Ran the airship quests where you wax one of the lich king eyes. Not impressed. Not even motivated to look up the name. I'm honestly bored out of my mind with the quest lines right now, though I hear the spear into the drake quest for Hodir is very Gods of War like, and worth trying.

Switching to fiber for Internet post-move has paid off well -- when I first logged back in, I wondered for a few minutes why my system's performance was so much better.

So that's about it. Thinking about apping a casual raiding guild. Checked in with current guild captain to make sure it's okay to pull out my main, which it apparently is. We still don't have anyone over 74 other than Jal.

Okay, bed time. Carson Daly's show ist no goode.

Ding! 78

It continues. Finally able to use my Totemic Purification Rod, my Kalu'ak rep reward. Got the achievement for exploring all of the Sholazar Basin. The Freya questline was surprisingly fun overall, though at times too experimental (see Jal-as-parot picture to the right). Oracles/Furyheart questline was better. I waded in on one side or the other heading to Nessingwary's originally when I saw the scores o' NPCs mobbing it out on the road. Wish I could recall, now that I'm firmly on the Oracles' side, rep grinding to grab the eggs -- which is idiotic, as I'm just 5kg (no pun intended for mass nor Celtics fans) away from my "free" epic flight form and don't need the green drake mount the Oracles' egg would give me. (Btw, MAN it's good to be flying again.) Ah yes, finishing the previous sentence. I wish I could recall which side I fought for when I initially saw the Oracle/Furyheart battle going on, before I started the questline. I think I was helping the Furyheart -- those Oracles are Murlocs, after all. Ewwww. Murlocs.

Nice to take a quick trip back to Un'Goro as part of the Freya line (and great fps too!), and decided I should smack down the Devilsaur while I was there. Pain in my butt. Felt childishly good to smack him down.


Did hit the Agent Tournament grounds. Might be a fun minigame, but so far not horribly impressive as I'm off to try its dailies.

For those kind enough to keep reading, I'll try to make things more interesting in a couple of weeks once I'm 80. I'm sold on not wasting any time until then instancing, etc. Still haven't even spec'd my second talent build. You can do nothing but waste time until you're 80. The gear's all going to be pretty much obsolete when you get there. Looking forward to digging up a raiding guild then, if I can't convince mine to do it. And that's looking doubtful, as our guild leader recently got [cue music] married.

Yes, in RL. Not to get someone the Kissing Bride achievement. ;^)

Ding! 77

Took a few days off during the week for RL, but played a bit last night. Got 77 right at the moment in the quest line where you unexpectedly go from friendly with the Frenzyheart to Hostile, and vice versa with The Oracles. Laser Chicken's rep list has two items from each faction worth pursuing, but the real benefits seem to be getting the Mercenary of Sholazar achievement and grabbing the Mysterious Eggs which reportedly have a 4-8% chance of turning into a Green Proto-Drake. Which reminds me that I might should have saved my 1000g for Cold Weather Flying rather than spent it on dual-speccing, which I haven't done yet. 77 is the level where flying's back in Northrend.

You can switch back and forth between Frenzyheart and the Oracles, but I'm probably going to rep up just the Oracles so I can start waiting a week for each egg to hatch. And I'm going to have to start saving up for flying too, I suppose. Time to finally grab Auctioneer again and bring the bank character back online.

Let me add that the questline is hella easy. I'm not impressed. Fun, but waaaaaaay too easy.

One quick note: The Frenzyheart/Oracle questline sure ain't PC, is it? You start by whacking gorillas (not that I didn't whack scores in STV for leather), later poke baby gorillas with sticks until the mother shows up ("Run away dumb softknuckle! We gonna poke you more!") -- so that you can kill her!, and then kill Oracles, proverbial sentient beings, for no good reason. You're a "slave" the entire time, and then the Oracles are dumb enough to turn on a dime and friend you after you've been murdering them. Compare this with the werewolf line where the werewolf clan has you, what, go to capture an orc and dismember it, but you're stopped by some girl before you do it. Blizzard seems to be having a good deal of fun with the people who quickly click, "Accept" and click talk bubbles without reading, but they're also putting grinders and completionist through some questionable lines for no good reason.

Not arguing it makes everything okay, but the Frenzyheart text cracked me up a few times.

"Dajik the Wasp Hunter says: I placed most of the spikes. Good amount of pointiness I think. You like?"
"Dajik the Wasp Hunter says: Dajik's last learner eaten by sand-thing. We do better this time though!"
"Dajik the Wasp Hunter says: You do okay enough with that one. Just okay."
"Dajik the Wasp Hunter says: Oh! Dajik has idea! Make chicken sounds and maybe they come to you!"
"Dajik the Wasp Hunter says: In case you wonder, wasp sting not feel so good. No need to try."

etc