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.