Well, when my 2nd month expired, I decided that would be it for now. The dribble of new content just wasn't worth it-- particularly when the newest stuff couldn't be accessed via the dungeon finder/LFR. There's only so many times I could run the same missions hoping for a marginal upgrade and, in short, WoW ceased to be fun. It was nice visiting the old haunts and a tip of the hat to friends new and old met along the way. For now the Warcraft Wanderings have ended.
Thank you for reading!
As for me... The Elder Scrolls Online beckons and adventures shall begin anew!
Monday, November 21, 2016
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Turning Back Time
Each week players are given a "bonus activity" which yields a perk for doing a particular activity. Last week, for example, World Quests granted bonus reputation and people who did 20 of them got a little satchel of stuff, previous to that was a bonus for arena skirmishes, yada yada. This week I got the pleasure of "kinda" reliving my leveling experience with "Timewalking: Burning Crusade"
No. Just "no".
Players and their gear may be scaled down to level 70 and then romp through Heroic Burning Crusade dungeons. Do five of them within a week and you'll get a couple of nifties and a piece of gear from the current raid. This last bit caught my eye and I started chain running them with Sun. In a couple of hours I had run my five and I had upgraded my weapon a little with the relic prize I had gotten from the bag, but was it fun?
Almost. I'll give it a solid "that was almost a nice time". It was certainly nice tromping through the old dungeons I haven't seen in years again and running into Millhouse Manastorm in the prison dungeon brought I solid grin. Also, every boss downed dropped token currency used to buy heirloom upgrades, toys, and transmog gear, but I'll give it three problems.
The first was the utter trash that fills your bags. Boss loot scales to "your level" (if you were a fresh-faced wide-eyed level 110), but everything else is vendorbait and clutters something fierce, but I found myself still looting things just in case something with a neat transmog appearance dropped. Sigh.
Secondly, I think it's a damn shame they only run an event like this for a week in over a month. This is the sort of thing that should be a constant option. Get more mileage out of your older content, encourage fun farming of old school rep instead of one-shot killing bosses. It could be amazing. Could.
Ultimately, it gets killed by the third problem: scaling. I know Blizzard tried their best, but it just wasn't there. I get the feeling it was tuned for people with minimum gear and at this point, no one has that. It might have been a little more fun on a max-level Anyth, as hunters are very mobile with a lot of instant multi-target burst damage, but as a druid it utterly sucked. Out of the five, there was only one team that proceeded at a "normal" pace. Throw a single paladin or hunter into the mix and you've got pack upon pack of things eating floor before I can get off a second spell.
Still, I can't complain too vociferously, as it was really cool seeing dozens of players in Shattrath for the first time in nearly a decade, even if they were there just for the token vendor.
No. Just "no".
Players and their gear may be scaled down to level 70 and then romp through Heroic Burning Crusade dungeons. Do five of them within a week and you'll get a couple of nifties and a piece of gear from the current raid. This last bit caught my eye and I started chain running them with Sun. In a couple of hours I had run my five and I had upgraded my weapon a little with the relic prize I had gotten from the bag, but was it fun?
Almost. I'll give it a solid "that was almost a nice time". It was certainly nice tromping through the old dungeons I haven't seen in years again and running into Millhouse Manastorm in the prison dungeon brought I solid grin. Also, every boss downed dropped token currency used to buy heirloom upgrades, toys, and transmog gear, but I'll give it three problems.
The first was the utter trash that fills your bags. Boss loot scales to "your level" (if you were a fresh-faced wide-eyed level 110), but everything else is vendorbait and clutters something fierce, but I found myself still looting things just in case something with a neat transmog appearance dropped. Sigh.
Secondly, I think it's a damn shame they only run an event like this for a week in over a month. This is the sort of thing that should be a constant option. Get more mileage out of your older content, encourage fun farming of old school rep instead of one-shot killing bosses. It could be amazing. Could.
Ultimately, it gets killed by the third problem: scaling. I know Blizzard tried their best, but it just wasn't there. I get the feeling it was tuned for people with minimum gear and at this point, no one has that. It might have been a little more fun on a max-level Anyth, as hunters are very mobile with a lot of instant multi-target burst damage, but as a druid it utterly sucked. Out of the five, there was only one team that proceeded at a "normal" pace. Throw a single paladin or hunter into the mix and you've got pack upon pack of things eating floor before I can get off a second spell.
Still, I can't complain too vociferously, as it was really cool seeing dozens of players in Shattrath for the first time in nearly a decade, even if they were there just for the token vendor.
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
The Land of the Hardcore Casual
I've come to accept that OnSunshine is presently my main while Strev gathers dust by the auction house (mostly by disenchanting things). She's matched Strev for questline progress and gear, with a slight advantage in the weapon-department. The first big raid from Burning Crusade, Karazhan, is being retired soon and being converted into a 5-man instance with the next patch (aka The Zul'Gurub Treatment), so for fun I took Strev on a tour through the decrepit castle for one last tour.
Ok. I admit it. It was entirely ungratifying, although every kill was earning reputation with the Violet Eye, a secret sect of the Kirin Tor mages I will never care enough to Exalt. Stomping around a level 70 raid with a 110 mage was ridiculous. Basically, it was wander around until I got annoyed with all of the things clawing at my clothing, pressing "arcane explosion" and aoeing all of the 16k health mobs with 1M+ damage. The average critter was hitting me for less than 100 damage and with over 2M health, I was a god against them. Still, what it lacked in challenge it made up for with ambiance. The music was stellar and the castle's design was well thought out. It has several wings that are mostly linear without seeming overly straight path to the next boss fight. The bosses themselves were two hit wonders and I found myself drawing out the fights with frost nova to get more lines of dialogue out of them.
I think I'll wander through ICC next at some point; it was the first raid I ever did years ago, and I owe a certain plaguemaster a little payback. Curiously, I don't really feel enthused at the thought of going back and collecting the achievements; probably just knowing it's a checklist instead of an actual challenge makes the victory hollow.
I started poking around on Anyth a little, buying her a weapon that is ridiculously overpowered for Pandaland and clearing out a few familiar quest hubs, as both OnSunshine and Strev have stalled out for progress, having gotten as far as they can without Mythic dungeons and "proper" raiding.
I've looked over the LFP tool and each entry seems to be along the lines of 3 DPS sitting around looking for a tank and "a healer that doesn't SUCK lol" or "carry me and you can use my keystone" (a prize that lets people run dungeons on insane levels of difficulty). I may give it a go for "old school" raids-- the current raids are filled with the usual stupid of "will examine your posted DPS logs before invites", "link heroic kill achieve & we will invite U 2 regular" and such.
It's a strange thing, living in the land of the Hardcore Casual.
Ok. I admit it. It was entirely ungratifying, although every kill was earning reputation with the Violet Eye, a secret sect of the Kirin Tor mages I will never care enough to Exalt. Stomping around a level 70 raid with a 110 mage was ridiculous. Basically, it was wander around until I got annoyed with all of the things clawing at my clothing, pressing "arcane explosion" and aoeing all of the 16k health mobs with 1M+ damage. The average critter was hitting me for less than 100 damage and with over 2M health, I was a god against them. Still, what it lacked in challenge it made up for with ambiance. The music was stellar and the castle's design was well thought out. It has several wings that are mostly linear without seeming overly straight path to the next boss fight. The bosses themselves were two hit wonders and I found myself drawing out the fights with frost nova to get more lines of dialogue out of them.
I think I'll wander through ICC next at some point; it was the first raid I ever did years ago, and I owe a certain plaguemaster a little payback. Curiously, I don't really feel enthused at the thought of going back and collecting the achievements; probably just knowing it's a checklist instead of an actual challenge makes the victory hollow.
I started poking around on Anyth a little, buying her a weapon that is ridiculously overpowered for Pandaland and clearing out a few familiar quest hubs, as both OnSunshine and Strev have stalled out for progress, having gotten as far as they can without Mythic dungeons and "proper" raiding.
I've looked over the LFP tool and each entry seems to be along the lines of 3 DPS sitting around looking for a tank and "a healer that doesn't SUCK lol" or "carry me and you can use my keystone" (a prize that lets people run dungeons on insane levels of difficulty). I may give it a go for "old school" raids-- the current raids are filled with the usual stupid of "will examine your posted DPS logs before invites", "link heroic kill achieve & we will invite U 2 regular" and such.
It's a strange thing, living in the land of the Hardcore Casual.
Monday, October 3, 2016
Like a Month to the Flame
For fun, I stoked my masochistic side and posted my DK story to reddit's /r/wow community. Some people "got it" and told me I made their day and other railed against the "shitposter" with his passive-aggressive whining. When all was said and done, I walked away with probably fewer internet karma points, 2 months of Reddit gold (thanks again, guys!), and a genuine offer to help my lackluster DPS. For all my joking around, I really do want to up my game, so I took the Kind Soul up on his offer.
After a few private messages, I've installed Boomkinator (a nice addon for tracking DOT timers and other rotation reminders) and enabled combat logging. A few gear upgrades and a bit of practicing and I'm now hitting 160k DPS against raider combat dummies. Rawr! I'm actually eager to see how that translates into a live fight. At some point I may even remember I originally intended to use Sun as a healer.
Otherwise, a month since I've re-subbed has come and gone. I know this primarily due to the polite email I got from Blizzard letting me know that my time was nearing completion and would I please consider paying them moneys? Ha ha, Blizzard. Not when I'm sitting on a mountain of gold and you're selling tokens.
At my lowest gold point, I was down to about 170k on Strev, after binging on the initial token and a like amount on gear and things to improve his overall quality of life. Since then, I've probably spent another 60k on "incidentals", bar tabs, hookers, and blow. (Unrelated: a quick trip to Moonguard's Goldshire has shown that nothing there has changed in a few years.), so that puts my "balance" at 110k gold or, if you prefer, about 3 months' worth of WoW tokens before my earnings.
Full disclosure: I have not been goblining it up, not by a longshot. Strev has primarily sold the dust and shards he's earned by disenchanting quest rewards. He's made about 8k profit on glyphs, which is a drop in the bucket compared to Sun. Sun, being Herbalist/Skinner has been making mad bank doing what I've always considered the Least Effort gold farming: picking up anything not nailed down. Herbs fetch 70g a piece and many nodes spawn 4-5 at a time. She's done a handful of "herb circuits" but at no point have I ever said, "Today I'm going to spend hours farming plants for sale". My first week or so was leveling Strev past Draenor the second was exclusively Strev's March to Max Level, so Sun has been part timing for less than a couple of weeks. So what does that translate to?
Current cash on hand: 393k. Good lord, that's around 10k a day just futzing around. Went ahead and bought another token for 35.5k, then dumped 10k into our guild's weekly lottery to help drum up ticket sales. Still it begs me to ask, how do some people stay broke in this game?
From a character development standpoint, Sun is rapidly catching up to Strev and has already surpassed him in base weapon level, due to some nice World Quest relic drops. What's keeping Strev from being relegated to "alt" status is primarily how much work I've done on his quest line completions and reputation gains. A lot of it is significantly "pain in the arse" that I don't particularly want to do it again on an alt in less than a month. Otherwise, things like achievements, pets, toys, and mounts are shared across characters so besides some gated content, there's no real "penalty" for changing it up.
After a few private messages, I've installed Boomkinator (a nice addon for tracking DOT timers and other rotation reminders) and enabled combat logging. A few gear upgrades and a bit of practicing and I'm now hitting 160k DPS against raider combat dummies. Rawr! I'm actually eager to see how that translates into a live fight. At some point I may even remember I originally intended to use Sun as a healer.
Otherwise, a month since I've re-subbed has come and gone. I know this primarily due to the polite email I got from Blizzard letting me know that my time was nearing completion and would I please consider paying them moneys? Ha ha, Blizzard. Not when I'm sitting on a mountain of gold and you're selling tokens.
At my lowest gold point, I was down to about 170k on Strev, after binging on the initial token and a like amount on gear and things to improve his overall quality of life. Since then, I've probably spent another 60k on "incidentals", bar tabs, hookers, and blow. (Unrelated: a quick trip to Moonguard's Goldshire has shown that nothing there has changed in a few years.), so that puts my "balance" at 110k gold or, if you prefer, about 3 months' worth of WoW tokens before my earnings.
Full disclosure: I have not been goblining it up, not by a longshot. Strev has primarily sold the dust and shards he's earned by disenchanting quest rewards. He's made about 8k profit on glyphs, which is a drop in the bucket compared to Sun. Sun, being Herbalist/Skinner has been making mad bank doing what I've always considered the Least Effort gold farming: picking up anything not nailed down. Herbs fetch 70g a piece and many nodes spawn 4-5 at a time. She's done a handful of "herb circuits" but at no point have I ever said, "Today I'm going to spend hours farming plants for sale". My first week or so was leveling Strev past Draenor the second was exclusively Strev's March to Max Level, so Sun has been part timing for less than a couple of weeks. So what does that translate to?
Current cash on hand: 393k. Good lord, that's around 10k a day just futzing around. Went ahead and bought another token for 35.5k, then dumped 10k into our guild's weekly lottery to help drum up ticket sales. Still it begs me to ask, how do some people stay broke in this game?
From a character development standpoint, Sun is rapidly catching up to Strev and has already surpassed him in base weapon level, due to some nice World Quest relic drops. What's keeping Strev from being relegated to "alt" status is primarily how much work I've done on his quest line completions and reputation gains. A lot of it is significantly "pain in the arse" that I don't particularly want to do it again on an alt in less than a month. Otherwise, things like achievements, pets, toys, and mounts are shared across characters so besides some gated content, there's no real "penalty" for changing it up.
Friday, September 30, 2016
An Open Letter
To the Death Knight I met in LFR Last Night,
I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciated your contributions to the success of our LFR raid last night. It was my first as my druid and you helped make it a memorable experience.
First and foremost, thank you for broadcasting Recount data at every opportunity. This saved me the trouble of looking down at the bottom right corner of my screen and while I occasionally had to take a moment to scroll up past your walls of text to read instance chat from others, take pleasure in knowing they had a much lower DPS than you did.
Secondly, thank you for taking the time to emphasize how much DPS you were doing both before and after broadcasting the damage meters. This saved valuable time of having to read through your walls of Recount text to get what really mattered: you were doing A Lot More Damage Per Second than most of us.
I also greatly appreciate you taking the time to notice my contribution to the team, although I feel as though taking your advice to "DROP PARTY, U FKING 80K DPS DRUID" would not have been productive to my overall goal to get better gear via LFR raiding. I will point out that although my per-second damage dealing was among the lowest of the DPS team, I did not fail a single combat mechanic and my only deaths were when we were forced to wipe after you and many others stood in fire repeatedly and were obliterated by attacks that could have been easily sidestepped with a modicum of situational awareness. Although I could point out that an extra 40k DPS isn't going to mean jack if most of the party is dead, it is obvious that the REAL problem and why the party wiped several times with seven or more minutes left on the boss' enrage timer was that I should have been using my mouse to execute a flawless balance druid DPS rotation instead of grinding it in my crotch screaming, "OMG! That DK'S DPS is SO HUGE! I want it in me RIGHT NOW!"
My only regret was that you eventually dropped party, as the next attempt was an unqualified success with no party deaths.
Because you cared so much about my gear, I wanted to let you know I didn't receive any from the raid, so I hope I get to see you again next week!
xoxo,
Sun
I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciated your contributions to the success of our LFR raid last night. It was my first as my druid and you helped make it a memorable experience.
First and foremost, thank you for broadcasting Recount data at every opportunity. This saved me the trouble of looking down at the bottom right corner of my screen and while I occasionally had to take a moment to scroll up past your walls of text to read instance chat from others, take pleasure in knowing they had a much lower DPS than you did.
Secondly, thank you for taking the time to emphasize how much DPS you were doing both before and after broadcasting the damage meters. This saved valuable time of having to read through your walls of Recount text to get what really mattered: you were doing A Lot More Damage Per Second than most of us.
I also greatly appreciate you taking the time to notice my contribution to the team, although I feel as though taking your advice to "DROP PARTY, U FKING 80K DPS DRUID" would not have been productive to my overall goal to get better gear via LFR raiding. I will point out that although my per-second damage dealing was among the lowest of the DPS team, I did not fail a single combat mechanic and my only deaths were when we were forced to wipe after you and many others stood in fire repeatedly and were obliterated by attacks that could have been easily sidestepped with a modicum of situational awareness. Although I could point out that an extra 40k DPS isn't going to mean jack if most of the party is dead, it is obvious that the REAL problem and why the party wiped several times with seven or more minutes left on the boss' enrage timer was that I should have been using my mouse to execute a flawless balance druid DPS rotation instead of grinding it in my crotch screaming, "OMG! That DK'S DPS is SO HUGE! I want it in me RIGHT NOW!"
My only regret was that you eventually dropped party, as the next attempt was an unqualified success with no party deaths.
Because you cared so much about my gear, I wanted to let you know I didn't receive any from the raid, so I hope I get to see you again next week!
xoxo,
Sun
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Emerald Nightmare on Elm St
This past Tuesday, Blizzard released the first three bosses of "The Emerald Nightmare" to LFR and I dutifully queued Strev up to see what the big deal was. I've always enjoyed Blizzard's raid mechanics and was eager to see how things have evolved after several years. Every aspect met my expectations.
The raid itself takes place in a corrupted version of The Emerald Dream, the "Plato's Purest Form of Azeroth" created by the Titans as a model for when they got around to creating Azeroth. The corrupting Nightmare has seeped in and the alternate dimension has devolved from Platonic to plutonic and we get to squeegee some of the evil from its windshield. After a short 7 minute DPS queue, I ported in… and recognized the place from Sun's class hall-- the main area is where Druids teleport when recalling "home", complete with portals to all of the druidy areas mentioned previously. This time each of those portals carries you to the nightmare version of Grizzly Hills, Ungoro Crater, etc which has their own themed boss to smite. Neat.
LFRaiders haven't evolved at all since Cataclysm and the boss mechanics were all watered down, but still failable. which we proved several times. After the first wipe, one of the angrier players started ranting about how people didn't understand the mechanics of a fight and, after checking, found that fully half of the players didn't have Deadly Boss Mods or an equivalent installed. For my own part, I knew I was half-assing it. To my credit, I had DBM installed and had read up on the fights in the dungeon journal. Against me was the fact I wasn't running with enchanted/gemmed gear, hadn't watched any videos of the fights, and was relying on the LFR method of "assume someone else will start screaming about what mechanics I'm screwing up".
The first boss was a Fairly Standard Dragon Encounter, which wasn't at all surprising for the first boss of an expansion, with a few tweaks. Players can get targeted with a debuff that puts pools of poisonous doom at their feet for a few seconds. Carry it to the edge of the room. Swarms of infected bugs appear… if you stand near them you're going to be in for a world of hurt when they explode. As predicted, LFRaiders absolutely covered the melee area with poison. We wiped once.
The second was a druid name Elerethe Somethingoranother. Apparently surrendering to the nightmare gives you cooler transformations than "owlbear" and "cat". He has two main forms, spider and roc, each with its own set of problems. This one was absolute chaos. Pick a mobile fight mechanic: it was there. Ground fire. People placing pools of poison. Tornados to dodge. Tornados SPREADING the poison people left on the floor. Many spiders, handle it! Chasing the boss to another area to continue the fight. Cleaves to dodge. We wiped once.
The final was a a giant eyeball on the side of a tree (maybe?) I'll need to get a better look, but it had a nice "elder god" vibe to it. This gave us the most problems, due to having several mechanics that required situational awareness. Basically, in addition to its slew of regular attacks, big ol' eyeball spawns a bunch of nightmarish adds-- tentacles, abominations, the usual gang of hellspawn. Every time one is killed, a bubbling slime spawns and starts fixating on a raid member until it is dead. The only way to significantly damage the boss is to kill one of these slimes while it is in eyeball-cuddling distance. Guess what wasn't mentioned in the dungeon journal?
Anyway, once the eyeball is downed, it reveals an opening into the tree where the REAL boss is. Run in and unload on him while he's casting an IKILLYOU spell. I'm just nuking happily away glad for a damage phase when I hear DBM kick in with "9….8….7…" I see a couple of people leaving the tree and it clicks instantly. Pivot. Blink! Blink! and I'm standing outside with five other people when the countdown ends and everyone but us are killed. Hilarious. The fact it happened a second time was just sad. The third time all but three make it out in time and we have done maybe 40% damage on the boss. Lather, rinse, and repeat and the thing is finally dead.
For all of my troubles and a couple of hours, I have a couple of new enchanting recipes that let me craft buff items players can use against raid bosses (you can use one per week and it lasts all week) and a cloak that served better as disenchantment-bait than as an equipment downgrade. As it stands, there is nothing that LFR can provide that would be an upgrade to Strev's grear, unless he gets a random 'warforged' or 'titanforged' bonus added to the loot. From just world questing, my gear already outstrips Ghetto Raiding.
For Sun, it is a different story. She's sitting at i824: one point shy of queueing for this hell herself and there's still a few things she could use. We'll see how that goes this weekend.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Just some random shots
Cleaning out a few pictures that never made the cut elsewhere...
Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be DPS...
What bothers me the most is the green fluid dripping down the upper right...
Seems legit...
Proof Sun killed the entire server at once...
How to get a superiority complex...
Why Strev will never quit his day job
Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be DPS...
What bothers me the most is the green fluid dripping down the upper right...
Seems legit...
Proof Sun killed the entire server at once...
How to get a superiority complex...
Why Strev will never quit his day job
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Worgen Trail
Short night for active playtime due to guild event WoW trivia participation. I was surprised at how much useless crap I remembered from way back, in the Long, Long ago.
"I'll take GRGMMRGL for $500, Alex."
Otherwise, Sun inched her way to 102 and when she made it, I left in the middle of a quest to save some blue dragon from a horde of zombie-elves to teleport back to my class hall. Sure enough, I was offered a quest to recover another artifact and I can imagine Sun grabbing a druid by the fur screaming, "THE SCYTHE OF ELUNE! GIMME! GIMME! GIMME!" With it, I could finally DPS-level my way up painlessly.
"Well, sure thing, Onsunshine! We've been keeping it in Duskwood. Just go over and pick it up."
"Things are never that easy. Someone's going steal it at the last minute, or it'll be in a dozen pieces and we'll all have a laugh at my expense while I go about reforging the damn thing, or to activate it, I'll need blood from the Blizzard Marketing team, or--"
"No, really. It's cool. We've been guarding it for a while. That whole 'The Scythe released the worgen curse on Duskwood thing'? Yeah, we're all over that."
"Seriously?"
"Cross my heart."
"Fine. But just so we're clear, I don't trust you."
Getting a portal to Duskwood is no problem: the druid class hall has portal to all of the 'druidy woodsy' areas from all expansions, including Grizzly Hills, Duskwood, Mount Hyjal, etc... basically nowhere anyone in their right mind would find useful in any way whatsoever.
I arrive and am presented with the Scythe of Elune, only to have its bearer backstabbed by a worgen rogue, who steals it and rides off.
Sun rolled her eyes, kicked the corpse and tells the portal "Told you so." From there, it was a tracking and hunting quest which led me across Duskwood and into Deadwind Pass, and finally to Karazhan itself as apparently it was "returned" to Karazhan's basement. Basement dwellers in Wow. Who would have guessed?
The quest was designed for a balance druid and would surely require special abilities that only they had. I, of course, went in as Resto as I had no other weapon. Long staircase full of terrors was dispatched (slowly) and one hallway later I encountered my metaphorical brick wall: a long swath of impassable floor that was the result of Some Dude at the other end channeling a spell. It was a "2 brain cell" test for Balance: cast Solar Beam at the enemy to disrupt the cast. The game was worried when I hadn't solved the "puzzle" after a moment and told me in giant friendly letters "Cast Solar Beam at the caster to disrupt the spell!" It even went so far as to show me a picture of the icon that I, as a Resto, didn't have. I was certainly not going to change specs. Playing the game as intended would be cheating.
The caster was immune to all damage spells and the patch of crap was probably at least 15 yards or so long. My only ghetto interrupt, a cone called Typhoon, covered nowhere near that distance. Waitaminute. What if I subvert the entire puzzle? I checked my talents and, sure enough, I had chosen one called "Displacer Beast". It puts you in cat form, gives you a hellacious short speed boost, and most importantly teleports you 20 yards forward. MUAHAHAHA!
*BAMF!* I teleported past the Floor o' Doom and landed at the mage's feet. I had intended to just keep running, but apparently a few hundred pounds of Surprise Cat was enough to break his concentration and I had to whittle him down. A few more encounters later, I faced down the Basement Dweller and claimed the Scythe! I switch over to Balance to admire it.
Oh, Yeah!
I hearth back to Dalaran and catch a flight back to where I was last questing. As I begin my decent, I yell out "NOW WITNESS THE FIREPOWER OF THIS FULLY ARMED AND OPERATIONAL BOOMKIN!"
Ah, hubris. Remember the dragon I left at the start of all of this? Turns out he was at the flight point. I get dropped in the middle of a phased high-pitched battle and am covered in zombies by the time my ride vanishes.
Ironically, I probably could have survived if I had stayed Resto.
"I'll take GRGMMRGL for $500, Alex."
Otherwise, Sun inched her way to 102 and when she made it, I left in the middle of a quest to save some blue dragon from a horde of zombie-elves to teleport back to my class hall. Sure enough, I was offered a quest to recover another artifact and I can imagine Sun grabbing a druid by the fur screaming, "THE SCYTHE OF ELUNE! GIMME! GIMME! GIMME!" With it, I could finally DPS-level my way up painlessly.
"Well, sure thing, Onsunshine! We've been keeping it in Duskwood. Just go over and pick it up."
"Things are never that easy. Someone's going steal it at the last minute, or it'll be in a dozen pieces and we'll all have a laugh at my expense while I go about reforging the damn thing, or to activate it, I'll need blood from the Blizzard Marketing team, or--"
"No, really. It's cool. We've been guarding it for a while. That whole 'The Scythe released the worgen curse on Duskwood thing'? Yeah, we're all over that."
"Seriously?"
"Cross my heart."
"Fine. But just so we're clear, I don't trust you."
Getting a portal to Duskwood is no problem: the druid class hall has portal to all of the 'druidy woodsy' areas from all expansions, including Grizzly Hills, Duskwood, Mount Hyjal, etc... basically nowhere anyone in their right mind would find useful in any way whatsoever.
I arrive and am presented with the Scythe of Elune, only to have its bearer backstabbed by a worgen rogue, who steals it and rides off.
Sun rolled her eyes, kicked the corpse and tells the portal "Told you so." From there, it was a tracking and hunting quest which led me across Duskwood and into Deadwind Pass, and finally to Karazhan itself as apparently it was "returned" to Karazhan's basement. Basement dwellers in Wow. Who would have guessed?
The quest was designed for a balance druid and would surely require special abilities that only they had. I, of course, went in as Resto as I had no other weapon. Long staircase full of terrors was dispatched (slowly) and one hallway later I encountered my metaphorical brick wall: a long swath of impassable floor that was the result of Some Dude at the other end channeling a spell. It was a "2 brain cell" test for Balance: cast Solar Beam at the enemy to disrupt the cast. The game was worried when I hadn't solved the "puzzle" after a moment and told me in giant friendly letters "Cast Solar Beam at the caster to disrupt the spell!" It even went so far as to show me a picture of the icon that I, as a Resto, didn't have. I was certainly not going to change specs. Playing the game as intended would be cheating.
The caster was immune to all damage spells and the patch of crap was probably at least 15 yards or so long. My only ghetto interrupt, a cone called Typhoon, covered nowhere near that distance. Waitaminute. What if I subvert the entire puzzle? I checked my talents and, sure enough, I had chosen one called "Displacer Beast". It puts you in cat form, gives you a hellacious short speed boost, and most importantly teleports you 20 yards forward. MUAHAHAHA!
*BAMF!* I teleported past the Floor o' Doom and landed at the mage's feet. I had intended to just keep running, but apparently a few hundred pounds of Surprise Cat was enough to break his concentration and I had to whittle him down. A few more encounters later, I faced down the Basement Dweller and claimed the Scythe! I switch over to Balance to admire it.
Oh, Yeah!
I hearth back to Dalaran and catch a flight back to where I was last questing. As I begin my decent, I yell out "NOW WITNESS THE FIREPOWER OF THIS FULLY ARMED AND OPERATIONAL BOOMKIN!"
Ah, hubris. Remember the dragon I left at the start of all of this? Turns out he was at the flight point. I get dropped in the middle of a phased high-pitched battle and am covered in zombies by the time my ride vanishes.
Ironically, I probably could have survived if I had stayed Resto.
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
Resto Chango!
I was a bit excited for Onsunshine's career path so, after picking up a crate of burned food from the chef he training under, I left Strev meandering the streets of Dalaran or whatever he does whenever I'm not controlling him-- I presume it involves slight of hand and nightelven women. Time to get "Sun" rising!
So with unbridled enthusiasm, I began my quest for the RestoDruid artifact, the Stick of Truth. (Well, they called it 'G'Hanir, the Mother Tree', but why quibble?)
The quest itself was ludicrously easy. Part 1 was remove a debuff from an elf and prowl around in stealth a bit. Part 2 was the "keep your team alive!" bit that was fun. You're given a party of NPCs and you have to keep them healed while they do battle with a demon. Much like the mage quest, it is impossible to fail, which removes any real sense of accomplishment. Any teammate you let hit 0% just stays in a "can't fight" state until you heal them again. So, yay-- with stick in hand, I'm named "Archdruid" and am let loose on the world at large to heal my foes into oblivion. Damn it.
The nice thing about the mistakes I make is that I never actually learn from them, so I get to experience them over and over again, like that hot chick from Finding Nemo.
Don't judge.
In this case, I'm now an undergeared fresh 100 whose only hope to get gear is to quest around in a healing spec because I can't use my weapon in other specializations. I'll get a chance to get the Balance weapon so I can "professionally Moonkin between dungeons" in a couple of levels, but in the meantime... yeesh. Once again, I train for a marathon by breaking my legs.
I decided to follow the same questing sequence as Strev at the beginning and worked a bit through Azsuna confirming that leveling this way is going to be somewhat tedious. On the plus side, although fights might take forever, there's very little chance of me actually dying. Also, I had forgotten the simple thrill of gathering herbs and ripping the skins off things. A couple of times, gathering gave me quests that sent me back to Dalaran to gain skills I thought I already had, for example: Legion Skinning: Skin the beasts of the broken islands. Well, I'm fairly certain doing just that was how I got the quest to-- oh, forget it. There was probably something patently obvious to the rest of the universe I'm missing, so I just went back and continued happily ripping skins off things.
Ended the evening at 101 and with my small bounty of plants and animal bits on the AH. I'm still torn right now as to whether it is more profitable to have Strev mill the plants into ink or not for his glyphs. Milling herbs are way too much like lotto tickets and you will usually get less overall than what you can get by auctioning the plants straight up, even accounting for the 5% AH cut. I'll need to do the math later; it just horks me off to no end when I hear people say something "is free if you farm the materials yourself".
So with unbridled enthusiasm, I began my quest for the RestoDruid artifact, the Stick of Truth. (Well, they called it 'G'Hanir, the Mother Tree', but why quibble?)
The quest itself was ludicrously easy. Part 1 was remove a debuff from an elf and prowl around in stealth a bit. Part 2 was the "keep your team alive!" bit that was fun. You're given a party of NPCs and you have to keep them healed while they do battle with a demon. Much like the mage quest, it is impossible to fail, which removes any real sense of accomplishment. Any teammate you let hit 0% just stays in a "can't fight" state until you heal them again. So, yay-- with stick in hand, I'm named "Archdruid" and am let loose on the world at large to heal my foes into oblivion. Damn it.
The nice thing about the mistakes I make is that I never actually learn from them, so I get to experience them over and over again, like that hot chick from Finding Nemo.
In this case, I'm now an undergeared fresh 100 whose only hope to get gear is to quest around in a healing spec because I can't use my weapon in other specializations. I'll get a chance to get the Balance weapon so I can "professionally Moonkin between dungeons" in a couple of levels, but in the meantime... yeesh. Once again, I train for a marathon by breaking my legs.
I decided to follow the same questing sequence as Strev at the beginning and worked a bit through Azsuna confirming that leveling this way is going to be somewhat tedious. On the plus side, although fights might take forever, there's very little chance of me actually dying. Also, I had forgotten the simple thrill of gathering herbs and ripping the skins off things. A couple of times, gathering gave me quests that sent me back to Dalaran to gain skills I thought I already had, for example: Legion Skinning: Skin the beasts of the broken islands. Well, I'm fairly certain doing just that was how I got the quest to-- oh, forget it. There was probably something patently obvious to the rest of the universe I'm missing, so I just went back and continued happily ripping skins off things.
Ended the evening at 101 and with my small bounty of plants and animal bits on the AH. I'm still torn right now as to whether it is more profitable to have Strev mill the plants into ink or not for his glyphs. Milling herbs are way too much like lotto tickets and you will usually get less overall than what you can get by auctioning the plants straight up, even accounting for the 5% AH cut. I'll need to do the math later; it just horks me off to no end when I hear people say something "is free if you farm the materials yourself".
Monday, September 19, 2016
><> FEEESH! ><>
The Fisherman is unique among other professions as it is the only one to receive an artifact, the Underlight Angler, but by all that's unholy you have to work for it. To get the artifact you have to be Level 110, skill level 800 fishing, catch 15 different rare fish (3 per legion zone), fish up the quest object, and run a short quest line at the end that includes a fishing-based scenario.
Over the years, Blizzard has tried to make fishing exciting and experimented with various mechanics (different sized fish, special lures, fish chunks, etc), but in the end most of them have been stripped away for simplicity. Now it is you, your bobber, and an optional bait. I honestly don't think you even need a high fishing skill to catch non-junk anymore. You certainly don't even need to equip a pole to just "fish" a pool of whatever. Open water gives you an 80% chance to catch Generic Fish (a mackeral, I think) and a 20% chance to catch the Fish of that Zone (Salmon, Koi, Perch, whatever).
Level 110 I had, but my fishing skill was mired around 600 or so. I need not have fretted, fishing levels up stupidly fast now thanks to the rare fish. Once caught, rare fish can be sold for 10g per or chucked back in the water for a +5 skill gain each. A few fish 'events' resulted in 8 or so rares at a time, so I was 800 without much effort. The rares themselves are the challenge.
Bait is randomly fished up from open water and generally has one of a few effects: a 3 minute buff that makes it more likely to catch a certain rare fish, you will get a buff that lets you see secret hidden pools of fish that contain rares, a debuff that summons a monster whose entrails become bait, and a couple of WTH baits. One spawns a sleeping murloc, which you slap. He runs around throwing rare fish everywhere and is utterly hilarious. The one that summons a horked off landshark is a lot less hilarious.
The problem in general is that in most zones pools are extraordinarily rare and, thanks to cross server zones, are quickly fished out by roving fishermen. That is, when the pools aren't accessible only by water walking or aren't camped by elites or fast spawning quest mobs. Sigh.
To maximize your efforts, there is a special bait that doubles your chance of fishing up other bait for ten minutes. This bait is sold by a reclusive mage outside Dalaran named Magross (probably). "Outside Dalaran? Isn't Dalaran a floating city?" Why, yes it is. He has a floating chunk of rock to call his very own you can access by glider, feather fall, or a trinket you can fish up in the underbelly of Dalaran's sewers. Magross has a little pond to call his very own and gave up a life of conjuring to pursue his true passion. He has a currency of his own called "Drowned Mana" which conveniently is only found in the pond 10 feet away from him. It's an uncommon pull, but you have a chance of fishing up a doodad that summons an elemental out of the pool. Upon defeat, all casts give drowned mana for 3 minutes or so. So, you can spend drowned mana on boosting your reputation with him for fishing junk like a duck-shaped bobber or what-have-you, but I was only interested in Arcane Lures to get the extra bait. I had no idea how many I'd need, so I got 40, just to see. Holy crap, I'm glad I did.
Even with the buff, the rarity of the pools meant that frequently I'd only be able to hit two or three before the buff expired and even then, more bait wasn't a guarantee. Heck, in some cases even getting the rare bait wasn't a guarantee I'd get the rare fish before time expired on it. The rare baits are "unique", so you can't stockpile them.
In the worst case ever, after an hour and a half of hunting I got and popped a bait that allowed me to see "Ghostly Queenfish" pools. I was near water and I ran around for 5 minutes and never saw a pool. At this point, I said "screw it" and bought replacement bait off the AH for 2500g. Yes, it was ridiculous, but I did NOT want to hunt more pools. A quick look on the internet told me of a couple of spawn areas so next time I wouldn't be caught fishless. So I went there and used the bait.
Sure enough, in the five minutes, I found three separate pools of beautiful ghostly queenfish, swimming ethereally-- ALL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GODDAMN LAKE. For want of a 100g potion of water walking, my 2500g bait was wasted. At this point emotion overrode common sense and I went back to the AH. Spent another 3400g on another bait (the cheapest that was left), and 200g on water walking potions. Went back and got my goddamn fish!
Overall catching the rares took the better part of a day, but I have literally hundreds of spare fish crammed into every pocket. After I got the "Bigger Fish to Fry" achievement, I went back to some nice koi pools I had found that were both plentiful and non-monster-infested and found the pearl that started the final quest chain.
Going back to Dalaran, Khadgar patronizes me and tells me to "go stick it in the fountain or something".
"Yeah, I really don't know what I was expecting you to do either."
Ok, fine. I chuck the pearl into the fountain. Nothing happens except the visual changes for me. Big pearl floating above the fountain. I walk away and get ambushed by Nat Pagle who tells me that he's found a spot where the fish are frenzying out of control! Only I, the Master of FEEESH can set things right! I travel with him to a secluded pond surrounded by murlocs. I clear them all out and we start fishing in earnest. After gathering a bunch of frenzied fish, we hunt down what's agitating them and fish it up: a horrific denizen of the deep! Nat screams, "Kill it with fire or whatever you adventurers use!" One arcane-infused fishstick later, Nat rips off the lure from the Angler's head and gives it to me: the artifact pole! WOO! It inherently confers to ability to breathe water, rendering my old tuskarr pole from Wrath of the Lich King finally obsolete.
Now that I have the thing, I find it gets its power by me catching and releasing rare fish. (Instead of +5 fishing, I now get +50 artifact power per fish). Can do! After another couple of hours at the pole, I've leveled the pole over a half dozen times, gaining all of the main powers I wanted: teleportation to the nearest fishing node (on a 5 minute cooldown), waterwalking and turning into a fish and gaining +speed while underwater. Other unlocked abilities include a chance to fish up entire schools of fish at once and reduced enemy detection while fishing.
Unsurprisingly, the rest of the guild was nonplussed. ><>
Over the years, Blizzard has tried to make fishing exciting and experimented with various mechanics (different sized fish, special lures, fish chunks, etc), but in the end most of them have been stripped away for simplicity. Now it is you, your bobber, and an optional bait. I honestly don't think you even need a high fishing skill to catch non-junk anymore. You certainly don't even need to equip a pole to just "fish" a pool of whatever. Open water gives you an 80% chance to catch Generic Fish (a mackeral, I think) and a 20% chance to catch the Fish of that Zone (Salmon, Koi, Perch, whatever).
Level 110 I had, but my fishing skill was mired around 600 or so. I need not have fretted, fishing levels up stupidly fast now thanks to the rare fish. Once caught, rare fish can be sold for 10g per or chucked back in the water for a +5 skill gain each. A few fish 'events' resulted in 8 or so rares at a time, so I was 800 without much effort. The rares themselves are the challenge.
Bait is randomly fished up from open water and generally has one of a few effects: a 3 minute buff that makes it more likely to catch a certain rare fish, you will get a buff that lets you see secret hidden pools of fish that contain rares, a debuff that summons a monster whose entrails become bait, and a couple of WTH baits. One spawns a sleeping murloc, which you slap. He runs around throwing rare fish everywhere and is utterly hilarious. The one that summons a horked off landshark is a lot less hilarious.
The problem in general is that in most zones pools are extraordinarily rare and, thanks to cross server zones, are quickly fished out by roving fishermen. That is, when the pools aren't accessible only by water walking or aren't camped by elites or fast spawning quest mobs. Sigh.
To maximize your efforts, there is a special bait that doubles your chance of fishing up other bait for ten minutes. This bait is sold by a reclusive mage outside Dalaran named Magross (probably). "Outside Dalaran? Isn't Dalaran a floating city?" Why, yes it is. He has a floating chunk of rock to call his very own you can access by glider, feather fall, or a trinket you can fish up in the underbelly of Dalaran's sewers. Magross has a little pond to call his very own and gave up a life of conjuring to pursue his true passion. He has a currency of his own called "Drowned Mana" which conveniently is only found in the pond 10 feet away from him. It's an uncommon pull, but you have a chance of fishing up a doodad that summons an elemental out of the pool. Upon defeat, all casts give drowned mana for 3 minutes or so. So, you can spend drowned mana on boosting your reputation with him for fishing junk like a duck-shaped bobber or what-have-you, but I was only interested in Arcane Lures to get the extra bait. I had no idea how many I'd need, so I got 40, just to see. Holy crap, I'm glad I did.
Even with the buff, the rarity of the pools meant that frequently I'd only be able to hit two or three before the buff expired and even then, more bait wasn't a guarantee. Heck, in some cases even getting the rare bait wasn't a guarantee I'd get the rare fish before time expired on it. The rare baits are "unique", so you can't stockpile them.
In the worst case ever, after an hour and a half of hunting I got and popped a bait that allowed me to see "Ghostly Queenfish" pools. I was near water and I ran around for 5 minutes and never saw a pool. At this point, I said "screw it" and bought replacement bait off the AH for 2500g. Yes, it was ridiculous, but I did NOT want to hunt more pools. A quick look on the internet told me of a couple of spawn areas so next time I wouldn't be caught fishless. So I went there and used the bait.
Sure enough, in the five minutes, I found three separate pools of beautiful ghostly queenfish, swimming ethereally-- ALL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GODDAMN LAKE. For want of a 100g potion of water walking, my 2500g bait was wasted. At this point emotion overrode common sense and I went back to the AH. Spent another 3400g on another bait (the cheapest that was left), and 200g on water walking potions. Went back and got my goddamn fish!
Overall catching the rares took the better part of a day, but I have literally hundreds of spare fish crammed into every pocket. After I got the "Bigger Fish to Fry" achievement, I went back to some nice koi pools I had found that were both plentiful and non-monster-infested and found the pearl that started the final quest chain.
Going back to Dalaran, Khadgar patronizes me and tells me to "go stick it in the fountain or something".
"Yeah, I really don't know what I was expecting you to do either."
Ok, fine. I chuck the pearl into the fountain. Nothing happens except the visual changes for me. Big pearl floating above the fountain. I walk away and get ambushed by Nat Pagle who tells me that he's found a spot where the fish are frenzying out of control! Only I, the Master of FEEESH can set things right! I travel with him to a secluded pond surrounded by murlocs. I clear them all out and we start fishing in earnest. After gathering a bunch of frenzied fish, we hunt down what's agitating them and fish it up: a horrific denizen of the deep! Nat screams, "Kill it with fire or whatever you adventurers use!" One arcane-infused fishstick later, Nat rips off the lure from the Angler's head and gives it to me: the artifact pole! WOO! It inherently confers to ability to breathe water, rendering my old tuskarr pole from Wrath of the Lich King finally obsolete.
Now that I have the thing, I find it gets its power by me catching and releasing rare fish. (Instead of +5 fishing, I now get +50 artifact power per fish). Can do! After another couple of hours at the pole, I've leveled the pole over a half dozen times, gaining all of the main powers I wanted: teleportation to the nearest fishing node (on a 5 minute cooldown), waterwalking and turning into a fish and gaining +speed while underwater. Other unlocked abilities include a chance to fish up entire schools of fish at once and reduced enemy detection while fishing.
Unsurprisingly, the rest of the guild was nonplussed. ><>
Ready for Raiding! (Soft of)
Over the course of the last few days, I checked off my "to do" list for Strev:
- Finish Mage Quest. This was actually a serious let down and felt appallingly dull and tropy (Surprise! The good guy-turned-bad was mind-controlled!), but it was nice to revisit the Oculus.
- Obtain the Artifact Fishing Pole. This will warrant a separate post later, as the story of its acquisition was all the fun, pain, and heartbreak that was missing from the Mage quest line.
- Gear up! Strev is now rocking at item level (ilevel) 836, which is more than enough to get in at the ground floor anywhere. For scale, 850 is the current cap.
My guild has been looking for the team to get up to i820 for normal raids, which release on Tuesday, but that's destined for failure from a beat-the-boss standpoint, but should be decent for letting the team start to gel and see how everyone starts to work together. Heck, the LFR version that will release a week after requires 825 minimum and it will feature the usual crippled fight mechanics that will let a handful AFK through most of it.
As a side effect of my lust for the fishing pole, I have a massive stockpile of semi-fresh fish that I have no idea how to cook. Now that raids are finally kicking off, there will be a great demand for enchantments, feasts, potions, and all of the raw materials that go into making raider consumables. Up until now, demand has been lackluster at best. Tonight will be the last night to buy up under-priced raw materials for flipping tomorrow. Time to shine, starlight!
In other news, I dusted off Anyth and started her through Pandaland, this time as a Marksman hunter, on the basis that Icy-Veins says they outclass the other specializations. As a petless hunter, she gains a straight bonus to DPS and doesn't have to fiddle with pet aggro and control. I'm not sure I like it. I mean, if I'm doing petless RDPS, I may as well be playing Strev and at that point the only real tacit advantage that Anyth has is that she only feigns death twice a minute.
Still, tooling around the starter zone, I was surprised at how much detail I remembered from the quests and quest lines years later. I also noted with some amusement that mining a node of "Ghost Iron" gave more experience than 20 mob kills with rested bonus. They really want you to level by questing/dungeons. If I cared enough, there's expensive potions that will triple xp gain for an hour, but it seems like a ridiculous waste of resources at the current 20k price tag. Remember: each 10k spent is equivalent to $5 actual dollars, based on wow token prices. I've found thinking that way is usually enough to keep me from making stupid purchases, excepting for the fishing one I'll relay next time.
Finally, because I really, REALLY hate myself, I spent my 100 Boost I got when I bought Legion. If I care to repeat the process again, the boost tokens sell for a straight $60 in the cash shop. The lucky recipient was probably one of the least likely suspects: Onsunshine, my worgen druid. I figure that when I get sick of DPSing, I should have a good healer to fall back on and everyone appreciates a resto druid more than a mage for dungeon runs, raids, children's parties (Look, Mommy! A MOONkin!), and pretty much everything. The fact I totally suck at it will just have to be a bitten bullet.
The "Poof! You're 100!" was actually much, much cooler than I expected. On the character selection page, it forced me to pick a damage spec (balance or feral) for the upgrade. Ok. When the dust settled, it upgraded my skills (Herbs, Skinning, and First Aid) to 700 and replaced all of my gear with a pretty matching set of basic i640 greens.
The first and only time her gear will ever match.
I would find out later that every last thing that was previously worn or in my inventory was moved to my mailbox, but it was nice having uncluttered bags for once. After login, I was put in a training scenario on a skyship, where Admiral Someguy mansplained "how to feral", giving basic pointers on what skills to use when and then sample combat with a training dummy and a few of his less-popular men.
"That's it? COOL!"
Basically, with knowledge of how to use 4 cat skills, I was told to leave the ship when I was ready to start the Legion intro scenario. "Check out your spellbook for a complete listing of your skills." *click* "Oh, God."
All right, we're going to Strev it to hell and back. I'm GOING to play a resto in the upcoming scenario, regardless of not having any healing addons or any idea what my skills do, a hazy grasp on the whole transform into different animals, and gear that is all agility and no intellect. I should have said "balance". Live and learn. Rawr! After best guessing and playing with the training dummy for a couple of minutes, I descend into hell.
So, how did it go? Turns out I was the only healer in the scenario, therefore I was the best. Yes, someone at some point screamed "WTF? Don't we have ANY healers?" Yes, people died, but to my credit very rarely. Yes, there was suffering, but we survived and I FELT GREAT! This is going to be exciting.
- Finish Mage Quest. This was actually a serious let down and felt appallingly dull and tropy (Surprise! The good guy-turned-bad was mind-controlled!), but it was nice to revisit the Oculus.
- Obtain the Artifact Fishing Pole. This will warrant a separate post later, as the story of its acquisition was all the fun, pain, and heartbreak that was missing from the Mage quest line.
- Gear up! Strev is now rocking at item level (ilevel) 836, which is more than enough to get in at the ground floor anywhere. For scale, 850 is the current cap.
My guild has been looking for the team to get up to i820 for normal raids, which release on Tuesday, but that's destined for failure from a beat-the-boss standpoint, but should be decent for letting the team start to gel and see how everyone starts to work together. Heck, the LFR version that will release a week after requires 825 minimum and it will feature the usual crippled fight mechanics that will let a handful AFK through most of it.
As a side effect of my lust for the fishing pole, I have a massive stockpile of semi-fresh fish that I have no idea how to cook. Now that raids are finally kicking off, there will be a great demand for enchantments, feasts, potions, and all of the raw materials that go into making raider consumables. Up until now, demand has been lackluster at best. Tonight will be the last night to buy up under-priced raw materials for flipping tomorrow. Time to shine, starlight!
In other news, I dusted off Anyth and started her through Pandaland, this time as a Marksman hunter, on the basis that Icy-Veins says they outclass the other specializations. As a petless hunter, she gains a straight bonus to DPS and doesn't have to fiddle with pet aggro and control. I'm not sure I like it. I mean, if I'm doing petless RDPS, I may as well be playing Strev and at that point the only real tacit advantage that Anyth has is that she only feigns death twice a minute.
Still, tooling around the starter zone, I was surprised at how much detail I remembered from the quests and quest lines years later. I also noted with some amusement that mining a node of "Ghost Iron" gave more experience than 20 mob kills with rested bonus. They really want you to level by questing/dungeons. If I cared enough, there's expensive potions that will triple xp gain for an hour, but it seems like a ridiculous waste of resources at the current 20k price tag. Remember: each 10k spent is equivalent to $5 actual dollars, based on wow token prices. I've found thinking that way is usually enough to keep me from making stupid purchases, excepting for the fishing one I'll relay next time.
Finally, because I really, REALLY hate myself, I spent my 100 Boost I got when I bought Legion. If I care to repeat the process again, the boost tokens sell for a straight $60 in the cash shop. The lucky recipient was probably one of the least likely suspects: Onsunshine, my worgen druid. I figure that when I get sick of DPSing, I should have a good healer to fall back on and everyone appreciates a resto druid more than a mage for dungeon runs, raids, children's parties (Look, Mommy! A MOONkin!), and pretty much everything. The fact I totally suck at it will just have to be a bitten bullet.
The "Poof! You're 100!" was actually much, much cooler than I expected. On the character selection page, it forced me to pick a damage spec (balance or feral) for the upgrade. Ok. When the dust settled, it upgraded my skills (Herbs, Skinning, and First Aid) to 700 and replaced all of my gear with a pretty matching set of basic i640 greens.
The first and only time her gear will ever match.
I would find out later that every last thing that was previously worn or in my inventory was moved to my mailbox, but it was nice having uncluttered bags for once. After login, I was put in a training scenario on a skyship, where Admiral Someguy mansplained "how to feral", giving basic pointers on what skills to use when and then sample combat with a training dummy and a few of his less-popular men.
"That's it? COOL!"
Basically, with knowledge of how to use 4 cat skills, I was told to leave the ship when I was ready to start the Legion intro scenario. "Check out your spellbook for a complete listing of your skills." *click* "Oh, God."
All right, we're going to Strev it to hell and back. I'm GOING to play a resto in the upcoming scenario, regardless of not having any healing addons or any idea what my skills do, a hazy grasp on the whole transform into different animals, and gear that is all agility and no intellect. I should have said "balance". Live and learn. Rawr! After best guessing and playing with the training dummy for a couple of minutes, I descend into hell.
So, how did it go? Turns out I was the only healer in the scenario, therefore I was the best. Yes, someone at some point screamed "WTF? Don't we have ANY healers?" Yes, people died, but to my credit very rarely. Yes, there was suffering, but we survived and I FELT GREAT! This is going to be exciting.
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Gnome Man's Land
The past couple of days have been sort of "establishing an evening routine", around optional activities. In the old days, this would be "go to hub a, b, or c" and do all the dailies until you're ready to stab yourself in the eyes with a [sparking fork of the feverflare] or something. (It doesn't really matter what you're gouging your eyes out with, as long as it is epic.)
What a purple fork might look like
The "must do" list for me is:
- Scout the World Map looking for quests that will give item upgrades first and foremost. If time permits, also target missions that give Warden reputation, artifact power, and order resources (which fuel my follower's stream of missions and are used to purchase upgrades for my class set of gear)
- Run around the zone Suramar collecting Mana Crystals, the "currency" of choice for discerning mana addicts.
- Feed said crystals to all of the addicts in my Suramarian outpost for tasty, tasty Nightfallen reputation.
I have no love for the Nightfallen, a group of elves who have sold themselves out to the Legion in return for mana. Without a steady supply of mana, they revert into mindless Withered, husks of rage and hunger-- basically making them 28 Days Later zombie-elves. The drug metaphors are stupidly in your face here and frankly I could easily have done without all of it, but their reputation is needed for everything from completing your class set to getting the achievements which will someday perhaps give expansion-wide flying. Right now the best you can hope to unlock is "faster horse speed" through a ridiculous amount of achievement hunting, but I can't imagine they won't eventually let us use our flappy things.
Dungeon running is just as painful now as it was a few years ago. Queue times of about 45 minutes for a DPS that eventually lead to mute groups filled with chainpulling psychotic tanks, healers that don't, and facepulling, firestanding DPS that value damage meters over common sense. So at least I had that familiarity working for me. The fact that EVERYTHING sends you to dungeons is a little annoying: profession quests, world quests, your class quests, campaign quests. I put these off to weekends when I have larger uninterrupted blocks of time.
By and large most of my time goes into the world questing. I can't emphasize how much I love this.
- As your item level increases gear rewards scale upwards
- Reputation is earned based on the zone doling out the reward
- There's no pressure to "do it all!" or hitting some daily mission cap.
- It keeps the zones populated with players constantly. I can only imagine how exciting that must be on PvP servers.
- The dynamically-scaled content means you get all 5 zones to play in, instead of one zone or a few lackluster hub areas.
Otherwise I spend time picking off side missions I discover as I explore the edges of the map, sit around doing AH market research, or just run around and fish for a while. ( ><> FEEESH! ><> ).
I've heard there's an Artifact fishing pole. I now have a character goal.
What a purple fork might look like
The "must do" list for me is:
- Scout the World Map looking for quests that will give item upgrades first and foremost. If time permits, also target missions that give Warden reputation, artifact power, and order resources (which fuel my follower's stream of missions and are used to purchase upgrades for my class set of gear)
- Run around the zone Suramar collecting Mana Crystals, the "currency" of choice for discerning mana addicts.
- Feed said crystals to all of the addicts in my Suramarian outpost for tasty, tasty Nightfallen reputation.
I have no love for the Nightfallen, a group of elves who have sold themselves out to the Legion in return for mana. Without a steady supply of mana, they revert into mindless Withered, husks of rage and hunger-- basically making them 28 Days Later zombie-elves. The drug metaphors are stupidly in your face here and frankly I could easily have done without all of it, but their reputation is needed for everything from completing your class set to getting the achievements which will someday perhaps give expansion-wide flying. Right now the best you can hope to unlock is "faster horse speed" through a ridiculous amount of achievement hunting, but I can't imagine they won't eventually let us use our flappy things.
Dungeon running is just as painful now as it was a few years ago. Queue times of about 45 minutes for a DPS that eventually lead to mute groups filled with chainpulling psychotic tanks, healers that don't, and facepulling, firestanding DPS that value damage meters over common sense. So at least I had that familiarity working for me. The fact that EVERYTHING sends you to dungeons is a little annoying: profession quests, world quests, your class quests, campaign quests. I put these off to weekends when I have larger uninterrupted blocks of time.
By and large most of my time goes into the world questing. I can't emphasize how much I love this.
- As your item level increases gear rewards scale upwards
- Reputation is earned based on the zone doling out the reward
- There's no pressure to "do it all!" or hitting some daily mission cap.
- It keeps the zones populated with players constantly. I can only imagine how exciting that must be on PvP servers.
- The dynamically-scaled content means you get all 5 zones to play in, instead of one zone or a few lackluster hub areas.
Otherwise I spend time picking off side missions I discover as I explore the edges of the map, sit around doing AH market research, or just run around and fish for a while. ( ><> FEEESH! ><> ).
I've heard there's an Artifact fishing pole. I now have a character goal.
Monday, September 12, 2016
Completely Unprofessional
Over the course of the past week I finished out the leveling content in the four world zones dedicated to it. I really appreciate the way Blizzard has done their dynamic scaling, so not only are the zones themselves more non-linear, but it is no longer "do this zone and then that one" throughout the experience. Yes, you'll want to ride every ride in the theme park, but there's no longer a sense of "if I don't do this NOW, I'll have out-leveled it and the rewards will be crap". I have almost nothing but praise for the dynamically scaling monsters and loot offered. "Almost nothing?", you say. The only drawback I see is there's little sense of "Look how powerful I am! *STOMP STOMP STOMP* RUN, MORTALS!" If anything I felt I was barely keeping pace with the content which was, after all, the point of it.
In the midst of it all, I joined the guild "Impractical Jokers" by virtue that their GM chatted with me directly when I randomly ran into him questing, as opposed to spamming me with a generic message using an addon that hunts for non-guilded people. (By and large, Mature Content was the worst offender there. I think I was pinged and auto-invited somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen times.) This would be the second time I've joined a guild whose name was based on a TV show I'd never seen or heard of until that point. (The first being 'Fairy Tail' in Tera.) Nice people; it should be a positive experience.
On a more economic note, it seems the value of gold has dropped significantly since my last run through and a few hundred thousand gold is no longer the fortune it was. Not entirely unexpected, but now that I have my first character at max level, I'll need to start up my auction house goblining properly. Just screwing around for a bit, flipping a couple of bracers needed for a questline and buying greens to disenchant netted me around 30k profit. I see why they upped the max gold limit to 10M. It's good to have goals.
Strev's professions are Inscription and Enchanting and at this point I'm thinking Inscription may be a terrible waste. Enchanting has always been (and continues to be) a steadfast moneymaker, but with the major/minor glyph system removed from the game since The Old Times, I'm not really sure how scribing measures up against simple gathering skills, particularly since I'll be out in the field more doing world quests. I've been collecting recipes as I find them for both professions, but so far there's been nothing worth the component cost to make. More research will be needed.
The alt brigade may fare a little better, but I dread re-learning a second class before I get the mage properly in gear. I'm still outputting mediocre damage in normal dungeons and I find myself running through mana faster than I should; extended fights are terrible. Again, research is needed.
In the midst of it all, I joined the guild "Impractical Jokers" by virtue that their GM chatted with me directly when I randomly ran into him questing, as opposed to spamming me with a generic message using an addon that hunts for non-guilded people. (By and large, Mature Content was the worst offender there. I think I was pinged and auto-invited somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen times.) This would be the second time I've joined a guild whose name was based on a TV show I'd never seen or heard of until that point. (The first being 'Fairy Tail' in Tera.) Nice people; it should be a positive experience.
On a more economic note, it seems the value of gold has dropped significantly since my last run through and a few hundred thousand gold is no longer the fortune it was. Not entirely unexpected, but now that I have my first character at max level, I'll need to start up my auction house goblining properly. Just screwing around for a bit, flipping a couple of bracers needed for a questline and buying greens to disenchant netted me around 30k profit. I see why they upped the max gold limit to 10M. It's good to have goals.
Strev's professions are Inscription and Enchanting and at this point I'm thinking Inscription may be a terrible waste. Enchanting has always been (and continues to be) a steadfast moneymaker, but with the major/minor glyph system removed from the game since The Old Times, I'm not really sure how scribing measures up against simple gathering skills, particularly since I'll be out in the field more doing world quests. I've been collecting recipes as I find them for both professions, but so far there's been nothing worth the component cost to make. More research will be needed.
The alt brigade may fare a little better, but I dread re-learning a second class before I get the mage properly in gear. I'm still outputting mediocre damage in normal dungeons and I find myself running through mana faster than I should; extended fights are terrible. Again, research is needed.
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
For We Are Many
Jumping headlong into Legion meant saying farewell to my budding Garrison, returning to Stormwind, and beginning an assault on the Broken Shore, a giant landmass in the ocean presumably no one noticed until now, which is serving as a base of operations for a demonic invasion of our world. So, you know, a Tuesday. After a suitably epic scenario that played out with a 4-group team of Alliance paired with a like-sized Horde, we were left with a very dead king and a righteously pissed off Jaina Proudmoore. With Anduin's butt back on the throne in Stormwind, I'm sent to Dalaran in Deadwind Pass to "bear witness" to it being teleported to the Broken Isles.
Apparently I missed a lot, because I was damn sure I had left Dalaran floating somewhere in Northrend. In fact, a quick teleport to Dalaran confirmed this. I wound up having to return to Stormwind, and then leave for Dalaran through a different portal so I can go to the "right" Dalaran, which was allegedly floating somewhere above Kara. Not feeling particularly compelled to jump off the edge to check, I took their word for it and met old familiar faces as the Kirin Tor ported the Island, which was being bombarded by Star Destroyers to someplace presumably more dangerous. I'm not going to even bother to wonder about it. Because seriously, I would think that Star Destroyers three zones from Stormwind would be a tad more important than securing an island somewhere in gods-cares-where.
Hell, they would have had to go over Duskwood just to get there!
As an aside, my teleportal spells still specify I can travel to "Dalaran - Northrend" and there's no conceivable way I can justify that as being an alternate universe. I'm half-tempted to fly to Kara and see if there really is a floating Dalaran there just so I can say there's now an f'in archipelago of floating cities, all named Dalaran. I've been given a standard-issue Dalaran Hearthstone, but I'll still gripe about the continuity a little.
Otherwise I'm pleased to see Dalaran returning as a central hub. Aside from the nostalgia factor, it's only as large as it genuinely needs to be without feeling cramped and nicely laid out. After running through a few "oh hai, Strev!" missions, I'm left in my "class hall", which replaces my garrison. It's a bit jarring moving from a walled fortification to what is, essentially, what looks to be a disused room at Hogwart's. I suppose I should be glad I hadn't gotten comfy at the old place. After admiring the mess, I'm told I can begin pursuing an Artifact Weapon. There's one for each main spec, so picking the one for arcane didn't exactly take hours of careful option weighing.
To my surprise, the questline for the weapon took me to Northrend, where I found myself barely holding my own against the critters. The clutch point came when I was given a solo dungeon inside Nexus which had me face off against enemies out of my league. This was a roadblock because I couldn't start Legion without the artifact. That's when I realized my failures were due to (a) not actually remembering all of the skills at my disposal and (b) clawing at the content with green crap from the mid 90s.
A visual representation of what green crap from the mid 90s might have looked like.
Well, the first thing I could handle by actually going through the spellbook and seeing what was missing from my hotbar. Ah yes, Frost Nova to root things and that spell to shield me from damage. Frankly I'm a little shocked I got as far as I did as quickly as I did without them. Now for the gear problem. I tucked my tail and went back to Draenor with a renewed sense of purpose to gear up properly before retur-- just kidding. I dropped 2k at the auction house and boosted my gear like 100 levels and went back.
It turns out I need not have bothered. Inside the instance, any damage done stays dealt as long as you don't leave the dungeon. No respawns. Die with a critter left at 1%? It stays at 1% until you sneeze on it. Ugh. At any rate, in short order I smoked the quest and bore my prize, Aluneth, an intelligent staff that occasionally comments on things and feeds on channeled energy from arcane sources automatically when I wander close to them. This last effect took me a bit by surprise as it happened and I noticed that "feeding my staff" gave me a little damage buff that lasts a good half hour. Monsters randomly drop "artifact chow" that lets you level the artifact up, giving it additional perks and bennies as it goes. I noted with some wry amusement that the artifact's skill tree is now more complex than my own.
So with stick in hand, I returned to Dalaran and my class hall to find it renovated and populated with a few other people. Oh! Apparently this isn't a private instance. With the "Map o' Legion" unlocked, I was able to pick a zone and begin questing there (more on that later) and when I popped back in at level 101, I was given another short quest in Dalaran and now the class hall is practically bursting at the seams with mages.
I note they've retained the Garrison's "pick a follower and send it on an off-camera mission" side activity, so that'll be a thing to do. The concept of spending resources to send followers out to do things which level them up and get more resources for you was done better in Skyforge, of all games. Skyforge let you handle all of that micro-management directly from the web. It plays like an app/browser game anyway, might as well go in whole hogger.
[Edit: several hours after posting this, I discovered that Blizzard 'one-upped' things by having a mobile app for Legion that lets you do all of the Class Hall stuff offline. Damn your attention to detail, Blizzard!]
Monday, September 5, 2016
Coming Soon: Legion
Yeah, so I figure that by the time you read this, my moral resolve will have crumbled and I'll be the owner of a copy of Legion. In the meantime, I'm happily bopping around killing rats and clicking glowies. After I dinged 98 a little more than a third of the way into the quests in Spires of Arak, I packed up and headed to Nagrand. This was done for a number of reasons.
First, I'd like for my quest rewards to at least keep pace with my level. Crazy, eh? Second, I'm a completionist at heart, so I know I'll come back and do the rest of the quests at some point... along with the optional missions and treasure collecting. (As an aside, my excitement over finding the hidden treasures waned considerably once I found out you can just buy maps that show where they are all hidden.) Third, I've always had a soft spot for Nagrand: the vast open expanses, the gentle rolling hills, the stupid poop quests. Well, maybe they weren't all pleasant memories, but I did want to see what the terrain looked like. Fourth and most importantly, I really, really hate bird people.
"Really, Strev? In bird culture, this is considered a dick move."
Nagrand sailed along beautifully and I wasn't disappointed. It was "nostalgia done right" as I picked off clefthoofs (clefthooves?), talbuk and elek like in the days of olde.The scenery was bright and uncluttered, with just enough mountainous terrain to piss me off mildly. I thoroughly enjoyed the Throne of the Elements section particularly, despite it being entirely devoid of unique mechanics. It was just really well laid out, in my opinion. The zone was significantly less linear than previous ones and about halfway through I hit 100.
Now where did I put that credit card?
First, I'd like for my quest rewards to at least keep pace with my level. Crazy, eh? Second, I'm a completionist at heart, so I know I'll come back and do the rest of the quests at some point... along with the optional missions and treasure collecting. (As an aside, my excitement over finding the hidden treasures waned considerably once I found out you can just buy maps that show where they are all hidden.) Third, I've always had a soft spot for Nagrand: the vast open expanses, the gentle rolling hills, the stupid poop quests. Well, maybe they weren't all pleasant memories, but I did want to see what the terrain looked like. Fourth and most importantly, I really, really hate bird people.
"Really, Strev? In bird culture, this is considered a dick move."
Nagrand sailed along beautifully and I wasn't disappointed. It was "nostalgia done right" as I picked off clefthoofs (clefthooves?), talbuk and elek like in the days of olde.The scenery was bright and uncluttered, with just enough mountainous terrain to piss me off mildly. I thoroughly enjoyed the Throne of the Elements section particularly, despite it being entirely devoid of unique mechanics. It was just really well laid out, in my opinion. The zone was significantly less linear than previous ones and about halfway through I hit 100.
Now where did I put that credit card?
Days of Future Past
Near as I can gather, this expansion takes places in an alternate timeline where the orcs didn't do a kegstand with Mannoroth's blood, so there's no corruption by the Burning Legion, no Outlands-style desolation, and presumably the British won the Revolutionary War. Instead of The Horde, Garrosh forms an "Iron Horde", which presumably ends with a kitchen-themed coliseum.
Today's mystery ingredient: Murloc!
Being a lifelong Doctor Who fan, I can cheerfully ignore all manner of plot holes for the sake of entertainment. As such, I'm not going to pick at the plot threads, because I'm sure the entire cosmic sweater is held together by suspension of disbelief. So, ok...our present is being assaulted by an alternate past which we've established didn't happen and we're here because reasons. Still content is content.
The main problem I have with WoW's content is that it gets devoured at a ludicrously speedy rate. The level spread for Warlords of Draenor is 90-100. There's seven zones presumably chock full of things to do. By the time I completely cleared the first zone, Shadowmoon Valley, I was level 94 and had nearly outleveled the first dungeon before I could experience it. Finished Gorgrond at 95.5 and Talador right at 97...in a day.
Bear in mind, this is without doing much of the "optional zone content". Certain parts of the maps contain quests that are accepted by moving into them-- usually of the "kill 20 rats" variety, but they reward a decent chunk of xp and gold, apparently so people can level faster without having to, you know, enjoy the game. Yes, I know there's a large contingent of people who believe the game doesn't start until they get that last "ding", but I'd rather enjoy the ride myself. Things have definitely changed since the early days when each level was a slow, uphill climb. I slowed my rolling ball of questing hurt long enough to take on the first two dungeons, Bloodmaul Slag Mines and Iron Docks. It seems as though they overhauled dungeon looting; there were no need/greed rolls. Each person was allowed to loot only things they could use.
On an unrelated note, I really like that they seem to be rewarding exploration. Several times my searching off the beaten path has led to a hidden treasure that was an improvement over my existing questing gear.
Most of my crafts are no longer locked at level 600; random drops off monsters start short quests that end with a reward of unlocking higher skill levels. From an "in universe" perspective, this is a lot more satisfying. From a "will need to level up my alts later" perspective, this strikes me as a massive pain in the ass. I'm curious to see if this methodology is retained in Legion.
Today's mystery ingredient: Murloc!
Being a lifelong Doctor Who fan, I can cheerfully ignore all manner of plot holes for the sake of entertainment. As such, I'm not going to pick at the plot threads, because I'm sure the entire cosmic sweater is held together by suspension of disbelief. So, ok...our present is being assaulted by an alternate past which we've established didn't happen and we're here because reasons. Still content is content.
The main problem I have with WoW's content is that it gets devoured at a ludicrously speedy rate. The level spread for Warlords of Draenor is 90-100. There's seven zones presumably chock full of things to do. By the time I completely cleared the first zone, Shadowmoon Valley, I was level 94 and had nearly outleveled the first dungeon before I could experience it. Finished Gorgrond at 95.5 and Talador right at 97...in a day.
Bear in mind, this is without doing much of the "optional zone content". Certain parts of the maps contain quests that are accepted by moving into them-- usually of the "kill 20 rats" variety, but they reward a decent chunk of xp and gold, apparently so people can level faster without having to, you know, enjoy the game. Yes, I know there's a large contingent of people who believe the game doesn't start until they get that last "ding", but I'd rather enjoy the ride myself. Things have definitely changed since the early days when each level was a slow, uphill climb. I slowed my rolling ball of questing hurt long enough to take on the first two dungeons, Bloodmaul Slag Mines and Iron Docks. It seems as though they overhauled dungeon looting; there were no need/greed rolls. Each person was allowed to loot only things they could use.
On an unrelated note, I really like that they seem to be rewarding exploration. Several times my searching off the beaten path has led to a hidden treasure that was an improvement over my existing questing gear.
Most of my crafts are no longer locked at level 600; random drops off monsters start short quests that end with a reward of unlocking higher skill levels. From an "in universe" perspective, this is a lot more satisfying. From a "will need to level up my alts later" perspective, this strikes me as a massive pain in the ass. I'm curious to see if this methodology is retained in Legion.
Sunday, September 4, 2016
A Pocket Full of Noodles
After speaking to The Guy Who Starts the Draenor Quests, I hopped through the swirling portal and began my theme park adventure in earnest.
Disclaimer: My general devil-may-care attitude towards Warcraft's lore hasn't changed in the past decade. I recognize some big names and will occasionally think "Hey, that's the dude/chick/dragon who did something I probably should know from something", but I've never actually cared enough to let things like "facts", "names", and accuracy impede my narratives. That may turn some of you off. I'm ok with that. Just clench your jaws, Pop Tart, and go to bed smug knowing that you're a better person than I for knowing the name of Stalvan Mistmantle's love.
On the other side of the portal I was treated with a series of "Welcome to Draenor" quests that required very little skill. Given that I was already a dozen shots of tequila in to my afternoon with no idea how to play my class optimally anymore, this wasn't as much of a nuisance as it would be normally. Fortunately, arcane mages still have all of the subtlety and nuance as a facially-applied sledgehammer, so I quickly got back in the groove of casual desolation. As expected, the first few "trash" quest rewards were far nicer than the epics I had left from the previous expansion, so I wasted no time making yesterday's photo obsolete, but horror came when I opened my inventory for the first time.
My bags were laden with noodles, fish, and a dozen types of cooked food. The treasures of a forgotten era vied with various dusts, elixirs, and toys for precious pack space. I was loathe to begin flushing things, fearful of accidentally discarding something of great value when it occurred to me that the odds of a consumable from two expansions back being worth more the gold from any single quest turn in was pretty slim. I'd price check the more esoteric garbage when the opportunity presents itself again, but for now I'd have plenty of space just from tossing the "obvious".
The second surprise came when I checked the mailbox and found a couple pages worth of notices. Apparently I'm still getting Brews of the Month and the Bottle of Binary Brew gave me a smile. Aside from that were a few notes from quest-givers who had given me their change-of-address notifications and a few general announcements of replacement toys and currencies... then I got to a notice that my Justice Points had been converted at some point at a rate of 47 silver each and.... woah.
Thank you, Easter bunny!
I'm still dreading looking in my bank or going through my alts. I'm going to need to steel myself for that.
In the meantime, after finishing the "Draenor 101" line, I'm left at my brand spanking new garrison which, as I understand it, most players develop a love/hate relationship with. For the unfamiliar, this is a little parcel of land that is "kinda like housing" in that players develop it by wasting time and money. What I haven't quite figured out is why I'd want to. Yes, there are a few little perks (like "horses go faster in Draenor") you get with certain upgrades, but I'm not out to impress anyone so overall I don't see this being a thing on which I'm going to spend too much effort. I'm very well aware I may live to eat those words, but at least I won't have to with a side dish of three year old noodles.
Disclaimer: My general devil-may-care attitude towards Warcraft's lore hasn't changed in the past decade. I recognize some big names and will occasionally think "Hey, that's the dude/chick/dragon who did something I probably should know from something", but I've never actually cared enough to let things like "facts", "names", and accuracy impede my narratives. That may turn some of you off. I'm ok with that. Just clench your jaws, Pop Tart, and go to bed smug knowing that you're a better person than I for knowing the name of Stalvan Mistmantle's love.
On the other side of the portal I was treated with a series of "Welcome to Draenor" quests that required very little skill. Given that I was already a dozen shots of tequila in to my afternoon with no idea how to play my class optimally anymore, this wasn't as much of a nuisance as it would be normally. Fortunately, arcane mages still have all of the subtlety and nuance as a facially-applied sledgehammer, so I quickly got back in the groove of casual desolation. As expected, the first few "trash" quest rewards were far nicer than the epics I had left from the previous expansion, so I wasted no time making yesterday's photo obsolete, but horror came when I opened my inventory for the first time.
My bags were laden with noodles, fish, and a dozen types of cooked food. The treasures of a forgotten era vied with various dusts, elixirs, and toys for precious pack space. I was loathe to begin flushing things, fearful of accidentally discarding something of great value when it occurred to me that the odds of a consumable from two expansions back being worth more the gold from any single quest turn in was pretty slim. I'd price check the more esoteric garbage when the opportunity presents itself again, but for now I'd have plenty of space just from tossing the "obvious".
The second surprise came when I checked the mailbox and found a couple pages worth of notices. Apparently I'm still getting Brews of the Month and the Bottle of Binary Brew gave me a smile. Aside from that were a few notes from quest-givers who had given me their change-of-address notifications and a few general announcements of replacement toys and currencies... then I got to a notice that my Justice Points had been converted at some point at a rate of 47 silver each and.... woah.
Thank you, Easter bunny!
I'm still dreading looking in my bank or going through my alts. I'm going to need to steel myself for that.
In the meantime, after finishing the "Draenor 101" line, I'm left at my brand spanking new garrison which, as I understand it, most players develop a love/hate relationship with. For the unfamiliar, this is a little parcel of land that is "kinda like housing" in that players develop it by wasting time and money. What I haven't quite figured out is why I'd want to. Yes, there are a few little perks (like "horses go faster in Draenor") you get with certain upgrades, but I'm not out to impress anyone so overall I don't see this being a thing on which I'm going to spend too much effort. I'm very well aware I may live to eat those words, but at least I won't have to with a side dish of three year old noodles.
Saturday, September 3, 2016
"Honey! I'm home!"
What can I say? It's been years. To make a long story short, a bunch of guys from the office have returned to the Altar of Blizzard with the new expansion and said I should revisit it. "I just don't think it's work $15 to re-up for a month, not to mention the box price. That's money I could blow on Pokecoins or, well, something that isn't WoW." Now, despite the time stamp on the last blog entry, I played a couple of months in Pandaland, long enough to get Strev through all of the available content and a few of the alts halfway through maybe level 87 before boredom of the daily grind set in and I left for other pastures.
"C'mon, Strev. You get the Draenor expansion for free and you can pay for your monthly sub with gold!" Now that perked my interest. When I left, I was sitting on a vault that periodically had to be sprayed for swimming cartoon ducks, a month's sub at 35k gold or so wasn't going to break me or even put that big of a dint in the ol' war chest. I rationalized that Draenor would keep me busy for a while and then after I'd sucked every last drop of juice from that lemon, I'd decide whether or not Legion was worth my effort. I mean, I know I'm going to break down and get it, but for now I can pretend. Besides, I'm always a sucker for peer pressure.
Well, I'd never uninstalled the game from my last run. Of course, I never bothered to keep it up to date either so, let's see how big of a downl--- 34 gig?! Yikes. Bear in mind the fastest speed my ISP, AT&T, provides borders on 3rd world speeds, so it will take days to patch the whole damn thing. As an aside, the main thing that keeps me from revisiting other MMOs I've enjoyed in the past to see how they've come along, for better or ill, is the massive downloads required just to pop in and say "Boo." Fortunately, Blizzard has the deal where you don't have to download everything in order to play and the portion I already had on my drive was almost enough to be considered "playable", if I didn't mind the occasional lack of graphical assets and giant delays while transitioning to areas. Good enough. I'd be going in blind after years "on the outside". Let's see...
A Fashionista I am not.
In short order I found myself in the middle of a panda commune surrounded by NPCs. I had no addons, talents, guild, friends, or clues to what was going on. After picking some talents almost at random and sorting out some basic spells to my toolbar, I hopped in a portal to Stormwind, determined to at least get my bearings. After stopping wistfully by the auctionhouse just to say "Hi" to Jaxom and Fitch, I tooled over to the Inscriptionist to see I didn't qualify for a skill increase yet. Fine. Crafting for a previous expansion isn't exactly a pressing necessity, so I'll figure it out later. As predicted, the noticeboard next to the AH gave me the breadcrumb to head to the Blasted Lands and begin our adventure proper.
So, for those of you reading along, new fans and old (who just happened to check this blog and discover it is suddenly active again), welcome to the continuing adventures of Strev, Gnome of the Wild Frontier.
Now let's go out there and do something stupid!
"C'mon, Strev. You get the Draenor expansion for free and you can pay for your monthly sub with gold!" Now that perked my interest. When I left, I was sitting on a vault that periodically had to be sprayed for swimming cartoon ducks, a month's sub at 35k gold or so wasn't going to break me or even put that big of a dint in the ol' war chest. I rationalized that Draenor would keep me busy for a while and then after I'd sucked every last drop of juice from that lemon, I'd decide whether or not Legion was worth my effort. I mean, I know I'm going to break down and get it, but for now I can pretend. Besides, I'm always a sucker for peer pressure.
Well, I'd never uninstalled the game from my last run. Of course, I never bothered to keep it up to date either so, let's see how big of a downl--- 34 gig?! Yikes. Bear in mind the fastest speed my ISP, AT&T, provides borders on 3rd world speeds, so it will take days to patch the whole damn thing. As an aside, the main thing that keeps me from revisiting other MMOs I've enjoyed in the past to see how they've come along, for better or ill, is the massive downloads required just to pop in and say "Boo." Fortunately, Blizzard has the deal where you don't have to download everything in order to play and the portion I already had on my drive was almost enough to be considered "playable", if I didn't mind the occasional lack of graphical assets and giant delays while transitioning to areas. Good enough. I'd be going in blind after years "on the outside". Let's see...
A Fashionista I am not.
In short order I found myself in the middle of a panda commune surrounded by NPCs. I had no addons, talents, guild, friends, or clues to what was going on. After picking some talents almost at random and sorting out some basic spells to my toolbar, I hopped in a portal to Stormwind, determined to at least get my bearings. After stopping wistfully by the auctionhouse just to say "Hi" to Jaxom and Fitch, I tooled over to the Inscriptionist to see I didn't qualify for a skill increase yet. Fine. Crafting for a previous expansion isn't exactly a pressing necessity, so I'll figure it out later. As predicted, the noticeboard next to the AH gave me the breadcrumb to head to the Blasted Lands and begin our adventure proper.
So, for those of you reading along, new fans and old (who just happened to check this blog and discover it is suddenly active again), welcome to the continuing adventures of Strev, Gnome of the Wild Frontier.
Now let's go out there and do something stupid!
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