Musings of a Hermit

All the Patch 2.3 Info has got me thinking about the future of our beloved World of Warcraft. I get in these moods at times where I wonder what they will add, when they will add it, that kind of stuff.

Druid
I would like to see a new form. Balance has the Moonkin, which is cool. Restoration has the Tree of Life, which is cool. What does feral get special? Not that they really need anything special, I just want it. I am thinking like an "aspect" or "were" beast kind of thing. I do not mean to replace the bear as tank, or the cat as rogue/dps, but maybe just something else. Were form would allow you to do a little of both at the same time. No taunt, no rogue skills, just massive hp/armor and some evil dps at the same time. Let the world know that you are feral and proud of it. Perhaps in WotLK....

Goblin
I want to see gobins as neutral race. Make them come out with the undermines. A complete set of zones that takes you all the way up to level 20 or so before you have to commit to a faction. Perhaps have a Quest line for each faction to prove your worth, before you can move on. Or maybe just stay middle of the road and have limited access to both? Who knows. Goblins could be rogues/warriors/mages/hunters/locks or something like that. Off the top of my head that feels right...

Christmas
Now that we have all seen how cool the Headless Horseman was what will Christmas bring this year? I think we should get a "sleigh" flying mount, or at least a new "Jingle Bell" to turn our mount into a sleigh. In addition to last years Grinch quest line, perhaps make a new grinch quest line with 70s in mind. Give him so nice purple epics for us to steal. I do not know make him come with some "Evil Gnome" adds or something...

Honor Grind

I am posting this for moral support. When I see what I want vs. what I have to "grind" for it is almost overwhleming...

This is for a full set of Season 1 gear (2.3 Patch Honor Purchase) as well as the other slots filled with epics....

Totals for Season 1
Honor 107450
WS Token 30
AB Token 50
AV Token 50
ES Token 50

Totals for Other PVP Epics
Honor 127462
WS Token 20
AB Token 60
AV Token 10
ES Token 60

Having said that I have already spent 21229 Honor, 20 AB Tokens, and 20 WS Tokens. I currently have 23 WS Tokens, 42 AB Tokens, 100 AV Tokens, 30 ES Tokens and 21000 something Honor.

Grand Total left to Purchase/Farm for....
192683 Honor, 7 WS Tokens, 48 AB Tokens, 0 AV Tokens, 80 ES Tokens....

/sigh

Return to the Dark Side

I have returned to my Horde toons. Yep, that is right, I am back Horde. I feel I owe my paladin the levels he deserves, but now that he is 70, it is a chore playing him again. I guess under WoW standards I am just not Paladin material. I absolutely love my warlock though.

A guildie and I jumped ship Thursday and I hit AV hard this weekend. Snubmah is not quite 70 yet so I am honor farming so I can have a little head start on gear when we get ready to form our pvp team. I do not like the lengthy commitment that raiding requires so PVP is the way to go for me right now. I think the average AV game this weekend was only like 20 minutes. I gained over 20k honor this weekend and spent a good chunk on some upgrades. I also ran Headless Horseman 5 times, I got a good group, and managed to get the pet and the caster dps ring.

After my pvp purchases I am now sitting with 4 epics. Well three 70 epics plus the epic tabard of flame from the card game, but it still counts....

Need more levels

I am on a mission. I am playing alliance almost exclusively now, not for my love of alliance, or my lack of love for horde, but I have found some good people to guild with. Until that changes I will play alliance. Kind of nice having a 70 on both sides as it allows me to take a real break from any drama that may arise. Having said that, there are times when I regret my decision waaaaay back when I chose a paladin as my starting toon. I like him, do not get me wrong, but going from my horde lock to the paladin is very painful at times. With my lock, things die... very quickly. There are times when I do too, but meh.... it works. My paladin is just the opposite. It is rare that I go down, and when I do, things are a mess, and usually quite comical. However, I think my dps is actually in the negatives.

I am only using him as an ATM (He gives my hunter Gold and farms for said Gold) and to do some pvp so I can get the arena/BG healing gear and wait for WotLK. I am really enjoying my hunter. I have forced myself to not twink him. He only has gear that he finds or that he can craft on his own. I make sure that he has plenty of gold on hand though as I am stockpiling all the leatherworking patterns that I see.

I made it through two levels last night. I did a few quests in STV, a few quests in 1k Needles/Shimmering flats, and now I am sitting in Desolace. With speed and a little luck on my side, Desolace and 2 more levels will be history by the time I log this evening. I may not be the fastest grinder/leveler in the world but I am dedicated :)

How to take Defeat

This weekend I did a lot of goofing off in the wonderful World of Warcraft. I took down the Headless Horseman several times with my paladin. We started up a n00b pvp 3v3 team called Lucid Slayers, and promptly lost all 10 of our games. We ran a guild member through BRD, and I finally got my Key at 70. I changed my spec to Holy.... again.... We did some BGs to start getting some "entry" gear, so that maybe, you know, we can win an Arena match. All and all a great WoW weekend. That is not all that I did this weekend, but it was all that happened on the WoW front.

I like to have fun in the game. I like to challenge myself in the game. As such, I realize that this is just that, a game. I try to find like minded people so that my enjoyment of the game increases. I have been lucky thus far in finding select people that I truly can just have fun with. This weekend, a friend and I went for a fun BRD run for another guild mate. So the team looked like this... Me (70 Paladin / Prot), Gutblades (70 Warrior / Fury), Zondra (70 Warrior / Fury), and Ambience (54 Druid / Feral). Gutblades, his wife Ambience, and I are like minded. As a matter of fact we often do stupid things during runs much to the amusement of each other.

This weekend while we were running BRD we came to the stunning revalation that Zondra, in fact, is not like us. Nothing at all... We like to challenge each other. I try to pull as much as I can while still judging whether or not I can do it alone. Sometimes... I die. Gutblades, not wanting to be left out, laughs and joins in. Ambience, having no choice must laugh and also... join in. We have fun. We do not mind a 10g repair bill (I was at 0% when we logged). I would rather not, but hey, I am 70... 10g is what? Less than one quest...

We were on the highway area of BRD just killing things when we pull waaaaaay to much. We draw another pat, then another comes from behind the door, then another.... It goes south real quick. Ambi draws the pats, and between our taunts we can not keep her alive from all the mobs coming. We go into panic mode, in a good way, and just try to kill as much as possible. Nope, no luck. We all die. That is right, 3 70s and a 54 just wiped in BRD. Gutblades and I think it is hillarious. Zondra... not so much. He gets pissed because somehow he thinks we are making fun of him... I mean come on, we just died too. Just enjoy the ride, have fun.

To Do Lists...

I find myself more often than not creating "To Do Lists" at work when I am in between tasks. I browse numerous WoW blogs, read a lot of different sites about WoW, and always have something I am planning to do. It becomes very tedius at times, but I know that if I do not make my lists then I will waste in game time.

I have made a gear list for my 70 Paladin that I found on some blogs & sites, that I have tweaked for personal taste. I play my Paladin tankadin style and that is what I plan on continuing to do. I am in a social guild, so unless I make some "raid" friends do not see myself seeing any endgame content with this toon. My horde lock has played in Kara and attempted Gruul's lair, but even he has not made it too far. I am content with this, but sometimes miss the good old MC / AQ / ZG days. They are very fun raids, when they work. More often than not, for me, they did not. RL would always aggro valuable raid members and we would be stuck waiting.... waiting.... waiting....

I have mats that I need to farm, quests to complete for easy gold. I have my up and coming 31 Draeni Hunter that I am enjoying. As I said before I am in a social guild, so the amount of 20 - 40 toons makes grouping, if I choose, easy. There are also several 70s that we can trade off "lowbie runs." Having said that, I have made myself a list of "needed" instance runs for my hunter. Quest completion and loot searching instance runs on serparate lists of course.

I have "farm" lists. Areas that I know to be higher percentage drops of items that I would like to have. I go out there and spend a couple hours easy, and very rarely come away with my drop. It is ok though, as at least I have vendor trash, and green drops.

I have to juggle my WoW time. I am certain many people with "Altivitus" do. The amount of stuff that I want to accomplish seems quite daunting at times though.

Professions

I am of the opinion that professions suck. Yes you heard that right, they suck. With my paladin I have been a 300 Hammersmith, 300 Alchemist, 300 Enchanter, 300 Engineer, 300 Herbalism, 375 Skinner, and 375 Miner. That was a long grueling gold intensive history of "mistakes." I am not saying that professions are not useful, I am just saying that they, in fact, suck.

I am not sure why but I make a lot of comparisons between Final Fantasy Online and World of Warcraft. Final Fantasy Online was really the first MMO that I ever really got into. I would probably still be playing FF Online if grouping were not mandatory. However, grouping was, and I can easily remmember looking for a group to get into the Crawler's Nest for over 2 hours before I finally just logged in disgust. That was really the final straw.

In Final Fantasy Online, you could have "ALL" the professions that you wanted. It took a lot of time and energy into leveling a profession. It took a lot of gil (their system of currency), and there were times when you crafted something that your mats were wasted and nothing happened. However, you could have "ALL" the professions. For someone like me, who is a little on the OCD side, that was wonderful.

Let us take a walk to imaginary land and pretend that we could have all the professions in WoW. I would almost be done. The only three I would need to work on would be tailoring and leatherworking. Maybe they should change it so that you can only have 2 "Active" professions. The rest go idle. In this scenario, you would have to select which professions were idle, in regards to BOP crafted items. You could not sport a complete suite of BOPs just because you had them all. However, you could switch over to Alchemy/Herbalism, grind a week or two to store up some pots, swich to Enchanting for another week or two to power your gear back up, then move on to your "farming" skills.

I think they should make the professions more difficult, then let you level them all. By the same token, they should be more rewarding when all is said and done.

Get the most...

Why do I love World of Warcraft? Allow me to share why I love the game of WoW. There are a variety of ways to play the game, a variety of styles to play, and content at every level of the game.

Level 1 - 70 Quest
You can be the kind of person that just loves to quest... you go through the many levels of the game quest after quest after quest.

Level 1 - 70 Grind
You can be the kind of person that just likes to grind... if a quest gets completed that is cool to, but you just want to tear through some mobs.

Level 70 Raid
Often called "end game," this style of play involves getting a bunch of people together and trying to tackle some of the really big challenges in the game. It takes time, patience, and people you trust.

Level 70 Instance / Heroic / Casual
You can be the kind of person that just does not have the time to devote to a raid guild. You have a good group of people that also do not really have time, so you settle for 5 mans. 5 mans can be challenging as well and do not require the same amount of "stress" that raids generally do.

Level 70 PVP
You could enjoy trashing other players. You can do world pvp, enter arena's, do some BGs, or just go around "ganking" people.

Twinks
This is a term that any MMO gamer should know well. You may be the type that really enjoys the twink experience and just enter low level BGs with above average gear.

I like Wow because no matter what style of gamer you are there is something for you. Personally, I like to level grind, do quests, and some casual pvp. I think the success of this game is in the design of it. The game meets a lot of gamers needs and continues to give.

Sell Out

Today's post /rant will not be WoW related as I have other "geeky" interests and some that are not so "geeky." Today we shall discuss this Tragedy. I have read comic books for a long time. My favorite was Spiderman growing up, but I really can not stand the movies. I read all the "X" titles, the Avengers, Fantastic Four, Ironman, Hulk, Wolverine,and Captain America. I was pretty much a Marvel junky. The only DC stuff I ever really read was some of the Batman comics, JLA, Teen Titans Go! (The cartoon :P ), and Green Lantern.

I loved comics, yet I have not really loved most of what the "mainstream" market has done to them. As they have become more popular with the Cinema masses I have stopped reading. I am not saying that this was the only reason, just a good stopping point. I long for my son to get old enough to want to collect / read so that we can enjoy this together.

Having said that, I came across the above article and was just shocked. I knew that Captain America was going to come back, there was no doubt there. I just thought that, you know, when he came back he would still be Captain America. I read the Death of Superman stuff and knew how bad that was when he came back. I went through the Ben Reilly Spiderman days and "wept." But come on... what Captain America has become is just wrong.

Here is a neat little comic from a Applegeeks that more or less sums up how I feel about this.

I work at a military base as an IT Contractor. When I picked up my issue where Captain America died, I put up several "Memorial" shots of Captain America. I even tried to talk the Commander into lowering the flag to half mast as Captain America was a hero. He had a good laugh, but nothing. I did however, take the afternoon off as bereavement to mourn :P

"We love to fly and it shows..."

I knocked out a few quests last night and purchased my flying mount. Not my epic one mind you, just the normal poor man mount. So finally my paladin has caught up to my lock. It feels nice to be able to fly around and look for ore deposits, or as I now begin to quest for even more gold for gear and enchants, I can just skip over areas and go directly to the quest area.

Some guild mates and I have been talking pvp lately. We are a "fun" guild and do not have the manpower to try Kara. Even if we did have the manpower, our balance is all wrong. We have decided just to continue having fun and try out some pvp. I am even planning on changing my spec over to a holy build after two years solid of prot. I will keep you up to date...

Questing

I am not sure how you like to quest. I am not even sure how I "best" like to quest. There are times when I will just grind around the general area and if I complete a quest, then that is cool too. There are other times when I am on a search and destroy mission. I know where the quest is, I know what I have to do, and I excecute.

I am not sure where I stumbled upon it, but I have an excel spreadsheet that I am currently converting to a word document with thottbot links. This spreadsheet shows most if not all the alliance quests up until the Skettis / Netherdrake quests. It shows where the quest starts, where the quest takes place, and who you turn the quest in to. It is broken down by zone, starting with Hellfire Peninsula. It is not a powerlevel guide by any means, but has been a helpful little tool for me that has saved me a lot of time.

Quest Guide

Now as I mentioned, this is not my creation. I have used it, but can not remember who or where I got it from. If anyone stumbles upon my post and can identify the author for me I would love to give him/her proper credit. Also if anyone has a horde equivalent then please pass on a link. I am afraid that I lack the patience to build one of these on my own. :)

Lay-a-Way

I recently made a confession that I have the very deadly disease "Altivitus." I do not for see ever finding the cure to that particular ailment, and have just learned to live with it. The symptoms are not overly worrisome, and really only affect "guild time."

I have come to the conclusion that I have an even more deadly disease... "AHA." The scientific name is Amustis Havif Allofeverything, commonly called Auction House Addiction. AHA is a terrible thing. It affects one's gold supply, "guild time" (to replenish said gold), and travel time, just to name a few...

In short the problem boils down to this. I go to the AH with good intentions. My plan is simple. I want to put up for auction, this netherweave cloth, these mined bars, or these skins, or whatever else I may have to produce income. What happens? I will tell you... I can not just list. Like some sort of sick compulsion I need to browse...

I search for plate on my paladin.... I search for "goofing off weapons" (You know the skills you never use but level when you run "lowbies" through instances) ... I search for "deals"... I search for tank gear, or healing gear... I just search...

Now, you may ask yourself, "Self, what does this have to do with the title?" Quit rushing me... I am getting there...

I need a new addon. I need an addon that allows me to set a target purchase, and save for it. I need it to "steal" a set amount of my gold and reserve it for that purchase. I need it to hide it so well that even unloading the addon will not find it. I would even like it to be able to separate my funds into different reserves for different targets that I want all at the same time. What should we call this addon...... LAY-A-WAY!

Advice

Today's post is going to be off the WoW topic if you do not mind. I am sitting at work and to be honest wish that my coworkers did not know my name. I am making physical diagrams so that I can later put them in Visio. The plan is to combine our current power, network, and HVAC layouts into one "Presentation" for the big guys.

This morning I am going around measuring all the offices, closets, electrical rooms, bathrooms, and the server floor. I have measured the extire of the building. As I am going about my business people keep offering their advice on who I should talk with or what I should do, or what I should purchase to make the job go easier. Everyone has their opinion and they believe it is their God given right to mention it to me.

If I take the time to ask your opinion, then feel free, tell me how I could be doing my current job/tasking better. Please. I have obviously not thought about what I am doing, so you are doing me a favor. I try to be polite. I listen. I nod my head. I go "check" what they recommend I check... the whole time realizing that I am probably wasting my time.

/sigh

Level 70

Woot! I finally dinged 70 with my paladin. It feels good. I have had gear sitting in the bank for a while now that I equipped and my bonus spell damage just went up. I run a protection spec, with "shockadin" gear. If you are unfamiliar with this term, that means I maximize my +spell damage. When questing/grinding I start off judging Crusader then follow up with righteous and watch the bonus damage work. I have even found that tanking works fine with my gear too, but would never try to tank any really tough bosses.

ReClass

I was in the Army for a little under 6 years (involuntary extension ftl) and understand the term ReClass. There are many others that may understand the term, for those of you who do not, allow me to explain...

In the service you have the ability to reclass or retrain a different career field. Perhaps, you joined up and there are just no promotions available in your career field. Perhaps, you are looking down the road and realize that there is no way you will get a decent civilian job with your current skill set. Perhaps, you just want a change of pace. All of that is your choice, and you have the ability to reclass. What this means is that you will go back to AIT (Training school, sort of like a college environment with Drill Sergeants shouting at you), and you will learn a new "trade." Congratulations... you have just reclassed.

Now to somehow connect that random bit of information to WoW..... My paladin. My paladin was my first toon and I feel like I owe him something. I feel as though I have to level him. I feel as though he deserves it, when to be honest, man I hate leveling a paladin. He is only 6 bubs away from 70, but still... that is 6 looong more bubs until I can safely say I am done again until WotLK comes out. Well not really, I still have to grind out some decent gold so I can get my really cool flying mount.

I want to reclass. I wish there was a system in place so that I could say... you know what.. Paladins do not suck, they just do nothing for me. I want to reclass. I realize that such a feature could be abused, and realize that it would never see the light of day, but still the concept would be great. My paladin could become a rouge... or a shadow priest... or even a mage...

Remembering When...

A looooong time ago (around 2 years)... on a server far far away (Skywall)... There was a level 1 Paladin.

Ah, that very first toon. It has been so long ago it is almost hard to remember the mistakes that I made. I tend to forget how long it took me to find things... how long it took me to level.. how long it took me to decide on which profession to begin (not that it mattered)... how long it took me to find the AH (yes this was before the AH patch, when you had to go to IF or Org.) It is almost hard for me to believe that there are any truly new players out there, that is until I log in and read some of the questions that flood general and trade chat.

Did you know that it is possible to skip the tram and run a level 25 paladin all the way from Stormwind to Ironforge? Did you? Well, it can be done.... however I would not recommend it. How do I know it can be done? Well, you have to remember that he was my first toon, I did not know any better, and I wanted to get to the AH that I heard was in IF. There was a lot of death involved... often times very shortly after my res... so it was more of a res hop and less of a "run." I thought it must be possible, because I see Night Elves, Dwarves, and Gnomes in my area all the time. I thought to myself, "Self, how are they getting here... there must be safe path through those tough zones." I, of course, was wrong.. there was a Tram...

I understand why people shout for directions. I really do, but it still bugs me to see the same questions spammed over and over again. There needs to be a chat faq or something that auto directs redundant questions from chat to the faq... That would be great.

Last night was the start of brewfest. I was on when it started, and wow.... the n00bs were out in force. Within a matter of minutes people were shouting for directions.... Come on people, please, just do a little looking around. Please, just try to use that God given brain of yours and find it first. If you fail, that is fine... I am willing to help. However, I want, nay I demand, that you at least look first.

"Altivitus"

I have a confession to make.... I have "altivitus." You may ask yourself, "Self, what is altivitus?"

Allow me to explain:
I am addicted to the creation of new toons. I am addicted to those first 10 or 20 levels. Why? I am not sure, but I love that lowbie content. Perhaps it is instant gratification of an easily obtainable new level. Perhaps it is the way that every couple of levels you get this new, amazing mechanic to add to your class. Perhaps it is just because...

I have pve toons, pvp toons. Then there are my alliance toons and horde toons. When a new server group is released by Blizzard, new toons have been created just to enjoy the new server level race. I have probably deleted more toons than the average WoW player has ever created. I am not sure that there is a combination of race / class that I have not enjoyed up to at least level 20. However, rarely do any of these toons make it much farther than level 20.

I am really excited about patch 2.3 for a few reasons. The main reason, of course, is that the amount of xp needed to level from 20 - 60 has been reduced while at the same time the quest xp for those 20 - 60 levels has been increased. So now, when I am "alt hiding" or just doing my Saturday morning "rest burn" I may be able to enjoy my "altivitus" all the more...

That last level...

I know not what it is about that last level, but for me it is the worst. I do not care at what point in your "WoW Career" you are in, for me, it always seems like the most grueling. When I was level 9 at the lowbies, as quick as they go, it seemed like level 10 was harder than level 11. When I was level 39, getting to level 40 seemed like it took forever. Pre-BC, level 59 was the longest, and now I am sitting at level 69 with my paladin and creeping through 1 bub at a time. The thing of it is, I have run out of easy quests in Nagrand. I do not want to have to move on to Blade's Edge, or Netherstorm, or Shadowmoon until I have a flying mount. I have limited the area in which I level, and so now I am stuck killing ogres and watching my xp bar slowing creep towards level 70. The only perk is... at 70 I would still be killing these suckers for the beads and rep. Two birds with one stone I guess...

Making Progress

Ok, so I am making slow progress.... I am taking this blog at its most literal interpretation, a web journal. I am afraid that at times this will be more for me (posting links and stuff) than for others, but that is my choice as this is my blog. :)

New Beginnings

I have decided to begin a blog and have no real "creative" way to begin than to just start throwing stuff on the page. My hobbies currently include World of Warcraft (WoW), camping, hiking, and Biblical research. I will devote the majority of blogspace to my "adventures" in warcraft. I rather enjoy the level grind and have played quite a few "toons". I will share my thoughts as they occur more for my friends than for any real readership, but if any care to stop by and read what I have to say that is fine too.