Ok, so…

Not that anyone who might have been checking on this hasn’t figured this out, but, well, I stopped writing here a while ago… 

I also stopped playing WoW about 1-1/2 years ago.  I played long enough to get my warrior to 85, I started working on the shaman, and I dabbled with a couple of druid toons, but I had a bunch of stuff happen in real-life that took alot of my time for a while, which also coincided with the card that I was auto-paying my WoW sub with expiring. 

I sort of realized that I didn’t miss the game that much, though I did miss the people I was used to playing with.  So anyway, for anyone that might still check in here from time to time, So Long.  Enjoy what you’re doing, have fun, and many happy adventures!

I’m not Dead!

Just a little note to let folks know that I’m not dead, and have not abandonded the blog.  I’ve just been quite busy with work and real-life things to take care of.  Hopefully soon I’ll get back to a more regular posting schedule.

Changes, Changes, Changes…

It’s inevitable.  WoW is an ever-changing game.  There are simply too many people that play the game for it to remain static and still be successful.  They (meaning Blizzard) are going to change things, and I don’t just mean the content patches.  I’m talking more about the changes that they make to already existing parts of the game.

Some changes are more noticeable than others, like for example the changes to the mount system.

Mounts

I didn’t start playing until mid-BC, but I remember running all the way to level 40.  I remember how excited I was to be able to get my epic land mount at 60, my basic flyer at 70, and saving, saving, and saving to get epic flight.  That was on my hunter, on my warrior, I caught the middle of the transition, getting the basic mount at 30, but I was somewhere in the middle of the flying change.  Honestly, with where the game is at this point, I like these changes a lot.  Honestly, pretty much everyone just wants to get through the older content as quickly as reasonably possible.  Being able to get from point A to point B more quickly cuts down on that time, and more importantly, reduces time where you’re basically just sitting there, holding down a key, time where you’re so to speak doing nothing other than watching the scenery go by.

Leveling

XP goes faster, BoA leveling gear, all the recruit-a-friend bumps…  All of them can make leveling go much, much faster.  Again, they’re changes that sort of had to be made.  If one were a new player coming into the game, the first 68 levels of the game could be a somewhat boring, lonely place.  I do like the BoA gear also.  I can fully appreciate that Blizz wants people to follow the lore of the game a bit as they level, but realistically, those of us who have already leveled a toon (or several) really don’t care too much about it probably.  What the BoA gear does though is basically give you a switch to flip to accelerate the process.  If you want to level faster, here’s how you can, if you want to stop, smell the flowers, follow all the lore, etc, you can still do that too.

Those are among what I would consider really positive changes, however, I don’t think that all changes are for the better.  Honestly, I read today that there are more incoming nerfs on some of the 5-mans, and honestly, I think all but one of them is unnecessary.

You must have 5k+ GS to read this post!!!

We’ve all seen it.  LFM (insert here) must have #### GS… Is anyone besides me sort of tired of it?

It’s pretty amazing how fast a mod can all but take over the game when you really think about it.  I first started hearing about GearScore a few months ago, but at least on my server I didn’t really start noticing it in the [Trade] and [LFG] channels until the last month or 2.  Now, almost anytime you see anyone looking for more for a raid, you seen a Gearscore req posted along with it.  I’m even starting to see it in guild recruitment posts.  Honestly, I’m sort of tired of it, but at the same time I totally understand.

Just remember you have to have at least a 5K GearScore to keep reading this 😛 !

The Random Dungeon Tool and You (tankishly)

Perhaps the most talked about new feature of patch 3.3 (aside from of course Icecrown Citadel) has to be the new Random Dungeon tool. And with good reason. I think it’s impact will be much, much larger than was expected, and it may have some repercussions that will change the face of the game forever.

Why can’t I play a **** ****?

I’ve been feeling the urge to dabble with another toon. Call it a short attention span, or whatever you wish. Not that I’m in any way bored or otherwise dis-interested in my warrior, I just want something else to fiddle with. This of course leads to the inevitable pondering of what it is I want to play for this “fiddling toon”.

What I already have.

I already have a fully leveled and raid-level-geared Night Elf Hunter. I also have my Dwarf Warrior, who’s actually more well-geared than my hunter. I have a lvl 33 Draenai Pally (some version of a ret-ish spec), a lvl 22 Gnome Rogue, a lvl 16 Night Elf Druid, and a lvl 60 Night Elf Death Knight, oh, yeah, there’s also my lvl 2 Draenai Mage, but he’s just a banker/auction-monkey. That’s on my ‘main’ server, Whisperwind.

I also have a few Hoarde toons spread between Nazgrel and Thunderhorn.  I have friends that play Hoarde on both servers, and so I have a few toons on either, nothing out of the ‘teens, with the exception of a DK on Nazgrel who’s lvl 60.

So basically, I already have a ranged DPSer, and a tank/melee DPSer, thought I’m very much considering going with a second prot spec on the warrior, as I basically never use the DPS spec, or I might set up a spec specifically for PvP.

This leaves one notable role I don’t have a toon to fill. I have no healer. I also technically have no caster DPS, but I do have a ranged DPS, so close enough for my tastes, at least for now.

And the Loot-gods do Smile

Sometimes it just works that way you know? You can run something over and over and over, and what you’re looking for never drops.

I have a friend that’s done Ony every week since she was put in, looking for the caster ring. He hasn’t seen it drop yet. I don’t know how many times I ran H-ToC trying to get the tank shoulders out of there (granted I think I only have like a dozen clears there, but still…), and they finally dropped. They dropped the first run after I plunked down a stack of Triumph badges to get an upgrade from the blue ones I had been wearing. Back when I first hit 80 with Drey, I ran reg HoL a number of times, trying to get the +def trinket, never saw it, not once, I still havn’t seen it, but I haven’t run it on reg in a while either. And now I don’t really have a use for it… I don’t know how many kills I have on Sarth between my 2 toons, but I have yet to win that damn 22-slot bag on either of them.

The Things we do for Achievements

Who would have known. Well, probably there’s some sort of psychological research data out there that Blizz used when they put the achievement system into the game, so maybe they did, but damn, the things that we can be convinced to do for an “achievement”.

So what brings this topic on?

Well, the whole Winter Veil thing starts today, and I’ve decided to go for the Violet Proto-Drake with my warrior. Seems simple enough right, most of the holidays aren’t really that hard, just a little time consuming. But there’s one minor issue. The one achievement requires you do the Ogri’La bombing-run quest on a holiday mount. No biggie right? Not for most of you vets out there, but my warrior was originally leveled as an alt, and conveniently, happened to be in Outlands during the Midsummer Flame Festival, which was the first holiday I actually decided to do on him. Actually it worked out rather well, I got like 2 1/2 levels on him running around doing the flame things, and had my Flame Warden title at like 63-64. Remember too, that was before they popped flying back to lvl 60. So anyway, I ended up basically skipping alot of Outlands between the levels I got from the festival, and having the leveling gear. I didn’t really quest in Nagrand, BeM, SMV, or Netherstorm.

So guess what, I don’t even have the Ogri’La opened up to where I can do the dailies for them.

So last night I set off to open them up. Nothing terribly difficult really, I’m a tank after all, so I manage to relatively easily solo the 5-man group quests that you have to do early in the questline. But let’s be honest, I have a short attention span, and I get bored easily. I got to the quest where you need an ass-load of Apexis Shards. I’m pluggin along collecting them when a good friend in my guild asks if anyone wants to help out on an Occulus achievement run.

Patch 3.3: Initial impressions

So last night was my first real foray into the game after 3.3 went live. Enough of my mods were borked on Tuesday that I didn’t do anything other than one “random dungeon” run (ended up being ToC) with a bunch of guildies. I intended to go as my off-spec (Arms) but for some reason my menu-bar descided to go away, and I couldn’t swap specs, so I just put my DPS gear on, swapped stances, and tried to inflict as much pain as I could. We made it through, though my contribution was relatively minimal. I did end up getting the Edge of Ruin though, so now I need to contemplate going fury, as I have Marrowstrike as well. Might be amusing…

So anyway, my thoughts on what I’ve experienced of the 3.3 fun so far? I’ll break it down a bit by category.

Something New (for me at least)

As I’m sitting here quite possibly on the eve of a major content patch it’s in many ways a time for reflection. I find myself in a different place than I’ve ever been before with a major patch or expansion being released. I’ve now got 2 characters at the level cap. I’ve effectively (and happily) switched “main” characters, and I’m filling a different role now. I’m in a new guild (been there about 2 months I guess), and my wife is rapidly approaching lvl 80 with her toon as well. Things are just different this time around, that’s the only way I can explain it. Add to that I’m in a different place progression-wise than I’ve ever been before as well.